Federal
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January 08, 2025
IRS Delays Thursday Deadlines For Carter Day Of Mourning
Any federal tax payments or returns due Thursday can now be paid or filed Friday due to the national day of mourning for President Jimmy Carter, the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday.
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January 07, 2025
H&R Block Accused Of Negligence In Data Breach
An H&R Block user who claims cybercriminals disseminated his personal information on the dark web, after a data breach at the tax preparation firm, accused the company in a proposed class action of failing to properly protect consumer data.
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January 07, 2025
Cos. Seek Pause Of Retention Credit Processing In Litigation
Two companies that helped clients obtain pandemic-era employee retention tax credits asked Arizona federal district court Tuesday to pause the IRS' use of a system for automatically processing claims, saying harm caused by this process cannot be remedied after litigation.
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January 07, 2025
7th Circ. Upholds Tax Penalties For Life Insurance Scammer
The Seventh Circuit upheld Tuesday nearly $400,000 in tax penalties against a man who served prison time for falsifying his returns as part of a scheme to poison his wife and collect on a $20 million life insurance policy.
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January 07, 2025
Treasury Finalizes Clean Electricity Tax Credit Regs
The U.S. Treasury Department released final regulations Tuesday for a pair of new tax credits that reward various types of electricity generation from technologies that don't emit greenhouse gases, replacing recently expired incentives that benefited only renewable energy sources.
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January 07, 2025
Lowenstein Sandler Elects 5-Atty Partner Class For 2025
Lowenstein Sandler LLP announced a class of five new partners for 2025 this week, drawing on attorneys working from New York and New Jersey and bringing expertise in tax law, environmental law, white collar defense and more.
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January 07, 2025
Baker McKenzie Adds Tax Partners In California And New York
Baker McKenzie is fortifying its tax practice by hiring a partner in San Francisco with experience in planning tax positions and handling controversies for technology-driven companies and rehiring another in New York who is skilled at state taxes and journalism.
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January 07, 2025
BankUnited's $40M Tax Refund Bid Too Late, Judge Rules
BankUnited is not owed a nearly $40 million tax refund stemming from losses it incurred when it took over a failed bank because it requested the refund too late, a Florida federal judge ruled Tuesday, agreeing with the U.S. government.
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January 06, 2025
Trump Selects Long Island Judge For EDNY's Top Prosecutor
President-elect Donald Trump, who was born in Queens, has picked a Long Island state court judge to serve as the next U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, according to an announcement made Monday on Truth Social.
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January 06, 2025
New Rules Won't Lift Political Clouds Over Hydrogen Projects
The Biden administration's new rules to make hydrogen production tax credits more accessible for project developers and investors may not move the needle much for the industry given President-elect Donald Trump's vow to at least partially repeal the statute that created the credits.
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January 06, 2025
House Speaker Sets April Target For Tax Law Extension Vote
The House of Representatives will send a reconciliation bill to the Senate by the end of April that will include major Republican priorities, including the renewal of Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions scheduled to expire at the end of the year, House Speaker Mike Johnson said.
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January 06, 2025
Judge Allows Sale Of Shared Dental Practice To Satisfy Taxes
The federal government can foreclose on a jointly owned dental practice to satisfy the roughly $500,000 tax debt of one of its partners, a New Jersey federal court ruled Monday, rejecting the request of a partner dentist who urged the court to spare his share.
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January 06, 2025
Convicted Atty Who 'Lost Everything' Fights To Keep License
A Philadelphia-based personal injury attorney who was convicted for not paying income tax on more than $8 million in revenue he earned and for failing to pay almost $60,000 in payroll taxes argued Monday he should not permanently lose his ability to practice law in New Jersey.
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January 06, 2025
Tax Whistleblower Urges High Court To Review $690M Claim
A whistleblower is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to review his claim for up to $690 million as his share of the $2.3 billion recovered through Internal Revenue Service investigations that he said resulted from his cooperation.
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January 06, 2025
Proskauer Adds New Funds Partners In NY, DC
Proskauer Rose LLP announced Monday it has rung in the new year by adding two new partners to its private funds group, with the addition of a tax expert from Schulte Roth & Zabel LLP in New York and a regulatory specialist from the SEC in Washington, D.C.
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January 06, 2025
US Wants More Time To Counter Altria's $106M Tax Refund Bid
Tobacco giant Altria's complaint seeking a $106 million tax refund related to its interests in beverage company Anheuser-Busch requires more research to counter in the event a Virginia federal court decides it can move forward, the U.S. government said in requesting time for potential discovery.
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January 03, 2025
Senate Finance Committee Adds Six New Members
Six lawmakers, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, have joined the Senate Finance Committee for the 119th Congress, Committee Chairman Mike Crapo said in a statement Friday.
