September 2017

Entrepreneurs go in business for a number of reasons, and you would be hard pressed to find retirement benefits to be one of them. Yet ask employees about why they chose or stick with a job, and benefits, including retirement, are often listed.

Most business owners want the same thing; they want to pass on their business to their kids. Others may want to sell the business, and some just want to give it away. However, all these options have unique tax concerns that must be considered.

The relentless advance of technology. You are aware of it. Whether you are boomer, a millennial, or even Gen Z (some call them the “iGeneration”). We can’t deny it. We live in a time of technological marvels. And the velocity of development related to ...

The office network that tax professionals and accountants use is at risk by hackers looking to do more than just peek at client information: The hackers are trying to take those networks over, says the IRS and state tax agencies. If that happens, the ...

As the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives return to session, a new survey from The Workforce Institute at Kronos Incorporated and Future Workplace reveals it can cost organizations as much as $100,000 each time a federal, state, or even local labor-related regulation is created or changed. “The $100,000 Bill” report is based on […]

Looking to enhance your payroll offering? There’s no better way than placing time clocks in your clients’ businesses. Time clocks are simple to implement; in many cases they integrate with your current payroll software. They also provide an ...

Continuous enhancements and integrations allow accounting professionals who use QuickBooks Online Accountant to streamline their workflow to get more done in one place.

There may be nothing more certain than death and taxes, but Americans like to push thoughts of that first topic away. Perhaps that's why almost three-fourths of U.S. small businesses don't have a succession plan and most small business owners don't ...

In 2017, female accounting professionals still lack the support they need in the workplace in order to advance their careers. Last year, I wrote a column on the topic of females only being represented in 19% of accounting firm leadership positions, ...

Few topics are as poorly understood as business valuation. Despite common misperceptions, it is a complex topic that cannot be boiled down to simplistic formulas or rules of thumbs.

When natural disasters strike, Americans naturally want to help. And that feeling of compassion is doubled when those catastrophes happen to our neighbors, our fellow citizens.

Like accountants, landscapers have a busy season and a not-so-busy season, which happens to be nearly opposite of yours. How can you focus your marketing and lead generation efforts during your busiest time of the year to gain new clients?

This is a tantalizing brave new world for younger accountants who like the idea of turning their penchant for number-crunching into a sexier profession, but what about those who are, ahem, reaching their golden age? It kind of sounds like rather than ...

With so much focus on Cloud and Mobile, can you imagine using your technology with no hardware? Hardware has become so cheap, reliable and generally good, many of us take this part of our technology experience for granted. It has been ten years since ...

While inventory management is not a new concept, with the advent of online stores to coincide with their brick and mortar counterparts, it’s more important than ever that retailers have a solid handle on their inventory. Good inventory management is ...

Ideally, a CPA firm’s management team concentrates most of its time on ensuring clients receive the best possible service and strategizing ways to cultivate new customers. That’s the ideal scenario.

Your small business clients who suffer inventory shrinkage – whether it’s from a natural disaster like Hurricane Harvey or Irma, or theft or simple mismanagement – must account for the event on their financial books. Generally, a firm can enter a ...

Over the past several years we have seen nationwide efforts, often precipitated by unions, to increase the minimum wage at the local level to $15 as a means of addressing economic inequality. The movement, called the "Fight for $15," has seen some ...

As we all know, the historical prototype for a retail business was a brick and mortar store, or multiple stores. But today, these same stores are competing with a variety of other retailers including Internet-only sellers, mobile-only retailers, and ...

USCIS announced on September 5, 2017, that they are phasing in a rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). The DACA program began in 2012 and granted temporary status and work permits to the “dreamers” who came here as ...

When a flood, fire, hurricane or other disaster strikes your business, you may suffer heavy property damage along with lost sales during the time you're forced to close. Having a good understanding of the accounting rules related to natural disasters ...

Has the IT role within CPA firms finally come full circle? I began the IT portion of my career providing support for IBM XT personal computers that were used by accountants to produce spreadsheets and word processing, while all the “real” data ...

There are many offshoots of a CRAT, such as a Charitable Remainder Uniform Trust (CRUT). In contrast to a CRAT, the payout provided to the noncharitable beneficiary from a CRUT can be either a fixed amount or a percentage of the FMV of the trust ...

Time clocks are simple to implement; in many cases they integrate with your current payroll software. They also provide an additional revenue stream for your firm, in addition to other benefits we’ll explore in this post.

In the final part of my estate planning series, I would like to tackle more complicated themes that build on the first two parts. The first thing that I would like to discuss in this article is a trust that was once used frequently before portability.

First of all, to qualify as IRC §1202 Stock, the stock must be in a domestic C-Corporation. The stock cannot be held by an S-Corporation or a limited liability company (LLC). Another caveat is that the corporation may not have more than $50 million in ...

Succession planning is a major area of concern for CPA firms. With baby boomers hitting retirement age, the following statistics underscore why it is such a compelling issue to the profession:

Contractors are unique when it comes to location. Their office often changes based on the project location. Knowing that, what can you do to maximize your efforts to reach these nomadic business pros?

On paper, it sounds good. As a concerned citizen, you see something that isn’t right and you do your American duty and blow the whistle. All government agencies have a Whistleblower Program, but none quite as dysfunctional as the IRS’.