Author: Tony Novak
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The coming housing price correction
One of my persistent flaws as a financial adviser (and as an investor) is that I forecast market changes too early. That’s a timing flaw, not a flaw on detection of the trend. I’ve been negative on housing prices for a long time. This graph published in a Robert Woods Johnson report explains why. When…
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Avoiding taxes for IRA accounts
Avoiding taxes on money held inside an IRA can be challenging. This article in Barron’s discusses how one more easy tax planning tool is likely to be eliminated and how to adjust to avoid triggering taxes in large IRAs. But there is always a way to reduce or eliminate taxes if you make your financial…
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Questions about TechSoup
My largest block of clients are charitable organizations. In that nonprofit field the company TechSoup is a popular vendor of technology services. A few recent events cause me to ask more questions. I’ve made a few purchases for clients through them. TechSoup markets “donated and specially discounted technology offers”. But lately I’ve noticed that specific…
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Health issues related to professional work after age 60
I’m not quite there yet; I turn 59 in a couple of weeks. But I’ve just been through the toughest year of my life1. It forced me to be more aware of the health risks of my long hours, high stress work routine. I’m paying attention to my health issues with special attention to the…
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Five tech tools to boost small business income
There are two approaches to boost the income of your small business: Increase revenue, or Decrease expenses. If your experience is like mine, there is no shortage of people willing to help you raise income. Marketing experts, business coaches, networking specialists, branding experts, and so forth. My inbox is overflowing daily from so many offers…
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Accountant with false prosecutions
Twice I’ve been convicted of crimes in the state of New Jersey based on the false testimony of police officers. The first time, 2014, I overcame the false testimony in appeals court. The second time, 2018, the court sided with the officer and I was branded with a criminal conviction. This triggers me to take…
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A survey of state-specific continuing professional education ethics courses for Delaware CPAs
Editing note: In February 2020 the state Board notified me by email that they completed an audit of my CPE program records for the period of July 2017 through June 2019 and found no deficiencies. Most Certified Public Accountants, like me, take continuing professional education (CPE) courses from a variety of sources on a range…
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Three nonnegotiable points on CPA verification letters
CPAs are commonly asked to verify business information including ownership, finances and available funds. This is a useful part of business operations and often part of the bank lending process. Some banks go as far as to ask for verification of an opinion, which if course is not possible. But to the extent that a…
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An accounting niche opposite the AICPA trend
An advertisement by a top-qualify national information publishing firm joined up with a prominent AICPA event to deliver an educational program designed to prepare CPA firms for imminent change. The bullet points describing the course content are: End-to-end, automated cloud-based tax preparation AI-enhanced, highly intuitive tax research A cloud-driven, Integrated Audit Approach that focuses on…