Avalara has acquired EZtax, which makes tax compliance products for the telecommunications inudstry. The company's software, which bears the same name, calculates and files taxes due on such services in the United States and Canada. Terms were not disclosed.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to notify thousands of taxpayers whose accounts were recently accessed by hackers about the incidents. The IRS says intruders were able to use information such as Social Security numbers and dates of birth and street addresses, obtained from non-IRS sources, to access its Get Transcript" application.

The Internal Revenue Service is scheduled to return millions of dollars in fees paid by those who took the Registered Tax Return Preparer test. The IRS next week plans to mail checks of $116 each paid for the roughly 89,000 tests that were paid for and taken between November 2011 and January 2013. Some preparers took the test more than once.

It is unlikely anyone would call the market for indirect tax products exciting. But in the last few months it has become much more interesting as the outlines of global competition for customers in this arena has started emerging. And it has gotten more interesting because of the amount of money invested in the battle in response to worldwide trends.