Practice management

H&R Block Inc. announced that its new bank opened more than 2 million prepaid card bank accounts by the end of the 2007 tax season, doubling the company’s original projection.

The popularity of S corporations has skyrocketed, with the number of businesses opting for them rising from 725,000 in 1985 to more than 3 million, according to the most recent statistics.And that growth is well-deserved, according to Richard Thompson, of the CPA and business advisory firm Sikich LLP. "S corporations have become such an important business vehicle because taxpayers understand their extreme value," he said.

The recent release of the long-awaited final regs on nonqualified deferred compensation under Code Sec. 409A did not bring a much-hoped-for extension of the effective date for full implementation of the rules. The final regs - all 209 pages of them, and the 186 pages it took to explain the changes made or not made to the proposed regs - do not extend the transition relief for compliance beyond Dec. 31, 2007.That does not leave much time for compliance, let alone formulating tax strategies that take maximum advantage of the small leeway that the final regs provide to employers. Compensation plans drafted under the proposed regulations must be compared against the final regs. Decisions on whether a plan should be terminated must be made. Final plan designs must be drafted and adopted. And then an explanation of the terms of the compliant plan must be explained (and sold) to the key executives who the plan has been adopted to keep happy in the first place.

As expected, the Treasury Department has created a new committee that will be charged with studying problems in the accounting industry.

The 2008 Low Income Taxpayer Clinic grant application process is now open.

Intuit Inc. has introduced a new trial balance utility for Lacerte tax software users, as well as announcing that it will host a series of one-day symposiums in June, providing training on topics such as how to use Intuit solutions more efficiently and how to successfully market a practice.

The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board met in early May to discuss the status of the IRS Private Debt Collection Program, as well as the budget for the IRS’s 2009 fiscal year.

The 2007 tax filing season set a number of records at the Internal Revenue Service -- highlighted by the more than 76 million electronically filed individual tax returns and more than 140 million visits to the IRS Web site.

For every achievement that the Internal Revenue Service reaches when it comes to technology, there seems to remain a disconnect with the agency’s capability of fulfilling its longer-term strategic plans.

Rankings can be very subjective, but they are still captivating. Everyone has an opinion of what they think is the best movie or song. As a Baby Boomer, I remember for years listening to a local station’s Top 500 classic rock and roll rankings to see if “In the Still of The Night,” was still ranked No 1.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has named Mary Moore Hamrick as director of its newly established Office of External Relations.The public affairs and government relations offices will now be combined under the single communications department. To head those offices, the board also announced that two new deputy directors have joined the board. Colleen Brennan will head up public affairs activities, while Kent Bonham will oversee government relations.

Churches, charities and other tax-exempt organizations that paid the federal excise tax on long-distance or bundled telephone service qualify for this year’s one-time telephone excise tax refund, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

The Government Accountability Office wants to see better descriptions and more cost and expected performance information on the Internal Revenue Service’s new initiatives in the agency’s future budget submissions.The IRS’s budget request for 2008 includes a spending increase of almost 5 percent, to $11.6 billion, and the GAO noted that the agency’s budget proposes shifting a greater proportion of spending to enforcement, continuing a trend.

Embarrassingly for Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, one of the loudest proponents of reducing the tax gap, two mistakes he made in recent years on his own property taxes have recently come to light.A political ad sponsored by the Montana Republican State Central Committee has brought to light local property taxes in both Washington and Montana that tripped up Baucus, D-Mont.

CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, announced that its 2007 User Conference for tax and accounting professionals will be held Nov. 4-7 at the Gaylord Texan Resort & Convention Center.

The Association for Accounting Marketing has released its 2006 Accounting Marketing/Sales Responsibility and Compensation Survey Results. The survey was very comprehensive, and shows an interesting snapshot of where many firms are with regard to marketing.

The Treasury Department issued rules last week aimed at dismissing some of the uncertainties around Roth 401(k) plans.

The Internal Revenue Service announced that while the phase-out of the tax credit for Toyota and Lexus hybrids continues, General Motors Corp. and Nissan hybrids still qualify for the full credit.

REPORT: BETTER JOB NEEDS TO BE DONE FOR 'INNOCENT SPOUSES'

Insurance company demutualizations became popular in the late 1990s. Facilitated by revised state laws, mutual insurance companies were attracted to conversion to stock companies for the same reasons that companies have long sought to be publicly held - greater access to capital. The policyholders of mutual insurance companies were generally granted cash or stock in return for their interest in the mutual insurance company.