Circular 230 revised: written tax advice.

• Position: News & Trends - Legal guidelines to tax advisers - Brief Article

The IRS and Treasury Department have issued revisions to the Circular 230 standards for written tax advice that were announced late last year.

The revisions clarify several areas of the new standards, including:

* Advice from in-house tax professionals to their employers;

* Situations in which the advice is provided after the client files the relevant tax return; and

* "Negative advice," wherein an adviser tells a client a transaction will not provide the purported tax benefit.

The revised standards also provide a definition of "the principal purpose" of tax avoidance, and relax specific requirements...