There are a lot of questions about how social media outlets will change the way practitioners do tax research in the future. While practitioners need access to authoritative publications and interpretative guidance, there is also a need to ask a peer a question. In the past, we might have done this at the water cooler, or over lunch with a peer, but in the age of the virtual office, these opportunities may be more difficult.
While Intuit is a long-time provider of tax tools for individuals and practitioners, they have shown some fresh thinking in their professional tax research offering. The tool, ProLine Tax Research, includes authoritative content from BNA and IRS Forms/Publications. Peer to peer advice is facilitated on a virtual community. Questions and answers can be searched and retrieved at will from a user community.
The White Paper is available for download from CPAFirmSoftware.com at the following link:
Another place where innovation is taking place is in the mobile space. Many publishers are creating mobile applications or websites which support mobile browsers for their product offerings. Mobile applications for practitioners include:
- IntelliConnect Mobile/CCH Mobile from CCH, a Wolters Kluwer Business (iOS, BlackBerry)
- BNA Quick Tax Reference App (iOS, Android, BlackBerry)
- Mobile CS from Thomson Reuters (iOS)
- QuickBooks Connect from Intuit (iOS)
There are many other applications out there related to tax & accounting. These include the recently announced IRS2GO application, vendor provided tax refund checkers, and many others. Many authors have written about mobile applications for practitioners in The CPA Practice Advisor, my favorite publication for the tax & accounting space.