The 2017 tax season remained behind 2016 levels. But the gap from last years' statistics continued to narrow and the average refund grew slightly according to the Internal Revenue Service which issued its report for the season through February 24.

Intuit this week said the number of efiled TurboTax units for the tax season through February 20 was down by 10 percent. But that was still better than the market has shown for both self-prepared efiles and total efiles.

Abacus Next, which provides software for legal professionals, has entered the CPA market with the purchase of Cloudnine Realtime and Results Software. Cloudnine hosts applications such as those from Intuit, Sage and Microsoft while Results produces CRM packages for QuickBooks users.