In the blogs: Feeling your pain

High-income backdown; Direct File collision; the vaping excise mess; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Feeling your pain

• Parametric (https://www.parametricportfolio.com/blog): One favorite opening of the week: “Presidential election cycles are invariably driven by emotions, often accompanied by unpredictable and even shocking events.” How to look more dispassionately at our parties’ tax policies.
• Virginia – U.S. Tax Talk (https://us-tax.org/about-this-us-tax-blog/): A recent Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report said that to meet an audit quota set in 2020, the IRS started examining tax returns that fit a designated profile of “high-income” taxpayers even if these returns did not show typical signs of irregularities. As TIGTA reports, the drop in efficiency at the IRS was so steep that the agency has ceased compliance with the directive.
• Don’t Mess with Taxes (http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/): Matchup of big-boy letters: The IRS and the congressional GOP are on a collision course over the Direct File program.
• National Taxpayer Advocate (https://www.taxpayeradvocate.irs.gov/taxnews-information/blogs-nta/): The IRS forums are off and running, and one quote’s called out from the “Taxpayer Advocate’s town hall: “I feel your pain — telephones are sadly the No. 1 thing I hear about when chatting with tax pros.”
• Marcum (https://www.marcumllp.com/insights): On July 19, many organizations found themselves fighting to restore operations after a flawed update from the cybersecurity firm (no joke) Crowdstrike ignited the largest global IT outage in history. IT and cybersecurity communities need to scrutinize how a single failure caused such a massive disruption.
• Taxable Talk (http://www.taxabletalk.com/): Is this or isn’t this a phishing attempt? A number of clues to examine a given example.
• Tax Vox (https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox): Ask seven public policy think tanks how to get the federal budget on a “strong, more sustainable fiscal path” and you’ll get seven different answers. But when one foundation recently asked that question of policy shops that spanned the political spectrum, nearly all respondents agreed on one thing. 

Across borders

• HBK (https://hbkcpa.com/insights/): A look at Canada’s new Digital Services Tax, which kicked in on June 28 with a 3% tax on Canadian-source digital services revenue earned by large domestic and foreign taxpayers.  
• The Tax Times (https://www.thetaxtimes.com): Turns out that a Canadian citizen’s $6.5 million in gains from her sale of a U.S. partnership interest in a company that sold energy drinks was not federally taxable as income, reversing a U.S. Tax Court ruling. 
• Tax Foundation (https://taxfoundation.org/blog): Another fav opening: “The U.S. vaping market is a disaster.” Streams of illicit products and a mishmash of excise taxes combine for no one knowing whether these taxes are being collected and remitted.
• Avalara (https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-america.html: A Wayfair 2.0 case is brewing in Illinois, but how level can the playing field really be?
• Peisner Johnson (https://peisnerjohnson.com/blog/): Why automation alone won’t cut it when clients try to keep up with sales tax obligations.

Think about it

• University of Illinois Tax School (https://taxschool.illinois.edu/blog/): An upcoming webinar addresses what some don’t want to think about: a potentially looming cliff for the TCJA estate tax exemption.
• Dean Dorton (https://deandorton.com/insights/): For any entity that receives federal funding, the process for monitoring and managing grant money is about to be streamlined and simplified. 
• Sikich (https://www.sikich.com/insights/): The U.S. Compliance Supplement guides federal agencies in establishing audit protocols to ensure non-federal entities comply with 2 CFR Part 200 (the supplement is also used by entities’ auditors to shape and select audit procedures). Changes this year to both the annual Compliance Supplement and Uniform Guidance should be on non-federal entities’ radars. A recap of the major updates.
• Taxing Subjects (https://www.drakesoftware.com/blog): What to remind them about home energy credits.
• Summing It Up (http://blog.freedmaxick.com/summing-it-up): What biz clients who are trying to plan an exit strategy should know about ESOPs.