Monday, September 17, 2018

UK targeting lawyers, accountants in illicit funds crackdown

Ajay K. Mehrotra (American Bar Foundation & Northwestern) presents The VAT Laggard: A Comparative History of U.S. Resistance to the Value-added Tax at Boston College today as part of its Tax Policy Workshop Series hosted by Jim Repetti, Diane Ring, and Shu-Yi Oei


Do consumers pay less attention to higher taxes than lower taxes, because they are looking for excuses to buy the good anyway?



Disbelief in Hong Kong at 'Chinese influence' claim from Australian MPs


  • by Kirsty Needham


Sam Brunson (Loyola-Chicago) presented God and the IRS: Accommodating Religious Practice in the Tax Law (Cambridge University Press 2018) yesterday at UC-Irvine as part of its Tax Policy Colloquium Series

Tax office's Project Do It 'missed $4.3bn in revenue'

So, you've been targeted by the ATO for a tax audit

“The overwhelming volume of this information demonstrates just how deep, and inescapable, our relationships with the company have become. And it can be sneakily transformative. To see months of your own search history repeated back to you in list form is to suffer a strange mixture of your most mundane and anxious—and largely forgotten—moments….
Deborah Jenkins Twitter.com/ATOSmallbizExec



Wall Street Journal, Senate Confirms Charles Rettig as IRS Commissioner:
The Senate confirmed Charles Rettig to run the Internal Revenue Service, giving the veteran California tax lawyer one of the toughest, most thankless jobs in the federal government.
Mr. Rettig, who spent his career representing wealthy taxpayers and businesses in complex disputes with the government, gets a term that runs until November 2022. He will replace David Kautter, the Treasury Department’s top tax policy official, who has been acting as IRS commissioner.
The Senate voted 64-33 in favor of Mr. Rettig’s confirmation. All Republicans who were present joined with 15 Democrats to back the nomination.
Mr. Rettig will run an agency struggling with flat or shrinking budgets, aging computer systems and increased demands from Congress. Last year, the IRS audited 0.62% of individual tax returns, the lowest rate since 2002. In 2017, the agency had 19% fewer employees than in 2010