Podcasts de Tax Collector

Thalia Smith, a partner at Deloitte, is using her experience as a Black woman in the Big Four to help students looking to break into accounting. Smith, an audit and assurance partner, is leading Deloitte's $75 million effort to close the diversity gap in the accounting profession. Just 2% of the firm's partners, principals, and managing directors a…

Tens of millions of families across the U.S. this week received their first monthly advance on the child tax credit from the IRS. The new monthly payments, which launched Thursday, are the result of a pandemic relief law that also temporarily boosted the credit's value. Households will receive up to $300 per month for each child under age 6, and up…

The U.S. audit regulator is slated to get fresh leadership after a turbulent few years that culminated in the removal of its chairman last month. But it could take months for a new slate of leaders to be selected and installed as members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The board faces a challenge in improving the morale of the PCA…

Large multinational corporations have for a few years now been required to report to the EU how much they pay in taxes to each European country they operate in. But now, after an agreement last month, it looks like those reports will soon be made public. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, Willy de Molina, a transfer pricing partner…

Pandemic-related budget fears have prompted states to search for new sources of tax revenue. Lawmakers across the country are beginning to look toward social media as a mother lode of untapped corporate tax revenue. Social media tech giants, of course, aren't a fan of that approach. Maryland’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax has drawn l…

After years of grueling negotiations, the world's wealthiest countries reached an agreement on how—and how much—to tax multinational corporations. Now comes what could be a heavier lift: Getting buy-in from the rest of the world. Kate Barton, EY's global vice chair for tax, joins this week's episode of Talking Tax to sort through what the recent G-…

The first loan approved through the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program went out the door just one week after the program was created last spring. At the time, with the pandemic shutting down nearly the entire country, the economic devastation looked like it could be limitless. The PPP was designed to help small business own…

A federal tax credit has played a big role in speeding adoption of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, offering consumers up to $7,500 off their year-end tax bill if they buy a qualifying vehicle. But Congress designed the credit to phase out as manufacturers established EVs as viable parts of their product line, setting a sales threshold that T…

A few weeks ago, a Talking Tax listener reached out about an episode from last summer that focused on why so few CPAs are Black. Lynnwood G. Campbell's stories from a more than 40-year-long career in accounting were so fascinating, we invited him on this week's show. Campbell, now retired, started out at what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, then…

The market for special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, was all the rage over the last year, with exponential asset growth in just a few months plus the involvement of celebrities like R&B singer Ciara and former Yankees slugger Alex Rodriguez. Then, last month, the Securities and Exchange Commission threw a sudden damper on it: new account…

The Biden administration has given a boost to a years-long effort toward global agreement on digital tax rules as negotiators work to strike a deal in the coming months. Since she took office, Janet Yellen’s Treasury Department has started to reshape the conversation on both elements of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s tw…

Rep. Tom Suozzi (D-N.Y.) is among lawmakers from high-tax states who want to repeal the $10,000 cap on deductions for state and local taxes paid. Individuals in Democratic states like New York and California have seen their tax bills go up as a result of the cap, which was part of the 2017 tax law. Suozzi is leading the fight against the cap, tryin…

President Joe Biden this week outlined his plan to increase taxes on wealthy individuals as a way to pay for investments in childcare and education. An almost doubling of the federal capital gains tax rate and a provision curtailing a tax break on property transferred to heirs at death are among the changes in the American Families Plan. But notice…

The U.S. Supreme Court will consider a case Monday involving a California law requiring nonprofits to disclose the identities of their major donors to state officials. Americans for Prosperity Foundation, a Charles Koch-backed nonprofit, and the Thomas Moore Law center argue that the law violates the First Amendment and have asked the high court to…

It has been a challenging year for the IRS, which is dealing with yet another prolonged tax-filing season while also distributing pandemic relief payments to hundreds of millions of people. Those challenges come at a time when the agency has struggled for years to carry out its core duties of auditing returns, collecting taxes, and answering its ph…

The cannabis industry is booming, but a provision in the federal tax code is holding it back, two attorneys in the industry said. The provision, Section 280E, doesn’t allow for tax deductions or credits stemming from trafficking in controlled substances, such as cannabis. The provision means some cannabis businesses owe more money to the IRS than t…

President Joe Biden this week unveiled his plan to pay for sweeping infrastructure investments by raising taxes on corporations. The proposals include raising the corporate tax rate to 28%, imposing a 21% global minimum tax on U.S. companies, and giving the IRS more resources to crack down on tax evasion. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, repo…

