An Internet primer for tax professionals.

How can surfing the Internet aid a tax practice? At the very least, Federal and state tax forms and instructions can be obtained from the Net, tax research can be performed using search engines, returns can be filed electronically and clients can receive and send electronic mail. However, none of this is possible unless the practitioner is technologically up to date. This article explains the tax practice uses of the Internet and the equipment needed to start surfing.

These days, most tax professionals have been exposed to the Internet (or "the Net"), even if only from the constant media coverage. The Net is useful not only because of the increasing tax information available through it, but also because of the opportunities it provides tax professionals for practice management and development and enhanced client relationships.

The Net has experienced phenomenal growth over the last few years. What started 27 years ago as a national network for communication between government agencies, defense contractors, scientists and educators has become an international network with more than 50 million users, and growing at the rate of about one million new users each month. Just as other emerging technologies have aided tax professionals over the last 20 years (e.g., microcomputers in the early 1980s, fax machines in the late 1980s and cellular phones in the early 1990s), the Net is potentially a very productive communication tool for the late 1990s.

Current tax applications and materials available through the Net are covered in this article. The following represent some of the major tools reviewed:

* Tax research materials and Internet connections to online tax services (e.g., direct access to LEXIS-NEXIS).

* Availability of Federal and state tax forms, instructions, publications, etc.

* Electronic filing via the Internet.

* Quick access to product reviews, software demos, pricing information and ordering ability from both tax- and practice-related vendors.

* Use of electronic mail (e-mail) and attached documents for electronic correspondence with clients and professionals outside the office.

* Application of long-distance telephone, videophone and teleconferencing technologies over the Net.

* Accessing Usenet newsgroups and mailing lists (listservs).

* Publishing a firm "home page" for practice development.

* Overview of intranet possibilities to facilitate intra-office communications.

This article is an introduction to the varied and powerful new tools for a tax practice available with Net technology. While hundreds of books have been written about the Net (generally without specific reference to tax materials), the following should stimulate practitioners' thinking about the possibilities of using Net technology in a tax practice.

Internet Terminology and Access Methods

The recent explosion in Internet use and applications can probably be traced to the development of the Mosaic "browser," the software that enables a user to navigate the Net. Mosaic was developed by a small group of programmers at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Mosaic distinguished itself by being a very user-friendly program providing, for the first time, a graphical-interface method to access the Net. Previously, Net users generally needed to be well-versed in terminal-style keyboard commands. The large numbers of Windows, Mac and UNIX users, coupled with Mosaic's cross-platform capability, caused its use to spread rapidly, in part due to the fact that its first and subsequent versions were provided free to users by simply accessing the Mosaic Internet site at NCSA.

Other similarly styled browsers soon hit the market; the most popular is Netscape Navigator, which has captured about 75% of the browser market.(1) Microsoft's browser, Internet Explorer, is now gaining in market share, although its current share is meager compared to Microsoft's usual market dominance.

Because of a common transmission protocol--Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP)--different computer networks, computers and operating systems (Windows, UNIX, etc.) can communicate with each other. A browser operating under TCP/IP enables the user to access any Internet site by a referencing method known as the site's Uniform Resource Locator (URL). A URL is an address to a specific Internet site. The Internet URL for the authors' Internet file server (i.e., a dedicated Internet host computer) at California State University (CSU) San Marcos is: http://www.csusm.edu/. This is the same style of address recently seen in all forms of advertising. That URL address, currently the most common style, is interpreted as follows:(2)

http://   =   uses the "HyperText Transfer
              Protocol" service (vs. file
              transfer protocol (FTP), gopher, etc.)
www.      =   refers to the "World Wide Web"
              (Web) system of hypertext
              Internet sites
csusm.    =   the first part of the CSU San Marcos
              Web server address
edu       =   the extension to "csusm" indicating
              that the server is located at an
              educational organization
              (vs. "com" for a business,
              "gov" for government, etc.)

"Hypertext" is becoming increasingly more common in electronic documents. Virtually every tax CD-ROM, for instance, uses hypertext links ("hyperlinks"); by mouse-clicking on a highlighted word(s), the user can move instantly to another location in the document. The hyperlink can also take the user to a completely different document (either at that site or another) in which, for example, the hypertext word(s) are defined or otherwise expanded.

