Intuit is offering users of its Lacerte and Pro Series tax preparation software a free seven-day trial of the company's new ProLine Tax Research. The trial is available to users by opening their tax software and downloading an update, which adds a tab to the software "Tax Research Powered by BNA".

Read more...

CHICAGO - Morningstar has ended a year of hints about its intentions and has started publishing credit ratings for about 100 of the largest U.S. companies with plans to expand that to 1,000 companies over the next year. Ratings are available for free at Morningstar.com with forecasts and scares available to institutional equity research clients.

Intuit anticipates that the number of taxpayers filing returns for tax year 2009 will dip one to two percentage points, giving the country two consecutive years in which the number of returns has fallen. The statistic was given by company executives as they made presentations at year-end investors' conferences held by major Wall Street firms. The conversations were made available via Webcasts from Intuit's Web site.