Tax Alerts from CCH

As year-end approaches, each business should consider the many opportunities that might be lost if year-end tax planning is not explored. Your business may even want to consider several general strategies, such as the use of traditional timing techniques for delaying income recognition and accelerating deductions. You may also consider customized strategies tailored to your business’s particular situation.

As we get closer to the end of yet another year, it is time to tie up the loose ends and implement tax saving strategies. This has been an interesting year in Washington. When the year started, it seemed highly likely that the tax law would receive a dramatic makeover this year. Now, with just under two months left in 2017, we have seen a lot of bickering in Washington but no sweeping tax law changes. Of course, there is still time, but there is also a lot of ground left to cover.

As the end of the year approaches, it is a good time to think of tax planning moves that will help lower your tax bill for this year and possibly the next. Factors that compound the planning challenge this year include political and economic uncertainty, and Congress' all too familiar failure to act on a number of important tax breaks that will expire at the end of 2016.

Although tax planning is a 12-month activity, year-end is traditionally the time to review tax strategies from the past and to revise them for the future. Year-end has also become a time when there is an increasing need to take a careful look at what has changed within the tax law itself since the beginning of the year. Opportunities and pitfalls within these recent changes, as they impact your unique business situation, should not be overlooked. This is particularly the case during year-end 2016. Here are some of the many considerations that you should review as year-end 2016 approaches.

Every person engaged in a trade or business, including partnerships and nonprofit organizations, must file information returns for each calendar year for certain payments made during such year in the course of the payor’s trade or business. The IRS requires 1096 and 1099 to be issued.