Happy Friday! Here are some of the tax relief news headlines we reported on this short holiday week:
IRS Audits-Back Taxes
It appears that comedian and actress Janeane Garofalo never thought she was married believing her 20 year “sham wedding” in Las Vegas to writer and producer Rob Cohen decades ago was not real. However, the IRS may not see it that way. They couple could face an IRS audit and IRS
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Douglas Schulman, the 47th IRS Commissioner spoke on November 7th before the professional association of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) in Washington, DC.  In his speech, he talked about his last five years and where he sees the IRS focusing its attention in the future. The IRS posted former Commissioner Schulman’s prepared remarks that outlined major IRS strategic priorities. On the top of the list is a
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In another chapter of the IRS versus the Swiss Banks saga, Republican Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky has recently blocked an amendment to a U.S.-Swiss tax treaty that provides the IRS data on Americans with hidden offshore bank accounts. Paul believes the protocol is too “sweeping” and would threaten taxpayers’ Fourth Amendment rights that guard against unreasonable search and seizure.
Bloomberg’s article Rand Paul Seeks to Block Tax Treaty Change on
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Countdown to Tax Day: 6 Days
On a recent episode of the Big Biz Show, we discussed the creation of the Tax Man TV show on Biz Television that morphed out of yours truly giving tax advice as a guest on the Big Biz Show for five years.
The Tax Man Show combines my 30 plus years in the tax business including running Tax Resolution Services, Co. for 15, to gives taxpayers
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The Obama Administration is continuing aggressive efforts to stamp out tax crime by appointing the right people with the right experience to get the job done. A recent Bloomberg article entitled, Keneally Confirmed to Lead Justice Department Tax Division announced Senate confirmation of Kathryn Keneally as the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s tax division. She is expected to continue the crackdown of tax crimes such as identity theft
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A major focus of the Obama Administration has been to reduce the “tax gap” (the difference between the amount of taxes reported and what the government actually collects). Nowhere has this become more obvious than with the President’s 2013 budget request.  A recent article in OMB Watch entitled Obama Proposes Exempting IRS from Budget Caps, reports on the Administration’s request to have some IRS enforcement spending be “excluded” from budget
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The latest chapter of the IRS versus the Swiss Banks, reveals U.S. Prosecutors taking on the oldest Swiss bank of them all: Wegelin & Co.,
An article in the Wall Street Journal entitled Swiss Bank Wegelin Indicted on U.S. Tax Charges, outlines the criminal charges filed by U.S. Prosecutors on February 2, 2012 against Wegelin & Co., Switzerland’s oldest bank (founded in 1741) alleging that Wegelin knowingly aided wealthy Americans in
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An article in Bloomberg entitled IRS Called Easy on Criminal Tax Evaders in Watchdog’s Critique outlines Nina Olson of the National Taxpayer Advocate’s concerns that intentional tax evaders get more IRS help than those who weren’t intending to hide money from the U.S. government. Olson warns that future IRS collection efforts could be jeopardized due to confusion over the treatment of accidental tax evaders.

The IRS sees
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The head of the Internal Revenue Service described how the tax-collecting agency will place more pressure on tax cheats and companies that facilitate cheating. It’s time for tax cheats to worry.
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The Internal Revenue Service is “turning up the pressure” on tax cheats.
Those were the exact words from IRS Commissioner Douglas H. Shulman when he spoke in December at the IRS/George Washington University 24th Annual Institute.
The IRS will direct much of the
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Richard Werdiger, a former client of Swiss bank UBS, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for conspiring to defraud the Internal Revenue Service. He had hid more than $7.1 million at UBS and evaded nearly $400,000 of taxes.
Werdiger pleaded guilty in March 2011 and agreed to pay a civil penalty of more than $3.8 million for his failure to report his overseas accounts to the IRS.
From
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As a certified tax resolution specialist, I have said it many times before; it never pays to hide from the IRS. Nowhere is that more apparent than with the government crackdown on off-shore tax evaders. The creation in 2010 of Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) set into motion serious U.S. efforts to combat tax evasion by U.S. taxpayers with investments in offshore accounts. Not only do FATCA regulations have
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In less than a month after the voluntary offshore bank declaration amnesty deadline expired, the results are showing that tax collection efforts from once elusive off-shore account holders appears to be working. A recent Reuters News Article – America’s Rich Losing Tussle with Taxman dated September 30, revealed that since 2008, the IRS has been successful at cracking down on off-shore tax shelters and going after Swiss banks (initially) and
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The Internal Revenue Service announced this week they received 12,000 new applications from the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative (OVDI) that closed on September 9, 2011. This pushes the total number of voluntary disclosures up to 30,000 since 2009.
The programs gave U.S.taxpayers with undisclosed assets or income offshore a second chance to get compliant with the U.S. tax system, pay their fair share and avoid potential criminal charges.
The IRS
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IRS.gov issued an extension to the 2011 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Initiative.  The original August 31, 2011 has been extended to September 9th, 2011.
The extension is to give more time due to the impact of Hurricane Irene.  This gives delinquent taxpayers with undisclosed offshore bank accounts extra time to disclose their assets to the IRS.
There is no better time than now to get on this.  FBAR and Offshore Account Disclosure is
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Investment adviser and former USB AG banker was indicted for helping wealthy Americans hide unclaimed money from the IRS in offshore accounts. The USB AG bank, not included in the indictment, is a Swiss global financial services company headquartered in Basel and Zürich, Switzerland. Martin Lack, a Swiss resident, is accused of assisting 9 U.S. clients in transferring monies to undeclared foreign accounts. In an article by David Voreacos of
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