News Articles

It's possible you could be kissing that bonus goodbye.

Just as your digital imprint can snarl up your job hunt, what you do at work can impact your professional persona.

Most employees know they shouldn't be spending much time at work sending personal emails or shopping on Amazon.

Those who think of it may take the trouble to clear their browsing history, according to a survey by Simply Hired, a job-search site. But that may not do as much to protect privacy as employees think.

Some two-thirds of companies monitor employees for e-mail infractions, and half have fired workers for those infractions, according to the Society for Human Resource Management.

In its 2017 Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, Gartner estimates it will take five to 10 years before there's mainstream adoption of blockchain. However, major players in the financial services industry are already seeing benefits from the technology, using blockchain as a game-changing “trust protocol” for financial transactions and keep pace with regulatory processes.

In addition, many companies are starting to work with blockchain technology along their supply chain to control sourcing together with their OEM partners. Regulatory agencies are tapping into the prospective use of blockchain to better understand revenue and cost streams of taxpaying companies. This increase in adoption has pushed accounting and finance executives to look at blockchain as a potential technology disruptor in their space, recognizing that there are several key business benefits to leveraging the technology.

Farmers and ranchers who were forced to sell livestock due to drought may get extra time to replace the livestock and defer tax on gains from the sales, according to the Internal Revenue Service. 

The one-year extension gives eligible farmers and ranchers until the end of the tax year after the first drought-free year to replace the sold livestock. The farmer or rancher must be in an applicable region -- a county designated as eligible for federal assistance, or a county contiguous to an eligible county. 

The Treasury Department said the Internal Revenue Service would push back implementation of a redesigned Form W-4 to tax year 2020, allowing the agency to keep working on a new approach to the employee withholding form. 

The IRS released a draft version of a new Form W-4, "Employee’s Withholding Allowance Certificate," earlier this year in the wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but it received heavy criticism from groups like the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of Enrolled Agents, which said it raised privacy concerns, created a substantial risk of under withholding, and would require taxpayers to forecast a number of tax-related items that are traditionally difficult to predict. 

The Internal Revenue Service issued its annual notice describing the daily rates that taxpayers can use for lodging, meals and incidental expenses when traveling for business. 

Notice 2018-77 announces the special per diem rates, effective Oct. 1, 2018, that taxpayers may use to substantiate the amount of expenses for lodging, meals and incidental expenses when traveling away from home. The notice also provides the special transportation industry rate, the rate for the incidental expenses only deduction, and the rates and list of high-cost localities for purposes of the high-low substantiation method. 

The House Ways and Means Committee finally released the three tax bills that they hope the House will pass prior to the midterm elections, constituting what they are calling Tax Reform 2.0. 

We have long known that one of the bills would focus on making permanent many of the temporary individual provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2018. House Bill 6760 provides the details on making those provisions permanent. 

We had very little detail on the other two areas of focus: retirement and education enhancements and promoting new business innovation. House Bill 6757, titled “The Family Savings Act of 2018,” provides the details on the retirement and education proposals. House Bill 6756, “The American Innovation Act of 2018,” provides the details on enhancing entrepreneurship. 

The Internal Revenue Service released guidance Wednesday on the business expense deduction for meals and entertainment in the wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which was supposed to eliminate deductions for expenses pertaining to activities generally considered entertainment, amusement or recreation. 

The IRS said taxpayers can still deduct 50 percent of the cost of business meals if the taxpayer (or an employee of the business) is present at the meal, and the food or beverages aren’t considered to be “lavish or extravagant.” The meals can involve a current or potential business customer, client, consultant or a similar business contact. Food and beverages provided during entertainment events won’t be considered entertainment if they’re bought separately from the event. 

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is proposing to make a number of narrow improvements in the lease accounting standard as public companies get ready for it to take effect at the end of the year.

The proposal aims to reduce some of the costs and implementation headaches of applying the leasing standard. It would also clarify a specific requirement in the standard related to lessor accounting with sales taxes and other similar taxes collected from lessees. The new guidance would allow lessors, as an accounting policy election, to not evaluate whether these taxes are costs of the lessor or costs of the lessee. Instead, a lessor could account for them as costs of the lessee and exclude the amounts from lease revenue and the associated expense.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service proposed regulations to increase and expand the first-year depreciation deduction for qualified property from 50 to 100 percent, carrying out a provision of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The tax code overhaul, which Congress passed last December, increased the first-year depreciation deduction from 50 to 100 percent for qualified property acquired and placed in service after Sept. 27, 2017. The increased benefit aims to expand opportunities for small and midsized businesses to expense equipment purchases and make capital investments in their companies. The proposed regulations are among a litany of rulemaking that the Treasury and the IRS are expected to roll out in the years ahead to implement various provisions of the far-reaching tax overhaul.

The IRS issued proposed regulations regarding the qualified trade or business income deduction under Sec. 199A, which was enacted by P.L. 115-97, the law known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) (REG-107892-18). At the same time, it issued Notice 2018-64, which provides guidance on how to compute W-2 wages for purposes of the deduction, along with FAQs. The proposed rules include a way that taxpayers can group or aggregate separate trades or businesses and an anti-abuse rule designed to prevent taxpayers from separating out parts of an otherwise disqualified business in an attempt to qualify those separated parts for the Sec. 199A deduction.