WebCPA Staff

A former CPA who now owns a medical supply company has been charged in a $7.6 million health care fraud scheme, along with three other defendants.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Securities and Exchange Commission plan to collaborate more closely to monitor and regulate the municipal bond market and industry.

The Internal Revenue Service said it has unclaimed refunds totaling more than $1.3 billion awaiting nearly 1.4 million people who did not file a federal income tax return for 2006, including over $150 million in the state of California alone.

The Internal Revenue Service has made an administrative determination to accept the position that medical residents are excepted from FICA payroll taxes based on the student exception for tax periods ending before April 1, 2005, when new IRS regulations went into effect.

Approva Corp. has introduced the latest version of its continuous controls monitoring and auditing automation software, Approva One.

A California tax preparer was sentenced to more than five years in prison and ordered to pay $377,468 in restitution after she was convicted of tax fraud.

Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to extend unemployment benefits, a 65 percent subsidy for COBRA health insurance for the unemployed, and a large set of tax breaks that expired at the end of last year.

The Internal Revenue Service has released statistics indicating a drop-off in both the number of tax returns filed for 2008, and the amount of income, showing the effects of the recession.

Lyndon Group has appointed John Gantenbein as the firm’s loss prevention practice leader.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has instituted public administrative proceedings against two former Ernst & Young auditors who failed to uncover the misappropriation of client funds by an investment advisor they were auditing.

Accounting firm Clayton & McKervey has opened a Chinese Web site to attract Chinese businesses expanding to the United States.

Fifty-six percent of CFOs at U.S. technology companies are currently using cloud computing in some capacity, according to a survey by accounting firm BDO Seidman.

Influential accounting industry leader Stuart Kessler has joined J.H. Cohn as a director.

Vrakas/Blum Computer Consulting has been named the No. 1 JobOps solution provider in the United States for 2009.

Freed Maxick & Battaglia has hired PR strategist and communications professional Emily Alexandria Burns as the firm’s e-marketing and communications specialist.

BizActions, a company that provides customized e-mail newsletters that CPAs can send to their clients, has introduced Dashboard 2.0, the latest version of its desktop application that displays organized, up-to-date information about clients’ newsletter readership.

The Internal Revenue Service has temporarily suspended the requirement to file a Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts for the 2009 and earlier calendar years, for people who are not U.S. citizens, residents or domestic entities.

A judge has suspended the stock offering registration statement of a mining exploration company after the Securities and Exchange Commission charged it with filing a forged audit report and stopped trading of the company’s stock.

The Justice Department has asked a federal court to stop two Miami-based tax return preparers from improperly claiming the First-Time Home Buyer Credit.

Inmates at a county prison just outside Key West, Fla., received up to $100,000 from the IRS after filing for over $1 million in fraudulent tax refunds.