Tax

A group of former Intuit employees have launched Taxnet.com, which provides Internet-based filing of income taxes, along with electronic filing.

The sale of many of its offices two years ago pushed financial planning and tax prep firm Gilman+Ciocia Inc. into the black for fiscal 2004, as a $6.1 million gain on that sale wiped out an operating loss of just over $1 million for the year ended June 30.

The National Association of Securities Dealers charged H&R Block Financial Advisors Inc., the investment arm of the tax prep giant, with fraud in the sale of $16 million worth of Enron Corp. bonds after the energy firm's finances and bond ratings had begun to collapse.

The Internal Revenue Service has selected three new members for its Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee, the body that serves as a public forum for discussion of electronic tax administration issues.

As worldwide legislative and regulatory changes make tax risk planning a top priority, many companies are aligning their tax strategies with their organization's overall enterprise risk profile, according to a survey of corporate tax directors by Ernst & Young.

A Connecticut district judge ruled against the Internal Revenue Service and ordered the agency to refund more than $62 million to a General Electric subsidiary stemming from a transaction that the IRS said was a sham.

The American Institute of CPAs has named Thomas J. Purcell III to a two-year term as chairman of its Tax Executive Committee, the tax policy and standards-setting body of the AICPA.

Despite Internal Revenue Service assertions that it had halted the decline in the government's efforts to police corporate tax non-compliance, the pace of corporate audits is running well below record-low levels registered in 2003, according to an analysis of IRS data.

Harper & Pearson Co., an auditing and business consulting firm based here, has merged two regional tax-consulting practices under its brand - Cabaniss, Horn & Passmore, and Kathy B. Devine Co.

More than 60 charities, churches and other tax-exempt groups have been contacted by the Internal Revenue Service about alleged improper political activities, the agency disclosed.