Sales-and-use-tax vendor Avalara plans to open an Accountants Resource Center on its website next week. The center will provide free state tax forms and applications for exemption certificates, along with tools such as white papers and videos, including webinars.

With the focus for Thomson Reuters for 2011 on cleaning up the mess in its former markets division, the Tax & Accounting business was a welcome bright spot for the company's results for the fourth quarter and year ended December 31. That segment produced a 17-percent increase in operating profits on a 14-percent rise in revenue for 2011 in what was the sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth of EBITDA for Tax & Accounting.

Thomas W. Richardson, a former Internal Revenue Service employee, has been sentenced to 105 months in prison for filing 29 individual tax returns for 2005 which claimed refunds of $7.9 million. Richardson, a resident of Mansfield, Texas, was also ordered to pay $30,649 in restitution.

Thomson Reuters plans to sell its property tax business, one of three lines the company said this week said that it intends to shed. The other two businesses to be divested are the Legal division's Law School Publishing business; and Financial & Risk's operation's eXimius business, which is part of the Retail Wealth Management organization.