Federal
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March 01, 2024
Exec's Captive Insurance Case Headed To Trial
Whether an insurance executive knowingly lied to clients by telling them they could take illegal tax deductions in connection with captive insurance arrangements should be decided by a jury, a Florida federal judge ruled, saying material facts in the case are disputed.
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March 01, 2024
Commission Eyes Sweeping Changes To US Olympic Model
An independent commission called for an overhaul of the U.S. Olympic system Friday, rebuking leaders for failing to keep athletes safe from sexual abuse and calling on Congress to take a more active role in administrating youth sports.
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March 01, 2024
Major Cos. Paying Well Below 21% TCJA Tax Rate, Study Says
Major corporations such as Netflix and T-Mobile are on average paying well below the 21% corporate tax rate established by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, a study by the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy of more than 340 major corporations showed.
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March 01, 2024
Easement Cases To Put IRS-Hired Appraisers Under Scrutiny
Some partnerships challenging the denial of tax deductions for conservation easement donations are mounting a new attack on the IRS' push to enforce the transactions with claims that the agency's multimillion-dollar contracts with third-party appraisal firms compel them to be biased toward the government.
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March 01, 2024
House Tax Panel To Prep Members On OECD Pillar 1
Neither Republicans nor Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee have opined much about the OECD profit reallocation plan known as Pillar One, but they will gain valuable information during an upcoming subcommittee meeting, a tax staffer for the panel said Friday.
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March 01, 2024
Menendez Associate Pleads Guilty In Bribe Case
A New Jersey insurance broker pled guilty Friday to bribing Sen. Bob Menendez and his wife, Nadine, by buying her a Mercedes-Benz convertible, under an agreement to cooperate with federal prosecutors.
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March 01, 2024
Taxation With Representation: Pillsbury, Cleary Gottlieb
In this week's Taxation with Representation, First Advantage Corp. acquires Sterling Check Corp., International Game Technology spins off two subsidiaries, Disney merges its media operations in India with Reliance Industries, and Atlas Energy Solutions purchases Hi-Crush.
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March 01, 2024
IRS Amends Language In Clean Hydrogen Proposal
The Internal Revenue Service issued a correction notice Friday to change the language of a proposal relating to clean hydrogen production and whether such facilities are treated as energy property.
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March 01, 2024
Weekly Internal Revenue Bulletin
The Internal Revenue Service issued its weekly bulletin Friday, and it included notice of a variety of rate updates.
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February 29, 2024
Logger Failed To Report $3M In Foreign Banks, Judge Rules
A logger failed to report more than $3 million he kept in foreign accounts, then fraudulently transferred the bulk of it to his wife when he learned he was being audited by the IRS, a Colorado federal judge said in upholding $1.7 million in penalties.
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February 29, 2024
House Approves Aviation Excise Tax Extensions
The U.S. House voted Thursday to extend excise taxes funding the Airport and Airway Trust Fund for two months at their current rates, clearing the path for the legislation to be considered by the Senate.
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February 29, 2024
Biz Owner's $2.4M FBAR Dispute Paused For Mediation
The U.S. government and a retired plumbing business owner mutually agreed to a 90-day stay of their $2.4 million tax dispute over foreign bank account reporting while they try to mediate a solution, a Georgia federal judge said Thursday.
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February 29, 2024
IRS Funding Cuts Would Raise Deficit $24B, CBO Says
A congressional agreement to rescind $20 billion in appropriated funding for the Internal Revenue Service this year would add $24 billion to the federal deficit through the next 10 years, according to Congressional Budget Office projections published Thursday.
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February 29, 2024
Ga. Man Convicted In $11M PPP Fraud Case Wants New Trial
An Atlanta man convicted on dozens of charges stemming from an $11 million pandemic loan fraud scheme has asked a Georgia federal judge for a new trial.
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February 29, 2024
IRS Amends Treatment Of Public Utility Debt
The Internal Revenue Service will not define certain public utilities as not recognizing gross income until the public utility receives the proceeds of a debt issued by the qualifying state financing entity, the agency said Thursday.
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February 29, 2024
NJ Towns Can't Sue Netflix, Hulu For Fees, 3rd Circ. Says
Two New Jersey municipalities cannot sue Netflix and Hulu for franchise fees under the state's Cable Television Act, the Third Circuit held Thursday in a precedential opinion, saying the state statute reserves enforcement of the law to the state Board of Public Utilities.
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February 29, 2024
IRS Enforcement Push Will Target 125K Wealthy Nonfilers
The Internal Revenue Service is ramping up enforcement against 125,000 high-income taxpayers who haven't filed returns since 2017 as a part of its ongoing efforts to increase tax compliance, the agency's chief told reporters Thursday.
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February 29, 2024
Senate Confirms First Woman To Top IRS Attorney Post
The U.S. Senate on Thursday confirmed a former director at EY who previously served as associate chief counsel, international, at the Internal Revenue Service to be the agency's chief counsel, making her the first woman to be confirmed for the role.
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February 29, 2024
Medtronic Says 3 Years Of Tax Returns Under IRS Audit
Three years of medical device company Medtronic's federal income tax returns are being audited by the Internal Revenue Service, the company said in a U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filing.
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February 29, 2024
Bankrupt Endo To Pay $465M To Resolve Opioid Claims
Drugmaker Endo International has agreed to pay as much as $465 million to resolve criminal and civil claims stemming from its sale and marketing of a powerful opioid, and will turn over its assets to a group of secured lenders who will operate the company under a new corporate structure.
