Paul L. Caron
Dean
Pepperdine Caruso
School of Law
IRS News
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IRS Celebrates National Whistleblower Day: $1.2 Billion Awards, $7 Billion Paid By Non-Compliant Taxpayers
IR-2024-199, IRS Whistleblower Office Celebrates National Whistleblower Day; Over $7 Billion in Collected Proceeds Thanks to Whistleblowers (July 29, 2024): In anticipation of National Whistleblower Appreciation Day on July 30, the Internal Revenue Service Whistleblower Office today recognized the important role whistleblowers play in supporting the nation’s tax administration. Since issuing its first award in 2007 through…
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WSJ: Increased IRS Audit Rate Of Wealthy Taxpayers Reduced Efficiency By 93%
Wall Street Journal Editorial, The IRS Has a High-Earner Delusion: Unlike bank robbers, IRS auditors tend to look where the money isn’t. That’s what happened after the agency started scrutinizing more tax returns from the wealthiest Americans. A new report says increased targeting of these taxpayers was hugely ineffective [The IRS Ceased Compliance With the…
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Treasury Department Seeks To Hire Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel ($147,649 – $221,900)
The U.S. Treasury Department is looking to hire a Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel (application deadline: July 29, 2024): SummaryThis position serves as Deputy Tax Legislative Counsel in the Office of the Tax Legislative Counsel (the Office). The Tax Legislative Counsel is the legal adviser on domestic, non-benefits tax legislation and guidance projects and assists the…
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TIGTA: Occupancy Rate At Most IRS Buildings Is Less Than 50% (Washington, D.C. Is Lowest)
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, The IRS Has Reduced Its Overall Space Footprint; However, a Significant Amount of Unneeded Office Space Still Remains (2024-100-027) (June 4, 2024): Since FY 2018, the IRS has reduced its overall space footprint by approximately 2 million rentable square feet, from 24.3 million to 22.3 million, which represents a…
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National Taxpayer Advocate Delivers Report To Congress: 500,000 Identity Theft Case Backlog Takes 2 Years To Resolve, IRS Answers 31% Of Taxpayer Phone Calls
IR-2024-173 (June 26, 2024), National Taxpayer Advocate Issues Mid-Year Report to Congress; Highlights Filing Season Challenges and Focuses on Strategic Priorities: National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins today released her statutorily mandated mid-year report to Congress. The report says the tax-return filing season generally ran smoothly this year, but it identifies delays in issuing refunds…
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Treasury Department Office Of Tax Legislative Counsel Seeks To Hire Attorneys
Office of Tax Legislative Counsel Attorney-Advisor Positions Priority application deadline is July 15, 2024, though we evaluate candidates year-round. Job Description: The Office of Tax Legislative Counsel (TLC) is part of the Department of the Treasury's Office of Tax Policy responsible for advising the Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy and senior Treasury officials in connection…
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IRS ‘Sincerely Apologizes To Ken Griffin And Thousands Of Other Taxpayers Whose Personal Information Was Leaked To The Press’
Following up on Tuesday’s post, Hedge Fund Billionaire Ken Griffin And IRS Settle Lawsuit Over Tax Returns Leaked To ProPublica: New York Times DealBook, The Taxman Apologizeth: The Internal Revenue Service has offered a rare public apology for a data leak that revealed the tax return details of Ken Griffin, the billionaire investor, and thousands of other…
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Hedge Fund Billionaire Ken Griffin And IRS Settle Lawsuit Over Tax Returns Leaked To ProPublica
Bloomberg, Ken Griffin’s Data Leak Suit Against IRS Ends In Settlement: The Internal Revenue Service agreed to settle a lawsuit brought by hedge fund manager Ken Griffin that accused the agency of failing to protect his confidential financial information from a contractor who stole his tax data and leaked it to ProPublica. … Griffin sued…
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AI-Generated Tax Advice Is Not (Yet) Making the Grade
Taxpayer Advocate Service, Is AI Generated Tax Advice Making the Grade?: AI is a rapidly evolving new technology, and may not be able to provide accurate answers to your complex tax questions. … Recently, some leading tax preparation companies have taken AI a step further by providing generative AI assistants, often referred to as AI…
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WSJ: The IRS Money Hole Gets Deeper
Wall Street Journal Editorial, The IRS Money Hole Gets Deeper: The Internal Revenue Service can’t write its own checks, which means it has to ask Congress for funding like any other agency. But if lawmakers have been tracking its misspending, they’ll turn down the tax collectors’ new $104 billion budget request and demand an audit…
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ProPublica: Sports Team Owners Face New Tax Scrutiny From The IRS
ProPublica, Sports Team Owners Face New Scrutiny From IRS Over Tax Avoidance: The IRS has launched a campaign to examine whether wealthy taxpayers are violating the law when using their ownership of sports teams to save large amounts in taxes. The effort will focus on sports industry entities that are reporting “significant tax losses” to…
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WSJ: 63% Of IRS Audits Target Taxpayers Earnings Less Than $200,000, Not $400,000 Promised By President Biden
Wall Street Journal Editorial, IRS’s Most Wanted: The $200,000 Man: The Internal Revenue Service got an audit of its own in time for Tax Day, and two irregularities jump out. President Biden’s plan to hire a new army of tax collectors is falling flat, and the agents already at work are targeting the middle class.…
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Genadek Presents Newly-Available Individual-Level U.S. Tax Data (1969-1994) Today At Georgetown