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January 03, 2025
Treasury Unveils Flexible Final Regs For Hydrogen Tax Credit
The U.S. Treasury Department released final rules Friday for hydrogen production tax credits that allow fuel produced using nuclear-generated electricity or methane to qualify for the incentive, making the regulations more flexible than what was proposed last year.
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January 03, 2025
Potomac Law Group Adds Longtime Tax Leader From Day Pitney
After an end-of-the-year hiring spree in which Potomac Law Group added four former Rimon PC attorneys, PLG has started 2025 by adding the former leader of Day Pitney's multistate tax practice to its ranks.
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January 03, 2025
Trump Taps Former Hill Staffer For Assistant Tax Policy Role
President-elect Donald Trump has tapped a longtime tax policy lobbyist to serve as the assistant secretary for tax policy at the U.S. Department of the Treasury during his coming second term.
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January 03, 2025
Prison Delay Denied For Broker In $22M Tax Scheme
An insurance broker sentenced to five years in prison for participating in a $22 million tax scheme must begin serving his term after a North Carolina federal judge on Friday denied him a delay to help his new counsel prepare his appeal.
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January 03, 2025
Weekly Internal Revenue Bulletin
The Internal Revenue Service's weekly bulletin, issued Friday, included an updated start date for when some must start to withdraw the required minimum amount of funds from several types of individual retirement accounts, pushing it back to 2026.
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January 02, 2025
Tax Court Upholds Nix Of $24M Deduction For Easement
A partnership that donated a preservation easement over a building in a historic district is not entitled to a nearly $24 million tax deduction, the U.S. Tax Court affirmed Thursday, saying the building was not listed on the National Register of Historic Places or federally certified.
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January 02, 2025
Retirement Trustee Liable For Fraud Penalty, Tax Court Finds
A trustee and fiduciary of two retirement plans who diverted $5.3 million from the plans for his personal benefit willfully and fraudulently intended to evade tax on his unreported income and is liable for a fraud penalty, the U.S. Tax Court held Thursday.
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January 02, 2025
Crypto Groups Challenge Decentralized Finance Broker Rule
Three cryptocurrency industry groups have teamed up to challenge a final U.S. Treasury Department rule implementing additional reporting requirements for decentralized finance brokers, telling a Texas federal court that the rule is unconstitutional and could destroy the industry.
Expert Analysis
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What To Make Of Dueling Corporate Transparency Act Rulings
Although challenges to the Corporate Transparency Act abound — as highlighted by recent federal court decisions from Alabama and Oregon taking opposite positions on its constitutionality — the act is still law, so companies should comply with their filing requirements or face the potential consequences, say attorneys at Lowenstein Sandler.
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The Pop Culture Docket: Justice Lebovits On Gilbert And Sullivan
Characters in the 19th century comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan break the rules of good lawyering by shamelessly throwing responsible critical thought to the wind, providing hilarious lessons for lawyers and judges on how to avoid a surfeit of traps and tribulations, say acting New York Supreme Court Justice Gerald Lebovits and law student Tara Scown.
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State Of The States' AI Legal Ethics Landscape
Over the past year, several state bar associations, as well as the American Bar Association, have released guidance on the ethical use of artificial intelligence in legal practice, all of which share overarching themes and some nuanced differences, say Eric Pacifici and Kevin Henderson at SMB Law Group.
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8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney
A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.
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How The 2025 Tax Policy Debate Will Affect The Energy Sector
Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming U.S. election, 2025 will bring a major tax policy debate that could affect the energy sector more than any other part of the economy — so stakeholders who could be affected should be engaging now to make sure they understand the stakes, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.
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This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys
Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.
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The Trade And Tax Issues Behind US-Canada Digital Tax Clash
The new Canadian digital services tax recently went into effect despite objections from the U.S., a controversy that represents an unusual mix of trade and tax policy, and many companies have been pondering how it will affect their e-commerce businesses, says Damon Pike at BDO.
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Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession
About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.
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AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys
The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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A Look At How De Minimis Import Rules May Soon Change
The planned implementation of executive actions focused on the de minimis rule as it applies to shipments means companies should use this interval to evaluate the potential applicability and impact of Section 301, Section 201 or Section 232 duties on their products, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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Ruling On Foreign Dividend Break Offers 2 Tax Court Insights
In Varian v. Commissioner, the U.S. Tax Court allowed a taxpayer's deduction for dividends from foreign subsidiaries, providing clarity on how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision may affect challenges to Treasury regulations, and revealing a potential disallowance of foreign tax credits, say attorneys at Davis Polk.
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Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners
Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.