The Latest

I’m a sucker for financial calculators -- you know, those little widgets that help you find out how much you’ll pay monthly on your 30-year mortgage, how long it’ll take to pay off your student loans, or what you can save when you switch your balances to a new credit card.So it was with some interest that I came across a little application last week, courtesy of journalist Kay Bell’s “Don’t Mess with Taxes” blog (http://dontmesswithtaxes.typepad.com), that allows users to calculate what their income tax liability would have been under the original Form 1040 -- issued in1913. (The calculator can be accessed directly at http://politicalcalculations.blogspot.com/2007/04/income-tax-original-form-1040.html).

Liberty Tax Service reported a 20 percent increase in the number of tax returns prepared at its franchises for the 2007 fiscal year.

According to Vertex Inc.’s annual Sales Tax Rate Report, the average number of U.S. sales tax rate changes per year has grown by 28 percent since the late 1990s.Based on a comparison of the number of state, county, city and district sales tax rate changes during the six-year periods between 1995 and 2000, and 2001 and 2006, the study found that the average number of rate changes per year was 610 and 779, respectively. According to the report, the number of rate changes decreased for the earlier period, while the number of yearly rate changes fluctuated for the later period.

The President’s Identity Theft Task Force rolled out a strategic plan this week, outlining a number of recommendations for increased federal prevention of identity theft.

In anticlimactic news, former HealthSouth chief executive Richard Scrushy will pay $81 million to settle civil charges brought by the Securities and Exchange Commission.While SEC spokespeople have said that the amount of the deal is among the most expensive for an executive settlement, a federal judge ruled that the judgments in three other civil cases brought against Scrushy could count as a $71.5 million credit toward the disgorgement to the SEC.

At first glance, the recent testimony of Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, Jr. before the Senate Finance Committee on ways to reduce the tax gap was fairly typical, in that he urged Congress to approve the Presidential-submitted budget with increased IRS funding, and to pass 16 legislative proposals aimed at narrowing the tax gap.

Global business intelligence software provider Business Objects S.A., provider of the Crystal Reports series, has agreed to acquire enterprise software publisher Cartesis for about $300 million in cash.

The leaders of the Senate Finance and the House Ways and Means Committees have reached agreement on a tax package aimed at providing nearly $5 billion in tax relief for small businesses.

A Greenwich, Conn., investment banker was convicted on charges of evading millions of dollars of taxes, according to the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.A jury found Richard Josephberg guilty on a total of 21 charges, including three counts of tax evasion, four counts of failure to file tax returns, five counts of failure to pay taxes, two counts of subscribing to false tax returns, and single counts of conspiracy to defraud, health care fraud and obstructing the due administration of the Internal Revenue Service.

AccountAbilities Inc., a provider of financial personnel staffing services, marketing services and management consulting services, announced that one of its partner firms has acquired a smaller staffing and consulting firm.