Katie Genadek (Colorado; Google Scholar) presents Newly-Available Individual-Level U.S. Tax Data from 1969-1994 (with J. Trent Alexander (Michigan; Google Scholar), David Bleckley (Michigan), Jonathan Fisher (Washington Center for Equitable Growth; Google Scholar), Susan Hautaniemi Leonard (Michigan; Google Scholar) & Aristotle Magganas (UCLA)) at Georgetown today as part of its Tax Law and Public Finance Workshop…
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Dorothy Brown And Steven Dean Question Biden Administration’s Commitment To Addressing Systemic Racial Bias In The Tax Code
Tax Notes, Treasury Accused of Stonewalling Equity Agenda: Dorothy Brown of the Georgetown University Law Center, a proponent of Treasury collecting race statistics to address tax code inequalities, feels seen but not heard as a member of the department's Advisory Committee on Racial Equity. Brown, author of The Whiteness of Wealth: How the Tax System Impoverishes Black Americans…
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Inside The IRS Unit Taking On America’s Millionaires And Billionaires
International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, Inside the IRS Unit Taking on America’s Millionaires and Billionaires: A pair of Internal Revenue Service agents are attempting to interview a billionaire they suspect of cheating on his taxes. But across the table from the agents is a formidable entourage of esteemed tax professionals hired to defend the billionaire.…
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NY Times: There’s A Tax Season Villain, And It’s Not The IRS
New York Times, There’s A Tax Season Villain, and It’s Not the I.R.S.: It’s the most miserable time of the year: tax season. Americans are about to spend millions of hours and billions of dollars filing their federal income taxes, and they are pretty sure they know who is responsible for their pain: The misanthropes…
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NY Times: Former Contractor Who Leaked Trump’s Tax Returns Sentenced To 5 Years In Prison
New York Times, Former Contractor Who Leaked Trump’s Tax Returns Sentenced to 5 Years in Prison: A former Internal Revenue Service contractor accused of leaking the tax documents of Donald J. Trump and other wealthy Americans was sentenced on Monday to five years in prison. The former contractor, Charles Littlejohn, known as Chaz, worked for…
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2023 Tax Filing Season Opens Today As IRS Computer Snarl Could Impact Millions Of Taxpayers
The Messenger, IRS Computer Snarl Could Threaten Millions of Taxpayers as Filing Season Is About to Open: A computer snarl has hit the Internal Revenue Service just as the filing season is set to open, with the agency saying Friday that some payroll providers, banks, mortgage companies and accountants have been unable to upload required…
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Thomas: Improving The Tax System For Independent Contractors With Quarterly 1099s
Kathleen DeLaney Thomas (North Carolina; Google Scholar), Improving the Tax System for Independent Contractors: Quarterly 1099s, 182 Tax Notes 79 (Jan. 1, 2024): In this article, Thomas proposes a new quarterly form sent to independent contractors that would inform them of their quarterly earnings and their obligation to remit estimated taxes on that income, easing the…
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Lily Batchelder Returns To NYU After Serving Over 3 Years As Assistant Secretary For Tax Policy
NYU Law News, Lily Batchelder Returns to NYU Law After Serving as the Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy: Lily Batchelder will return to NYU Law in Spring 2024 after serving as assistant secretary for tax policy at the US Department of the Treasury. Batchelder, who is the Robert C. Kopple Family Professor of Taxation…
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NY Times: National Taxpayer Advocate Laments IRS Struggles To Answer Taxpayer Phone Calls Despite Budget Infusion
New York Times, Effort to Revamp I.R.S. Faces Challenges Despite Funding Infusion: The Office of the National Taxpayer Advocate lamented that the tax collection agency, which now faces budget cuts in Congress, is still struggling to answer the telephones. A multibillion-dollar federal effort to modernize the Internal Revenue Service has not yet solved the agency’s…
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NY Times: IRS To Begin Trial Of Its Own Free Tax-Filing System
New York Times, I.R.S. to Begin Trial of Its Own Free Tax-Filing System: The Internal Revenue Service is rolling out a free option for filing federal tax returns this year to some residents of a dozen states. Last month, the agency published details of its plan to test an in-house filing system, in which taxpayers…
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Longtime Tax Watchdog J. Russell George Dies After Illness
Bloomberg, Longtime Tax Watchdog J. Russell George Dies After Illness: J. Russell George, who served as a key IRS watchdog for nearly two decades, most notably during the 2013 controversy over groups’ applications for tax-exempt status—died earlier this week after a lengthy illness. George had served as the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration since…
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Why Cutting IRS Funding Is Not Conservative
Washington Post Op-Ed: Why Cutting IRS Funding Is Not a Conservative Move, by Brian Riedl (Manhattan Institute): Last year, President Biden and congressional Democrats enacted $80 billion in new IRS funding for the next decade. During the debt limit debate earlier this year, Republicans successfully negotiated a $20 billion cut in that funding. And now,…
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Joint Tax Committee Publishes Bluebook: General Explanation Of Tax Legislation Enacted In The 117th Congress
The Joint Committee on Taxation has released General Explanation of Tax Legislation Enacted in the 116th Congress (JCS-1-23) (Dec. 21, 2023) (560 pages): This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation in consultation with the staffs of the House Committee on Ways and Means and the Senate Committee on Finance, provides…