Employers who are tasked with complying with the U.S. tax system, already one of the world's most complicated and onerous, may now be looked upon as collection agents for the IRS. In a recently issued opinion (U.S. v. Heli USA Airways, Inc.), a district court determined that an employer is liable for an employee's unpaid taxes and penalties that IRS sought to collect [...]

Paying Taxes 2012, an annual study by the World Bank, International Finance Corp. and PricewaterhouseCoopers, ranks 183 countries based on difficulty of compliance with business taxes. The study measures the tax systems by viewing a domestic company complying with the different tax laws in each economy. The study measures cost of compliance from the perspective of hou [...]

In a recent speech at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, IRS commissioner Doug Shulman tried to make the case for tax simplification. In his prepared remarks he said “Most taxpayers want simplicity. They want to pay what they owe, understand what tax benefits they are entitled to, and not get tripped up by the system. However, today’s Tax Code is anything but sim [...]

Buried in the Tax Relief Act of 2010 was a provision that increased the lifetime gift tax exemption from $1 million to $5 million for each individual ($10 million for a married couple). This increase in exemption was provided for a period of two years and is slated to sunset on December 31, 2012. Congress is now in the midst of a gargantuan task of reducing the fed [...]

The Hispanic marketplace has become the most important U.S. demographic growth driver in the food, beverage and restaurant sectors, according to data from Hispanic market research firm Latinum Network. Demographic trends indicate Hispanics should continue to be a dominant consumer segment in the food, beverage and restaurant sector for years to come, according to Lati [...]

On Oct. 9, 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 459 (“Bill”) into law. The Bill imposes significant penalties against employers if they are found to have been involved in “willful” misclassification of employees as independent contractors. The Bill is effective January 1, 2012.New Civil PenaltiesEmployers face a civil penalty of between $5,000 and [...]

Retailers and manufacturers doing business in California, with annual gross receipts of more than $100 million will have new disclosures to contend with. Effective January 1, 2012, retailers and manufacturers must disclose their efforts to eliminate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chain. This disclosure is supposed to be made on company website. If t [...]

The commercial real estate industry is no stranger to big accounting changes – all we have to do is look at how fair value accounting impacted the industry. However the impending update to lease accounting has a potential impact beyond obvious accounting. The best way to prepare for this latest update is to consider the proposed changes for lessees and lessors in toda [...]

New IRS Voluntary Classification Settlement Program for Workers Misclassified as Independent ContractorsFor years, the issue of classifying workers as independent contractors or employees has been an area of significant scrutiny by the IRS. At its core, the determination of employee versus independent contractor status boils down to whether and to what extent the empl [...]

Transactions often involve payment of fees by the acquiror or by the selling target. Traditionally the IRS has viewed such fees, referred to as “success-based fee”, as costs that produce significant long-term benefits, and therefore required to be capitalized. Taxpayers would be able to rebut the IRS presumption by demonstrating that the fees [...]