A federal jury has convicted a Baton Rouge, La., tax preparer of fraud and failing to report hundreds of thousands of dollars of her own income on tax returns. Angela Myers, who operated Angie's Tax Service, was found guilty of wire fraud, making false claims, subscribing to false tax returns and aggravated identity theft. Many of her victims were patients confined to a nursing home.

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The delay in accepting tax returns by the Internal Revenue Service took a big bite out of financial results for H&R Block for the third quarter ended January 31. The better news was that while revenue dipped by 29.1 percent for the most recently ended period, the number of tax returns received by tax services chain were down only 5 percent for the tax season through February 28, compared to last year. Block says those results are consistent with the rest of the industry.

In a season plagued by serious software issues, the situation has apparently improved for some who purchased the rewritten TaxWorks application. But for those suffering the woes of ATX from CCH Small Firm Services, there are fewer indications that things have gotten much better. Among both groups there are still reports of serious performance problems, clogged or unhelpful tech support and those who have abandoned their initial software to be able to conduct business for tax season.