According to IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, “The IRS is significantly changing the way we determine innocent spouse relief. These improvements should dramatically enhance our process to make it fairer for victimized taxpayers facing a difficult situation.”
On December 20th the IRS announced that a due diligence checklist, Form 8867, will now be required to be filed with any federal return that claims the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). This decision will be enacted as of January 1, 2012, and all will affect returns filed after that date that claim the EITC.
In recent months, there has been a lot of talk about the latest due diligence requirements proposed by the IRS – requirements designed to help regulate the tax preparation profession. But just recently, one of the proposed requirements has been put on hold.
The tax preparation industry has experienced many changes in the past couple of years, including the requirement for competency testing as a provision of tax preparer regulation. According to the IRS, the return preparer competency test will be released late in 2011.
Few areas seemed to have such a high degree of patches, redirections, and changes in tax law.
You may already be getting questions from clients about the new health insurance credit…the IRS has mailed postcards about this credit to millions of small employers.
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