Recently, I wrote an article for the Hennepin County Lawyer addressing some of the kinds of tax questions that non-tax attorneys receive from their clients. The text of this article is included below: Tax touches almost everything. As a tax attorney, this keeps my job very interesting. This also means that even non-tax attorneys likely [...]
Appearing in the October of 2021 issue of ALI CLE’s The Practical Lawyer is an article by Kathleen E. (Splett) Pfutzenreuter and Benjamin A. Wagner addressing a variety of tax topics that small and solo firm lawyers should be ready to answer. The tax topics covered include: when to talk to a tax accountant or [...]
The American Rescue Plan Act established the Restaurant Revitalization Fund (RRF) to provide support to eligible entities that suffered revenue losses related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) will provide restaurants and other eligible entities with funding equal to their COVID-19 pandemic-related revenue loss up to $10 million per business [...]
In January of 2018, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued a press release advising delinquent taxpayers to negotiate reasonable alternatives to enforced collection action, or risk losing their passport. Please find more on that press release and the IRS’s initial approach to passport revocation here. Suffice to say, the initial process for passport revocation was [...]
The on-going COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on the daily operations for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). The IRS has appeared to have done its level best to provide taxpayers with options for securing vital documentation. Though, taxpayers attempting to obtain a lien release or certificate of discharge have experienced some delays in [...]
It is not uncommon for small businesses to rely on friends and family for loans to assist the business in meeting operating expenses. This is even more true given the on-going pandemic. Small businesses are scrambling to make sure they can meeting their operating expenses. Unfortunately, many of those small business owners are so focused [...]
On March 25, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced its “People First Initiative,” a program intended to respond to the challenges of Covid-19 by providing a variety of relief related to IRS deadlines and collection actions. For additional information, please see our previous blog article regarding the People First Initiative here and the full [...]
People often joke that the only certainties in life are death and taxes. Well, it turns out that, when it comes to the report of Foreign Bank and Financial Account (FBAR) penalties, death may have finally met its match. The Southern District of Florida issued a decision in United States v. Green, 2020 BL 165965 [...]
The United States Tax Court (Court) recently issued a decision highlighting, yet again, the importance of clear drafting in settlement agreements. In Doyle v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo. 2019-8, the Court held that the taxpayer could not exclude amounts, pursuant to Internal Revenue Code § 104(a)(2), that he received from a settlement agreement. [...]
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) can utilize its jeopardy levy function (i.e., taking a taxpayer’s assets) to pursue a taxpayer’s assets prior to issuing a jeopardy assessment (i.e., telling a taxpayer how much they owe). In Chief Counsel Advice (CCA) 201830013, the IRS clarified the circumstances in which it would take such drastic steps. In [...]