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Highlights of some of our favorite tax-related blogs from the past week.

In with the new

• Taxable Talk: Soon it’ll be time for noisemakers, champagne, confetti and the announcement of the 2015 Tax Offender of the Year. The latter isn’t easy to earn and takes, beyond fudging a 1040, “Bozo-like action or actions.” A list of past lucky recipients.
• Tax Analysts: Wouldn’t it be nice, as the Beach Boys asked. “Unlikely New Year’s Resolutions” include Congress greenlighting comprehensive reform of U.S. international tax law, Greeks paying all taxes they owe and American firms with large untaxed offshore profits repatriating those profits and paying the income taxes.
• BNA blogs: When your trip down memory lane comprises property tax highlights from 2015, beginning with the Keystone XL Pipeline Project and valuation of big box retail.

Simplify, simplify, simplify

• Tax Policy: Apple CEO Tim Cook continues to call for a simpler Tax Code for the digital age, one that clicks on from the “patchwork of rules and exceptions that attempt to make up for the highest corporate income tax rate in the developed world, for taxing worldwide income, and for applying double taxation on corporate profits.”
• The Wandering Tax Pro: A new group of preparers, Tax Professionals for Tax Reform, looks to “advocate and promote a total rewriting of the U.S. Tax Code,” which “has grown into a complicated and convoluted mess [that] needs to be shredded and totally rewritten from scratch.” An ambitious 2016, indeed.

Connections

• Procedurally Taxing: How PATH legislation directly addressed the venue of CDP and innocent spouse appeals.
• Mauled Again: More than coincidence? A recent hike in Maryland’s alcohol sale taxes seemed to cause gonorrhea rates in the state to decrease 24%. “The study suggests that the tax increase reduced alcohol sales and consumption, in turn reducing the number of alcohol-induced sexual encounters.” After the chuckles, we and others do wonder why the rates of other STDs didn’t decrease?
• TaxProf: A look at how PATH tries “to clarify the position of the United States Tax Court within the modern administrative state.”

Snout squealing

• Due Diligence: In this week’s collection: “Why Is Your Snout Squealing Answered?”; “Bad News for Shale Bond Holders – $100 Oil in 2040”; “Watkins – Brashear Pleads to Illegal Kickbacks!”; “Whistleblower Collects $6 Million – A Christmas Story.”
• IRS Problem Solver Blog: The federal whistleblower program suffers from bureaucracy, late payments and an inability to protect the blowers of said whistles, according to a recent GAO report.

Year-end advice

• Solutions for CPA Firm Leaders: Big and getting bigger markets – in this case, the aging – and how to tap them.
• TurboTax Blog: Reminding your clients of the savings possible through comparison-shopping ACA plans.
• Taxes at About.com: Mortgage lenders forgiving debt, potential tax liability and new exclusions in the case of insolvency, bankruptcy and certain types of mortgage debt.

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