Intuit was a winner in this year's consumer tax competition. With the Internal Revenue Service reporting that self-prepared returns were up by 6.5 percent over the 2013 tax season, Intuit said the number of TurboTax efiled returns that were accepted this year were up by 9 percent.

The market for Internet-based payroll and HR services is drawing a crowd as three organizations have gone to the public market for funds. Those are the TriNet Group, Paycom Software and Paylocity with TriNet having raised $240 million in an IPO that was priced a week ago. Paylocity went public on March 18 while Paycom filed a registration statement for its proposed IPO on March 10.

Call it the case of the dueling surveys. Cloud accounting company Xero says that its survey shows that 55 percent the accountants responding plan to offer cloud accounting services to clients. That comes on the heels of another survey that shows 70.5 percent of firms responding do not use any cloud accounting applications.