Battling the IRS on Compensation & Fringe Benefits: A Survey of Current Audit Issues, Compliance Complexities, & Potential Refund Claims
1. Understand how to compute total exposure for clients to liability for underreporting benefits or underwithholding taxes, or for any late-filing of information returns. (Clients often want to know not just what the rules are, but what the penalties might be for not following the rules.)
2. Overview of current hot issues in payroll tax and compensation audits, and summary of the IRS position, and of taxpayers’ responses on the substantive legal issues.
3. Summary of computational mistakes commonly made in IRS assessments (which should be challenged by taxpayers).
4. Explanation of general substantive arguments raised in response to proposed assessments in all payroll audits. (These arguments are common to all payroll tax protests, in contrast to the discussions above, which vary, depending on the particular benefit being examined.)
5. “Best practices” to explain to clients, to avoid payroll tax audits.
