Expats Protest Tax Treatment of US Taxpayers Abroad

Accounting Today reports a  group of U.S. expatriates has written a letter to IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman to complain he has not responded to a directive from the National Taxpayer Advocate objecting to the way taxpayers who came forward under the 2009 Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Program were treated by IRS examiners.
Last December, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson described her concerns in her annual report to Congress and later sent a rarely used Taxpayer Advocate Directive to Shulman (see Taxpayer Uncertainty Prompts Citizenship Renunciations). Olson, who heads the Taxpayer Advocacy Service, argued that IRS examiners treated some taxpayers unfairly who had come forward under the 2009 program to voluntarily declare previously undisclosed bank accounts to the IRS. She said the IRS had subjected them to a “one size fits all” regime and rescinded some of the claims midstream that would have qualified for reduced penalties by way of “reasonable cause” (see Groundhog Day for IRS Voluntary Disclosure Do-over). READ MORE HERE