WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today reminded employers and small businesses of a new Jan. 31 filing deadline for Forms W-2. The IRS must also hold some refunds until Feb. 15. A new federal law, aimed at making it easier for the IRS to detect and prevent refund fraud, will accelerate the W-2 filing…
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WASHINGTON –– The Internal Revenue Service today reminded the nation’s more than 725,000 federal tax return preparers that they must renew their Preparer Tax Identification Numbers (PTINs) for 2017. All current PTINs will expire Dec. 31, 2016. Anyone who prepares or helps prepare any federal tax return, or claim for refund, for compensation must have…
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WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service today announced cost‑of‑living adjustments affecting dollar limitations for pension plans and other retirement-related items for tax year 2017. Highlights of changes for 2017 The income ranges for determining eligibility to make deductible contributions to traditional Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs), to contribute to Roth IRAs, and to claim the saver’s…
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BUFFALO, N.Y. (WIVB) – Scammers seem to be getting more creative in using fear of the Taxman as a weapon to steal from taxpayers. The mere mention of the Internal Revenue Service is enough to evoke fear in many Americans, so using the IRS as a ruse to steal someone’s hard earned money can be…
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Note of Clarification: If taxpayers submit a tax return with an expired ITIN, they will experience a delay in processing and certain credits such as the Child Tax Credit and the American Opportunity Tax Credit may not be allowed unless the ITIN is renewed. Taxpayers are not, however, prohibited from filing a tax return. (Added…
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Recently, tax professionals have been the target of criminals for identity (ID) theft. Among other reasons, tax professionals work with a large amount of sensitive data; stolen data can be used to file fraudulent returns rather inexpensively, and the return to criminals is very high. What’s more, smaller firms make an attractive target because in…
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The Internal Revenue Service plans to make changes in how it deals with people who don’t file tax returns to collect billions of dollars in lost tax revenue, according to a new report. The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, said the IRS has a strategy in place as part of…
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It took a big raid in India to slow down an IRS impostor scam that resulted in thousands of people, many of them retirees, being bilked out of millions of dollars. The Better Business Bureau said last week that the hustle accounted for about one in four reports to its scam tracker. But the organization says it…
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There are few things worse than spending hours preparing your tax return only to discover that identity thieves have already snatched your refund. For many people, the misery starts with an error message from their tax software saying that they’ve already submitted a return; for paper filers, a letter from the IRS is usually the…
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WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service and its Security Summit partners today issued an alert to taxpayers and tax professionals to be on guard against fake emails purporting to contain an IRS tax bill related to the Affordable Care Act. The IRS has received numerous reports around the country of scammers sending a fraudulent version…
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