Thursday, May 19, 2011

IRS rolling out new tax technology

The Internal Revenue Service has rolled out a number of new technology innovations and other strategies, which may impose tighter reporting guidelines regarding capital gains taxes and other income categories.

While day trading companies will not have to abide by the somewhat controversial 1099 reporting requirements that were recently repealed, other changes will soon be in effect.

During a recent speech at the Johns Hopkins Carey Business School in Baltimore, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman said the agency is beginning a new push toward greater information reporting. Some of those changes will work to cut down on unreported day trading taxes.

"We have some recent changes in the law that gave us new tools in our information reporting toolkit," Shulman said. "For example, IRS research exposed the huge scope of misreported capital gains and losses largely due to taxpayers not accurately reporting their securities' cost, or 'basis.'" He added brokers would be required to fill out addition basis data to allow clients to better fill out their tax returns.

In addition, the IRS is also working to roll out regulations and training requirements for tax preparers, so people will be able to rest assured they will be able to find a tax preparer or computer program that has effective accounting tips for those who do day trading for a living.

Shulman also added the IRS is nearly ready to roll out an upgraded version of its customer account database, which allows consumers to see any recent tax bills out payments made on an account. It should be ready by January 2012.

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