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 [...]
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 [...]
When an individual has outstanding federal tax liabilities, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a number of tools at its disposal to try to collect the liabilities from the individual, including levying the individual’s wages (I.R.C. § 6331(a)). When the IRS issues a wage levy notice to an employer, the employer must pay the IRS [...]
The Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS’s) Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (Program) has elements of the Program that will no longer be available to certain taxpayers on September 28, 2018. For more on those elements, please see our previous posts here and here. Following the IRS’s decision to eliminate elements of the Program, it also issued Technical [...]
The marijuana industry has experienced a nationwide boom in the last five years. In 2013, the marijuana industry realized approximately $1.5 billion in sales. In 2017, the industry realized approximately $9 billion in sales. Those numbers will, likely, only continue to rise as more and more states continue to legalize recreational marijuana. In spite of [...]
A recent U.S. Tax Court decision in Barker v. Comm’r of Internal Revenue, T.C. Memo. 2018-67 exemplified the notion that a taxpayer could win a significant tax battle, but still lose the tax war. Cecile Barker was a successful aerospace engineer who also operated a music production/promotion company called SoBe. Cecile’s son was among the [...]
I missed the deadline to file my tax return. Now what? The deadline for individual taxpayers to file their 2017 Forms 1040, U.S. Individual Income Tax Return, was April 18, 2018. Generally, the filing deadline for Forms 1040 is April 15 of the following tax year. However, as was the case for the 2017 filing [...]
The recent Sixth Circuit decision in Bibler v. U.S., 2018 WL 1911249, may mark an evolution of the definition of “willfulness” in trust fund recovery penalty cases. For the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to prevail in its assessment of the trust fund recovery penalty pursuant to Internal Revenue Code (I.R.C.) § 6672, the liable taxpayer [...]