Blog Archives
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The Ulitmate Generation Skipping Trust?
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Wednesday May 11, 2011Estate tax professionals, whether CPAs, tax attorneys or other financial advisors, have long honed their skills at finding the most beneficial wealth transfer strategies. The goal in most cases is to reduce or eliminate tax liabilities, while also ensuring for other distributions such as charitable giving. There are many such strategies and the result is a tax specialty filled with an array of acronyms, such as CRATs, CRUTs, CLATs, CLUTs, GRITs, GRATs, GRUTs, an so on. And of course, there's the common GST, or Generation-Skipping Trust. But almost a century ago, one wealthy individual, and his intrepid planner, designed a considerably less common variety of the GST. One that eventually would take almost a century before paying its... -
A Sneak Peek - Coming Monday April 18
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Friday April 15, 2011For those who might have missed our not-so-subtle hints over the past month, starting on Monday, The CPA Technology Advisor will become... CPA Practice Advisor. The biggest changes on Monday will be with our April/May print issue- which will showcase our new brand, as well as our new print size (a more traditional magazine size instead of the large tabloid). Not to mention great new feature articles, contributors and reviewers. As for our online version (at www.CPAPracticeAdvisor.com), you'll primarily notice the changing of branding elements until our full website redesign, which is coming soon. Don't worry about your bookmarks- if you go to our previous site, you'll be automatically sent to the new one. Here's a sneak peek at our... -
Last-Minute Tax Tips from the Texas Society of CPAs
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Wednesday April 13, 2011Whether they are born procrastinators, have been waiting for some of their supporting tax documentation to arrive, or they have other reasons, many individual tax filers wait until the last week, even the last day, to file their annual returns or an extension. Because of a peculiar Washington D.C. holiday, filers were granted a 3-day reprieve this year: The official IRS due date for individual returns is April 18, 2011. In years past, many filers with expected tax-due returns could justify this wait by saying they wanted to benefit from their money as long as they could- and there was no reason to pay early. Of course, the IRS and most professional and DIY tax preparation programs allow users to file as early as they want, but with any net... -
Awesome Add-On Awards - Application Period Open
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Friday April 8, 2011The Sleeter Group announced today that they've opened the application period for their Awesome Add-On Awards, with a focus this year on developer consulting. This is the seventh year of the awards, which recognize products that help small businesses by integrating with QuickBooks or complementing the most widely-used accounting program. Since The Sleeter Group is the largest national network of small business tech experts, it makes sense that they've turned some of their attention to proactive measures: Helping software developers at the front-end of building such programs so that they have a better grasp on what SMBs really need and want their business management systems to do. There's more about the Awesome Add-On Awards at... -
The Problem With Online Sales Tax
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Tuesday March 29, 2011The idea of taxing online sales and services has long been thrown around as a potential revenue source. In this time of belt tightening and budget cutting, states are especially eager to find ways to fill some of their fiscal shortfalls, and the loss of sales tax revenues to online sources is an appealing target. Texas is the latest to consider the subject, spurred by two members of the state legislature's ways and means committee. Proponents of such plans point out that most states' taxation laws were in place before the creation of the internet (do we blame Al Gore?), and therefore don't address the nature of electronic sales, which have taken retail revenue (and taxes) away from local merchants and sent it out into the ether (and to... -
Microsoft Backup Error 0x-81000037
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Sunday March 27, 2011So here you are happily running Microsoft Windows 7 for months, backing up daily to an external hard drive, and everything runs smoothly. Until, that is, backup stops backing up and instead issues a cryptic message:"The backup was not successful. The error is: Windows Backup failed while trying to read from the shadow copy on one of the volumes being backed up. Please check in the event logs for any relevant errors. (0x81000037)."If you track this back through scads of Microsoft gobble-tech-ease, you learn that the problem occurs when the backup hits a snag in a reparse point.Microsoft helpfully provides an explanation:"If the reparse point points to a location that contains any compressed file format (multimedia files, .zip files... -
The Benefits of Multi-Screen Monitors
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Thursday March 24, 2011Breaking news! PCWorld says multi-screen monitors can help productivity! (http://www.pcworld.com/article/223014/make_multiple_monitors_work_for_you.html) In case you've missed the major transition, surveys now show that more than half of accountants are already using multi-screen monitors. And heck, here at CPA Practice Advisor (that's our new name starting in April/now), we've long praised the benefits and have been raving about the productivity boost of multiple monitors since at least 2005 when I wrote on the subject (http://cpata.com/go/721). Of course, back then, we only recommended a couple of monitors for most professionals, three for the really savvy. Now dual monitors has become pretty much standard in tax and accounting firms... -
A ScanSnap Surprise
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Tuesday March 1, 2011Over the past year or so, Fujitsu has been very active in its communications with tax and accounting professionals, attending conferences and tradeshows and reaching out to better understand the market, which has helped it better serve professionals, too. (Our own Scott Cytron recently wrote about the ScanSnap at www.cpata.com/go/2731.) I was surprised the other day, however, to see a ScanSnap S-1300 at my neighborhood convenience store. The owner-operator was too busy at the time to have a discussion about it, but it did get me thinking about ways that small businesses can benefit from the versatile little scanner/organizer. From a small retailer's point of view, I'm sure it helps keep all of the vendor receipts/invoices in order, not... -
Changes are Coming... We'll soon be CPA Practice Advisor
By Isaac M. O'Bannon, Editor - Monday February 21, 2011As I mentioned yesterday, the staff of The CPA Tech Advisor are down here in Dallas, Texas at the Gaylord Resort and conference center for our annual Thought Leader Symposium and Hall of Fame Awards. Last night we shared some important news with the attendees, who include more than 20 influential practitioners and influencers, as well as representatives of Sage, CCH and Thomson Reuters. The news... Coming April 15, we will rebranding and will be known as CPA Practice Advisor. In our continuing relationship with the National Society of Accountants, we will also publish as NSA Practice Advisor. Our commitment remains focused on helping professionals be as productive and profitable, and so we are expanding our scope to offer greater... -
Microsoft Releases Dynamics CRM 2011
By Dave McClure, Contributing Writer/Columnist - Thursday February 17, 2011Microsoft this week released the on-premises and dealer-hosted versions of its Dynamics CRM 2011 solution. This release complements the latest version of Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online, which delivers Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 as an on-demand service from Microsoft’s datacenters and was launched into 40 markets and 41 languages in January. Microsoft announced that the new release scaled to 150,000 concurrent users in a single instance while delivering sub-second response times. It also features a familiar client based on Microsoft Outlook, point-and-click configurability, real-time dashboards and in-line business intelligence for performance and goal management. Integrated within Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 is a new Dynamics...
