Federal
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February 12, 2025
IRS Updates Depreciation Deductions For Certain Vehicles
Certain vehicles placed in service in 2025 will be eligible for an additional depreciation deduction of up to $20,200 for the first tax year, the Internal Revenue Service said Wednesday.
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February 11, 2025
Rodney King's Former Atty Gets Prison For $7M Tax Evasion
A Los Angeles criminal defense and civil rights attorney who once represented Rodney King was sentenced by a California federal court Tuesday to 1½ years in prison for evading $7.2 million worth of taxes on income from his law practice.
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February 11, 2025
Trump's Tariffs, GOP Tax Goals Pose Political Puzzle
President Donald Trump's use of wholesale tariffs may generate trillions of dollars across a 10-year budget window, but the economic uncertainty associated with the U.S.'s aggressive trade posture could politically harm Republicans' must-have efforts to shepherd a tax bill into law this year, experts say.
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February 11, 2025
House Panelists Push For IRS Funding, Tech Upgrade
The Internal Revenue Service is still underfunded and needs to prioritize using any additional funding it receives to boost its taxpayer services and technology modernization, panelists told a House Ways and Means subcommittee Tuesday.
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February 11, 2025
Tax Court Orders Penalties For $90M In Disallowed Deductions
A group of four North Carolina partnerships that were denied a total of $90 million in tax deductions for donations of conservation easements must pay valuation and accuracy-related penalties under a U.S. Tax Court ruling Tuesday.
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February 11, 2025
FBAR Default Vacated To Give Widow Another Chance
A New York federal court agreed with a magistrate's recommendation to vacate a default judgment against a widow, giving her another chance to defend her husband's estate against the government's $275,000 claim that he failed to report his Indian bank account.
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February 11, 2025
Holland & Knight Adds Ballard Spahr Litigator In Philly
A former U.S. attorney with expertise on anti-money laundering and complex tax matters recently moved his litigation practice to Holland & Knight after nine years with Ballard Spahr LLP.
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February 11, 2025
EU Leaders Poised For 'Proportionate' Response To US Tariffs
European Union officials criticized President Donald Trump's decision to impose an across-the-board 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum, with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Tuesday signaling "firm and proportionate countermeasures."
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February 11, 2025
Commerce Powers Key In Battle Over Corp. Transparency Law
The question of whether Congress exceeded its powers to regulate commerce by enacting the Corporate Transparency Act is likely to feature in a potential U.S. Supreme Court resolution to around a dozen challenges to the law that are percolating through the courts.
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February 11, 2025
Partaking In $1.3B Easement Fraud Lands CPA 2 Years
A Florida accountant who illegally sold tax deductions to his clients in the form of conservation easements and conspired with others convicted in a $1.3 billion fraud scheme was sentenced to two years in prison by a New Jersey federal judge.
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February 07, 2025
DOGE Access To Treasury Payment System Blocked By Judge
A Manhattan federal judge blocked the access of Elon Musk and staffers of his temporary Department of Government Efficiency to U.S. Department of the Treasury payment systems Saturday and ordered them to destroy data already obtained, after state attorneys general sued, calling that access "dangerous" and unlawful.
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February 10, 2025
Pension Execs Found Liable In $2B Danish Tax Fraud Case
A New York federal jury found Monday by "clear and convincing evidence" that Denmark's tax agency reasonably relied on the false statements made on pension plan applications that were part of a $2.1 billion tax fraud scheme by pension plan executives.
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February 10, 2025
5th Circ. Urged To Reject Crypto Exec's Privacy Law Claim
The IRS complied with a financial privacy law to summon third-party bank records belonging to a cryptocurrency executive under investigation, the U.S. government told the Fifth Circuit on Monday in the businessman's appeal to overturn a lower court decision that rejected his bid to quash the summonses.
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February 10, 2025
Trump Sets Across-The-Board 25% Tariff On Steel And Aluminum
President Donald Trump teed up a 25% tariff on all imported steel and aluminum Monday evening, continuing a trend of sweeping, aggressive trade actions that have defined his first three weeks in office.
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February 10, 2025
Tax-Crime Suspect's Bond Revoked After Additional Charges
A man accused of promoting abusive tax shelters was ordered to prison Monday by a Colorado federal judge who said she believed he may have committed additional crimes in connection with a multimillion-dollar fraudulent investment fund while awaiting trial.
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February 10, 2025
Trump Buyout Plan Still On Hold As Unions Cite 'Confusion'
A Boston federal judge on Monday extended his hold on President Donald Trump's federal worker buyout program as he weighs a request from unions to block the so-called Fork Directive, which promises months of pay to government employees who resign their posts.
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February 10, 2025
Tax Court Judge Protections Challenged In 11th Circ.
The federal government oversimplified a U.S. Supreme Court ruling to argue against granting a request to review job protections for U.S. Tax Court judges, the owners of an electronic parts company told the Eleventh Circuit in seeking the reversal of a tax penalty.
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February 10, 2025
Goldstein Rearrested After Feds Say He Hid Millions In Crypto
U.S. Supreme Court lawyer and SCOTUSblog publisher Tom Goldstein was arrested again Monday following his earlier release on criminal tax evasion charges, after prosecutors alleged that he secretly made millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency transactions in recent days and was a serious risk to flee.
