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?
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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:
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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).
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
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.
Read More
The relationship between accountant and client is a relationship based on open communication and the exchange of relevant ideas, and this serves as the basis for decision making. Without the exchange of ideas between client and accountant there is no value added to the decision making process. Key to the relationship between both client and accountant is what can be viewed as an exchange of “relevant ideas.” For there to be an exchange of relevant ideas both parties need to establish what information the other party would likely need in the near-term and the long-term.
Read More
You may have heard about subscription businesses and what owning a subscription business might be like. This article will help clarify what you may or may not have heard by going through some of the basics of owning and operating a subscription business.
Read More
With the holidays fast approaching, many people are looking for ways to combine their desire to help the causes they believe in along with their desire to save on taxes. For the charitably inclined, there are strategic ways of giving that can accomplish both goals. The following strategies, as noted by Fidelity, are for your consideration and can help you make the most of your charitable giving this year.
Read More
Clients (and accountants) are human whether we like it or not. And as we know, humans make mistakes. Identifying and fixing financial mistakes is a large part of the effort expended by clients and accountants. An analysis of these efforts make up the crux of this article.
Read More
As noted in recent reports, current US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) as prescribed by Accounting Standards Codification (ASC 840) focuses on whether the lease transfers substantially all of the risks and rewards of ownership.
Read More
On September 27, 2017, the Trump Administration and select Republican members of Congress released a “unified framework” for tax reform. The document provides more detail than a number of other tax reform documents that have emerged from the Administration over the past few months, but it still leaves many specifics to be worked out by the tax-writing committees. The term “framework” means it is not the finished bill or a draft of actual legislation. The framework is subject to change after the September 27, 2017 issuance of the framework.
Read More
As the IRS has noted in its alerts to the public, a variety of different tax scams continue to rob people of millions of dollars and trick them into handing over sensitive personal information. Scammers use the regular mail, telephone, fax or email to set up their victims.
Read More
The decision of when to draw social security benefits can have a lifelong impact on one’s ability to have sufficient enough funds to afford retirement. For too many retirees, an insufficient social security nest egg is all they have.
Waiting to collect social security benefits versus not waiting to collect social security benefits can be a difficult decision make. A number of factors need to be taken into account in order to make an intelligent and well-informed decision.
Read More
In recent days the world has become familiar with perhaps the largest data breach event ever known to humanity. I’m referring, of course, to the Equifax data breach.
Read More
What is a foreclosure?
A foreclosure occurs when a property owner cannot service their mortgage (i.e. make principal and/or interest payments), usually leading to the property (distressed property) being seized and sold (foreclosure sale). Typically, the property in foreclosure is available for investors to purchase.
Buying a foreclosed home is different from buying a typical resale. In many cases the following applies:
Read More
An adoption tax credit is a tax credit offered to adoptive parents to encourage adoption. Section 36C of the United States Internal Revenue code offers a credit for “qualified adoption expenses” paid or incurred by individual taxpayers.
The tax code provides an adoption credit of up to $13,570 of qualified expenses (in 2017) for each child adopted, whether via public foster care, domestic private adoption, or international adoption.
Read More
What is a workflow?
A workflow is a list of repeatable tasks that need to be performed in order to achieve a particular business goal. A workflow documents the procedures and processes that form an organization’s “assembly line,” so to speak—the order of steps that need to be performed to get from start to finish.
Documenting the order of steps (workflow) that an organization needs to perform provides a number of opportunities to enhance and improve an organization’s business operations.
Read More
Trump administration officials and congressional Republican leaders are negotiating the terms of a tax reform bill. While they have not introduced legislation or a detailed plan, here are some of the latest news items detailing what we know so far about their goals and possible intentions with respect to taxation of income flowing through pass-thru entities—and only applying to pass-thru entities.
Read More
What with all the talk about “cash flow” and “cash flow management,” it’s worth your while to gain a better understanding of what these terms actually mean.
Positive cash flow, for example, does not mean the business is profitable.
Read More
This article tries to draw attention to the role that accountants could play as business advisors within your business. Historically, accountants occupied the position of “bean-counters,” which essentially focused on what happened in the past, not on what the future of the business holds.
This has changed, and it’s important to understand the dynamics of how it works in today’s business context.
Read More
When choosing for the right qualified CPA for your business, the goal is to find a business advisor who is qualified to help take you from point A to point B—the long haul, in other words. The plan is to find the right complimentary relationship.
Read More
Before getting into a discussion of common bookkeeping mistakes, it is worthwhile to address the importance of sound bookkeeping in general.
The importance of sound bookkeeping is frequently lost and ignored by management. It is apparent that the main reason management tends to ignore the bookkeeping function is because it is focused on the “big picture.” What management fails to recognize is that there is no “big picture” to look at without bookkeeping first doing its thing in the details.
Read More
One of the most significant, if not the most significant function within any secure business is that of risk management. Risk Management equates to having a set of policies and procedures in place that are designed to mitigate losses caused by a myriad of circumstances including natural disasters (floods, tornados, hurricanes, etc.).
Read More
A green business is a business that cares about its profitability while at the same time is constantly attentive to the impact the business has on the environment.
Read More
