The Art of Accounting: Business   Personal    Estate and Trust    Outside Controllership

Blog Layout

Bizarre Controversy Affecting All Businesses

Feb 01, 2015

There is a big controversy in the tax preparation world right now concerning anybody who runs a business or has property for rent (which is a lot of people). IRS has changed the rules about how repairs should be deducted. Anybody who owns business property is required to comply with the new rules going forward - which includes folks with rentals or business vehicles, and also corporations with desks and equipment. The point is that these new rules apply to a TON of people and businesses, and they ALL have to comply.

But here is the controversy: Since the rules are new, complying with the them means a change in the way we account for these costs, known as a 'CHANGE OF ACCOUNTING METHOD' and that it requires PERMISSION. The permission will be granted automatically, but it still has to be requested by filing a complicated Form 3115 - Change of Accounting Method. If all this holds up, this will mean a huge number of hours for tax preparers, and thus a significant increase the fees charged to their clients.

So (a) we have to comply, but (b) we have to ask permission to comply. This is so obviously absurd that it shouldn't even be taken seriously, right? But the frightening thing is that all the bright CPAs and tax lawyers AND the bright lights at IRS seem to be agreeing this is exactly what we have to do. Or they are saying that they aren't quite sure, but that we had better file the forms just to protect our clients from potential penalties and ourselves from malpractice claims.

I'll keep you posted. 

Sheesh!

Randy

Beware of Phony IRS Email Scam

03 Mar, 2015
Beware of Phony IRS Email Scam Today a client forwarded an email to us that purported to be from the IRS.  The message contained the official IRS logo, and showed “Identity Verification” in the subject line.  The body of the email asked: “Kindly verify your information from a 1040 tax form that you filed within the last six years.  Follow the reference below to verify your identity.  This information is use for identity verification purposes only.” [...]

Beware of scam:  Phony IRS Collection Calls

09 Dec, 2014
One of our clients picked up the phone recently and was told by a man on the other end of the line that he was with the IRS, that our client owed several thousand dollars in back taxes, and said that if the money wasn’t paid, someone would be sent to arrest him. This has become a familiar story.  It is the fourth time we have heard it in the past couple of years, and the second time in the past few months.  And a tax attorney of our acquaintance told us that three of her cli [...]

Foreign Account Reporting-FBARs:  Report them!

15 Aug, 2014
If you fail to file a required Foreign Bank Account Report (FBAR), that failure can result in penalties so steep that they would mean the loss of most of the investment in question.  But many who should have filed FBARs in the past have been reticent to start filing because that might alert IRS to the prior failures, leading to a ugly things.  But now there is good news for many delinquent FBAR filers.  IRS has recently clarified its rules, and indicated that there will be no pena [...]
Share by: