The Internal Revenue Service will scrap its plans to close 68 Taxpayer Assistance Centers after Congress insisted the agency further study the potential impact of the closures.

A group of congressional representatives has asked the Internal Revenue Service to hold off on plans to shut down 68 of the agency's Taxpayer Assistance Centers.

Accountants Global Network International-North America Inc., a network of accounting firms, is tackling two of the profession's challenges by looking to enhance the skills of experienced partners, and develop a firm's staff, in a more focused manner.

CCH Tax and Accounting launched a new feature for its online self-study courses last week, giving CPAs the opportunity to earn CPE credit around the clock, seven days a week.

Frank Abagnale Jr., the convicted forger whose life was chronicled in the movie "Catch Me If You Can," told a crowd of CPAs and attorneys that one of the reasons that the annual losses from white-collar crime now top $660 billion -- roughly twice the budget of the U.S. military -- is the alarming lack of ethics, in terms of both formal company guidelines and curricula in school."Every company should have a code of ethics that they give to employees," said Abagnale, the keynote speaker at an anti-fraud conference sponsored by the New York State Society of CPAs and the Foundation for Accounting Education. "And it should be part of the educational curriculum. They don't teach ethics in school."He said that executives at companies are six times more likely to commit fraud than managers, and 14 times more likely than rank-and-file employees. To illustrate the magnitude of modern fraud and theft, Abagnale said that bank robberies last year constituted some $64 million. By contrast, American Express alone recorded $2.5 billion in consumer fraud losses."It's 4,000 times easier to do today what I did 40 years ago," said Abagnale, who served time in prison for forgery and fraud, before becoming a nationally known security consultant to banks and Fortune 500 companies. "Technology has made that possible. Cellphones can snap a picture of someone writing out a check and capture all the information that a forger needs." He added that the evolution and sophistication of printers and scanners have made check copying so simple that even 12-year-olds have been charged with forgery. In 2004, check fraud reached $19 billion. And in addressing the frightening rise in identity theft, Abagnale said that there are now several Web sites that offer personal information -- including a subject's Social Security numbers -- for a small fee. "Identity theft is only limited to one's imagination."

In response to proposed new rules by the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy, two professors at Kansas State University have issued a national call for better business ethics education and better accounting ethics education.

The Virginia Society of CPAs has teamed with professional education and corporate training provider SmartPros Ltd. on online ethics continuing professional education.

The American Institute of CPAs bestowed awards upon two members and an accounting firm during its Spring Meeting of Council here this week.

Good news for accounting graduates: Average salary offers to new college graduates are climbing at a steady pace, and those with accounting degrees are faring particularly well, according to a recent salary survey.

There would be a greater required concentration on accounting and business under new model rules for CPA qualification that are being proposed by the Education Committee of the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy. The proposed change would increase the number of semester hours required in upper-division undergraduate-level accounting -- from 24 to 30 hours, or 20 hours at the graduate level, or an equivalent combination, and from 24 to 36 hours at the upper-division undergraduate level, or 24 at the graduate level, for business other than accounting. It would also have specific hourly requirements for both accounting and business subjects, including three hours of ethics in accounting and three hours of ethics in business. Other subjects within the accounting concentration are financial accounting and reporting for business organizations; financial accounting and reporting for government and not-for-profit entities; assurance services; taxation; management accounting; and accounting information systems. The revisions would centralize the definitions in Rule 5-1 and the application in Rule 5-2, as well as reflect greater detail on accreditation and the appropriate scrutiny accompanying each level of accreditation. Comments may be mailed to NASBA's Education Committee, c/o NASBA, 150 Fourth Avenue North, Suite 700, Nashville, Tenn., 37219; faxed to (615) 846-0149; or e-mailed to kellis@nasba.org. The draft is available at www.nasba.org/nasbaweb.nsf/pub.

The 27,000-member California Society of CPAs and the California CPA Education Foundation named Loretta Doon, CPA, to the newly created post of chief operating officer, effective April 18. Doon currently serves as associate executive director of the California Teachers Association. She is a member of CalCPA and was president of the Education Foundation's board of trustees from June 2003 through May 2004. She also was appointed to the California Lottery Commission by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. The California Society of CPAs and the California CPA Education Foundation are separate entities overseen by chief executive John Dunleavy. As chief operating officer, Doon will work with both organizations.

Tax prep conglomerate H&R Block and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now have teamed up in a partnership to help boost awareness of the Earned Income Tax Credit and to reduce filing costs for low-income taxpayers.

Publisher John Wiley & Sons Inc., which publishes CPA Exam review books, has moved its test prep online via a partnership with Acadient, a Boston-based developer and distributor of online learning.

Tax-prep conglomerate H&R Block and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now have teamed up in a partnership to help boost awareness of the Earned Income Tax credit and to reduce filing costs for low-income taxpayers. Block and Acorn will canvass some 65 cities in a door-to-door joint education effort aimed at low-income filers who may be eligible for the EITC. The effort will also highlight the costs and speed factors associated with refund options, and also work to hasten the elimination of costly fees connected with refund anticipation loans. Ironically, the Block-Acorn alliance comes exactly one year after Acorn held rallies at Block offices protesting what they perceived were aggressive sales of the company's RALs, which they claim unfairly targeted lower-income taxpayers.

James Simpson, CPA and owner of Indianapolis-based Financial Technologies & Management, remembers all too well the continuing professional education classes of recent years.

Accounting, finance, and banking professionals who hold a professional credential of some type, on average earned 30 percent more than employees in those fields working without a credential, according to a survey by CareerBank.com. Credentialed finance professionals, who comprised roughly half the survey's 2,800 respondents, earned on average $70,096, compared to $53,748 for those without any credential. Of the credentialed respondents participating in the survey, more than 62 percent held the CPA designation. The average annual salary for CPAs participating in the survey increased just over 2 percent from 2003, to $73,295. CPA salaries were not broken down by career longevity, but three-quarters of all respondents had been working in their current position for less than five years. Those in their positions more than five years earned 25 percent more ($75,858 vs. $69,791) than those tenured for under five years. In gender-specific terms, the average 2004 salary for women respondents rose nearly $2,000, to $52,012 while the average salary for men dipped $190 to $69,848. The was the fourth annual salary survey of finance professionals for CareerBank.com, a HR Web site for accounting, finance, and banking posts.

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By almost anyone's accounting, accounting is making a comeback.

AICPA adopts outsourcing ethics