Thus, in the case of the Web, hypertext is used to link not just to other documents on the current Web server, but also to other URL sites throughout the world. In other words, the hypertext word(s) contain an embedded URL reference that when clicked on can connect the user to the new URL site.

The popularity of the Web since its establishment in the early 1990s(3) has been stimulated by its use of the HyperText Text Markup Language (HTML) format. HTML is the most popular page design and hyperlink method for navigating the Net because it provides as common software format, regardless of the written language used.

Making a physical connection to the Net has become easier in the last year. Most computers(4) sold today contain a modem with speeds of either 14,400 or 28,800 bits per second (bps); the latter is the preferred speed because of its increased bandwidth (i.e., signal capacity). For computers without a modem, a 28,800-bps model can be purchased for about $150. Other alternatives include an Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) line, if available from the local phone company; with a $350 ISDN adapter/modem, the ISDN carries digital rather than analog signals at a four-times-faster rate of 115,200 bps (i.e., about 100 pages per minute or more).

These connection methods are slow in comparison to a direct connection to the Net through a dedicated file server in an office operating as an Internet host, which should be considered if cost-effective for the size of the practice. A leased line--for instance, a T1--connected to an Internet host can obtain much higher speeds--up to 1.5 mega bits per second (1,500,000 bps). Further, with the recent deregulation of the telecommunications industry, cable companies and other carriers (including satellite) will be entering the arena with significantly enhanced bandwidths.(5)

The next step is to select an Internet provider. All of the major online services (America Online, CompuServe, Microsoft Network and Prodigy) provide Internet gateways (connections) and e-mail. Moreover, numerous local and regional Net providers exist throughout the country. Even phone companies are competing--for example, AT&T offers five hours per month of free Internet access to its U.S. customers.

Any URL site can provide access to a computer file for downloading to a personal computer through the FTP. Thus, for example, tax forms, vendor demo programs and free or purchased software can be obtained over the Net.

Finally, recent Net advances that may ultimately affect tax practice involve the use of Virtual Reality Modeling Language (VRML), talking/musical web sites (Net Radio), 3-D graphics including animation,(6) and a new Internet computer language, Java, that is similar to the C++ programming language.

Java (produced by Sun Microsystems Inc. and Microsoft's competing ActiveX) has great potential for creating new Net applications and may soon be a productive tool for tax applications. Because it contains an executable uncompiled computer program, it will run on any operating system. Therefore, when a user accesses a URL containing a Java program, an embedded 64 kilobyte (KB) microcomputer essentially is unleashed. Could an online tax return preparation site be far behind?

Research Sites for Tax Topics

There is a wide variety of research sites for tax topics on the Net. As a starting point for tax research, the following examples of tax gateways provide hypertext links to numerous tax resources at other sites:

* Applied Research Technologies' Essential Links to Taxes (http://www.el.com/totheweb/taxes/).

* Dennis Schmidt's Tax Sites Directory (http://www.uni.edu/schmidt/tax.html/).

* Frank McNeil's Income Tax Information in Internet (http://www.best.com:80/%7Eftmexpat/html/taxsites.html/).

* Government Printing Office (GPO Access) (http://www.access.gpo.gov/su_docs/aces/aaces001.html).

* Thomas Omer's Tax World (http://omer.cba.neu.edu/home#TaxInformationSites/).

The hypertext links within these gateway sites may include IRS forms, income tax articles, the Code, tax newsletters, discussion groups on specific tax topics, state tax information and a host of other sites useful to income tax preparers. For example, in Dennis Schmidt's Tax Sites Directory, clicking on State Taxes leads to State Tax Agencies and a list of sites covering each state. A good example of a state tax home page is the South Carolina Department of Revenue (http://www.state.sc.us:80/dor/). This "home page" (i.e., a site on the Web) features hypertext links covering news releases, the state tax calendar, the various taxes administered in South Carolina, the state's division of motor vehicles, taxpayer service center phone numbers, fax-back forms and more.

