Identity theft isn’t a new crime by any stretch of the imagination. With the use of electronic fund transactions, electronic tax filing, and the general increase of personal data being available online, identity theft is easy to perpetrate and has increased significantly in the last few years.
There are numerous expensive services and software offered by credit-reporting bureaus and private companies that will assist in keeping your data safe. However, most of these safety measures can be done yourself – for free.
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By now, most people have heard the term HSA or Health Savings Account. But what is it? A Health Savings Account combines a high deductible health insurance plan with a tax savings account.
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With the passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), tax professionals and businesses are beginning to absorb the massive changes and find some key twists in the new tax reform laws. The following information on these twists will help you navigate the new terrain.
Don’t Be GILTI
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) tax reform and transfer pricing questions have become hot topics. However, as publications such as Tax Notes have observed, there is no single simple answer that applies across the board and fits all companies. While companies based in the U.S.
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The role of Business Intelligence (BI) in your client’s company can be so pervasive and transformative that in many cases it can save their business. The basic spirit behind BI is what some call “data surfacing”—the process of taking large amounts of raw data and turning into meaningful, strategic information that the business can act upon immediately.
Here are three big ways that BI could potentially save your client’s business:
1. Brings Customer Service to Life
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The new lease accounting standards will require some extra time and work for many companies as they race to satisfy the new requirements.
In these new rules, two leases (finance and operating) will be required on the balance sheets.
CFO sums it up this way:
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A key portion of the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) is Section 199A and its deduction of qualified business income. Section 199A allows taxpayers other than corporations a deduction of 20 percent of qualified business income that is earned in a qualified trade or business, though this has some limitations. There are both positive and negative aspects to the changes depending on your situation.
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Tax planning will become more important than ever now that the TCJA has completely transformed the tax code landscape. There are significant implications for tax planning on every level, from individuals to businesses.
The following highlights provide a bird’s-eye-view of what tax planning considerations could be made in 2018 and beyond.
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With such sweeping changes coming in with that Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), there has been a fair amount of confusion with how certain deductions are handled. In particular, there are frequent questions about how entertainment and client meal expenses are handled.
Before TCJA, companies for the most part could deduct 50 percent of these expenses for business-related meal and entertainment purposes. In addition, if the meal was provided by the employer on the employer’s property it was 100 percent deductible.
Not so anymore.
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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed by President Trump in Dec. 2017, has significant implications for how businesses will assess the choice of entity. Prior to reform, partnerships were a very common choice of entity, but with the new provisions in TCJA, the C corporation has become an appealing option once again (but with some caveats).
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Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen stunning development in recent years, and these improvements are wiggling their way into the day-to-day operations of small businesses faster than many business owners realize.
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There are few experiences that conjure such dread and stress as when a taxpayer has received notification from the Internal Revenue Service that he or she will undergo an audit of their tax returns.
Frankly, it feels like a punch in the gut when you first read those words.
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(Pursuant To IR-2018-66, March 21, 2018) Internal Revenue Service
Every year the IRS issues its “Dirty Dozen” report to highlight the biggest scams that the public needs to avoid.
The IRS has released the following press release:
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If you’ve formed certain habits related to how you handle meals, entertainment, transportation, and parking as it relates to your business and taxes, the time to change those habits has come.
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No business looks forward to the time-consuming process of closing their books at the end of each month. It’s certainly not the fun part of running a business. It can be tedious. (Though when business is doing well, it can be encouraging to see everything closing nicely in healthy shape.)
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After a lengthy process, Congress and the President did what they had to do in late December 2017 to put into law one of the most significant pieces of legislation in decades: the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The Act put into place a number of provisions that will affect Not for Profit Organizations. Note the following areas of tax impact that the provisions of the TCJA brought in relation to Not For Profit Organizations, as noted in Yeo Yeo:
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Every business owner wants growth and profit. No one wants to sit back passively and miss out on opportunities. However, as noted in Rhonda Abram’s analysis in USA Today, it’s easier said than done: there’s a certain key combination of factors that must be achieved. The key is coming up with the right combination of resources and steps to take to achieve “growth.” There are big problems with growing a small business opportunistically.
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There is plenty of misunderstanding about the definition of cryptocurrency. Wikipedia’s well-researched entry on the topic defines “cryptocurrency” as follows (with their links included):
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Most articles about the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in December buzz about the resulting income tax consequences for individuals and businesses.
But what about the intersection of the TCJA and estate planning?
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A recent interview style Q and A session appeared in Accounting Today featuring the expertise of author Iralma Pozo. In this series of questions, Pozo tackles some important aspects of the most significant change to the U.S. tax code since 1986. With such historic changes underway, it’s critical that you understand how the Tax Cuts and Job Act will affect cash flow issues for clients.
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Over the years in our regulation-heavy business environment, small businesses have had forests of rules and regulations to wade through every year. The hard truth is that legislative and regulatory challenges (especially over-regulation) often hit small businesses the hardest. They have fewer resources in terms of staff, money, time and management attention to handle the sometimes massive tasks of keeping up with regulations.
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The following article provides a preliminary overview to blockchain technology. Additional information regarding this technology and its potential will be presented in subsequent articles. This information was presented in the Journal of Accountancy by Lou Carlozo:
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At the beginning of the new year, the time is right to assess where your company is going and examine strategic initiatives. It’s also a terrific time to put a plan together to see what resources would be required to bring those initiatives to fruition. It’s also time to ask a lot of questions to determine which plans are “pie in the sky” dreams, and which plans are in realistic alignment with the company’s long-term goals.
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An intriguing survey was recently conducted by BeeBole with several CFOs and financial experts, asking them to predict which tech trends will shake up financial management in 2018.
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In last month’s newsletter we presented some general facets of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). In this article, we will explore some portions of the new bill in greater detail.
In general, the law cuts corporate tax rates permanently and individual tax rates temporarily. It permanently removes the individual mandate, a key provision of the Affordable Care Act, and it changes other policies in dramatic ways, such as the SALT deduction (which will be explained in more detail below).
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President Trump signed the "Tax Cuts and Jobs Act" into law on Dec. 22, as noted and summerized from a report by Investopedia. The Senate passed the bill on Dec. 20 by a party-line vote of 51 to 48. The House passed the bill later in the day by a vote of 224 to 201. No House Democrats supported the bill, and 12 Republicans voted no, most of them representing California, New York and New Jersey.
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In practice, the sharing economy is nothing new. It’s been around for a thousand years, in fact. Societies have always shared the use of assets.
But then the internet came along, and following close behind was Big Data.
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Poor cash flow can affect much more than the financial performance of your business. The non-financial costs of poor cash flow can have just as negative an impact on your business as the financial costs. Here are a few ways, as noted in Beyond the Numbers, that poor cash flow can affect your business.
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Carefully crafted, plainly understood communication is fundamental to the establishment of relationships, whether personal or business. If there is ever going to be a meaningful exchange of thoughts and emotions it will be through effective communication.
But it’s easier said than done.
To say precisely what you mean without leaving any shred of nuance out of your intended message is a fine art form that takes practice and hard work.
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