Welcome to TaxBlawg, a blog resource from Chamberlain Hrdlicka for news and analysis of current legal issues facing tax practitioners. Although blawg.com identifies nearly 1,400 active “blawgs,” including 20+ blawgs related to taxation and estate planning, the needs of tax professionals have received surprisingly little attention.
Tax practitioners have previously lacked a dedicated resource to call their own. For those intrepid souls, we offer TaxBlawg, a forum of tax talk for tax pros.
Popular Topics
Chamberlain Hrdlicka Blawgs
As if the waters for small captive insurance arrangements hadn’t been muddied enough after Avrahami v. Commissioner, on June 18, 2018, the U.S. Tax Court issued the second opinion in a small captive case, Reserve Mechanical Corp. v. Commissioner, this time holding that the taxpayer’s participation in a risk pool failed to satisfy the risk distribution requirement (i.e., the sharing of a sufficient number of independent insurance risks so that no one claim can have too great an adverse financial effect on the insurer) to establish a bona fide insurance arrangement. Until this ...
For my fellow procrastinators whose federal tax returns are on extension, with the October 15th deadline rapidly approaching, perhaps the burning question has crossed your mind, “If I file electronically while the government is shut down, will my return be accepted?” Yes, I can happily report that a return electronically submitted to the IRS at 3:43 p.m. this day was “accepted for filing” at 4:04 p.m., efficiency approaching a Michael Phelps-like performance. Perhaps the IRS has designed a system that operates better when it is staffed only by computers rather than by ...
The Quality Stores employment tax refund case was argued before the Supreme Court on January 14, 2014. An explanation about the issue at stake can be found in prior Taxblawg.net postings. Although the outcome of the case remains in doubt, the possibility of a taxpayer victory means that employers should start thinking about the need to satisfy an important prerequisite to qualify their claims for refund.
Employment (FICA) taxes have both an employer and an employee component. A taxpayer victory in Quality Stores will enable both employers and terminated employees to recover their ...
In a high profile summons enforcement case brought by the Internal Revenue Service against Coinbase, Inc. (United States v. Coinbase Inc., No. 3:17-cv-01431 (N.D. Cal. 2017)), a virtual currency exchange for traders of popular digital cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum and Litecoin, the Internal Revenue Service sought the production by Coinbase of all of its customer records involving Bitcoin transactions from 2013 through 2015. The number of customers potentially susceptible to such a broad summons request was estimated at just under 500,000.
The U.S ...