While browsing a gateway site for relevant links to a particular tax research issue, a list of bookmarks(7) for useful Web sites can be compiled and saved for later reference. Bookmark lists contain selected Website titles and are stored with the accompanying URLs in a bookmark file. Clicking on a desired title in the bookmark list immediately opens that particular site, making it unnecessary to remember or type in the URL.(8)

After browsing gateway sites and forming a bookmark list for future reference, a more specific search may be needed. URL http://www.search.com/ displays several popular search engines that can be used to find a home page, a hypertext link or specific text within a home page that pertains to a particular tax issue. Given the dynamic nature of the Internet as a tax information resource, any "current" list of suggested URLs for tax research would soon be incomplete; however, search engines are very useful for providing a more complete list of the most current tax resource sites available. Alta Vista (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) is a very fast search engine that will locate every mention of a particular text on the Web that matches a given search query. However, if the search query is too general (or too specific), thousands of matches may be listed, making it difficult to determine which are most useful. For more general search queries, Yahoo (http://www.yahoo.com/) finds Web sites by description; Magellan (http://www.mckinley.com/) lists sites that are evaluated and rated; Infoseek Guide (http://www2.infoseek.com/) reviews both home pages and newsgroups (i.e., electronic bulletin boards for specific topics); Excite (http://www.excite.com/) finds home pages by matching up subjects; and Lycos (http://www/lycos/com/) finds home pages containing the given search query and rates them for relevance. Lycos determines relevance according to how closely words in the search query can be matched with the words in a given site. Sites that contain the given search terms early, rather than far down in a subsection, are rated more relevant.(9)

Most search engines are capable of using Boolean logic, wildcards(10) and other advanced query techniques to limit or expand searches.(11) The alphabetized list of general keywords in Table 1 on page 492 represents examples of words and terms that can be used to form a search query in conjunction with the word "tax" or derivations thereof (e.g., taxes, taxation).

Depending on the particular tax issue, more specific terms may also be used in a search query. For example, suppose one is interested in researching the tax effects of limited liability companies. A sample search query with a browser and search engine could be as follows:

1. Type in http://www.search.com/ in the location window.

2. Type "tax limited liability company" in the Lycos search box and click on "Search." The 10 best sites (according to Lycos) are displayed with a brief description of each site (all terms in the search query are highlighted in subsequent sites for easier browsing). Any additional sites beyond the first ten can also be requested.

3. Click on the sites that appear to be the most important and add them to the bookmark list for future reference.

Another way to search for tax information on a given topic is to access LEXIS-NEXIS directly through the Internet. An existing customer with a password can connect to LEXIS-NEXIS through Telnet by opening the URL http://www.lexis-nexis.com/Incc/telnet.html. Also, LEXIS-NEXIS recently announced that it will offer legal research products that incorporate Netscape, to give clients easy and efficient access to information on the Internet. As a result, legal and tax research on the Internet may eventually be commonly used to complement the customary searches run on LEXIS-NEXIS.

Sources of Tax Forms

Tax forms and instructions can be accessed through the Internet, but the free Adobe Acrobat Reader software (http://www.adobe.com/acrobat/readstep.html) must first be downloaded and installed. Most tax gateways and many other tax resource sites will guide the user to download and install the reader software and the plug-in (i.e., add-on software) necessary for the reader to communicate with the user's Net browser. Once these are installed, tax forms, instructions and publications can be retrieved from a comprehensive list and printed. For example, Ernst & Young LLP's Selected IRS Tax Forms and Publications (http://www.wiley.com/ey/forms.html) provides forms that are sometimes difficult to retrieve from IRS databases. A more complete list of retrievable forms can be found at Taxing Times' Index of Federal Tax Forms and Publications for 1995 Tax Year (http://www.scubed.com/tax/fed/1995/fed.html#LIST). For state forms, instructions and publications, go to Taxing Times' Index of States (http://www.scubed.com/tax/state/state_index.html) and follow the links to the desired form.

