Michael Cohn

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has released her mid-year report to Congress, in which she urges the Internal Revenue Service to issue refunds to victims of tax preparer fraud and expand the IRS’s recently announced voluntary tax preparer education program to include competency testing.

A group of senators has introduced a bipartisan bill governing sales taxes on online purchases and Internet access after previous legislation failed to make progress in the House.

Accountants need to make sure their clients' files are secure and stored away so they are not vulnerable to identity theft.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued final regulations on truncated taxpayer identification numbers, or TTINs, to safeguard against identity theft.

The House has approved by voice vote legislation permanently banning states from taxing Internet access or imposing multiple or discriminatory taxes on e-commerce.

The American Institute of CPAs has filed a federal lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service challenging the legality of the IRS's plans for voluntary continuing education and testing of tax preparers.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed a pair of Accounting Standards Updates aimed at simplifying the process of inventory measurement and eliminating the requirements for extraordinary items.

The Internal Revenue Service has partially withdrawn some of the rules it had earlier proposed on limiting rollovers from individual retirement arrangements.

The accounting job site CollegeFrog has been renamed Accountingfly as the site adds the function of allowing accounting firms to recruit experienced employees.

A former California tax preparer was sentenced Monday to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to charges that he filed dozens of false tax returns with the Internal Revenue Service.

Indiana has become the first state to allow competency-based education to qualify for renewal of a CPA license.

Ernst & Young has agreed to pay $4 million to settle charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission accusing the firm of violating auditor independence rules by lobbying congressional staff on behalf of two auditing clients.

The nonpartisan Tax Foundation research group has released a primer on the Marketplace Fairness Act, the legislation that proposes to establish federal law governing sales taxes on online purchases.

Three-quarters of Americans are worried about having enough money for retirement, according to a new survey that found three out of 10 Americans are not saving for later years.

ACL has introduced an add-in tool for Microsoft Excel aimed at auditors and compliance professionals.

An Internal Revenue Service employee has been suspended for 100 days without pay for urging taxpayers to re-elect President Obama in 2012.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun sending letters to public companies that fail to file their financials with all the necessary data using Extensible Business Reporting Language technology.

The real estate investment trust Ventas has dismissed Ernst & Young as its auditor after E&Y determined that it lacked independence because of an “inappropriate personal relationship” between an E&Y partner and Ventas’s former chief accounting officer and controller.

The Internal Revenue Service is being urged to modernize the process of filing amended tax returns in a new government report that estimates the IRS could be losing billions of dollars from erroneous tax refunds claimed on amended tax returns.

Financial Executives International has elected a new slate of executive officers and members of the board of directors for the fiscal year, effective July 1.