Yearly Archives: 2020

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) reviewed the levies issued to taxpayers by the different functions within the IRS Collection organization during the period October 1, 2018, through September 30, 2019, found a number of problems associated with IRS levies issued by the Automated Collection System (ACS). 

The TIGTA review found that of the 194,498 taxpayers that received these levies, 145 taxpayers were not timely informed of their Collection Due Process (CDP) rights. The review said, "When an additional amount is assessed to a delinquent account of a taxpayer, an additional CDP notice must be issued to the taxpayer," the audit said. However, out of the 84,513 taxpayers that received additional assessments prior to the ACS levy, four (4) taxpayers did not receive a new CDP notice. IRS also must suspend collection action during the CDP hearing process, TIGTA said.

"However, Of The 194,498 Taxpayers That Received
ACS Levies, TIGTA Identified Three (3) Taxpayers With Levies Issued While A CDP Hearing Was Pending," The Audit Said.

According to the audit, revenue officers issued 58,546 levies utilizing the Integrated Collection System (ICS).

From this population, TIGTA identified: 

1. 25 taxpayers that were not notified of the CDP rights; 
2. 24 taxpayers that were not timely notified of their CDP rights; and 
3. 25 taxpayers that were not notified of their CDP rights when the CDP notice transaction code was incorrectly reversed. 
4. In addition, out of almost 17,000 taxpayers that received additional tax assessments prior to the levy, audits identified 51 taxpayers that did not receive a new CDP notice subsequent to the time the additional assessment was made.

Finally, "TIGTA also identified 40 taxpayers out of 58,546 that received ICS levies while a CDP hearing was pending in violation of the law," the audit said. Of the seven recommendations made by TIGTA, IRS agreed with six and said it will take alternative corrective action related to the remaining recommendation. 

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The IRS has released final regs that provide guidance for certain foreign persons that recognize gain or loss from the sale or exchange of an interest in a partnership that is engaged in a trade or business within the U.S.

The final regs retain the basic approach and structure of the proposed regs with certain revisions described below. 

1. Determining deemed sale EC gain or deemed sale EC loss. The final regs retain the basic framework of the proposed regs, including the factual determinations regarding assets attributable to an office or fixed place of business in the U.S. maintained by the partnership ("office attribution rule") (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(ii)(B) through Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(ii)(E)) 
2. Ten-year exception. The final regs retain the ten-year exception as an exception to the determination of deemed sale EC gain and EC loss under Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(i)(A). 
3. Sourcing rules. The final regs make several changes to the general sourcing rule provided in Prop Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(i).
4. Look-back rule for inventory property. The final regs provide a look-back rule for determining the foreign source portion of deemed sale EC gain or EC loss attributable to inventory property that is held by the partnership on the date of the deemed sale. 
5. Look-back rule for intangibles. To minimize the difficulty of applying the sourcing rules to intangible property and to provide more certainty, the final regs provide a separate rule for intangibles (including going concern value) that determines the foreign source portion of deemed sale gain or loss attributable to intangibles by using a proxy method that is based on the source of the partnership’s historic gross ordinary income. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(ii)(C)) 
6. Depreciable personal property. The final regs provide a two-part approach for determining the foreign source portion of deemed sale EC gain and EC loss attributable to depreciable personal property. The first part applies a recapture principle to the extent of depreciation adjustments taken with respect to the property. The second part focuses on where the property is located to the extent the property has deemed sale EC gain in excess of its depreciation adjustments or if the property has deemed sale EC loss. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(ii)(D)) 
7. Material change in circumstances rule. The final regs provide a material change in circumstances rule for inventory and intangibles. When this rule applies, the foreign source portion of deemed sale EC gain or EC loss attributable to inventory property or intangibles may be determined using a modified look-back period. Taxpayers can use this material change in circumstances rule to remedy an incorrect sourcing result with respect to inventory property and intangibles. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(2)(ii)(E)) 
8. Treaty coordination. The final regs retain the general rule that prevents taxation of gain on assets that do not form part of a U.S. permanent establishment, but also address certain gains that may be taxed without regard to whether there is a U.S. permanent establishment (for example, gains from the disposition of certain USRPI). (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(f)) The final regs also add a rule coordinating these regs with treaty provisions governing the disposition of USRPI, which allow the U.S. to tax gain derived from the disposition of the USRPI without regard to whether the USRPI forms a part of a partnership’s permanent establishment. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(f)) Partner-specific exclusions and exceptions. Under the final regs, a foreign transferor’s distributive share of deemed sale EC gain or EC loss does not include any amount that is excluded from the foreign transferor’s gross income or otherwise exempt from U.S. Federal income tax under the Code. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(c)(3)(i)) 
9. Clarification of Sec. 897 coordination rule with respect to nonrecognition provisions. The final regs clarify the interaction between the Code Sec. 897 coordination rule and the nonrecognition provision described in Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(b)(2)(ii). Specifically, the final regs provide that any transfer of an interest in a partnership as part of a nonrecognition transaction will not be subject to Code Sec. 864(c)(8) to the extent that the gain or loss on the transfer is not recognized. Instead, if the partnership owns one or more USRPI, Code Sec. 897(g) and its regs will apply with respect to the unrecognized gain or loss. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(d)) 

