After the tax season started with returns at lower levels than in 2015, observers expected results would improve. But total returns remained off from the beginning and then registered only a tiny increase for the period ended March 11. Then for the season through March 18, total returns dropped slightly as did the percentage efiled by paid preparers.

With the number of returns efiled by professional preparers still lagging the 2015 tax season, those efiled by D-I-Yers accelerated growth over the prior year. The number of returns filed by the pros through March 11 were down by 2.5 percent, the same as in the tax statistics through March 4. But self-prepared efilings moved up by 4.l percent from the corresponding period ended March 13, 2015.

A New York tax preparer who pleaded guilty to filing phony state income tax returns in 2009 has been arrested on new tax charges. Steve Sabba, 58-years old of Yorktown Heights, N.Y., has been accused of not filing his personal income tax return for 2014 and misrepresenting his income in 2012, according to the New York  Office of Taxation and Finance. He has pleaded not guilty.

Two preparers who worked at Mo Money Tax stores in the Richmond, Va.-area have pleaded guilty to tax return fraud. The pleas by Jeremy Blanchard, 35, and Erik Pittman, 35, both of Memphis, Tenn., this month are the latest in actions against those involved in Mo Money, which had as many as 300 stores in 18 states before the courts barred the chain's owners from preparing federal taxes for others or being involved in owning a tax business.