A taxpayer without a regular place of business can still obtain a deduction for travel away from home if the taxpayer can establish that he/she has a home.  In two cases (Jason Ayala v. Commissioner and Manuel Ayala, Jr. v. Commissioner) the taxpayers failed to show they had a home and lost the deduction.  But the IRS also failed in its attempt to assess a negligence penalty on these taxpayers.

The materials for the podcast can be downloaded from http://www.edzollars.com/2007-04-27_Home.pdf .

The podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, located on the web at http://www.leimbergservices.com .

The IRS on April 23 released guidance on the application of monetary penalties to practitioners, their employers, firms and related entities for violations of Circular 230 as authorized by the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004.  This guidance gives some insight into the IRS’s views on how they will make use of this new enforcement tool, as well as some indication of what the IRS might view as an appropriate quality control system for a tax practice.  If, as expected, SSTS No. 9 goes from an exposure draft to a final standard for CPAs, this document may be one to consider when a CPA firm sets out its tax quality control standards.  And given the existence of the “aspirationalâ€? standard for best practices in Circular 230 Section 10.33, the importance of SSTS No. 9 may not be limited to CPAs.

The materials for this podcast can be found at

http://www.edzollars.com/2007-04-24_Monetary_Penalties.pdf

This podcast is sponsored by Leimberg Information Services, located on the web at http://www.leimbergservices.com .