The final regs generally apply to transfers occurring on or after December 26, 2018 (that is, the date on which the proposed regs were filed with the Federal Register). While not subject to these final regulations, transfers occurring on or after November 27, 2017, but before December 26, 2018, are subject to Code Sec. 864(c)(8). In addition, the final regs apply to amounts taken into account on or after December 26, 2018, pursuant to an installment sale occurring on or after November 27, 2017 and before December 26, 2018. (Reg §1.864(c)(8)-1(j) and Reg §1.897-7(c)) 

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Sources

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Thomson Reuters

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In Announcement 2020-12 the IRS said that when all or a portion of the stated principal amount of a covered loan is forgiven because the recipient satisfies the forgiveness requirements under section 1106 of the CARES Act, an entity isn’t required to, “for federal income tax purposes only,” and should not, file a Form 1099-C information return with the IRS or provide a payee statement to the recipient as a result of the forgiveness.

The IRS noted that filing such information returns with the IRS could result in the issuance of underreporter notices on the IRS’s Letter CP2000 to eligible recipients, and furnishing payee statements to those recipients could therefore cause confusion. The IRS issued the announcement with the goal of preventing such confusion.

The announcement may lead to some confusion anyway, however, as the transparency around the PPP loans has been the subject of some wrangling in Congress. Earlier this year, Democrats pressured the Small Business Administration to release more information about the recipients of the loans. Some information eventually came out in the form of spreadsheets, but the data proved to be inaccurate in many cases. 

Earlier this month, the Justice Department’s Criminal Division charged 57 defendants with PPP-related fraud and has identified nearly 500 people suspected of COVID-related loan fraud.

Have IRS Tax Problem?

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On July 21, 2020, The Internal Revenue Service announced the creation of the new Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management office, which will spearhead IRS efforts to empower taxpayers and IRS employees to rapidly resolve issues in a simplified digital environment.

The office's efforts will support overall IRS modernization and implementation of long-term changes stemming from the Taxpayer First Act.

Serving as co-directors of the new office will be Hampden "Harrison" Smith, IV, currently the agency's Deputy Chief Procurement Officer, and Justin Lewis Abold-LaBreche, who is the Director of Enterprise Case Management.

The new stand-alone office will focus on enhancing the taxpayer experience by improving business processes and modernizing systems. The office will apply agile, customer-centered thinking and draw on leading industry test-and-learn practices to rapidly identify what combination of business process and technology works best for the IRS's customers and employees. In the digitalization space, a portfolio-based approach will be utilized for the challenges the IRS faces, in the form of multiple small pilot projects for business process changes and technology solutions. The pilots will be focused on a desired outcome instead of a prescriptive approach, and they will be scaled and funded as they demonstrate value and return on investment. In the case management space, the office procured a commercial-off-the-shelf platform earlier this year from Pegasystems Inc., and its first release is well underway.

