In the blogs: The best policy

Partners’ pay as a retention tool; volunteering to file; the global tax debate; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

The best policy

• Rosenberg Associates (https://rosenbergassoc.com/blog/): Here’s a thorny one: Should partners cut their comp to pay staff better?
• Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders (http://ritakeller.com/blog/): Recruiting is one thing, retention another — and perhaps a more important one.
• The Tax Times (https://www.thetaxtimes.com): Who Can Resist a Bargain? Dept.: Last year, the IRS collected more than $245 million as a result of whistleblowers’ tips, for which it made 179 awards totaling more than $36 million.
• Federal Tax Crimes (http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/): In Darst v. United States, Darst, who had long ago been convicted of tax obstruction and failure to file returns, sought belatedly to overturn his convictions in part by compelling discovery of documents. One of them: certain statements of the IRS commissioners that “filing a tax return is voluntary.”
• Bloomberg Tax (https://pro.bloombergtax.com/news-insights/): Groups and lawmakers advocating for Democrats’ domestic agenda, from clean energy to health care, are renewing campaigns tailored to their target audience: Joe Manchin.
• AICPA Insights (https://www.aicpa.org/blog): Seventy percent of finance digital transformations fail. How to beat those odds.
• National Association of Tax Professionals (https://blog.natptax.com/): This week’s “You Make the Call” looks at Lisa, who in past years has claimed the self-employed health insurance deduction on her Schedule C for her dog-grooming business. She qualifies for Medicare this year and wonders if payment of her Medicare premiums for Parts A, B, C and D may also qualify as deductible health insurance premiums. What do you tell her?
• Canopy (https://www.getcanopy.com/blog): With millions of documents, broken communication chains, never-ending meetings, and constant task/tool switching, an accounting firm can quickly devolve into a chaotic environment. So, how do you manage this and organize your firm?

Biased reporting

• TaxProf Blog (http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/): The home mortgage interest deduction is more than 100 years old. The deduction has been subject to increasing and, at times, withering criticism: ineffective and regressive; carrying a disparate racial impact. How, then, has the deduction persisted?
• Don’t Mess with Taxes (http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/): A look at Juneteenth and the racial bias in tax law.
• Tax Vox (https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/): Senator Rick Scott, R-Florida, who once proposed taxing millions of low-income households that currently pay no income tax, has released a new version that largely walks back those tax hikes. But while its details are even murkier than his original, Scott still may be looking to hike taxes on many of those same households.

Matters of comfort

• Taxbuzz (https://www.taxbuzz.com/blog): Hey, romantic digital nomads: When you work remotely abroad, your email isn’t the only thing that follows you.
• Current Federal Tax Developments (https://www.currentfederaltaxdevelopments.com/): The Tax Court found that clothes purchased by a nurse to meet an employer’s requirements that she be dressed in comfortable clothes and in a manner that reflected her profession as a nurse qualified as a deductible business expense.
• Henry+Horne (https://www.hhcpa.com/blogs/): What to remind them about maximizing HSA benefits.
• Wolters Kluwer (https://www.wolterskluwer.com/en/solutions/tax-accounting-us/industry-news): A look at recent ABA contributions to the Treasury and IRS Priority Guidance Plan, including Code Sections 6662 and 1504(a) and topics in corporate tax, cryptocurrency, capital recovery and leasing, exempt organizations and several other areas.

That local touch

• TaxConnex (https://www.taxconnex.com/blog-): Summer vacation time is here. Don’t forget to unpack the question of whether travel services are taxable.
• Avalara (https://www.avalara.com/blog/en/north-america.html): Your biz clients who sell online face more sales tax wrangles than ever in order fulfillment.
• Mauled Again (http://mauledagain.blogspot.com/): New Jersey’s plan to expand and revamp the state’s current Homestead Benefit Program depends in part on refundable income tax credits to offset property taxes being made available to homeowners and renters. Renters do not pay property taxes so why would they be getting refundable credits? “The answer is rather simple.”
• Peisner Johnson (https://peisnerjohnson.com/blog/): A look at Colorado’s new retail delivery fee.
• Sikich (https://www.sikich.com/insights/): Are you sure your biz clients know all they need to about R&D credits at both the state and federal levels?
• Tax Foundation (https://taxfoundation.org/blog): Around the world, governments have sought to change how corporate profits are taxed in a global economy. Last year more than 130 jurisdictions agreed to an outline of policies that would change where companies pay taxes and institute a global minimum tax of 15%. Four points to remember amid the global tax debate.