Someone at the IRS must have wanted to empty out their inbox before Thanksgiving.

How else to explain the flood of stuff coming out of Constitution Avenue this week? In less than 24 hours, I received no fewer than six IRS e-announcements and saw a flurry of tweets about news and guidance emerging from the agency.

Here's the Reader's Digest version:

• A new IRS revenue procedure would allow most businesses to “use losses incurred during the economic downturn to reduce income from prior tax years.”
  
• Some current homeowners may qualify for the extended first-time homebuyer credit as part of The Worker, Homeownership and Business Assistance Act of 2009.
  
• The IRS has proposed new regulations that would require the reporting of “credit card, debit card and similar transactions, as well as transactions settled through third-party payment networks,” to participating merchants and the IRS.
  
• The IRS announced relief that “provides some employers with a one-year reprieve to comply with forthcoming interest rate rules,” according to Watson Wyatt.
  
• New technical guidance in the form of Notice 2009-93 “creates a pilot program allowing filers of information returns to truncate an individual payee’s nine-digit identifying number on paper payee statements for calendar years 2009 and 2010 if the filers meet the requirements set forth in this notice.”
  
• Some new stats are available regarding exempt organizations' unrelated business income tax for 2006.
  
• Interest rates for the first quarter of 2010 will remain unchanged.
  
• The fall 2009 edition of the Statistics of Income Bulletin is available. Read a summary, then download the complete publication.

That's a lot to digest on the day before Thanksgiving. Save some room for dessert.