The Wesley Snipes show was back in federal court in Atlanta, Georgia. The actor, however, was noticeably absent as his attorneys did the talking.

Snipes, who was sentenced to a maximum three years in federal prison for his convictions on tax evasion charges in April 2008, had vowed to appeal and on November 20 his attorneys made oral arguments in appellate court. The appeal focused on two issues: that the three year sentence was "unreasonable" and that the actor should have been granted a pre-trial hearing to decide whether his trial should have been in New York instead of Florida.

Aaron Carter is having a bad week. Just days after his elimination from Dancing with the Stars' ninth season, news surfaced that Carter was slapped with an IRS lien worth more than $1 million. The liens, which were filed in Los Angeles last week, date back to 2003.

Carter has been trying to repair his bad boy image in recent months, including adding a new management team. Carter's current manager, Johnny Wright, told ET News, "It is unfortunate that while Aaron was a minor, his finances were grossly mismanaged by his previous team which has lead to the current situation of which he was unaware of until today. Aaron is working with a new team to take appropriate actions towards speedy resolution of the matter and looks forward to putting this behind him and moving forward with the next stage of his music career."

Headlines across the country are blasting that millions of taxpayers may owe come tax time because "the government was too generous with their new Making Work Pay tax credit," as the New York Daily News put it.

It sure makes for dramatic news coverage... only it's not quite right.

The government didn't make a mistake when calculating the Making Work Pay tax credit and this most definitely isn't something just hitting the radar of taxpayers. It just makes good headlines now.

The issue of too much withholding has been making news since the inception of the credit in early 2009. Yahoo even appeared to revamp an earlier version of the CNNMoney.com story released on this past Tuesday, titled "Stimulus surprise: 15 million people may owe taxes" from a piece released six months ago. Clicking on the link from the prior story, formerly here, now gives you a 404 error. Hmm.

If the trend in e-filing continues, the IRS expects more than 100 million individual taxpayers to file their tax returns electronically for the 2009 tax year.

More than one-third of those taxpayers will file by personal computer; the remainder will use a professional tax preparer or free file at an IRS site. No matter how you choose to e-file this year, following are some tips to make it as easy as possible.

Chances are, you filed your federal taxes electronically this year.

According to the IRS, about two out of every three individual taxpayers elected to e-file in 2009, up almost 6% from returns filed electronically in 2008. That works out to just a few million returns shy of 100 million individual returns, or 67% of tax returns.

It's a pretty incredible increase for the IRS e-file program which began just more than 20 years ago. In 1986, the first year of the program, just 25,000 refund-only returns were accepted in three locations, less than 1% of the returns filed in 2009.

Soccer fans across the world can collectively offer up a sigh of relief: there will be no strike for soccer players in Spain. At least for now.

Spain's Professional Football League, the governing body that manages the major professional football leagues in Spain, has been making noise about going on strike. The organization is more or less the equivalent of the MLS here in the US since football in Europe is really soccer; the U.S. version of football is referred to as, well, American football.

The Internal Revenue Service might be looking for you -- but not for the reasons that you think. The IRS is actually looking to dole out refunds worth more than $123.5 million to taxpayers whose refund checks were returned to the IRS by the U.S. Postal Service due to mailing address errors.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman wants taxpayers to come forward, saying, "We are eager to get this money into the hands of taxpayers, so don't delay if you think you are missing a refund. The sooner you update your address information, the quicker you can get your refund."

Updating your address with the IRS is easy. You can update your address online by visiting the "Where's My Refund?" tool on the IRS web site or use the telephone version of "Where's My Refund?" by calling 1-800-829-1954. You can also complete a Form 8822, Change of Address, downloadable as a pdf via the IRS web site or call 800–TAX–FORM (800–829–3676) to have a Form 8822 mailed to you.

The average number of undeliverable refunds rose by 16% this year, but the 107,831 refunds which remain outstanding still total less than 1% of the more than 142 million returns processed by the IRS. If you haven't received your refund, check with the IRS to see if your check was one of those returned by the post office. If it wasn't, and your check remains undelivered, you can receive a replacement check within six to eight weeks of making a claim by calling 1-800-829-1954.

Remember, a tax refund is your money. Don't leave it on the table.

Recently, a reader asked about how to properly file income taxes while in a Chapter 13 bankruptcy. It's an important question because a key requirement to remain under the protections of Chapter 13 is continued compliance with required tax filings (see 11 U.S.C. § 521).

Chapter 13 bankruptcy is often referred to as the "wage earner's bankruptcy" because it's targeted to individuals who are still earning income. Under Chapter 13, an individual may repay all or part of existing debts over time (generally, three years) as part of a payment plan in exchange for a stoppage in collection activities.

As if you don't already have enough money worries. This is the year to double, no, triple-check, your taxes before filing. The IRS is looking for the money it's owed with renewed vigor, and that means a lot more people can expect to be audited. Why now? It's not hard to guess.

We've been hearing for months that the economy is finally on its way up, but the numbers don't actually bear that out.

As of last month, the federal deficit weighed in at a record $1.42 trillion and, depending on what Congress does, could double within the year. Estimates are that within the next ten years, the deficit will hit $9.1 trillion. Increases in the budget have been tapped for bailouts, CASH for clunkers, the first time homebuyer's credit and the controversial new health care plan. The problem? There's no money to pay for all of these programs.

Less than two weeks after the official amnesty program ended for taxpayers who had previously failed to disclose income from offshore accounts, the first high profile criminal case involving a taxpayer has been resolved.

Steven Michael Rubinstein, of Boca Raton, an accountant and US client of UBS AG, the Swiss Bank that caused an international uproar when it was implicated in a wide-ranging scheme to assist foreign account holders in hiding income, was successfully prosecuted in the U.S. government's offshore tax-evasion probe. Rubinstein received three years of probation and a year of home-confinement, and was fined $40,000, on charges of filing a false tax return. The sentence was much lighter than expected.

The IRS charged that Rubinstein deposited more than $2 million in gold coins into his UBS accounts and used the funds to buy and sell securities. Rubinstein did not disclose the account on his tax return, as required by U.S. law, nor did he report the income generated by the accounts. You can read the official complaint here (downloads as a pdf). Rubinstein was arrested in April of this year, and has the unhappy distinction of being the first taxpayer associated with the case to be officially charged.