Electronic Filing on the Net

Last year, approximately 13.5 million taxpayers filed their Federal income tax returns electronically.(12) In an attempt to eventually eliminate paperwork, the IRS, in cooperation with state tax administration agencies, recently instituted the Federal/State Electronic Filing Program (F/SEFP). This program allows tax professionals to prepare and file both Federal and state income tax returns electronically in a single transmission. Most states have joined this program, allowing state tax returns to be submitted to the IRS for a cursory error check and then forwarded to the appropriate state tax agency. Under this program, taxpayers submitting their returns electronically must do so with the help of a licensed professional (either a tax preparer or an electronic return originator). Tax professionals who begin offering this joint, one-stop, electronic-filing service may have a competitive edge in certain markets.

Electronic filing through the Internet is faster, more convenient and more accurate than the conventional paper filing method. Instead of relying on registered mail for documentation of timely filing, preparers received. immediate IRS confirmation that a return has been received. Time is also saved when the IRS forwards the return data to the appropriate state agency. After the return has been processed, any refund can be deposited to the taxpayer's bank account through the electronic Direct Deposit system, making the total turnaround time from filing a return to receiving a refund only a few weeks. Through electronic filing, taxpayers who owe additional tax have the convenience of filing early but not paying until April 15.

Tax returns filed online in 1994 had a 99.4% accuracy rate.(13) There are two reasons for the increased accuracy: First, the tax preparation software used for online filing checks for math errors before electronic transmission occurs. After receiving the return, the IRS checks for additional errors before forwarding the information to the state tax agencies. If, in a cursory examination of the return, the IRS detects that a Social Security number needs to be corrected or some other mistake has been made, the taxpayer is immediately notified and the corrected return can be resubmitted electronically.

Table 1: Common Search Terms and Tax Areas Available on the Internet

academia              hot topics         products
articles              immigration        proposed changes
associations          Internal Revenue   planning
calendar                Code             rates
court decisions       international      reform
Cumulative Bulletin   IRS                regulations
directory             judicial           services
employment            law                Social Security
FAQ (frequently       legislation        software
  asked question)     mailing lists      state
forms                 new developments   statistics
gateways              newsgroups         tips
history               newsletters        treaty
home page             per diem

Although electronic filing is efficient and saves paper, it is not without cost and does not completely eliminate the need for paper documents in a tax filing. After the IRS confirms the receipt of a tax return filed online, Form 8453-OL, U.S. Individual Income Tax Declaration for On-Line Service Electronic Filing (a signature document), Form 1099, W-2 and other paper documents (and possibly a check) must be submitted. The following URLs contain information about online filing and IRS-approved tax preparation software:

* Online Filing Fact Sheet--IRS

(http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/elec_svs/online.html).

* Federal/State Electronic Filing

(http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/elec_svs/fed_state.html).

* YPN:Taxes:Federal Electronic Filing

(http://www.ypn.com/taxes/a630.html).

* YPN:Taxes: State Electronic Filing

(http://www.ypn.com/taxes/a631.html).

Limitations of Internet Tax Research and Filing

Tax research on the Net is still in its infancy; new avenues to advance and enhance the tax professional's use of this powerful tool are always being developed. At present, however, the Internet is, at best, a useful supplement to traditional tax research tools.

One of the main limitations of Internet tax research is the inability of search engines to deliver sophisticated tax searches. Most search engines still deliver a high proportion of irrelevant information when challenged with anything beyond a simple search on a well-represented topic. In addition, currently, the ability to use advanced searches that are particularly useful in taxation (e.g., wildcard searches and date-limited searches) is not a common feature of search engines.

Other limitations include the inability to use most tax services presently available through online subscriptions; in addition, certain restrictions are placed on taxpayers who file their returns electronically. For example, the F/SEFP accepts only calendar-year income tax returns, and only 31 states presently participate in the program. Even taxpayers who qualify for the program and are in a state that participates are restricted to using certain IRS-approved tax preparation software when filing electronically.

Finally, tax professionals should be aware that information transmitted on the Internet is often not secure; thus, confidential information should be protected by an encryption method and disclaimers should accompany any free tax advice published on the Net.

Most of these limitations and problems will most likely be solved in the near future; however, presently, the Net's enormous potential and the new opportunities that continue to develop for tax applications appear to be outpacing the resolution of these problems.

