Phony insurance tax form e-services email scams are targeting professional tax preparers. The Internal Revenue Service warned recently attempts to access annuity and life insurance accounts and a renewed effort to con pros with purported e-services agreements.

Three New York City owners of tax preparation businesses have been indicted on charges they used stolen identity information to prepare federal tax returns. In unrelated cases, Hakeem Bamgbala, and Afolabi Ajelero, owner of Kaybamz , a tax preparation business in Brooklyn; and Oyeniyi Jaiyesimi, who operates a tax preparation business in Springfield Gardens, face trial on multiple counts of alleged wire fraud and identity theft.

Intuit, which has been top of the do-it-yourself tax preparation heap, is making a major push into assisted preparation. The software has moved beyond five tax seasons of testing its concept and is hiring credential preparers at a accelerated rate.

A 39-year-old Dallas, Texas, tax preparer, who was a fugitive for more than two years, had pled guilty to obstruction of justice. Shannon Tecoko Mays also faces a lengthy prison sentence because of his guilty plea to a February 2014 indictment that said he sought more than $6 million in refunds via bogus returns.