Practice Management

Maybe not surprisingly, an overwhelmingly majority of taxpayers recently surveyed agreed that it is “not at all” acceptable to cheat on income taxes.The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board cited said that 86 percent of respondents to its 2006 Taxpayer Attitude Survey, in concluding that there was strong continued taxpayer support for compliance. The percentage was down slightly from last year’s figure, but still within the margin of error.

Two South Florida-based accounting firms have merged their operations.

Fiducial, a provider of tax, payroll, financial and business services to small businesses, announced that it has strengthened its Midwest market by acquiring Matrix Accounting and Business Services.

The California Society of CPAs passed the 30,000-member threshold in late January.In a statement announcing the milestone, the society credited a continuing “trend of California CPAs flocking to CalCPA for advocacy, technical guidance and professional resources” for boosting its numbers.

Donald Korb, chief counsel of the Internal Revenue Service, is getting a ton of good press these days for his efforts to get the agency into the game of recruiting young tax attorney talent.It’s a rare week that goes by in my office that either I don’t have a direct conversation with a practitioner, or I don’t overhear talk from the editors and writers for our sister publications revolving around the ongoing quest of just about every accounting firm to attract and retain workers. So it’s probably by nature of the even smaller pool of candidates that the competition for tax attorneys isn’t the stuff of surveys and opinion polls.

When I was very young, I discovered I was different from most other kids. It is probably because my two brothers and I didn’t have a “normal childhood,” most of our skills and abilities were self taught. That probably explains why I read so many personal self-help books, and have branched out into business books such as, "The World Is Flat" by Thomas Freidman, which I have repeatedly tried to finish, but failed.Thank goodness the mention of Gary Boomer in the book was on page 14. Each time I started another section in that book, I felt like that television character, Marie Barone, who lamented every month when a dozen Florida grapefruits or Bartlett pears came from a fruit of the month club gift.

California’s Pohl, McNabola, Berg & Co. announced that it has merged with Texas firm Helin, Donovan, Trubee & Wilkinson LLP in a deal effective Jan. 1.The combined firm, which will operate under the name PMB Helin Donovan LLP, will have a dozen partners and approximately 65 total staff in the two states.

The Internal Revenue Service said that it will renew contracts with two out of the three private agencies it signed to participate in a pilot program outsourcing debt collection. Conspicuously absent from that announcement was the fate of that third agency.The IRS said yesterday that it would extend the contracts of Waterloo, Iowa-based CBE Group Inc. and Arcade, N.Y.-based Pioneer Credit Recovery Inc., a unit of SLM Corp. The new contract will run through March 8, 2008.

The Internal Revenue Service announced the selection of 16 new members for its advisory council. The appointees will join 11 returning members who are in the last year of a three-year term.The council members are scheduled to meet in Washington, D.C. several times in 2007, with a public report to be provided during a meeting open to the public on Nov. 15.

Pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. announced that it would settle a number of tax disputes with the Internal Revenue Service at a net cash cost close to $2.3 billion.