The American Institute of CPAs is opposing a plan for voluntary tax preparer regulation by the Internal Revenue Service. The organization, in a letter to Commissioner John Koskinen this week, urged the IRS to use tools already under its control, including the Preparer Tax Identification Number, for ensuring better preparer performance and detection of fraud and incompetence.

The Internal Revenue Service is starting a one-year pilot program next month for small businesses with retirement plans that owe penalties for not filing reporting documents. Businesses that file current and prior-year forms during the program, they can avoid penalties.

Intuit had a killer tax season in both consumer and professional software sales. In an earnings webcast, CEO Brad Smith said, "We succeeded on all fronts" in meeting financial goals, continuing "We won this tax season." The company gained about a 1.5-percentage point gain in market share in the do-it-yourself tax category and the 3-percent gain in professional tax revenue was a strong performance in the slow-growing paid preparer market.

Intuit CEO Brad Smith appeared this week to place the company's CPASelect program into the category of something that is useful, but which won't become a major tool. Smith said during the company's earnings webcast for the second quarter that its emphasis is on reducing the number of tax questions consumers have, more than on providing expert help