Practice management

Lee Farkas, former chairman of Taylor, Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., was found guilty of 14 counts of securities, bank and wire fraud and conspiracy to commit fraud for masterminding a scheme that prosecutors said cheated investors and the government out of $3 billion and led to the 2009 collapse of his company and Colonial Bank.

Cloud-based document storage and sharing service SmartVault announced it has officially joined The CloudSolutions Alliance, the CPA-focused group formed in 2010 by Fujitsu and cloud-based sales tax automation service provider SpeedTax, with the goal of educating and gaining further access to firms who would be most interested in their services.

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More than half of senior executives polled indicated that their respective companies have a formal sustainability strategy in place, while another 31 percent said they are either working on a plan or expect to eventually adopt one.

“The Pale King,” the novel about the Internal Revenue Service that author David Foster Wallace was writing before he committed suicide, hit the bookstores on April 15.

CPA-focused consulting firm and hosting service Xcentric said Monday it has completed the purchase of technology consultancy InfoTech Partners North America, bringing on board prominent consultant Roman Kepczyk.

The American Institute of CPAs has included the latest guidance from the Financial Accounting Standards Board on accounting for mergers and acquisitions in the newest edition of its book Accounting Trends & Techniques.

The Internal Revenue Service has been doing a better job of detecting and preventing fraudulent refunds this filing season, but programming bugs and inadequate controls are still allowing erroneous claims to get through for various tax credits.

Three influential senators have written to Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Doug Shulman, asking him to re-evaluate the two-year time limit for innocent spouses to request tax relief.

Taxpayers set a record over the weekend, surpassing the 100 million mark for electronically filed tax returns so far this season.

In his best impersonation of a fiscal conservative, President Obama last week called for $1 trillion tax hikes on the wealthiest Americans as part of an effort to reduce the deficit by $4 trillion over the next dozen years.

The House passed the controversial budget plan introduced last week by House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., in a largely party-line vote on Friday.

The White House introduced the ability to generate a “federal taxpayer receipt” on its Web site Friday.

Tax filers who paid an accountant or CPA to prepare their returns registered a high level of satisfaction with their method of preparation, with 75 percent stating that they were “very satisfied” in working with the accountant or CPA, according to a new survey.

The Internal Revenue Service is asking the public for recommendations on items that should be included on its 2011-2012 Guidance Priority List.

Problems with administering the First-Time Homebuyer Credit and similar tax credits indicate the Internal Revenue Service needs to strengthen its controls over all refundable credits, a new government report recommended Friday.

It’s doubtful whether the tax changes proposed by the President in his speech on Wednesday would generate much of a dent in the deficit, even if they were to be accepted by Congress.

President Obama signed legislation Thursday repealing the expanded 1099 reporting requirements in the health care reform law and Small Business Jobs Act.

The Internal Revenue Service issued final regulations Thursday lowering the initial enrollment and renewal of enrollment user fees for enrolled agents and enrolled retirement plan agents, and separating the enrolled retirement plan agent user fees from the enrolled agent user fees.