The Senate has approved a fiscal year (FY) 2019 budget for the IRS. The Senate’s approved IRS budget provides less funding than a House-approved proposal. The Senate appropriations package, which includes the Financial Services and General Government appropriations bill (HR 6147), cleared the Senate by a 92-to-6
Read more →IRS Budget Hearing Testimony The IRS’s “Achilles’ heel” is using outdated software originating from the 1960s, Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter told Senate lawmakers. Kautter and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin testified in a May 22 Senate Appropriations Financial Services and General Government Subcommittee hearing. System Shut Down
Read more →The IRS has announced initial guidance for computing the business interest expense deduction under Code Sec. 163(j) effective for tax years beginning after 2017, and aspects that will be covered in future regulations. The deduction is generally limited to the taxpayer’s business interest income plus 30 percent
Read more →Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter on April 12 provided lawmakers with an update on the 2018 tax filing season and IRS operations. Kautter, testifying before the Senate Finance Committee (SFC), told lawmakers that the 2018 filing season has gone well with regard to tax return processing and
Read more →BUSINESSES Corporate Taxes H.R. 1 calls for a 21-percent corporate tax rate beginning in 2018. The new law makes the new rate permanent. The maximum corporate tax rate currently tops out at 35 percent. Although the current 2017 maximum corporate tax rate is 35 percent, many corporations
Read more →The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1) has been approved by Congress and signed by President Trump. After a last-minute procedural glitch that required the Senate to vote first on the final bill, the most sweeping change to the U.S. tax code in decades cleared the
Read more →Administration officials and senior GOP leaders in Congress have predicted that tax reform legislation will be drafted this Fall and come to the floors of both the House and Senate for a vote before year-end. The officials and lawmakers outlined broad principles for individual and business tax
Read more →While House and Senate counterparts continue their efforts toward tax reform, a number of discrepancies must be reconciled before a unified plan emerges. What makes an already complicated process more difficult is the lack of agreement among the taxwriters, according to Eric Solomon, Ernst & Young (EY),
Read more →Congressional taxwriting committees’ senior staff and the Joint Committee on Taxation’s (JCT) chief of staff provided a legislative update at the Federal Bar Association’s (FBA) 41st annual tax conference in Washington, D.C. on March 3. The congressional staff previewed their inside perspectives on tax reform and Patient
Read more →House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-Tex., touted the House GOP “Better Way” tax reform Blueprint on February 3 at the International Tax Policy Forum (ITPF) and Georgetown Law’s Institute of International Economic Law (IIEL) Conference on tax competition in Washington, D.C. Brady delivered the
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