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Intuit Inc. and Electronic Clearing House Inc. have agreed to scrap a deal that would have seen Intuit pay $142 million for the debit and credit card processor’s business.

I come from a family of pretty good athletes. Well, let me amend that. Of the four males in the household, my youngest brother was terrible -- always falling over his feet, my middle brother and I were pretty decent athletes, having played in high school and college. My father was a duffer and even though he had the most expensive golf clubs on the market, his handicap practically equaled the national debt.

During conference calls with auditors this week, Securities and Exchange Commission staff said that accountants should be on the lookout for improper selling strategies designed to take advantage of FAS 159, “Fair Value Option.”

Solutions to your problems are everywhere. Just look at all the products, services and companies that proudly proclaim their status as solutions.

A year after the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 became law, government statistics show that the number of bankruptcy filings nationwide dropped nearly 70 percent last year.The total number of filings last year dropped to 618,000, down from a record of 2.1 million in 2005, when people were rushing to file before the new laws were enacted, according to statistics from the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. The American Bankruptcy Institute said that the 2006 number was the lowest level since 1988.

Taxpayers frustrated by delays in Intuit Inc.’s tax-processing capabilities will have until midnight on April 19 to electronically file their returns.The Internal Revenue Service and Intuit said that as many as several hundred thousand last-minute tax filers were affected by Intuit’s server problems Tuesday night -- meaning that they, or their accountants, may have been unable to electronically file returns.

A new report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board looks to draw some conclusions out of its inspections of approximately 275 audits of internal controls over financial reporting performed by registered public accounting firms.The report specifically looks at the second year implementation of the board’s Auditing Standard No. 2, “An Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting Performed in Conjunction with an Audit of Financial Statements.” Nearly a year ago, the PCAOB announced that during 2006 it would conduct inspections to determine whether auditors were achieving the objectives of the standard with the least expenditure of resources.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a proposal to improve the accounting for financial guarantee insurance contracts.The proposal, “Accounting and Reporting by Insurance Enterprises: An Interpretation of FASB Statement No. 60,” is aimed at reducing diversity in accounting treatment and providing financial statement users with clearer, more comparable information and expanded disclosures. The proposal has also been written in a new format intended to improve its understandability.

AccuFund Inc., a provider of financial reporting and accounting software for nonprofits and municipal and government organizations, has rolled out its first budget development module for the AccuFund Accounting Suite.With the module, budget managers can view any budget version to compare changes, as well as control revisions until the budget is locked. Revisions can be entered line by line, or by making calculations using rules applied at either the account, group, or worksheet levels. Notes can also be entered on any account line in a budget worksheet to explain a revision.

The Internal Revenue Service will grant a six-month tax filing and payment extension to those affected by the shootings at Virginia Tech.The relief applies to the victims, their families and emergency responders, as well as university students and employees.