Here's what's been going on this week in the world of accountants and bookkeepers! In this edition, we'll be taking a look at the LastPass breach, what's new in Intuit Tax Advisor, and news from the IRS about the 1099-K threshold and a new Deputy Chief for Taxpayer Experience. Read on for the latest updates and insights from professionals in the know. Do you know someone who would benefit from reading The Woodard Report? Be a friend and pass it on!!

LastPass Breach Worse Than Originally Reported

The Hacker News, 12-23-2022

The August 2022 security breach of LastPass may have been more severe than previously disclosed by the company. Malicious actors obtained a trove of personal information belonging to its customers, including their encrypted password vaults. The master password is stored in a "proprietary binary format" that can only be decoded with a key derived from the users' passwords. LastPass did not divulge how recent the backup was but warned that a threat actor could use brute-force to guess the password and get access to the data. Read more...

Intuit Announces Improvements to Its New Intuit Tax Advisor Product

Intuit Tax Pro Center, 12-13-2022

Intuit has added new features and improvements to its new Tax Advisor product, aimed at helping customers deliver tax advisory services to clients. The cloud-based service offers tax-saving strategies and estimates potential tax savings, communicating the results in client-friendly reports to increase tax planning value and productivity. Since its August 2022 launch, Intuit has added a number of new strategies, including the ability to estimate the tax savings of changing from a sole proprietorship to an S corporation, cost segregation studies to identify and reclassify assets for accelerated deductions, tax loss harvesting and optimizing the qualified business income deduction. The service has also been updated with new features, including improved client report options and increased transparency in strategy calculations. Users of the service are reportedly saving an average of 2.1 hours per tax plan, compared to the 2.3 hours historically taken to prepare a "typical" tax plan, and identifying an average of $21,979 of tax savings per plan. Read more...

IRS News: Delay in 1099-K $600 Threshold and a New Deputy in Town

IRS Newsroom, 12-27-2022

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has announced a delay in the implementation of new reporting thresholds for third-party settlement organizations (TPSOs). As a result, TPSOs will not be required to report tax year 2022 transactions on a Form 1099-K to the IRS or payee using the $600 threshold amount that was enacted as part of the American Rescue Plan of 2021. This delay will help to reduce confusion during the 2023 tax filing season and provide more time for taxpayers, tax professionals and industry to understand the new requirements. The transition period, described in Notice 2023-10, will delay the reporting of transactions in excess of $600 to those that occur after calendar year 2022, in order to facilitate an orderly transition for TPSO tax compliance and individual payee compliance with income tax reporting. The existing 1099-K reporting threshold of $20,000 in payments from over 200 transactions will remain in effect. Read more...

In addition, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has appointed Courtney Kay-Decker as the new Deputy Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer. In this role, Kay-Decker will be responsible for leading the IRS's efforts to improve the taxpayer experience, including driving the strategy for taxpayer interactions, monitoring and prioritizing the taxpayer experience, coordinating the identification of taxpayer trends and best practices, and collaborating on the implementation of service-wide taxpayer experience improvements. Read more...