WASHINGTON — The Internal Revenue Service will hold a Webinar regarding the new registration requirements for professional tax preparers next week. The hour-long “New Requirements for Tax Return Preparers – Learn the Who, What, When and How" will be Webcast on Wednesday June 9 at 2 p.m Eastern time.

Intuit's planned practice management suite is going to be a completely Web-based entry. And although Intuit offered few new details, as it seems to be following a policy of dropping a few hints periodically about the package, the fact that the offering is a SaaS product marks a significant shift in the company's approach to the professional tax and accounting market.

With its tax season hurt by the inability to get funding for all its refund loan business, Jackson Hewitt saw 2.53 million tax returns prepared at its company-owned and franchised offices during this year's tax season, a drop of 14.4 percent from 2.955 million for the 2009 tax season. And that was actually an improvement from the 17-percent to 19-percent drop the company had predicted, since it had a better performance in the second half of the season than expected. Read more...