Research on Vendor Tax-Related Products

Another useful feature of a Net connection is the ability to find and review tax-related products. Because most vendors now have (or soon will have) a home page, in many instances tax products (as well as products from other vendors) can be identified, reviewed, priced and even ordered from a Web site.(14) Some tax-related URLs include:(15)

* Bureau of National Affairs/Tax Management

(http://www.bna.com/tm/tm_home.html).

* Commerce Clearing House (http://www.cch.com/).

* Matthew Bender (http://www.bender.com/).

* Research Institute of America

(http://www.riatax.com/about.html).

* Tax Analysts (http://www.tax.org/).

E-mail Access Via the Net

E-mail is a major technological tool in the 1990s tax practice. Use of e-mail and the ability to attach documents for electronic correspondence with clients and other professionals inside or outside the office have become almost a necessity. Moreover, it can be argued that a firm without such capacity may be at a disadvantage both in terms of its internal operations and accessibility to and by clients.

Most firms today with a local area network (LAN) use e-mail; nevertheless, e-mail connections within a firm with several offices require either (1) a wide area network (WAN), (2) an outside e-mail provider available by modem or (3) an Internet connection. A few years ago, large accounting firms were likely to operate their own WAN; today, the most cost-effective method for most firms, large or small, is to make a connection through the Net, especially since e-mail security for messages and attachments is provided by encryption methods within most e-mail programs and Net browsers.

E-mail has become an indispensable tool; its usefulness is further enhanced by the fact that a firm's clients may already have (or very shortly will have) e-mail accessibility through the Net (or another gateway). As a result, clients are beginning to demand access to their tax professionals through e-mail almost as much as they would expect voice mail and a fax machine.

One of the key features of most e-mail programs is the ability to attach documents or other files with e-mail. For example, a tax return could be printed to a file and attached to an e-mail message (presumably encrypted for privacy reasons) for a client's review, or a spreadsheet file could be sent to a tax professional in another location. Similarly, written documents (including graphics) can be attached as a file and sent via the Net--a more convenient, higher-quality and cost-effective method than fixing. Obviously, the sender must recognize that the receiver may need certain software to interpret the document transmitted.

Telephone, VideoPhone and Teleconferencing

A newly emerging application of the Internet is for voice and video communications. Relatively low-cost hardware and software are now available to enable two or more users with similarly equipped computers to use the Net as a phone, videophone or teleconferencing tool.

This technology provides three obvious advantages to tax professionals once the appropriate hardware (i.e., relatively inexpensive miniature microphone and videocamera) and software are configured: (1) currently, the Internet provides free long-distance phone service, albeit sometimes garbled, low-fidelity reception; (2) videophone technology permits two professionals to talk and see each other (although the video is usually sampled, noncontiguous pictures) and work jointly, for instance, on a tax opinion letter, spreadsheet file or graphic slide presentation; and (3) teleconferencing enables several individuals to simultaneously talk, see each other, and observe relevant documents in real time.

Listervs and Newsgroups

Another important function of the Internet is to facilitate discussion among interested parties. Discussion groups or listservs (mailing lists) can be found for many tax areas. A list of 22 (at press time) moderated discussion groups, from tax-exempt bonds to state and local taxes, can be found at http://www.tax.org/notes/default.htm. Interested users may subscribe (free of charge) to a particular discussion group by clicking on the group's address and sending an e-mail message to the moderator, a Tax Analysts' staff member (http://www.tax.org/default.htm). Subscribers can exchange ideas by placing messages (called "postings") and receiving messages that are distributed via e-mail to everyone on the subscription list. Past messages are archived and can be browsed or searched with search engines such as Infoseek Guide (http://www2.infoseek.com/).

Mailing lists should not be confused with newsgroups. Usenet newsgroups are thousands of theme-based public bulletin boards on the Internet. Instead of receiving messages via e-mail, interested readers wander in and out of newsgroups to view messages that are posted for limited periods of time. After viewing a newsgroup, visitors may respond to the newsgroup articles by posting a question or statement to the group or by e-mailing the poster personally.

