If this year's tax season is going to show growth in filings, it will probably be after the filing deadline. That is what happened in 2016 when each week's report lagged the 2015 results until the report for the season through April 22, 2016 when every statistical category showed growth.

The updated version of the Uniform CPA Examination was launched on April 1. The exam is described as providing an additional assessment of higher-order cognitive skills to test a candidate's critical thinking, problem solving and analytical ability. It also features greater use of task-based simulations to assess those skills.

It's becoming difficult to find new ways of describing the weekly tax season results released by the Internal Revenue Service. For the season through March 31, results, except for the size of refunds, again remained behind the year ago season through April 1.