A process that arranges information warehoused at individual accounting
and tax preparation firms at a central location for the purpose of
marketing information. Data contained at these firms have qualitative and
quantitative characteristics that are different from data archived at the
Internal Revenue Service or other tax authorities. This fact makes the
data valuable as data in two ways. First the data can be exchanged to
provide new revenue streams. Secondly, these data, if grouped into data
warehouses of other firms, has value as pure data, not just customer
lists. These data may be sold or rented creating additional revenue
streams for their originators. The purchasers of this bulk data are
interested in using this data in the field of data mining. Data mining is
a technique of analyzing vast amounts of information to uncover
relationships to predict events and has wide application in many areas of
the economy.