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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018 made significant changes to the Tax Code, including child-related tax issues. If you are going through a divorce, be sure that your family law attorney is aware of Dependent Exemptions, Head of Household, Dependent Care Credit, Child Tax Credit, and Higher Education Tax Credits to ensure that you are properly represented during divorce. Merely addressing these issues in a divorce decree is not enough because rarely does the Tax Code respect the provisions of the divorce decree. Instead, you must ensure that you have taken the necessary steps to meet the requirements in the Tax Code.

The IRS announced today, during the government shutdown, that it will waive the estimated tax penalty for many taxpayers whose 2018 federal income tax withholding and estimated tax payments fell short of their total tax liability for the year.

Does your business have unpaid employment tax liabilities? If you answered yes, it is important to consider designating voluntary payments towards trust fund taxes. Designating payments costs you nothing, and helps you avoid personal liability. If you do not designate your payments, the IRS will apply the payments in a manner that is least beneficial to you.

You’ve recently discovered an error on your income tax return. Do you have a duty to notify the IRS? Generally, no, you have no legal obligation file an amended income tax return, but in some circumstances, it may be beneficial to file an amended income tax return. However, taxpayers should carefully consider whether to file an amended income tax return, and if they decide to file one, they should time the filing carefully.

In March 2018, the IRS announced that it would end its Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) on September 28, 2018. Now that the program is over, what options are available to taxpayers with criminal exposure that seek to resolve past failures to report?

The IRS announced today that it will completely end the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program (OVDP) as of September 28, 2018.

If you have a foreign bank account or other foreign financial asset, you may have a reporting obligation. Failure to report when required may result in significant penalties. The draconian penalties may be as much as 50% of the value of the assets at the time that the report was due. Do you have...

If you find yourself in litigation with the IRS, or in the middle of an administrative dispute that seems to be going nowhere, it’s time to consider a taxpayer’s best friend: the qualified offer. The qualified offer provisions allow taxpayers to recover fees and costs when the IRS rejects a settlement offer, and the taxpayers win a determination that requires a lesser amount than the offer.

Our tax system is based on voluntary reporting, and the Tax Code is full of different penalty provisions to encourage accurate voluntary reporting by penalizing those that do not. Even if all you did was fail to timely file your return and timely pay the amount shown on your return, you could be facing penalties of as much as 45% of the tax that you owe. But don’t despair; there are several ways to alleviate penalties. This article will focus on the three most common penalties: failure to file, failure to pay, and accuracy-related penalties.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is the first significant tax reform effort by Congress in more than 30 years, and it repeals the deduction for alimony and separate maintenance payments starting in 2019. Learn about the new changes and account during 2018.

The Department of Justice recently announced that it will begin arguing that offshore tax defendants should be sentenced under different guidelines that are based on the balances of offshore accounts rather than the tax loss from failing to report income from those accounts.

The IRS has a new Chief in charge of its Criminal Investigations division, and that means a renewed focus on traditional tax crimes (overstating deductions, underreporting income), and a new data-drive approach that will mean more tax crime investigations in Phoenix, and the surrounding cities.