Once again, we are in the middle of a protracted tax filing season. And for yet another year, tax execs closed the books virtually. This week on our podcast Talking Tax, we hear how the season is going for corporate filers. Host Amanda Iacone speaks with Rema Serafi, national managing partner for tax at KPMG, about how tax directors are coping with…

The IRS announced this week that it would push back the deadline for some individuals to file and pay their taxes, a move that comes as the agency and taxpayers are grappling with changes in the new pandemic aid law. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, reporter Amanda Iacone speaks with Scott Berger, a tax principal at the firm Kaufman Rossin, a…

We are in the heart of tax filing season in the U.S. and, so far, it appears to be going much better than last year. That, however, is an extraordinarily low bar, given that last year's season ran up against the outset of a global pandemic. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, we launch a two-part series looking at how tax season is …

A $1.9 trillion stimulus package that includes a third round of direct cash payments to American households will likely wind up on President Joe Biden's desk within the next few weeks. The direct payments are politically popular, but will they become a regular tool in U.S. fiscal policy, even after the pandemic? And if so, is that a good thing? Eve…

Retail investors had the opportunity to make a lot of money thanks to recent spikes for GameStop, AMC, and other stocks. New traders who cashed out big gains in 2020 could face complications this tax season. Many novice traders used the online trading app Robinhood. The company missed a Feb. 16 deadline to send those clients tax documents needed fo…

The U.S. has fallen behind other countries’ efforts to police the use of sales-suppression software known as tax zappers. That’s according to Richard Ainsworth, a tax law specialist and adjunct professor at New York University Law School and Boston University School of Law. When a retailer plugs a tax zapper into a register, the technology can esse…

"In retrospect, I had no idea what I was getting myself into." Lafayette "Chip" Harter joined the Treasury Department in 2017 as deputy assistant secretary for international tax affairs. He quickly became the Trump administration's point person on negotiating with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which is trying to broker …

President Joe Biden's campaign promises to raise taxes on corporations and the wealthy got a big boost when Democrats swept the Georgia runoffs, giving them control of both the House and the Senate. One of Biden's major tax proposals, pitched as part of his "Made in America" plan to boost manufacturing, is to overhaul the 2017 tax law's internation…

The architects of the 2017 tax code overhaul had lofty goals: They predicted the law would make filing your taxes easier, boost wages and investment, and cut tax rates without increasing the deficit. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 made broad changes to the tax system, lowering corporate and individual rates, boosting the standard deduction, crea…

The second round of the Paycheck Protection Program reopened with fewer bumps for struggling businesses and small lenders that work with under-served communities. The program, revived by the latest Covid-19 relief law, facilitates government-backed small business loans that can be forgiven if used to cover employee salaries and other eligible expen…

The pandemic-induced economic downturn has been a huge challenge for states trying to make their budgetary ends meet. Now, some lawmakers are looking to offset a drop in sales taxes and other revenue with new levies on digital advertising. Darcy Kooiker, a partner with Armanino in Bellevue, Wash., who specializes in state and local tax issues, says…

The stimulus bill signed by President Trump was significant not just for its size but also because many lawmakers inserted tax items into the bill they'd been wanting for some time to become law. On the latest episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone talks with Capitol Hill reporter Kaustuv Basu about what was in this bill and…

The economic fallout from the ongoing coronavirus pandemic will shape the world of taxes at the international, federal, and state levels in the coming year. That's according to three tax attorneys we spoke to about what to expect in 2021. For this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, reporter Jeff Leon talks to these attorneys about how juri…

Who says taxes are boring? Today on a holiday edition of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, we bring you a few of the more humorous tax disputes of this year. Bloomberg Tax reporter Hamza Ali joins us to talk about a man who saved on his tax bill by mathematically proving he was a terrible gambler, a juice cleanse that may or may not be medicinal, an…

Despite historic and decisive victories at the Supreme Court, same-sex couples are still not fully equal with different-sex couples in the eyes of the U.S. tax code. That’s the conclusion of University of Pittsburgh law professor Anthony Infanti, who specializes in the intersection of tax policy and gender and sexuality. Infanti speaks with Bloombe…

Teslas and other electric vehicles may be helping to solve the problem of climate change—but they’re also creating a new problem for state and federal transportation budgets. That’s because these budgets are funded largely from revenue generated by taxes on gasoline. States are trying to figure out how to fund new roads or maintain existing ones if…

The Supreme Court this week heard its biggest tax case of this term and, based on how the oral argument went, the IRS could be headed for a significant loss. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Jeffrey Leon talks to Bloomberg Tax reporter Aysha Bagchi, who is covering the case, CIC Services v. IRS. She says some of the justices…

