On the heels of its purchase of inventory software company, Lettuce, Intuit has announced the acquisition of Australian start-up, Invitco. The Sydney-based company developed cloud-based data extraction technology that is used in its accounts payable processing product, Invitbox. Intuit's rival Xero named Invitco as its Emerging Add-On Partner of the Year for 2013.

A pilot program, designed to tax preparers who abused the Earned Income Tax Credit, kept $590 million from being improperly paid out in 2013, according to John A. Koskinen, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service. Koskinen made the observation recently in written testimony before the Senate Finance Committee.

The 2014 tax season was as uneventful for software as 2013's was marred by problems. So much for that analysis. What tax professionals really want to know if what changes will hit the products they use for the next tax season. Only a few new features are ready for public view, but then again, a substantial number of tax preparers new their software without seeing the new stuff.