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Only time will tell whether the bane of the 2006 tax filing year for the Internal Revenue Service is the scam-prone telephone tax refund, or the confusion that seems destined to arrive soon surrounding a number of extender provisions that were not included on the agency's original forms.The agency urged taxpayers to check and see if they qualify for the telephone excise tax refund after more than 10 million early filers did not request the one-time refund. In the first release of the year's weekly filing season statistics, about 30 percent of all taxpayers had not requested the telephone tax refund. Nearly half of those returns - more than 4.8 million - were completed by a tax preparer. "We are surprised how many tax preparers are overlooking the telephone tax refund," said IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, in a statement.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury announced that they will work on creating detailed LIFO guidance for automobile wholesalers, manufacturers and dealers.The accounting issue confronting the automobile industry - which involves the proper treatment of the dollar-value, last-in, first out inventory method for pooling purposes of "crossover vehicles," which have characteristics of both trucks and cars - was selected for the Industry Issue Resolution Program.

SHAW AUDITOR RESIGNSThe Shaw Group Inc., a Baton Rouge, La.-based multi-services provider for clients in the government and private sectors, said that Big Four firm Ernst & Young will resign as the company's auditor.

In The FASB: The People, the Process, and the Politics, a book that we published under the McGraw-Hill imprint in 1998, we presented a brief discussion of what we called "a new perspective" that unveils the futility of many of the beliefs and actions of managers and others who have not yet grasped how the capital markets get and use information. We recently came across it and thought it would make an interesting column.Traditionally, accounting theory, practice and standards-setting have all focused on the flow of information from companies to the capital markets, under the assumption that this information is used by those markets to make investment and credit decisions. In effect, attention has been directed to the public financial statements moving between statement preparers and the capital markets (see box, "In theory").

The head of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Fraud/Bank Secrecy Act will now play a key role in efforts to halt tax fraud, after being named the new head of the agency's Criminal Investigation Division.In announcing Eileen Mayer's appointment, Commissioner Mark Everson called her a seasoned prosecutor who knows the criminal justice system inside and out.

Industry data projects that by 2010, nearly half of all CPA firms will, to some degree, be providers of financial services to affluent clients.This represents a dramatic leap from the situation today, when only 19.4 percent of CPA firms are currently providing financial services to this client base. The opportunity is there, but to tap into it, firms must expand their capabilities and services, which increasingly involves building alliances with insurance and benefit companies.

Retirement is the No. 1 personal financial planning concern, regardless of age, according to an informal survey taken by the American Institute of CPAs at its Personal Financial Planning Conference.The AICPA said that it was a surprised to see that retirement planning is a major concern for career builders - classified as those between the ages of 25 and 34 - who also have the more immediate pressures of education, home buying and debt management following close behind.

Broker/dealer H.D. Vest has teamed with Cannon Financial Institute, a provider of financial services consulting, to provide practice management training to its top 600 advisors. The training sessions are scheduled to take place in Arizona and Texas in May, and the program has been named "Elite Academy." Participants will begin with a single concentrated workshop on "creating a consistent client experience."

Morningstar Investment Services, a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of financial information concern Morningstar Inc., has launched Morningstar Managed Portfolios Select Stock Baskets, a managed account service consisting of customized stock portfolios based on Morningstar indexes and independent equity research.The Morningstar Indexes form the basis of each stock basket's investment composition, and the stock basket is subsequently tailored to suit an investor's specific parameters, including sector and industry exposure, stock restrictions, existing holdings, and personal tax situation. MIS then selects stocks for the portfolio using Morningstar data and research on the stocks within the index.

Global software provider SAP is working to shed its reputation of being inaccessible to the small-and-midsized market.The Walldorf, Germany-based company, known for its enterprise relationship planning software system, is targeting what it termed a $15 billion "untapped" global SMB market with a new business model that will cost an estimated $500 million over two fiscal years.