Chicago Chapter Seminars Cover International Issues, Research Credit.

The Chicago Chapter has continued to expand its technical presentations with special half-day seminars in addition to monthly meetings. This format allows the chapter to experiment with meeting sites throughout the Chicagoland area to accommodate as many members as possible.

In March, Jim Forhan, Stan Wiseberg, Saul Caisman, Peter Simpson, Rodney Lawrence, and Suzan Campbell from KPMG led a half-day seminar dedicated to international issues. The International Tax Committee, co-chaired by Ray Barbosa and Tony Verdino, and the KPMG representatives led an informative session that included an update on current international matters such as corporate tax shelters, foreign partnership reporting requirements, ACM, and other topics. The second half of the program focused on international joint ventures, negotiation, control, due diligence, formation, ongoing operations, and exit strategies.

In April, the meeting focused on research credits. The first half of the technical session was a presentation by Janet Wong, National Director of Technical Tax Services with KPMG in Washington, D.C. Dan Rahill and Christine Kachinsky of the Chicago office joined her. After their presentation, Tom Blythe, Paul Schaffhausen, Sheldon Kimel, and John Mann led a chapter roundtable discussion of recent audit issues with the IRS that started with the research credit and expanded into other areas. Some members commented that they had experienced...