Practice Management

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson urged the Internal Revenue Service to focus more broadly on steps to increase voluntary compliance.

Executive compensation has been under scrutiny on several fronts in recent years.

* STRONG RESPONSE TO STOCK OPTION, SON OF BOSS INITIATIVES: The executive stock option settlement initiative launched in February has received a strong turnout, according to the Internal Revenue Service. The initiative provided corporate executives and their companies with a means to resolve an abusive tax transaction involving the transfer of stock options to family-controlled partnerships.

Time Warner Inc. will set aside $3 billion in reserves for shareholder lawsuits over the AOL merger, and in a separate announcement, plaintiff lawyers said that accounting firm Ernst & Young, the company's auditor, has agreed to contribute another $100 million.

Armanino McKenna LLP, one of the largest accounting

A federal judge has filed paperwork alerting the Internal Revenue Service that he plans to halt their experiment in outsourcing debt collection, siding with a Texas company that claimed they had been unfairly excluded from the bidding process.

The Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee, the consortium that is charged with advising the Internal Revenue Service on its e-filing strategy, is exhorting the service to accelerate its previously announced plans to update its e-filing process.

Tax preparation giant H&R Block Inc. will acquire the Tax & Business Services division of American Express, creating a combined firm with more than 5,000 employees and generating more than $1 billion in annual revenue.

A judge has ordered the Internal Revenue Service to pay more than $250,000 after determining an IRS agent disclosed confidential information during a criminal investigation.

Although the White House said it reviewed tax returns for Supreme Court nominee John G. Roberts Jr., it has stopped short of allowing investigators from the Senate Judiciary Committee to review the returns as part of the confirmation process.