A federal court has barred a Tucker, Ga.-based CPA and his firms from preparing federal income tax returns for others. A permanent injunction shuts down the preparation business of Matthew Adegbite and his companies, MAS & Associates CPA and Mathew A. Adegbite CPA. The accountant drew the action for allegedly inflating deductions or creating phony ones.

A former CPA and attorney, who failed to pay taxes on millions of dollars he earned, has been sentenced to 48 months in prison. John T. Hoang of Woodbridge, Va., who pleaded guilty to charges in July, drew the term for creating phony businesses on some of the hundreds of returns he prepared from 2004 through 2006.

A program for truncating Taxpayer Identification Numbers should be extended to Employer Identification Numbers, according to a recommendation from Information Reporting Program Advisory Committee. In its 2013 annual report, the committee says truncating EINs would help prevent identity theft and it also said the IRS should support a proposed bill that would allow Social Security numbers to be truncated on wage reporting forms.

Independent tax preparers have lost market share and will continue to be under pressure, H&R Block said this week. In comments made an an investor's day webcast, Block reported that independents, which it says comprise 44 percent of the preparation market, had lost about 1 percent of market share since 2010.