TEI Honored for Role in State Tax Notes’ “Project of the Year”
TEI Updates Its Mission Statement to Incorporate a Diversity Charter
TEI Participates in CFO Magazine’s State Tax Survey
CFO Magazine invited TEI's members and TEI Tax Counsel, Pilar Mata, to weigh in on pressing state and local tax issues and rank state tax environments this past April – March. The resulting article discusses states' efforts to expand their nexus laws, the trend toward market-based sourcing for income tax purposes, and the recent increase in retroactive tax laws. It also presents the results of CFO Magazine’s survey ranking states as "best" and "worst" in six key areas.
IRS Releases New FATCA Form – Form W-8BEN-E
On April 13, 2016, the IRS released a revised Form W-8BEN-E, which foreign entities must provide to withholding agents of their U.S.-sourced income under the FATCA regime. The form was last updated in 2014. The updated form includes ten new checkboxes in Part III, Question 14.b, for indicating which limitation-of-benefits treaty provision applies when claiming treaty benefits. Responses to this question are not intuitive, and the question may cause confusion, particularly if individuals charged with completing the form are not familiar with the reporting company's treaty positions.
LB&I has begun publishing Internal Revenue Manual updates
** Update of March 31, 2016
LB&I has begun publishing Internal Revenue Manual updates to incorporate the issue-driven examination process outlined in Publication 5125. We encourage TEI Members to review the updates and send your questions, comments, and concerns to Patrick Evans, TEI’s Chief Tax Counsel, at pevans@tei.org or (202) 464-8351.
TEI Members Exchange Views with Senior IRS and Treasury Officials
On February 23-24, 2016, a delegation from Tax Executives Institute met with the Commissioner of Internal Revenue, John Koskinen, and senior officials of the Internal Revenue Service and with the Treasury Department’s Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, Mark Mazur, and senior officials of Treasury’s Office of Tax Policy.
The detailed agendas TEI submitted to the IRS and Treasury Department before the meetings are provided below.
LB&I Rolls Out Revised IDR Process
As you may have recently read in the tax press or heard about at TEI’s Annual Conference, LB&I has redesigned its examination process to increase the efficiency, effectiveness, and transparency of its audits. A central aspect of a tax audit is information gathering, generally through the use of Information Document Requests or IDRs. LB&I executives believe the current IDR management process lacks the rigor necessary to hold taxpayers and examiners accountable for timely and efficient fact gathering.