The U.S. Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) this month has published two reports that consider differing aspects of the Internal Revenue Service's recent performance – and has arrived at many of the same conclusions that the National Taxpayer Advocate, Erin M. Collins, did, in her annual report to Congress back in January, on what the IRS needs to do to improve its efficacy. 

The IRS has formally reminded U.S. taxpayers not to ignore a virtual currency question at the top of the tax returns they're currently preparing to file, for the 2021 tax year.

Alexandru Bittner, who has been one of the most visible challengers of the United States' notoriously persecutory FBAR penalty regime in recent years, has now become the latest FBAR litigant to urge the U.S. Supreme Court to rule, once and for all, on the way non-willful FBAR penalties should be determined. 

As part of what it calls "a longer-term effort to improve" the services it provides to U.S. taxpayers, the IRS has unveiled "the first-ever Taxpayer Experience Office," and says it "will soon begin taking additional steps to expand" the offering.

The U.S. and Malta have signed an agreement that will end the alleged mis-use of certain provisions in the existing U.S./Maltese income tax treaty by Americans seeking to avoid paying tax on income generated by pension schemes domiciled there, the Internal Revenue Service said this week.

As regular readers of the American Expat Financial News Journal possibly know better than most, U.S. taxpayers who live abroad (as well as their tax advisers) are increasingly having to consider the potential interactions between U.S. and foreign laws when determining the U.S. tax consequences of a particular financial transaction.

U.S. tax expert Virginia La Torre Jeker explains it this way: "In today's world, it is no longer possible for practitioners to ignore the possible implications of another country’s laws."

Last week, we reported the news that the U.S. Internal Revenue Service had announced that U.S. taxpayers could now begin to claim a "reasonable cause" defense, in the event they were ever to find themselves hit with a penalty in connection with a tax matter for which they had "reasonably and in good faith" relied upon any IRS-published FAQs (frequently-asked-questions) that has to do with new tax legislation.

For Virginia La Torre Jeker, the well-known American tax expert and blogger who is (famously) based in Dubai, the IRS's statement was, well, about as clear as mud...

 U.S. taxpayers may now claim a "reasonable cause" defense in the event they've been hit with a penalty in connection with a tax matter for which they had "reasonably and in good faith" relied on any IRS-published FAQs (frequently-asked-questions) that has to do with new tax legislation, the IRS has announced. 

Uncle Sam – in the rather more official (and less colorful) form of the Internal Revenue Service – is reminding U.S. expats that as it is now October, this means they only have two weeks left to get their U.S. tax returns in, if they opted to take advantage of the extension that lets such taxpayers have until Oct. 15 to file their 2020 returns.

In what one U.S. official was quoted as saying was evidence of the government's "commitment" to go after American taxpayers who used "offshore service providers to avoid U.S. taxes," the U.S. Justice Department on Thursday announced that it had authorized the IRS to issue summonses that would require "multiple couriers and financial institutions" to produce information about U.S. taxpayers" who were believed to have used a firm known as Panama Offshore Legal Services, "and its associates," to evade U.S. income taxes.