Briefly, a fresh check of the statistical counters on the blog reveal that April was an all time high for visits, at 1,592 and similarly, the number of hits was also at a high point at 11,139 for the month. These numbers are in line with the increasing trend for the last several months. Welcome all and as always if you have comments (like you want Ray to do more stories on celeb's and bankruptcy) please shoot me an e-mail, Mike

On May 17, President Bush signed into law the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act of 2005 (a/k/a Public Law 109-222) which, among other things, affects how the IRS deals with offers in compromise.

Section 509 of the law changes the requirements for submitting an application for a lump sum offer in compromise with the IRS. Under the existing rules, taxpayers must submit a $150 fee with their applications, although there are some exceptions.

The new law, which will go into effect 60 days from enactment (in other words, July 16) requires that taxpayers submit their first installment with their application (and that it contain at least 20% of the proposed compromised amount.) (The law specifies that a "lump sum offer in compromise" means one that will pay the tax liability in five installments or less.) Similarly, requests for installment plans with more than five payments require a payment equal to the first installment due along with the application, and the taxpayer must make regular installments while the application is pending. The new law states provides that the existing application fees will be taken out of the first installment, but the IRS will still be able to waive the fees using existing criteria.

Congress also amended the tax laws to state that an offer in compromise will be deemed accepted if the IRS fails to accept or reject the offer within 24 months.

The Government Printing Office doesn't have the final version of the bill available for viewing yet, but you can locate by going to http://thomas.loc.gov and searching for H.R.4297.

Other topics addressed in the legislation are small business expenses, dividends and capital gains, increases in the alternative minimum tax amount, corporate estimated tax payments, five-year amortization of certain oil and gas-related geologic and geophysical expenses and a host of others.

Mac