HARVEY CPA PC
Newsletters
Tax Alerts
Tax Briefing(s)

Amid a growing number of scams and fraudulent activity surrounding the Employee Retention Credit, the Internal Revenue Service will stop processing new claims, effective immediately, at least through the end of the year.


The Department of the Treasury is reaching out to Congress to get the appropriate tools to combat the wave of Employee Retention Credit fraud and other future issues.


The Internal Revenue Service detailed plans on some of the high-income taxpayers that will be targeted for more compliance efforts in the coming fiscal year.


The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to improve its training of revenue agents that will be focused on auditing high-income taxpayers.


The IRS has provided additional interim guidance in Notice 2023-64 for the application of the new corporate alternative minimum tax (CAMT). This guidance clarifies and supplements the CAMT guidance provided in Notice 2023-7, I.R.B. 2023-3, 390, and Notice 2023-20, I.R.B. 2023-10, 523, which were issued earlier this year. The IRS anticipates that the forthcoming proposed regulations on the CAMT will be consistent with this interim guidance and that they will apply for tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2024. Taxpayers may rely on the interim guidance for tax years ending on or before the date the forthcoming proposed regulations are published, and for any tax year that begins before January 1, 2024.


Taxpayers may rely on a notice that describes proposed regulations that will address the amortization of qualified research and experimentation (R&E) expenses. Before 2022, R&E expenses were currently deductible, but the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (P.L. 115-97) replaced the deduction with a five-year amortization period (15 years for foreign research).


Taxpayers may rely on proposed regulations that detail how to satisfy the prevailing wage and apprenticeship (PWA) requirements for bonus amounts that may apply to several energy and business credits. The regs also explain the correction and penalty provisions that allow taxpayers to claim the bonus credits even if they failed to satisfy the PWA tests. Comments are requested.


The IRS has provided guidance on the income tax treatment of payments made by states in 2023 and later years. In IRS News Release 2023-23, February 10, 2023, the IRS clarified the federal tax status of special payments made by 21 states in 2022 that were mainly related to the COVID-19 pandemic, with varying terms in the types of paymentspayment amounts, and eligibility rules.


National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to alter how it deals with supervisory review of penalties.


Taxpayers, and the accounting and legal professionals who represent them, need to be prepared as the Internal Revenue Service has begun compliance work on those who own and trade in cryptocurrencies.


Taxpayers will receive some modest relief for the 2015 tax year, thanks to the mandatory annual inflation-adjustments provided under the Tax Code. When there is inflation, indexing of brackets lowers tax bills by including more of people’s incomes in lower brackets—for example by placing taxpayers’ income in the existing 15-percent bracket, rather than the existing 25-percent bracket.


With the April 15th filing season deadline now behind us, it’s not too early to turn your attention to next year’s deadline for filing your 2014 return. That refocus requires among other things an awareness of the direct impact that many "ordinary," as well as one-time, transactions and events will have on the tax you will eventually be obligated to pay April 15, 2015. To gain this forward-looking perspective, however, taking a moment to look back … at the filing season that has just ended, is particularly worthwhile. This generally involves a two-step process: (1) a look-back at your 2013 tax return to pinpoint new opportunities as well as "lessons learned;" and (2) a look-back at what has happened in the tax world since January 1st that may indicate new challenges to be faced for the first time on your 2014 return.

Mid-size employers may be eligible for recently announced transition relief from the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act's employer shared responsibility requirements. Final regulations issued by the IRS in late January include transition relief for mid-size employers for 2015. Mid-size employers for this relief are defined generally as businesses employing at least 50 but fewer than 100 full-time employees. Exceptions and complicated measurement rules continue to apply. The final regulations also describe the treatment of seasonal employees, volunteer workers, student employees, the calculation of the employer shared responsibility payment, and much more.