Tips for working remotely; when days become years; bad preparers; and other highlights from our favorite tax bloggers.

Plandemics

• National Association of Tax Professionals (https://blog.natptax.com/): The right tools for your employees to work from home productively have zipped from luxury to necessity. Here are tools you can and must use now.
• Intuit Proconnect (http://taxprocenter.proconnect.intuit.com/): More that should be in your remote tech toolkit.
• Sikich (https://www.sikich.com/insights/): Most organizations outside of health care haven’t really planned for a pandemic (certainly not the government). Here’s guidance on what your pandemic plan should entail and how to incorporate that plan into an existing business continuity and disaster recovery plan.
• Tax Foundation (https://taxfoundation.org/blog): Key updates of the relief bill for businesses and individuals, including proposed recovery rebates’ modifications, waiving of required minimum distribution rules for certain retirement plans and elimination of the technical correction for downward attribution of stock ownership, among others.
• Tax Vox (https://www.taxpolicycenter.org/taxvox): The direct payments (a.k.a. recovery rebates) in the Senate’s stimulus plan would target two-thirds of their benefits to low- and middle-income households, according to a new analysis.
• Bloomberg Tax (https://pro.bloombergtax.com/news-insights/): Three of the Big Four are backing calls by U.K. regulators for large companies to delay financial reporting as the new coronavirus pandemic throws business into chaos.
• Liberty (http://www.libertytax.com/tax-lounge): In the movie “Hope and Glory,” we think it was, the English family returns to their home during the Blitz to find it on fire. They wonder why, since there were no air raids in the area that night. “Happens in wartime, too,” they’re told. What to remember about casualty loss deduction, the list for which doesn’t (currently) include pandemics.
• Wolters Kluwer (http://news.cchgroup.com/): A new COVID-19 page specifically for tax pros.
• Taxable Talk (http://www.taxabletalk.com/): So what federal returns weren’t extended?

Words for this time

• The Wandering Tax Pro (http://wanderingtaxpro.blogspot.com/): What one preparer is and isn’t doing. Keywords include “4868,” “previously,” “a bit more leisurely,” “Jersey shore” and “GDEs” (the E is for “extension”).
• Don’t Mess with Taxes (http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com/): Even in the best circumstances, taxes rarely are fun. But especially in crisis situations, taxes are necessary — or as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, “Taxes are what we pay for a civilized society.”
• Eide Bailly (https://www.eidebailly.com/taxblog): Favorite opening of the week: “What day is it?” A look back at developments over the past 10 days, which in previous realities would’ve been about 50 years. As Mr. Rogers said, “Look for the helpers.”
• Tax Girl (https://www.forbes.com/sites/kellyphillipserb/): What’s passing for good news these days: “The IRS isn’t shutting down completely — but it’s getting close.”
• HR Block (https://www.hrblock.com/tax-center/): A layman’s guide to the extension.

Back at the ranch

• Federal Tax Crimes (http://federaltaxcrimes.blogspot.com/): How a district court muddled United States v. Schwarzbaum, an FBAR collection suit.
• Taxbuzz (https://www.taxbuzz.com/blog): This is almost refreshing this week: “Although tax preparers are supposed to make your life easier, there are situations where your tax preparer can cause you more stress rather than reduce it.” What they may think about spotting bad preparers.