Development of a Firm Home Page

As already noted, a "home page" is the top-level Web document usually associated with a simple URL address. Hypertext links within the home page enable other pages in the document to be accessed.

Any firm with a Net connection can create its own home page if it has a registered Internet site and file server or its Internet provider allows a user to publish its own home page. Obviously, the ability to create a home page may be a criterion in selecting an Internet provider. On the other hand, the most preferred method, a Net host file server at the firm, gives the provider complete control over the home page and Internet connections (although in most instances, at significant additional cost for hardware, software and maintenance).

Why would a firm want to create its own home page on the Internet? To further practice development efforts. A home page provides an address in cyberspace, and firms with home pages are perceived as being technologically sophisticated. Moreover, as the number of Internet users increases, the value of having a home page becomes even more apparent; in fact, competitive pressures may soon make it almost a necessity. Also, many Internet search engines will index items from a firm's home page. Therefore, anyone looking for a practice's services and expertise should be able to find it--an optimal practice development situation in which the potential client seeks out the practitioner.

A home page, however, is only of limited use unless it contains appropriate content to promote one's firm. The following are some items to consider including within a firm's home page, with appropriate hyperlinks:

* Types of services provided by the firm.

* Areas of firm expertise (e.g., industries).

* Tax tips (especially before year-end and during tax season).

* Copies of current and/or previous firm newsletters.

* Available employment.

* Name, phone and fax numbers, plus an e-mail link to one or more professionals in the firm to contact for questions and possible engagements.

To get a feel for how CPA firms organize their home page and its contents, a user can search the Net for CPA and TAX.(16) For some other good examples, it is worthwhile looking at the Big Six firms' home pages, contained in Table 2 above.

Constructing and maintaining a home page (as well as a Web site) is becoming easier and cheaper each month. Rather than manually editing an HTML-formatted home page and linked documents, there are new software packages specifically designed to build and maintain home pages.(17) For example, America Online's GNNpress and Microsoft's FrontPage are two graphically based programs.

Intranet--the Internal Net

As was already discussed, the Net provides tax professionals with access to resources outside the firm or, alternatively, access by outsiders to the firm's home page and/or e-mail. In contrast, an "intranet" is an internal system that combines the backbone of the Internet, a firm's LAN and a Net browser with its HTML-formatted pages. It provides the general capabilities and user-friendliness of the Internet, but in a system limited to a firm's professionals and staff. Some intranets may even permit limited access by clients, but outsiders are otherwise excluded by "firewalls" to prevent unauthorized access.

Once way to envision the Internet/intranet distinction is to think of a firm's Web site as a multi-tiered domain in which, at the first level, both outsiders (via the Internet) and firm professionals have access to hyperlinked home pages. The second level may still be accessible by password to clients, but not by other outsiders. The third level could be accessible only by firm professionals, and a fourth level may be available just to certain firm professionals (e.g., partners). Therefore, what starts at the Internet level, under this scenario, ends at levels three and four at the internet level.

Table 2: Big Six Home Page Addresses

*   Arthur Andersen LLP:
     http://www.arthurandersen.com/newhome.htm
*   Coopers & Lybrand L.L.P.:
     http://www.colybrand.com/tax/taxwww0.html
*   Deloitte & Touche LLP: http://www.dttus.com/
*   Ernst & Young LLP: http://www.wiley.com:80/ey/ey.html
*   KPMG Peat Marwick LLP: http://www.us.kpmg.com/washnat/
*   Price Waterhouse LLP: http://www.pw.com/us/22ca.htm

In general, an intranet provides an internal information system with hyperlinked home pages containing specific information relevant to the firm's operations (e.g., client documents, services, databases, policies, procedures, etc.). The ability to use an Internet browser in-house to obtain information from intranet home pages with hyperlinks to other pages (either inside or outside the firm) can be quite advantageous.

For instance, given the present legal and regulatory climate, human resources (HR) is a difficult management task. Facilitating the management of this function by creating an intranet HR home page containing relevant links to specific firm policies and procedures may be quite beneficial. Another obvious use would be to "advertise" job openings by posting positions either internally on the intranet and/or externally on the Net.

