H&R Block is continuing to attempt to take advantage of the woes faced by Intuit's TurboTax this tax season. The company is offering taxpayers the opportunity the pay half of what they paid another tax preparer last year.
Block had already offered free desktop software to unhappy TurboTax users.

Wolters Kluwer, CCH Small Firm Services has introduced a web-based platform, CCH iFirm, that paves the way for placing its entire tax and accounting suite in the cloud. Currently, iFirm offers access to practice management and trial balance functions. But more applications likely will be placed under the iFirm umbrella to draw from a common database.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has censured Chinese accounting firms that are members of the Big Four. The Chinese firms admitted they failed to produce requested documents before proceedings were begun in 2012. They must provide documents and meet SEC requirements over the next for year. Each firm agreed to pay $500,000.

Nonprofit software vendor Abila has simplified the channel program it inherited. Late last month, the Austin, Texas, based company said it had reduced seven partner categories to three as part of what it is formally calling the Partner Ecosystem. The program has three elements, Business Partners, Product Partners and Implementation Partners.