Blog

On June 29, 2015 Congress passed a bill signed into law by the President doubling all information reporting penalties. This comes on the heels of the IRS decision earlier this year to cut its popular program answering questions related to the filing of Forms 1099 and 1042-S.

Earlier this month the President issued his proposed budget for fiscal year 2016. It includes a massive near 20 percent hike in the IRS' budget, with these funds largely meant to help close the $385 billion annual tax gap.

Bad news for filers seeking IRS guidance on filing Forms 1099 and 1042-S. On January 14, 2015 National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson announced the IRS will not be providing guidance on meeting information reporting filing, compliance, and due diligence requirements under the law.

I have said it time and again, beyond Federal W-8/1042/1042-S related audits and State level audits for under 1099 reporting the biggest liability accounts payable professionals must be aware of is paying workers misclassified by their employer as independent contractors.

One of the biggest compliance problems faced by Accounts Payable Departments are issues posed by companies misclassifying workers as independent contractors when regulators think these workers are employees; as recently found out by yet another multinational corporation and in regards to thousands of its workers.

The IRS has released the New 2014 Form W-8IMY. With this new form the IRS has now released the first new Final Forms W-8BEN, W-8ECI, W-8EXP, W-8IMY since 2006 as well as the brand new Form W-8BEN-E.

This is about as hot off the presses as it gets. Yesterday the IRS released finalized Forms W-8BEN and W-8ECI and their new instructions (see here and here).

Housing Wire is reporting that JP Morgan Chase has hired 3,000 employees for its compliance and legal departments. In addition the bank is spending roughly $1.5 Billion to beef up its control efforts, and manage risk and compliance issues. 

A new report issued by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Office of Audit (TIGTA) and the IRS have determined that employers regularly misclassify millions of workers as independent contractors instead of employees. 

The IRS has just released Notice 2013-43 and, here we go again, the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) implementation guidelines have again been revised. Let's take a brief look at what this means for you.