Practice Management

The Internal Revenue Service has issued changes to the 2007 instructions for Form 1040 and Form 1040NR because of the Tax Technical Corrections Act of 2007.

Thomson has acquired TaxStream, a software provider that helps companies comply with income tax demands.

Super-regional CPA and business advisory firm Dixon Hughes said it would merge with Rhea & Ivy PLC. effective Feb. 1. Terms were not disclosed. The union will add some 70 employees and 12 partners to Dixon Hughes. Upon completion of the merger, Rhea & Ivy, headquartered here, will operate under the Dixon Hughes brand. The Rhea & Ivy team will remain in Memphis, while an existing Dixon Hughes office in Memphis -- whose client roster is comprised primarily of auto dealerships -- will combine with the new Memphis practice, bringing that team to more than 90 people. Ranked No. 17 on Accounting Today's 2007 Top 100 Firms list, Dixon Hughes generated annual revenues of $155 million.

GAO Comptroller General David Walker, who has spent the last three years on a "Fiscal Wake-Up Tour," again reiterated his agency's warning that the country is on an "imprudent and unsustainable fiscal path," while stressing the need for bi-partisan cooperation and the courage to make tough choices for the longer term. Walker, who has traveled to some 25 states on his tour, said simulations by the GAO and the Congressional Budget Office show that despite a three-year decline in the budget deficit, the U.S. faces "large and growing structural deficits driven primarily by rising health care costs and known demographic trends." The auditor general pointed out that the first wave of Baby Boomers has already filed for early Social Security retirement benefits -- and will be eligible for Medicare in just three years. Walker said rapidly rising health care costs are not simply a federal budget problem, but rather the No. 1 challenge to the U.S. and that the problem calls "for us as a nation to fundamentally rethink how we define, deliver, and finance health care in both the public and the private sectors." Walker said "While Congress and the administration are focused on the need for a short-term fiscal stimulus, our long-term challenge increases the importance of careful design of any stimulus package. It should be timely, targeted and temporary, while at the same time creating a capable and credible commission to make recommendations to the next Congress and the next president for action on our longer-range and looming fiscal imbalance."

The Senate Finance Committee held hearings on the nomination of Douglas Shulman to be commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

Accounting firm Templeton & Co. has combined practices with James Machen Chartered, a CPA and consulting firm based in Boca Raton, Fla.

Congress can't seem to agree on what to do about an economic stimulus package, which could mire the effort to produce an effective package in time to do some good.

Billy Beane, vice president and general manager of the Oakland A’s, the keynote speaker at the recent Winning Is Everything Conference, explained how mathematics is transforming America’s pastime. Yes, I said mathematics.

Marks Paneth & Shron has merged with Schneider & Associates, adding four new partners to its Woodbury, N.Y., office.

Two venerable Chicago accounting firms have merged.