A Florida CPA has been arrested for allegedly stealing nearly $200,000 from an elderly client. The Sarasota County's Sheriff's Office has accused CPA Brian Strand of stealing the money, withdrawing much of it via ATMs at area casinos.

Xero and Intuit have both expanded the links between their accounting software packages and ecommerce vendors. Xero has integrated its system with Shopify, an online company based in Canada, while Intuit has established integration between QuickBooks Online and both Shopify and Big commerce, based in Australia.

The number of returns efiled by tax professionals has dropped while the number of self-prepared returns continued to rise. Those are the results shown by statistics released this week by the Internal Revenue Service. The numbers cover the filing season through February 27 this year, compared to the period ended February 28 last year.