Let’s be clear on the much-awaited Asian deal that Yahoo and its Asian partners have been working on: While it is certainly still moving forward, once signed, it will not actually officially close until next year.

Yes, that’s right — 2013!

Still, what everyone and his investor is waiting for is the splashy announcement of the agreement, which involves the Silicon Valley Internet giant, China’s Alibaba Group and SoftBank, a large shareholder in Yahoo Japan.

Yahoo leadership has been hoping that could happen before Feb. 24, an important date after which activist shareholder Daniel Loeb could begin to mount a proxy fight against the current board.

And while the definitive agreement — involving the sale of Yahoo’s 33 percent stake in Alibaba and 35 percent stake in Yahoo Japan — has been moving back and forth among the dealmakers, one source said its completion might take a little longer than that, perhaps even into mid-March.

“It is one of the most complicated cross-border transactions in a long time,” said one person close to the situation. “It’s three different languages, three time zones and three companies that have not always seen eye to eye.”

It’s not that the companies don’t have the top talent on the effort. For Yahoo, it is CFO Tim Morse (who most recently also warmed the CEO seat, until Scott Thompson’s recent appointment); for Alibaba, it’s CEO Jack Ma and CFO Joe Tsai; and, for SoftBank, it is top man Masa Son and his top man Ron Fisher.

To make things even more complex, at the same time as the negotiating is going on, the trio also has to pay mind to how the Internal Revenue Service in the U.S. is going to view the whole deal.

As you can see here from a Wall Street Journal chart, it’s a pretty complicated “cash-rich split-off” to avoid taxes.

While the IRS cannot take an application for a “private letter ruling” until it has an actual agreement in hand, and will not issue one on a hypothetical transaction, the agreement still must be crafted so it is most likely to pass muster.

And only then can anyone move on to the many billions of dollars that Yahoo will instruct Alibaba and SoftBank to pay or contribute in kind for the asset part of the arrangement.

As the Journal noted, in more clarity than I ever could: “A key part of satisfying tax-code requirements is that the company shedding its shares get assets, not just cash, in exchange for them. Cash can’t account for more than two-thirds of the transferred value, tax rules say. This restriction was adopted in 2005 to limit misuse of the provision.”

While Yahoo’s execs have met about the various possibilities, it is more considering now than anything else.

And although a lot of names have been bandied about — Weather Channel, WebMD, as well as Glam Media and even Digg — the more likely direction Yahoo will go in will be different, according to many sources.

First, said sources, the key criteria for the purchase will be to diversify revenue streams, a theme Thompson sounded in his first earnings report recently. That could mean more online commerce, perhaps, rather than advertising or media assets.

Second, said sources, international properties might be more valuable to Yahoo than owning more U.S.-based ones, which opens up a range of interesting possibilities.

This could even include some already held by Alibaba, for example, such as garnering a big stake in its publicly-traded Alibaba.com. That property has become a prime candidate for the deal, said several sources, for a number of reasons.

Technically, via Alibaba, Yahoo already owns some of the e-commerce giant, but not directly. Another possibility is to get back the Yahoo China business, also now owned by Alibaba.

Third, U.S. companies that Yahoo might look at could be unusual and even bold. Two names brought up in recent internal meetings, for example, were Netflix (before its stock revived) and Yelp (which is prepping for an IPO, and which Yahoo once tried to buy already).

And if things were not already needlessly complex in fixing its Asia problem, expect a change in the Yahoo board composition, too, as early as this week.

As I previously reported, at least four directors are expected to move on. More to the point, there will also be replacements announced at the same time.

To stave off Loeb and even give him a perceptible win, sources said the company is considering announcing the changes sooner than later, with the hope that fresh new members will placate other shareholders.

Lastly, with Thompson starting to take the reins after a month there, I would also expect he’ll weigh in on some significant restructuring (his word, not mine!) at Yahoo soon enough, too.

Complicated? Sure is! Perplexing even? And how! But until Asian and board resolutions, the real work of fixing Yahoo can’t really begin.

The Internal Revenue Service recently unveiled their YouTube channel, irsvideos. The 12 videos have information about claiming recovery rebate credits and other tax tips.

“It’s another way for us to get information out to taxpayers,” says Terry Lemons, a spokesperson for the IRS.

The videos are produced in-house and feature actual IRS employees. Mostly, they direct people to IRS.gov, which doesn’t currently host video. The aim is to make taxpayers aware of existing tax credits and direct them toward more information about those credits, Lemons says. They’re also available in Spanish and American Sign Language.

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But after making an initial concession earlier this year, Google (GOOG) and the White House are going further. The Electronic Frontier Foundation explains: “Ordinarily, YouTube maintains a record of every YouTube video you’ve ever viewed, associated with your YouTube account, through use of the YouTube cookie. Now, they’ve agreed to exempt videos embedded on Whitehouse.gov from this logging.”

Will that be good enough to satisfy hard-to-please critics like the EFF? Amazingly, it does! Though of course, they’d like to see more. Here’s Cindy Cohn, the EFF’s legal director:

This is a good step and we commend YouTube and the Government for taking it. It shows that they recognize that tracking the government videos that Americans view is creepy and wrong. It also shows that Google/YouTube technologists can build and offer clever, useful privacy-protective modifications to their standard software.

Now we’d like to see them turn that cleverness to other places, not just the White House. Google/YouTube should offer this same “tracking-free” viewing to others. Human rights videos, politically sensitive videos, or even ordinary videos where viewers may want privacy should all be available without tracking…

In addition, the government should adopt “tracking-free” videos across the board for all government websites. Viewers of videos from the Internal Revenue Service, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, your member of Congress and other governmental entities deserve the same privacy protection that viewers of the President’s speeches.

The IRS has videos? Who knew? In the meantime, feel free to watch clips like this one, of Obama’s April victory over the UConn women’s basketball team in a game of “P-I-G” without worrying that the government is watching you watch.

According to the organization’s latest audited financial statement, its revenue for 2007 totaled $75.1 million, up 13 percent from 2006′s $66.8 million. And 88 percent of that came came directly from Google, which pays Mozilla to be the default search engine in it Firefox browser.

So of Mozilla’s $75.1 million in 2007 revenue, $66 million was paid it by Google. That’s quite a sum. Large enough to pique the interest of the Internal Revenue Service, which is reviewing Mozilla’s nonprofit status and “challenging certain deductions,” according to Mozilla Foundation chairperson Mitchell Baker.

An interesting turn of events for Mozilla, which this time last year was claiming it would walk away from Google if that’s what it took to remain independent. “We’ve spent a lot of time and energy making sure that Google understands that it cannot turn us into an arm of Google,” Baker said at the time. “The things that make Mozilla and Firefox a success [are] the product, and the community that cares about it. First and foremost, we would protect those things,” Baker said. “If the protection of those things would come into conflict with Google, or any of our search partners, we would opt for the community who built Firefox and love Firefox…. There are other ways to make money from a browser.”

Good to know. Because you may need to pursue them when the IRS is through with you…