The Internal Revenue Service announced today that businesses and associations have until August 31, to submit projects to be included in the agency’s Fall 2008 Industry Issue Resolution (IIR) Program review. The IIR was set up to allow corporate taxpayer to submit requests to the IRS regarding industry-specific tax issues that they believe need clarification.
The agency explained that for each issue selected, the IRS and the Treasury Department team up to interview taxpayers or other interested parties affected by the problem, with a goal of recommending guidance to resolve the issue. The program “benefits both taxpayers and the IRS by saving time and expense that would otherwise be expended on resolving the issue through examinations,” noted the agency in a statement.
Recently, the IRS has worked on IIR projects related to how public utilities calculate their so-called qualified production activities, as well as the way auto wholesalers, manufacturers and dealers apply the last-in first-out (LIFO) inventory method. New guidance issued as a result of the IRR program includes clarification of a safe harbor pooling methodology used by car and truck resellers; guidance on when facsimile signatures may be used to sign employee tax forms; and an explanation of the circumstances under which insurance companies that make incentive payments to health care providers are allowed to record the payments as “unpaid losses.”
The IRR selection process is laid out by the agency in a five-page memo that identifies the type of issues accepted into the program, how the selection process works, and what kind of information the IRS and Treasury Department will want to collect before pursuing a project.
Project requests are reviewed twice a year, and can be submitted anytime via e-mail to [email protected].