Ashlea Ebeling
Forbes.com
11/4/2014
…There are five key factors at play – complicating the upcoming filing season (that’s when you file your 2014 tax return). The IRS agency budget is the number one challenge, Koskinen said. The House has voted to cut the IRS budget for 2015 by $341 million, and the Senate has proposed to increase it by $240 million—that would still be 7% below 2010 funding levels.
In the meantime, Congress keeps passing laws that the IRS has to implement, namely the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) and the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (“FATCA”). For example, Koskinen said the IRS requested $430 million in 2014 from Congress to implement the ACA but got zero, forcing it to take money out of enforcement and taxpayer services budgets.
This will be the first filing season with two major provisions from the Affordable Care Act –the premium tax credit and the individual shared responsibility payment–on Form 1040. National Taxpayer Advocate Olson said she’s very concerned about the IRS receiving accurate information from the health exchanges. It won’t be the IRS’s fault, but taxpayers will likely put the blame on the IRS. Koskinen touted the web pages that the IRS has created to help explain the ACA tax provisions…
Read the complete article at Forbes.com
h/t iOwnTheWorld