Review of Recent Tax News

Several stories from Tax Analysts caught my attention recently: in one case, the IRS stated that individual tax collections were down (though taxable income was up) based on 2001 and 2003 tax cuts and that about half a million taxpayers were newly subject to AMT. A second story mentioned that members of Congress had attached a rider to a Defense bill which would prevent the IRS from cutting back telephone service hours. A third article discussed objections by Max Baucus (D-MT), ranking member on the Senate Finance Committee, to motions to proceed with the tax reconciliation legislation recently passed. From WebCPA comes a story from the U.S. Department of Commerce that taxpayers underreported taxable income by close to $1 trillion (about 1/8 of all income was not reported according to the article). All articles can be linked at right.