Xero has named Amy Vetter as its first Head of Accounting in the United States. Vetter's position is one in which she is described as evangelist for accounting, practice management and supporting financial solutions. It is not one in which she is involved in the company's accounting department.

The Internal Revenue Service has agreed it will not provide its own direct tax return filing. That is one of the provisions of a five-year agreement between the Free File Alliance and the IRS. The parties said the agreement could lead to improvements such as the importing of prior-year information, along with additional options for free state tax returns.

The VP who has headed QuickBooks Online tfor he last 19 months has left Intuit after 15 years with the company. The LinkedIn page of Terry Hicks, VP and general of QuickBooks Online, shows his job supervising Intuit's fastest growing product ended last month.