Everybody has to have a Top 10 list around the New Year, and looking back over the past year, we found that WebCPA readers clicked the most on stories about taxes and accounting firm rankings.

1. Accounting Today Releases Top 100 Firms Ranking: OK, maybe this one wasn’t exactly a news story, but it still garnered the most traffic of any article on the site. In any case, it seems like almost every major firm wants to know where they stand in Accounting Today’s annual rankings.

2. Senate Approves Homebuyer Tax Credit: There was plenty of interest in the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit this year as Congress first approved the credit, and later extended, expanded and investigated it.

3. Congress Mandates Electronic Filing: Roger Russell’s article covered the little-noticed provisions related to electronic tax filing in the legislation extending the First-Time Homebuyer Tax Credit.

4. Tax Court Denies Medical Deduction for Prostitutes, Porn: No doubt this was one of the most unusual cases to come the way of the U.S. Tax Court in the past year and we got an interview with the plaintiff.

5. The Best Accounting Firms to Work For: Our ranking of the Best Accounting Firms to Work For garnered a lot of curiosity this year, in part from partners and staffers looking for greener pastures.

6. IRS Updates 1040 for 2009: Back in June, we reported on the preview version that the IRS posted of its 1040 return for this coming tax season, and a lot of readers were interested in getting a sneak peek.

7. IRS Publishes Guide to Latest Tax Breaks: Count on the IRS to know which tax credits and deductions are the best bets to know about when preparing returns next tax season.

8. IRS Mulls Limiting Sole Proprietor Loss Deductions: Many of our readers have small business clients and are sole practitioners themselves, so it’s no surprise this article attracted special attention in October. 

9. Tax Preparer Proposals in Budget Greenbook: When the Obama-era Treasury Department issued its initial proposals in May for generating more tax revenue next year, including the first hints of the tax preparer regulations it was planning, practitioners wanted to know what was on the drawing board.

10. IRS Extends Deadline for Filing FBAR: One of the major trends in the past year was the IRS cracking down on undeclared foreign accounts, especially at UBS, but back in June, the IRS granted a few months’ reprieve to taxpayers filing a report on foreign bank accounts. That deadline has now passed, as has the deadline for the IRS’s voluntary disclosure program, but people are still coming forward hoping to catch a break.

Let’s hope we all get a break next year from the financial turmoil of 2009, and some resolution in the continuing clash over fair value measurement and mark-to-market accounting, and the ongoing debate over convergence and the roadmap from U.S. GAAP to International Financial Reporting Standards. Those too were some of the other big stories of the past year.

Happy New Year and best wishes for a brighter 2010. And thanks for reading WebCPA.