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February 28, 2024
Crapo Seeks Changes To Child Tax Credit Provisions In Bill
The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Finance Committee said Wednesday that he cannot support the bipartisan tax bill pending in the Senate as long as a provision that allows taxpayers to receive a refundable child tax credit based on their prior year's earnings is included.
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February 28, 2024
Amgen Seeks Dismissal Of Investor Action Over $11B Tax Bill
Amgen had no obligation to disclose specific amounts of proposed adjustments to its taxes, the company told a New York federal court as it again demanded dismissal of a proposed class action alleging the company hid a $10.7 billion tax bill from investors.
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February 28, 2024
Embattled Philly Loan Biz Principals Hit With RICO Charges
Legal troubles for the principals of Philadelphia's Par Funding cash advance company are mounting as federal prosecutors hit them with a new indictment adding Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act allegations on top of existing charges that the principals bilked investors out of hundreds of millions of dollars and threatened violence against borrowers.
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February 28, 2024
COVID Fraud Jury Can't Hear Of Gov't's Loan Error, Feds Say
A jury shouldn't be shown evidence of the U.S. government's error in approving a Michigan business owner's application for a Paycheck Protection Program loan while he was under indictment, federal prosecutors have argued.
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February 28, 2024
Timeline Rule For Assessing Tax Not Retroactive, Court Says
A former corporate executive who received a $26 million buyout and then rolled the proceeds over to a retirement account incorrectly claimed that an amended statute of limitations exempted him from paying a penalty, the U.S. Tax Court ruled Wednesday.
Expert Analysis
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Crypto Investors May Face Increasing State FCA Tax Liability
Cryptocurrency investors who fail to report the state tax consequences of transactions are poised to encounter increased civil or criminal legal exposure as a growing number of states bring tax fraud under the purview of their whistleblower statutes, say attorneys at Brownstein Hyatt.
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Justices' Boechler Ruling May Spell Tax Exceptionalism's End
By basing its decision on cases outside the tax arena, the U.S. Supreme Court treated Boechler v. Commissioner as an administrative law case rather than a tax case and stripped away the traditional lines of tax exceptionalism, says James Creech at Baker Tilly.
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MORE Act's Possible Impact On State-Licensed Cannabis Cos.
The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, recently passed in the U.S. House of Representatives, would dramatically alter the federal legal landscape for state-licensed cannabis businesses in both positive and negative ways — from opening new marketing avenues to compounding tax burdens, say attorneys at the Law Offices of Omar Figueroa.
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3 Contract Considerations For Renewable Fuels Trade
As renewable fuels continue to develop and contracts for their sale and purchase become more common in the energy industry, companies should think about negotiating several key issues when entering into offtake agreements for feedstock purchase transactions, says Nneka Obiokoye at Holland & Knight.
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What Microcaptive Reporting Ruling May Mean For The IRS
In CIC v. Internal Revenue Service, a Tennessee federal court’s decision to set aside an IRS requirement to disclose microcaptive insurance arrangements may be a step toward evidentiary standards to show that the potential for abuse in a lawful transaction is sufficient to support heightened disclosure requirements, says Samuel Lauricia at Weston Hurd.
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Avoiding Surprise Taxation Of Employment Settlements
Excerpt from Practical Guidance
Sandra Cohen at Cohen & Buckmann discusses how to avoid unwelcome tax-related payments in connection with settling an employment claim, as the extra cost can significantly decrease the perceived value of an offer and push the parties further apart.
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US Should Leverage Tax Rules To Deter Business With Russia
The U.S. should further restrict the flow of resources available for the Putin regime's war in Ukraine by denying U.S. businesses that operate in Russia or Belarus foreign tax credits and global intangible low-taxed income preferences, and by terminating its tax treaty with Russia, says Reuven Avi-Yonah at University of Michigan Law School.
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Justices Must Apply Law Evenly In Shadow Docket Rulings
In recent shadow docket decisions, the U.S. Supreme Court has inconsistently applied the requirement that parties demonstrate irreparable harm to obtain injunctive relief, which is problematic for two separate but related reasons, says David Hopkins at Benesch.
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Federal Cannabis Bill Needs A Regulatory Plan To Succeed
The Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, is laudable but fundamentally flawed because it lacks a robust regulatory plan that would allow for bipartisan support, says Andrew Kline at Perkins Coie.
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To Capture All Digital Transactions, Tax Rules Must Keep Up
Legislative efforts to capture revenue from digital-transaction income can do better than the American Rescue Plan Act, which recently went into effect but employs definitions that have already been surpassed by technology, says Matthew Agramonte at Shutts & Bowen.
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Lessons From Recent PPP Loan And COVID Fraud Cases
Following President Joe Biden's recent pledge to expand enforcement efforts against pandemic and Paycheck Protection Program loan fraud, a look at the U.S. Department of Justice's recent criminal and civil enforcement actions sheds light on its evolving priorities, say Sara Lord and Aaron Danzig at Arnall Golden.
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Ampersand Clarifies Power Project Placed-In-Service Analysis
The Federal Circuit's recent ruling in Ampersand Chowchilla Biomass v. U.S. affirms a lower court's decision regarding when power generation projects were placed in service for federal income tax purposes, but also highlights that the placed-in-service analysis is not one size fits all, say David Burton and Viktoria Vozarova at Norton Rose.
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Simplifying Tax Issues For Nonresident Athletes In Canada
Tax compliance can be particularly challenging for nonresident professional athletes playing in Canada, but as NHL contract negotiations approach a close, it's worth looking at some ways the tax burden can be mitigated, say Marie-France Dompierre and Marc Pietro Allard at Davies Ward.