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February 10, 2025
Skadden Adds Designer Of Tax Cut Act's Int'l Provisions In DC
Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom LLP announced Monday it has hired a tax attorney who helped create some international provisions in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, and who joins the firm as House Republicans signal they'll vote to renew some measures of that bill that are set to expire.
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February 10, 2025
Pillsbury Recruits Former Mayer Brown Tax Pro In NY
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP said it has recruited a former Mayer Brown LLP tax expert to serve as a partner in Pillsbury's New York office.
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February 07, 2025
Feds Defend Corporate Transparency Act In 5th And 4th Circuits
The U.S. government defended the Corporate Transparency Act in the Fifth and Fourth Circuits on Friday, urging the former to reverse a Texas federal judge's nationwide injunction on the law and the latter to affirm a Virginia federal judge's rejection of a bid to block the law's enforcement.
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February 07, 2025
Wyden Demands Clarification On DOGE's Treasury Access
Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden questioned Friday whether U.S. Treasury Department lawyers were misleading and evasive when they said members of Elon Musk's U.S. DOGE Service Temporary Organization were granted only "read-only" access to the department's payment systems.
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February 07, 2025
Ex-Mass. State Sen. Gets 18 Months For Pandemic, Tax Fraud
A former Massachusetts state senator was sentenced to 18 months in prison Friday after being convicted of fraudulently collecting pandemic unemployment benefits and failing to report consulting income he was also earning at the time on his tax returns.
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February 07, 2025
Customs Broker Pleads Guilty To Wire Fraud, Tax Evasion
A customs broker pled guilty Friday in California federal court to evading $1.5 million in taxes and overcharging clients about $5.4 million in import duty fees as part of a plea agreement he reached with the U.S. Department of Justice.
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February 07, 2025
Ex-NFL Star Romanowski's Bankruptcy Converted To Ch. 7
Former NFL player Bill Romanowski and wife Julie had their Chapter 11 bankruptcy case converted to a Chapter 7 on Friday, after a California judge called a filing from the couple seeking the case's dismissal full of "hyperbole" and said a trustee is needed to examine the pair's assets and liabilities.
Expert Analysis
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8 Childhood Lessons That Can Help You Be A Better Attorney
A new school year is underway, marking a fitting time for attorneys to reflect on some fundamental life lessons from early childhood that offer a framework for problems that no legal textbook can solve, say Chris Gismondi and Chris Campbell at DLA Piper.
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How The 2025 Tax Policy Debate Will Affect The Energy Sector
Regardless of the outcome of the upcoming U.S. election, 2025 will bring a major tax policy debate that could affect the energy sector more than any other part of the economy — so stakeholders who could be affected should be engaging now to make sure they understand the stakes, say attorneys at Mayer Brown.
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This Election, We Need To Talk About Court Process
In recent decades, the U.S. Supreme Court has markedly transformed judicial processes — from summary judgment standards to notice pleadings — which has, in turn, affected individuals’ substantive rights, and we need to consider how the upcoming presidential election may continue this pattern, says Reuben Guttman at Guttman Buschner.
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Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys
Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.
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The Trade And Tax Issues Behind US-Canada Digital Tax Clash
The new Canadian digital services tax recently went into effect despite objections from the U.S., a controversy that represents an unusual mix of trade and tax policy, and many companies have been pondering how it will affect their e-commerce businesses, says Damon Pike at BDO.
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Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession
About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.
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AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys
The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.
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A Look At How De Minimis Import Rules May Soon Change
The planned implementation of executive actions focused on the de minimis rule as it applies to shipments means companies should use this interval to evaluate the potential applicability and impact of Section 301, Section 201 or Section 232 duties on their products, say attorneys at Holland & Knight.
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Ruling On Foreign Dividend Break Offers 2 Tax Court Insights
In Varian v. Commissioner, the U.S. Tax Court allowed a taxpayer's deduction for dividends from foreign subsidiaries, providing clarity on how the U.S. Supreme Court’s Loper Bright decision may affect challenges to Treasury regulations, and revealing a potential disallowance of foreign tax credits, say attorneys at Davis Polk.
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Why Now Is The Time For Law Firms To Hire Lateral Partners
Partner and associate mobility data from the second quarter of this year suggest that there's never been a better time in recent years for law firms to hire lateral candidates, particularly experienced partners — though this necessitates an understanding of potential red flags, say Julie Henson and Greg Hamman at Decipher Investigative Intelligence.
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Considering Possible PR Risks Of Certain Legal Tactics
Disney and American Airlines recently abandoned certain litigation tactics in two lawsuits after fierce public backlash, illustrating why corporate counsel should consider the reputational implications of any legal strategy and partner with their communications teams to preempt public relations concerns, says Chris Gidez at G7 Reputation Advisory.
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It's No Longer Enough For Firms To Be Trusted Advisers
Amid fierce competition for business, the transactional “trusted adviser” paradigm from which most firms operate is no longer sufficient — they should instead aim to become trusted partners with their most valuable clients, says Stuart Maister at Strategic Narrative.
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Avoid Getting Burned By Agencies' Solar Financing Spotlight
Recently coordinated reports and advisories from the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission maximize the spotlight on the consumer solar financing market and highlight pitfalls for lenders to avoid in this burgeoning field, says Mercedes Tunstall at Cadwalader.