Despite decades of work to educate more Black lawyers, the percentage of Black associates and partners in firms across the U.S. remain very low, and well below those of other professional careers. Big Law firms across the board are ramping up social justice efforts as the nation engages in a renewed dialogue on race and equality. But some have accu…

Research from former IRS economist Kim Bloomquist made waves last year when he found that the agency's audits of low-wage Earned Income Tax Credit filers has been going up while audits of high-income earners have been going down. Bloomquist joins us on our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, to discuss why this has been happening and how—or even whether—t…

Businesses all across the country have been shutdown for days, weeks, or even months at a time due to the coronavirus pandemic. Many assumed their insurance policies would help them defray some of their lost revenue. But those assumptions were, by and large, wrong. In this special audio documentary, “Business, Interrupted” we look at why insurers d…

President-elect Biden's plans to reshape tax policy, including the roll back of several provisions from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, may be partially or fully thwarted if Republicans hold onto the Senate. That's according Colin Wilhelm, a Bloomberg Tax reporter who covers Capitol Hill. Colin joins host Amanda Iacone on our weekly podcast, Talkin…

A series of auditing scandals in the U.K. made it seem like a fait accompli that we'd see major legislation forcing auditors to be more independent. But 2020's unending string of crises means Parliament has been unable to devote attention to this difficult issue. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone speak with Bloo…

The NCAA used oppose the legalization of sports betting. But, now that it's lost that fight at the Supreme Court, the collegiate athletic association has decided to cash in on the trend. On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Jeff Leon talks with reporter Sam McQuillan about the NCAA's decision to allow colleges to enter into endo…

The 137 countries trying to forge a global approach to taxing multinational companies are behind schedule, hobbled by the pandemic and by disagreements about dozens of issues large and small. And the U.S., home of many corporate giants, has objections.On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone talks with Bloomberg Tax re…

New rules for corporate auditors are on their way, but many of these auditing firms are worried that international standards for how firms assess their risk will diverge from those in the U.S., leaving them to cope with a patchwork quilt of do's and don'ts. On this episode of Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone talks with Tom Seidenstein, chair of the …

The Supreme Court is back in session, and is set to consider a tax case that could lead to more scrutiny of Treasury actions. CIC Services, LLC v. IRS is scheduled for arguments Dec. 1. The justices will consider whether a Civil War-era law prohibits courts from ruling on a reporting requirement at issue, before the plaintiff has actually been pena…

One of the main takeaways from The New York Times' bombshell report unveiling the President's tax returns is that the line between his business and personal filings is nearly nonexistent. However, Bloomberg News' Laura Davison says that's pretty common for people like Donald Trump who are in the real estate and development business and own their ow…

It seems no one is really happy with the IRS' rules governing the professional conduct of tax professionals: not the courts, not tax professionals, and not even the IRS itself. On today's episode of Talking Tax, host Jeff Leon speaks with two people who have special insight into the agency's efforts to rewrite its ethics rules: a tax practitioner w…

On this episode of Talking Tax, we highlight a new project that examines the anxieties and uncertainties of tax professionals around the billions of dollars in coronavirus relief funding that Congress has allocated. Host Jeff Leon speaks with Bloomberg Industry Group deputy team leaders Colleen Murphy and Jay-Anne Casuga about the questions they re…

On this episode of Talking Tax, we speak with former IRS Commissioner Mark Everson about some of the many tax credits that small businesses may not be aware they can claim. For example, Everson says businesses that are operating differently or making new products due to the coronavirus pandemic may be eligible to receive a research and development …

On this week's episode of Talking Tax, we hear from public policy researcher Donnie Charleston with the group E Pluribus Unum about how the tax system in America provides white taxpayers with benefits people of color often don't or can't enjoy. Charleston speaks with Bloomberg Tax's Yuri Nagano about how the racial history of real estate in the U.S…

Numerous tax-related provisions, including changes to the Paycheck Protection Program and the expansion of anti-layoff credits, could make their way into a larger pandemic relief bill being drafted in Congress right now. However, even though lots of these provisions enjoy bipartisan support, the broader legislative package is stalling as Democrats …

The IRS doesn’t collect data on taxpayers’ racial or ethnic backgrounds, which advocates say makes it difficult to determine whether tax policies disproportionately hurt minorities. In this week’s episode of Talking Tax, host Amanda Iacone speaks with reporter Allyson Versprille about the push to allow the IRS to collect more detailed demographic d…