ILLINOIS Ostrow Reisin Berk & Abrams, Chicago, announced new hires: Hesham Alkhulaqi and Matthew Temple as staff accountants, and Sarah Zambrano as a tax preparer, in the tax group; Steve Helm as a staff accountant in the audit group; and Charles Jakes, Jr., as an accounting clerk in the accounting department. KENTUCKY David Douglas was

The IRS will waive the estimated tax penalty for any qualifying farmer or fisherman who files a 2018 federal income tax return and pays any tax due by Monday, April 15. The deadline is Wednesday, April 17, for taxpayers in Maine and Massachusetts. The IRS is providing this relief because, due to certain rule changes,

Tax refunds in the U.S. jumped 17 percent week over week, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said. Mnuchin didn’t provide further data or clarify which week he was speaking about, though IRS figures announced last Friday showed a 17 percent drop in the amount of the average tax refund during the week ended Feb. 15 versus

Michael Cohen unfurled a series of damaging accusations against his former boss Donald Trump in a day of testimony before Congress, including assertions that may pose additional legal peril for the president. Trump’s former lawyer and fixer offered potentially damaging specifics on at least three possible misdeeds, starting with his assertion that Trump inflated the

China is considering tax breaks to attract more global funds to register in the country and reverse swelling outflows to international tax havens, people with knowledge of the matter said. Great Wall of China The Ministry of Finance has enlisted a global accounting firm to conduct due diligence ahead of a potential feasibility study on

Using LinkedIn right; this year’s sales-tax holidays; alternative methods of apportionment; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers. Get appy Wolters Kluwer (http://news.cchgroup.com/): What are your biggest tax season challenges? How many of these tax season challenges are you facing? You’d think it’s the day-to-day potholes that get filled while the long-term craters go

Senator Bernie Sanders plans to release 10 years worth of tax returns “soon,” he said at a town hall forum on Monday night. “We have to do just a few more little things,” Sanders, who announced last week that he would again seek the Democratic presidential nomination, said during the forum, aired on CNN. He

The CPA Consultants’ Alliance informed its clients this month that its website had been hacked, with several fake blog entries touting cannabis-related products posted on the site and emailed to everyone on the organization’s mailing list. The CPACA members, a group of consultants who advise CPA firms about technology, marketing and business development, realized the

Average tax refunds are down 17 percent so far in the first filing season under President Donald Trump’s tax overhaul, according to the IRS, prompting the Treasury Department to caution that the data contain aberrations and could be misleading. Direct-deposit refunds dropped for the third week in a row this filing season to $2,703, from

IRS data released Friday shows that up to the middle of February, tax season was off to a slightly slower start than last year. Refund amounts, however, were down significantly, both overall and in terms of average refund. 7 Images Total As of midnight, Feb. 14, 2019, the IRS had received a little under 2

PricewaterhouseCoopers is supporting calls from the American Institute of CPAs and some lawmakers in Congress who are asking the Internal Revenue Service to lower the penalty threshold for taxpayers who didn’t withhold enough from their paychecks or make enough estimated tax payments in the wake of the new tax law. Last month, the IRS announced

Over the past several years, I’ve had the opportunity to review almost a dozen enterprise resource planning systems for several web sites. Though I haven’t updated these reviews in a year, there are a number of thoughts about ERP that I would like to share. One is that the “E” in ERP doesn’t quite stand

As a young accountant or professional who is a member of an association, you may well have been offered the opportunity to purchase inexpensive term insurance through that association. You get all the benefits of easy enrollment, with no lengthy forms or medical questions to complete, nor do you even have to pay a bill,

When revising their predictions of companies’ current quarterly earnings, financial analysts are more likely to highlight the negatives instead of the positives, according to new research. “Analysts revise current earnings more often for bad than for good news, consistent with not incorporating good news into short-horizon earnings forecasts,” said the study by Zachary R. Kaplan

MAINE Baker Newman Noyes, Portland, announced three promotions: Gilda Bryand to administrative manager in the tax practice, Jason Emery to managing director in the audit practice, and Brian Sawlivich to IT manager in the operations department. MASSACHUSETTS Miriam Niedelman was promoted to manager in the tax practice at Baker Newman Noyes, Boston. MINNESOTA Moore Stephens

$3 million in phony refunds; caretaker cares for own coffers; “serial fraud;” and other highlights of recent tax cases. Murrieta, Calif.: Preparer Patrick Nathaniel McCall, 39, a resident of Las Vegas, has pleaded guilty to a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service of more than $175,000 through the submission of fraudulent federal income tax

LBA Haynes Strand PLLC, a North Carolina-based CPA firm, is partnering with the financial technology provider Ceterus to offer client accounting services to dentists. Ceterus has designed a system to automate client accounting for CPA firms, using a combination of artificial intelligence and machine learning. Along with automating the bookkeeping for the firm, Ceterus is

The Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, or COSO, is teaming up with Top 10 Firm Crowe LLP and CommonSpirit Health to issue new guidance for health care providers on internal controls amid heightened regulatory scrutiny of the health care sector. The publication, “2013 COSO Integrated Framework: An Implementation Guide for the Healthcare

The price of SALT; raining in New Jersey; using cause-related marketing; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers. All president and accounted for Solutions For CPA Firm Leaders (http://ritakeller.com/blog/): Using Twitter in your practice. Tax Girl (http://blogs.forbes.com/kellyphillipserb): In honor of the holiday just passed, “A Look at How Much Influence Presidents Have on Your

Senate Democrats are accusing the Trump administration of hastily redoing the tax withholding tables last year, harming taxpayers and causing them to owe taxes this year. “If the Administration had simply left withholding tables untouched, most taxpayers would have had the proper amount of taxes withheld from their pay,” Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., the ranking