PARSPPANY, N.J. - Wal-Mart's decision to remodel its smaller stores put a crimp in the plans for tax chain Jackson Hewitt's expansion because the new design can't accommodate the tax business facilities in several Wal-Mart locations during the next filing season, while its revenue could also be impacted by its banking partners considering lowering interest rates on refund anticipation loans.

Meanwhile, the company said it also plans to launch its first online tax preparation program, although it gave no details about when the program would be introduced. These statements came as Jackson Hewitt reported results for the first quarter ended July 31. According to its SEC filings, the tax chain will operate in 1,500 to 1,750 Wal-Mart stores, but did not detal how many locations will be affected by the new design.. The company also stated it had learned of "potential structural changes under consideration with respect to the offering of RAL and Assisted Refund products by certain of our bank partners, including lowering the APR in the RAL program." The agreements, under which the banks pay Jackson Hewitt a fixed fee for offering and administering bank products, expire on Oct. 31, 2010.

The professional tax preparation market needs regulation because of the errors being made by a significant proportion of those preparing taxes, according to representatives from state and federal bodies in a panel discussion at this week's IRS Public Forum on Tax Return Preparer Review.

"Unqualified or unethical tax return preparers can cause enormous damage to the Federal tax system, to taxpayers and to the tax preparer community as a whole," was the prepared statement of Michael Mckenney, assistant inspector general for audit  and
treasury inspector general for tax administration. 

It was interesting, and unexpected, when the three top players in professional tax preparation decided that this year is the time to make a bigger noise about online professional tax preparation.

In fact, it was very unexpected that at the Illinois CPA Society's Midwest Accounting and Financial Showcase that both Intuit and CCH would make announcements. Intuit had been making announcements on the order of Hansel and Gretel dropping bread crumbs to mark a trail.

But CCH decided this year it was the place to talk about the delivery schedule of its online version of ProSystem fx Tax, along with other applications. These moves are detailed in "Online Tax: the Future Is Now?" in this issue. Call it what you want - Software-as-a-Software service, ASP (I like the simple Internet-based myself)- the fact that CCH, Thomson Reuters and Intuit have all put their plans on the table means they've decided that acceptance of online applications has gotten to the point, it's worth try to sell them more aggressively.