Income Tax

Although it’s been almost five years since the floodgates were opened, we’re still seeing a steady stream of conversions to Roth IRAs. As long as Congress doesn’t clamp down on the rules, you can expect for this trend to continue.

The IRS has started a new voluntary program that it says is intended to encourage education and filing season readiness for paid tax return preparers who are not credentialed. The program will be in place to help taxpayers during the 2015 filing season.

Small business accounting and tax company Intuit has partnered with cloud document storage and sharing firm SmartVault, which will provide integrated cloud-based document management for Intuit's two professional tax systems, Lacerte and ProSeries. The combination of these professional programs is intended to further automate tax preparation workflow, from receiving source files securely from clients to printing and sharing final tax returns with a built-in custom branded client portal.

Tax and accounting technology developer Wolters Kluwer, CCH has made its new CCH IntelliConnect Direct available to all professionals. The system, which provides a universal research interface that offers anytime, anywhere access to accurate, reliable, and continuously updated U.S. and global tax, accounting and regulatory information and guidance, had been in limited beta availability. It works on desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices.

During the first decade or two of my accounting and tax life, I always felt that everyone knew more than I did. I was always a bit intimidated by the depth of knowledge other CPAs, EAs and attorneys seemed to have – and prayed that I could know just a little more of what they knew.

Effective this tax season, our clients have had the option of deducting $5 per square foot, up to 300 square feet – instead of using the complex Office in Home rules. That provides for a maximum deduction of $1,500.

If there was a Letterman Top 10 list for the things that make small business owners have a migraine, the number one spot would be the U.S. tax structure.

On January 28, 2013, the Maryland Court of Appeals found an important element of the Maryland income tax unconstitutional. The controversy surrounds the state’s disallowance of credits against the Maryland county-level income tax for taxpayers who pay income tax to other states. The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the state Comptroller’s appeal in its next term. The Case was Maryland State Comptroller of the Treasury v. Wynne, No. 107.