The Latest

Today is the first day of spring and it’s a welcome sight for those of us in the Northeast. It’s been a rather interesting winter, to say the least. Although spring cleaning moves to the front burner, one does note that many people begin to look carefully at whether they have the right financial plan. During the winter, they kind of hibernate but with the advent of spring and the April 15th tax deadline looming, people generally start to take stock, much like they do on January 1st with New Year’s resolutions. My friend, John Napolitano, who is the chief executive officer of U.S. Wealth Management located in Braintree, Mass., and who is the author of the best-selling book Success as a Personal Financial Planner (published by Alpha), knows quite well how to build a thriving career in one of today’s hottest fields. So he has set forth specific questions that one should ask when looking for a financial planner. I should also say that John is quite blunt when it comes to financial planning. “Anyone with a pulse can call themselves a financial planner, and many people have hired planners who later turned out to be salesmen who didn't give a darn about their long-term plan.”

A federal judge has for the second time rejected a class action lawsuit against the Free File Alliance, the group of tax software vendors who provide free software and electronic filing to low-income taxpayers.

Ernst & Young and Swiss bank UBS have been sued by a group of investors in Luxembourg who put money in a fund that directed 95 percent of their assets to Bernard Madoff’s firm.

The Internal Revenue Service has added three new forms for correcting errors on employment tax returns.

Our Facebook friend Jane Lee of the Ohio Society of CPAs shared a link touting the benefits of becoming a CPA.

Our Facebook friend Jane Lee of the Ohio Society of CPAs shared a link touting the benefits of becoming a CPA.

Jean-François Champollion, the man who discovered the Rosetta Stone, which provided the clues to the meaning of Egyptian hieroglyphs, had an advantage: He didn’t have to call tech support or read software documentation to figure out the meaning of those carvings. And if you have seen that Rosetta Stone, the software sold in those chunky, yellow boxes that nobody at the airport seems to buy, I would say language is the easy part of the process.

PayCyle said that it has implemented the payroll tax reduction included in the recently passed economic stimulus bill.

The Internal Revenue Service and a group of community partners plan to open their doors on Sat., March 21, to help people who need free tax preparation services, a question answered or a payment schedule arranged.

The economic crisis will force many companies to cut costs at their internal audit departments, according to a new study from PricewaterhouseCoopers.