Ernst & Young Global Limited, doing business as EY, is a multinational professional services network with headquarters in London, England. EY is one of the largest professional services networks in the world. Along with Deloitte, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers, it is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms. It primarily provides assurance, tax, consulting and advisory services to its clients. Like many of the larger accounting firms in recent years, EY has expanded into markets adjacent to accounting, including strategy, operations, HR, technology, and financial services consulting.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is a multinational professional services network of firms, operating as partnerships under the PwC brand. PwC ranks as the second-largest professional services network in the world and is considered one of the Big Four accounting firms, along with Deloitte, EY and KPMG.
The national debt of the United States is the total national debt owed by the federal government of the United States to Treasury security holders. The national debt at any point in time is the face value of the then outstanding Treasury securities that have been issued by the Treasury and other federal government agencies. The terms "national deficit" and "national surplus" usually refer to the federal government budget balance from year to year, not the cumulative amount of debt. In a deficit year the national debt increases as the government needs to borrow funds to finance the deficit, while in a surplus year the debt decreases as more money is received than spent, enabling the government to reduce the debt by buying back some Treasury securities. In general, government debt increases as a result of government spending and decreases from tax or other receipts, both of which fluctuate during the course of a fiscal year. There are two components of gross national debt:
The Canada Revenue Agency is the revenue service of the Government of Canada. The CRA collects taxes, administers tax law and policy, and delivers benefit programs and tax credits for the federal government and most provincial and territorial governments. Legislation administered by the CRA includes the Income Tax Act, parts of the Excise Tax Act, and laws relating to the Canada Pension Plan, employment insurance (EI), softwood lumber, and tobacco. The Agency also oversees the registration of charities in Canada, and ensures their compliance with tax and common law.
Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited , commonly referred to as Deloitte, is a multinational professional services network with offices in over 150 countries and territories around the world. Deloitte is one of the Big Four accounting organizations and the largest professional services network in the world by revenue and number of professionals, with headquarters in London, England.
Jackson Hewitt Tax Service Inc. is the second largest tax-preparation service in the United States; responsible for preparing over 2 million federal, state, and local income-tax returns each year.
Intuit Inc. is an American business that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. As of 2019, more than 95% of its revenues and earnings come from its activities within the United States. Intuit's products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, personal finance app Mint and the small business accounting program QuickBooks. Intuit has lobbied extensively against the IRS providing taxpayers with free pre-filled forms, as is the norm in other developed countries.
TurboTax is a software package for preparation of American income tax returns, produced by Intuit. TurboTax is a market leader in its product segment, competing with H&R Block Tax Software and TaxAct. TurboTax was developed by Michael A. Chipman of Chipsoft in 1984 and was sold to Intuit in 1993.
QuickBooks is an accounting software package developed and marketed by Intuit. QuickBooks products are geared mainly toward small and medium-sized businesses and offer on-premises accounting applications as well as cloud-based versions that accept business payments, manage and pay bills, and payroll functions.
Tax preparation is the process of preparing tax returns, often income tax returns, often for a person other than the taxpayer, and generally for compensation. Tax preparation may be done by the taxpayer with or without the help of tax preparation software and online services. Tax preparation may also be done by a licensed professional such as an attorney, certified public accountant or enrolled agent, or by an unlicensed tax preparation business. Because United States income tax laws are considered to be complicated, many taxpayers seek outside assistance with taxes.
Homestead Technologies is a web hosting company based in Burlington, Massachusetts. Homestead offers its members WYSIWIG tools to build and publish their own websites. Since its founding in 1997 as a free service provider, Homestead has expanded the scope of its services to include online marketing, paid search ads, SEO tools and e-commerce services. Homestead.com, which launched in June 1998, enables Internet users to build a feature-rich website by integrating and customizing content, with focus on small businesses, e-commerce, and their related services, such as consulting, listings and online business directories.
TaxAct Holdings, Inc. is an American tax preparation software company based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The company offers its own software package "TaxAct" to individual tax registers, companies and professional affiliates. The company was founded in 1998. Since 2012, TaxAct Holdings, Inc. is a subsidiary of Blucora.
Credit Karma is an American multinational personal finance company founded in 2007, which has been a brand of Intuit since December 2020. It is best known as a free credit and financial management platform, but its features also include free tax preparation, monitoring of unclaimed property databases and a tool to identify and dispute credit report errors. The company operates in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom.
Free File is a service which allows U.S. taxpayers to prepare and e-file their federal income tax returns for free. Through the program, the IRS itself offers fillable forms to all taxpayers, while commercial software companies that are part of the Free File Alliance offer free tax preparation software to tax filers with annual adjusted gross income (AGI) below $72,000. The service is available through the IRS's website at www.irs.gov/freefile.
A tax return is the completion of documentation that calculates an entity’s or individual's income earned with the amount of tax payable to the government, government organizations or to potential taxpayers.
Santa Barbara Tax Products Group is based in San Diego, California and operates as a subsidiary of Green Dot Corporation. Santa Barbara Tax Products Group was established in 2010 upon the sale of the Tax Products Business Unit of Santa Barbara Bank & Trust (SBBT), and was acquired by Green Dot Corporation in 2014.
CalFile is the current tax preparation program/service of the California Franchise Tax Board (FTB).
Under the federal law of the United States of America, tax evasion or tax fraud, is the purposeful illegal attempt of a taxpayer to evade assessment or payment of a tax imposed by Federal law. Conviction of tax evasion may result in fines and imprisonment. Compared to other countries, Americans are more likely to pay their taxes fairly, honestly, and on time.
Refund to Savings (R2S) is a program intended to help low-income households build savings and increase financial security.
Quickbase, Inc., provides a low-code application development platform called Quickbase. Headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the company was divested from Intuit in March 2016. In Jan 2019, Private-Equity firm Vista Equity Partners announced buying a majority stake in Quickbase from Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe for a reported $1 billion. Quickbase is used by more than 6,000 customers, including half of the Fortune 100, across a variety of industries and use cases, including process and project management, asset and order tracking, customer and contracts management, time and expense, sales and HR applications. Competitors include Appian, Oracle APEX, Microsoft PowerApps, Mendix, and OutSystems.