Now according to accountingTODAY The Internal Revenue Service is gearing up to deploy a more modern taxpayer case management system in December, starting with the customer support area of its Exempt Organizations unit and eventually more widely across the IRS, in the hope of making it easier for taxpayers and IRS employees to get access to information more quickly and efficiently.

The effort is in line with the Taxpayer First Act that Congress passed last year, which includes a number of IRS reforms, including modernizing the aging technology at the agency. The IRS has been relying on decades-old systems, some of which date back to the Kennedy administration. Last month, the IRS announced a new Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management office, and it’s in charge of the effort to create the Enterprise Case Management system. But the IRS has been working on modernizing its systems for many years, with a number of problems along the way, especially in the Modernized e-File system, which frequently needs to go offline for maintenance.

The initial release of the new system will allow EO case workers to scan and copy documents, research case records, and send requests for publicly available documents such as applications for tax-exempt status and exemption letters, while also helping resolve problems involving determination requests for tax-exempt status.

“This really supports our overall IRS modernization efforts and puts us on a really great path with the Taxpayer First Act because it’s helping us consolidate aging systems and create that taxpayer experience that we are working hard to deliver,” said Justin Lewis Abold-LaBreche, co-director of the Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management office, during a conference call Wednesday with reporters. 

“At the top level, we are working on things like consolidating aging systems and migrating people over to a common platform, creating electronic case files, increasing digital channels and self-service, and streamlining our employees’ access to data so they can resolve issues quickly. 

The taxpayers are going to see this right away with faster service, and IRS employees are going to benefit because they’re more comprehensively going to be able to resolve issues that taxpayers bring to them. It’s really a positive framework for helping the IRS modernize quickly and deliver value to the taxpayer.”

He Noted That The IRS Currently Has 60 Aging Case Management Systems That Often Can’t Talk To Each Other 
Because They Were Built At Different Times 
Over The Past 20 Or More Years.

So that’s our challenge, to really take this opportunity to modernize the underlying business processes and then migrate upwards of 200 business processes and 45,000 users onto a common case management platform, so we can deliver that outstanding service to the taxpayer.”

The IRS signed the contract with Pegasystems in April after going through a procurement process with due diligence. “There was thorough market research and evaluation, and we selected Pegasystems,” said Abold-LaBreche. “It’s a proven piece of technology. It has wide adoption in the private sector and the government, and we’ve made huge progress since April 2020, which was just a handful of months ago. We’re already up in the cloud. We’ve got foundational technology functionality in place, and we’re now finishing up the configuration of Pegasystems for our first business process.”

“Today the process for our correspondence workstream is very paper based and manual,” said Killen. “Taxpayers mail in letters and forms. We handle their requests manually in a paper format, and after research, which often means an employee has to search a number of IRS systems, we respond by sending them a letter in the mail. 

We will take that request digitally, or if the taxpayer has to send a letter, we will scan it in and then do that work within the ECM platform. 

Employees also will be able to conduct almost all of their research right from the ECM platform. Now, with these requests being handled digitally, the IRS employees performing this work will be able to provide a faster, more complete response. I think this is a great example of how we are not only spinning out this new platform, the ECM, but we are doing it in a way that allows us to take the opportunity to modernize and create new digital channels. This is the model for how we are going to move forward as an enterprise.”

Abold-LaBreche said more information would be released in the next 30 to 60 days about those plans. He denied that the December rollout was timed to coincide after the November election. In 2013, the IRS’s Exempt Organizations unit ran into trouble amid revelations that it had been using terms such as “Tea Party,” “Patriot” and “Progressive” to filter out applications for 501(c)4 tax-exempt status from political groups ahead of the 2012 elections, which led to the ouster of the director of the EO unit, Lois Lerner, and several other top IRS officials.

He said his office has a strong commitment from the IRS leadership for the new technology initiative and they are still working out what that will look like in the future. He pointed as well to other recent technology initiatives, such as the ability to file amended 1040-X tax returns electronically and added that it would be the first of many good things happening at the IRS.

Have IRS Tax Problem?

 Contact the Tax Lawyers at
Marini & Associates, P.A. 

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