Insights

Last week, I had the pleasure of attending the New York University 10th Annual Tax Controversy Forum and hearing Paul Mamo, Director of Collection in the Internal Revenue Service, speak on developments in employment tax enforcement. Over the past few years, the IRS initiated an…
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In a 5-4 decision this morning, the Supreme Court upheld the South Dakota law requiring certain retailers to collect and remit sales tax regardless of whether the retailer had a physical presence.  The Supreme Court characterized the “physical presence” test as “unsound and incorrect”.  …
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  Tax Code Section 104(a)(2) provides that “damages (other than punitive damages) received … on account of personal physical injuries or physical sickness” are excludable from the recipient’s gross income for tax purposes.  In 1996, Congress, through the Small Business Job Protection Act, amended this…
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The IRS published its first notice of the year this past Friday – Notice 2018-1 – providing guidance for implementation of Internal Revenue Code Section 7345. Wait, step back a moment… what is happening? On December 4, 2015, the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (the…
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  This past April, I wrote about a federal indictment returned against Diane L. Kroupa, a former judge on the United States Tax Court, and her husband, Robert E. Fackler.  The indictment charged Ms. Kroupa and Mr. Fackler with leaving off income from their tax returns…
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Last December, a new law known as the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 (the “BBA”) (P.L. 114-74), repealed the existing partnership audit procedures under “TEFRA,” which stands for the 1982 Tax Equity and Fiscal Responsibility Act, effective for tax years beginning in 2018.  Thus, for…
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Arsenio Hall, a late night TV talk show host from the early 1990s, had a segment he called, “Things That Make You Go ‘Hmmmmm’”.  This past Monday, an indictment handed down by a federal grand jury in Minnesota definitely made criminal tax lawyers across the…
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