Practice Management

Filomeno & Company PC, an eight-partner CPA firm based here, has expanded its financial planning practice with the merger of fee-only planning firm Thibodeau Financial Advisors LLC into its fold.

Just three days after Oracle and PeopleSoft signed a truce in their protracted shareholder war via a $10.3 billion merger agreement, security software provider Symantec Corp. agreed to pay $13.5 million to purchase data storage and recovery software concern Veritas Software Corp.

Tax reform under the second Bush administration will most likely take the form of piecemeal tax cuts, according to participants in a tax panel sponsored by the Council for Electronic Revenue Communication Advancement, a government-private industry trade association. President Bush has said that he would appoint a panel to recommend changes to the tax code that would make it simpler, fairer and less burdensome.

More than half of U.S. and European multinational companies will increase their compliance spending by an average of 23 percent over the next 12 to 24 months, according to a recent survey from Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers.According to PwC's Management Barometer Survey, about 51 percent of those polled said that they would raise spending on compliance, while some 44 percent of senior executives revealed that their companies do not have a clear view of their total compliance spending.

As part of efforts to tighten ethical standards for tax professionals and curb abusive tax shelters, the Treasury has issued final regulations amending Treasury Circular 230, which governs the practice of attorneys, accountants and other tax professionals before the Internal Revenue Service.

With tax day fast approaching, CPAs may be feeling stressed. However, they may be able to make their own lives, as well as those of their small business clients, a little less tense by encouraging those clients to consider certain business expenditures before the upcoming tax season, according to Hewlett Packard and H&R Block.

Regional firm Kahn, Litwin, Renza & Co., based here, is expanding into Newport with the merger of Casten, Victor & Co. into its fold.

Accounting and business consulting firm Citrin Cooperman & Co. has plans to merge Brewster, N.Y.-based CPA firm J.P. Bryan & Co. into its fold.

The Internal Revenue Service has teamed with the Department of Housing and Urban Development in an effort to expand the agencies' outreach to low-income taxpayers.

Interface Software, which makes the Interaction CRM software line for the professional services market, has been acquired by LexisNexis.