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IRS OFFICIALS TURN ATTENTION AND INCREASED RESOURCES TO IRA 2022:

IRS OFFICIALS TURN ATTENTION AND INCREASED RESOURCES TO IRA 2022:

The IRS and Treasury will be publishing notices soon for tax provisions enacted in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA, P.L. 117-169), with the hope that many public comments are submitted in response.

Guidance for implementation of the new corporate stock buyback tax, corporate alternative minimum tax, and green energy provisions is a high priority, Robin Greenhouse of the IRS Office of Chief Counsel (Large Business and International) said September 20 at a Tax Executives Institute conference in Tysons, Virginia.

The Inflation Reduction Act specifies that the Treasury secretary must issue guidance for those provisions and impose deadlines for some, so that must happen soon, Greenhouse said, adding that the Office of Chief Counsel and Treasury are “working very hard to provide quick guidance and issue requests for comment.”

The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is no longer a separate focus for developing guidance. “We’ve reached the point where the TCJA is the tax law now, so not a separate project anymore,” LB&I Commissioner Nikole Flax said at the same event. As issues come up with TCJA provisions, guidance will be handled as it is with any other existing tax law provision, she said.

One exception concerning the TCJA being worked on now is the long-anticipated guidance under section 174 for research and experimentation expense amortization, addressing changes in accounting methods, Greenhouse said.

More Resources

Flax noted that with more funding coming to the IRS because of the new legislation, some programs the agency was considering scaling back may be kept or even expanded. She pointed to the compliance assurance process program as “a good example of a place where the frame of thinking may change now that more resources are available.”

Next Steps

The IRS and Treasury are just starting to work on next year’s priority guidance plan now, Greenhouse said. Two projects specific to digital asset monitoring are also underway: one for information reporting, and the other for more general tax issues as they apply to digital assets.