A couple things passed over my desk recently that I thought might be noteworthy, and I am passing them along for your review…
If you have money in a foreign bank account the IRS is expanding its efforts to locate you. They are investigating Credit Suisse and other foreign banks to determine if they aided in tax evasion similar to the big UBS crackdown last year. If you have assets that are sitting in a foreign bank that you have not disclosed to the Feds the amnesty period to come clean expires August 31.
Tax preparers who do not register as such or who do not sign returns they work on are being chased by IRS. The agency is surveying tax returns they suspect may have been done by a paid preparer but not signed, and will be contacting the taxpayers about their returns in an effort to find the preparer.
And in a recent act of administrative benevolence that will be good news for those “camera ready” politicians and anyone living in Beverly Hills, IRS announced that field auditors will no longer pursue assessing the 10% tanning tax on customers of indoor tanning salons who redeem “frequent buyer” points for a free tanning session. Perhaps we can call this the Dermatological Stimulus of 2011.