Intuit has been closely monitoring congressional and IRS activity on the tax extension legislation passed by Congress late Thursday night and said it has completed various scenario plans and programmed its professional tax software applications to be prepared for all the latest tax law changes.

With just weeks to go before the end of the year, Congress has cleared tax relief legislation extending the Bush-era individual and capital gains and dividend tax cuts for all taxpayers for two years, as well as a 13-month extension of unemployment benefits.

The House approved an $858 billion extension of the Bush-era tax rates and unemployment benefits late Thursday night, a day after the Senate approved the bill, sending the bill to President Obama’s desk.

The modern era of tax return preparer administration began on Sept. 28, 2010.

Nonprofit charitable tax-exempt organizations filed 313,121 information returns for tax year 2007, according to new statistics released by the Internal Revenue Service, an increase of 4 percent from 2006.

The American Institute of CPAs has launched a new public service tax website to help taxpayers better understand how the federal tax system works and connect with a CPA for tax help.

A federal judge’s decision striking down a key provision of the health care reform law, along with the near-certain repeal of the 1099 information reporting requirements in the law, indicate that President Obama’s signature achievement of the past year is likely to be chipped away in the years ahead before many of its provisions even take effect.