While the IRS posted a news release[1] announcing the agency had hit a key milestone in dealing with paper return filings that have been backlogged since the pandemic began, the National Taxpayer Advocate issued a report[2] a day later showing the agency had lost ground over the past year in attempting to catch up on dealing with such returns.

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear the taxpayer’s appeal of the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision in the case of Bittner v. United States.[1] The key issue is whether, in assessing penalties for failing to report interests in foreign accounts on an annual FBAR, the penalties apply on a per-account or per-reporting form basis, a matter which was decided differently in 2021 cases heard by the Fifth and Ninth Circuits.

The IRS in News Release IR-2022-127[1] announced they have made available automated voice bot options to assist taxpayers in verifying their identities and setting up payment plans.

The release begins:

The Internal Revenue Service today announced expanded voice bot options to help eligible taxpayers easily verify their identity to set up or modify a payment plan while avoiding long wait times.

“This is part of a wider effort at the IRS to help improve the experience of taxpayers,” said IRS Commissioner Chuck Rettig. “We continue to look for ways to better assist taxpayers, and that includes helping people avoid waiting on hold or having to make a second phone call to get what they need. The expanded voice bots are another example of how technology can help the IRS provide better service to taxpayers.”[2]

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 in the case of Romana v. Commissioner, TC Summary Opinion 2022-9.[1]

In the case of Chavis v. Commissioner,[1] 158 T.C. No. 8, Angela Chavis argued, in part, that she should not be liable to pay a portion of a trust fund penalty under IRC §6672 because she should qualify for innocent spouse relief. The Tax Court denied her requested relief, finding that the innocent spouse provisions only apply to amounts due on joint income tax returns.

The Tax Court had to look at a taxpayer’s attempt to claim a deduction for interest paid on a home equity credit line by the application of funds when the property was foreclosed in the case of Howland v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2022-60.[1] And the Tax Court found that the answer isn’t quite as clear as you might expect at first glance.

Not understanding and following proper procedures can come back to haunt taxpayers, even if they do something that they would have been allowed to do if they had followed the proper procedures. In PLR 202223011[1] the IRS denied the taxpayer’s request to file a Form 3115 for an overall accounting method change from the cash to accrual basis it had made without asking for permission years earlier.

On May 13, eighteen members of Congress wrote the IRS asking for the agency to increase mileage rates in recognition of the rapid rise in the price of gasoline since the beginning of 2022.[1] The letter pointed out that the IRS had previously raised the rate mid-year in 2011, noting the increases this year are more substantial than those that prompted the increase in rates in 2011.

The IRS has now decided to take action to increase some mileage rates by 4 cents per mile effective July 1, announcing the change to be in effect for the last six months of 2022 in Announcement 2022-13.[2]

The AICPA sent a letter[1] to IRS Associate Chief Counsel Holly Porter (Passthroughs and Special Industries) with comments regarding the need for guidance on research and experimental expenditures under IRC §174.

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act revised IRC §174 so that, effective for tax years beginning after December 31, 2021, specified research or experimental expenditures are no longer currently deductible by a business, but rather must be amortized over 5 years for domestic research and 15 years for foreign research.

In PLR 202221006[1] a corporation whose shareholders were negotiating a sale of their stock to an unrelated third party asked the IRS to rule that the business is a qualified trade or business under IRC §1202(e)(3).

A taxpayer found her deduction for a donation of property to a museum was denied entirely for failing to meet the substantiation requirements of IRC §170(f)(8)(B) in the case of Albrecht v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2022-53.[1]

In Notice 2022-28[1] the IRS announced that employers can establish tax advantaged programs where employees donate some or all of their unused paid leave for certain relief for victims of the further Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This type of leave-based donation program has been authorized on a short-term, limited basis by the IRS previously in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, certain natural disasters and the COVID-19 pandemic.

The IRS has again extended temporary relief from the physical presence requirement for executing certain plan documents in front of a plan representative or notary public in Notice 2022-27.[1] The relief was first provided in Notice 2020-42 as a response to the COVID-19 pandemic and most recently had been extended by Notice 2021-40 through June 30, 2022. The new notice extends this relief through the end of 2022.

A paragraph in a recently released Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration Report[1] disclosed that the IRS destroyed an estimated 30 million paper-filed information returns in March 2021 due to the backlog in processing paper documents at the agency.

The audit was initiated to look at issues preventing broader use of electronic filing for business returns, but it began by noting that the decision to destroy these returns led to the audit:

This audit was initiated because the IRS’s continued inability to process backlogs of paper-filed tax returns contributed to management’s decision to destroy an estimated 30 million paper-filed information return documents in March 2021.[2]

The U.S. Court of Federal Claims rejected a taxpayer’s argument that the IRS improperly allowed the offset of a tax refund on his 2019 return filed in January 2020 against his outstanding student loan debt in violation of the CARES Act. As the opinion pointed out in the case of Seto v. United States, US Court of Federal Claims, Docket No. 1:21-CV-01497[1], since the offset took place over a month before the CARES Act was signed into law, there was no relief available that would enable him to recover his refund.

The taxpayer in the case of Evert v. Commissioner, TC Memo 2022-48[1] argued that she had signed a Form 872, Consent to Extend the Time to Assess Tax, under duress, rendering it invalid and, thus, the IRS had failed to timely issue a notice of deficiency for 2015. The Tax Court did not agree with the taxpayer.

The Tax Court ruled that the IRS Chief Counsel has the ultimate say on whether an individual qualifies for innocent spouse relief even though the Cincinnati Centralized Innocent Spouse Operation (CCISO) determined the taxpayer was entitled to relief when the request for relief initially arises as part of litigation in Tax Court.[1]

The case is interesting since the IRS itself disagreed over whether the taxpayer should be granted innocent spouse relief. As the Court notes:

What concerns us is her effort to be relieved of her liability on the joint tax returns she filed with Goddard while they were married. The part of the IRS bureaucracy that usually handles these sorts of requests thinks she’s entitled to relief. The IRS’s lawyer disagrees. We must decide who speaks for the IRS.[2]