Similarly, a firm may want to create a keyword-searchable tax database of, for example, client newsletters, research memoranda or opinion letters. Another simple but useful example would be to keep a firm's partner and employee phone and address list on the internet, where it could be updated as needed and thus always be current.

In conclusion, an intranet provides a convenient, easy format for an information system within a CPA firm. Its potential is far beyond the suggestions contained in this brief discussion.(18)

Conclusion

This primer on the tax resources available through the Internet has been intended as an introduction to the terminology and potential usefulness of the Internet for a tax practice. The authors have attempted to introduce the possibilities of this powerful new tool--one that will only expand future tax practice.

(1) Netscape Communications Corporation was formed by Jim Clark, founder and officer of Silicon Graphics, and Marc Andreesen, a principal in the creation of Mosaic at NCSA.

(2) Upper- and lower-case should be observed when entering a URL and all characters should be entered without spaces between them.

(3) The Web was conceived and designed by Tim Berners-Lee in 1990 while at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (known by its French acronym, CERN).

(4) The Net is accessible from virtually any type of computer, microprocessor or operating system (e.g., DOS, Windows, Apple, UNIX). Even Internet Access Boxes (a $500 Internet appliance) have become available this year.

(5) Although the speed differences of various connections seem quite astounding, they are really only the upper limits when the highway is clear and the destination is not congested. In everyday use, the effective speeds are reduced considerably by the amount of other traffic using the bandwidth, the communication speed of the URL site connected to, and the congestion created by the number of other users at a specific Net site.

(6) With the introduction of the PowerVR chip developed by VideoLogic and NEC, 3-D graphics will be greatly enhanced later this year.

(7) For purposes of this article, the Netscape Navigator term "bookmark" is used to indicate a URL that has been listed and saved in a file under a descriptive title for convenient access at a later time. Other browsers (e.g., Microsoft's Internet Explorer) use synonymous terms, like "hotlist."

(8) Occasionally, URLs change and bookmark files need to be updated. In the Netscape browser, for instance, bookmarks can be updated automatically by clicking "What's New" on the Bookmark file menu.

(9) For a detailed description of various search engines, see http://www.liber-tynet.org/~bertland/search2.html/.

(10) For a discussion of tax searches with Boolean techniques, see Black, "CD-ROM Tax Research (Part I)," 26 The Tax Adviser 583 (Oct. 1995). Currently, most search engines do not support wildcards (i.e., search terms with an asterisk (*) or other character that tells the search engine to find all derivations of the word--e.g., the wildcard tax* yields hits for tax, taxes, taxed, taxation and taxpayer).

(11) See http://www.search.com/terms.html/.

(12) See "IRS Fact Sheet Describes Electronic Filing, Telefile System," 94 Tax Notes Today 255-21 (12/30/94), p. 2.

(13) See IRS, "Federal/State Electronic Filing," at http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/prod/elec_svs/fed_state.html.

(14) Some vendors permit downloading a demo or test version of software.

(15) Most company URLs start with http://www. and then proceed with the company name or an abbreviation. For instance, in these examples, "bna" and "cch" are used as primary references. Consequently, a particular company may often be reached by typing http://www.[company].com.

(16) The AccountingNet, http://www.accountingnet.com/about.html, contains many examples of CPA home pages. For a fee, it also provides both a home page site and tools for making a home page. Other sites providing information on constructing home pages include:

* http://lor.trincoll.edu/cpsc/CS.makeyourownhomepage.html

* http://home.netscape.com/custom/index.html

* http://www.value.net/~glasener/buildpage.htm

* http://www.ncsa.uiuc.edu/General/Internet/WWW/HTMLPrimer.html/

* http://gort.ucsd.edu/iassist/home_page.html

* http://www.mcp.com/hayden/internet/cyohp/

* http://zdnet.com/zdi/software/snapsol/snapweb0.html

* http://www.fivebats.com/learn/webweave/pageweaver/style.html

(17) Developing and maintaining home pages at some Internet providers may be limited to certain software and formats related to the provider's system.

(18) Intranets represent a whole new realm of Internet-style applications within a practice office; an article in the next issue will cover them in detail.