Category: Accounting
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Head’s Up on New Pennsylvania Charity Reporting Requirements
Executive Summary: Smaller Pennsylvania charities face revised state requirements for their submitted financial statements that may require additional advance planning. May 16, 2018 is the IRS filing deadline for filing 2017 information with the federal government for most nonprofit organizations. Some organizations haven’t had a need to focus on the details of recent legal changes affecting…
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New Jersey CPAs weigh in on legislative priorities
These are the legislative priorities of the members of the New Jersey Society of Certifies Public Accountants most recent member survey: Reducing property taxes Improving the state’s infrastructure — roads, bridges, tunnels and public transportation Converting public pensions to 401(k)s Auditing state agencies and programs for overspending, waste and revenue allocation Combining municipalities and/or school…
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Implications of blockchain in everyday accounting
The AICPA co-published a new report on blockchain that is written primarily by accountants at Deloitte & Touche LLP. The report covers a range of issues from introduction of concept to a call for action for CPAs. It is not an accounting standards publication but rather a white paper on the issue of blockchain. The decentralized…
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Sample tax representation agreement
This page is outdated. A more recent version is available: Sample accounting services engagement agreement 2021 IF AFTER READING THIS YOU AGREE TO ALL THE TERMS, PLEASE RESPOND TO THIS EMAIL AND TYPE “AGREED“. PLEASE CALL WITH ANY QUESTIONS. SUMMARY OF THIS EMAIL Documents included: 1) Privacy policy, 2) Confidentiality Privilege Agreement, 3) Engagement Agreement,…
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Husband and wife partnerships are complicated
I’m talking taxes here, not relationship advice. I’m the last person who should be giving advice on marital relationships. Unfortunately, I might not be much help on the tax and legal issues either. The best I hope to accomplish in this blog post is to list some of the issues, in bullet format, that should be…
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One door closes, another opens
“When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us”. – Alexander Graham Bell A poorly matched tax engagement ended early yesterday on the same day as I brought in a record amount of new business. I hardly have time…
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Quickbooks pricing revisited
The pricing information in this post is now of of date. I can save businesses $500+. But should I? Quickbooks remains by far the most popular small business accounting platform capturing about 4 in 5 businesses in this market. The services I most commonly work with – accounting, taxes, banking services, financial planning, payroll and…
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2018: The year for a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA)
(This inform is not updated to reflect 2019 proposed regulations so should be presumed to be partially obsolete). Summary: Small businesses with middle-income employees may use a Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) to help cover out-of-pocket medical costs or individual insurance premiums as one of the easiest ways to cut 2018 taxes at minimal administrative and setup…
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The Impact of “Funny Numbers”
Will the ‘tone at the top’ trigger an increase in tax fraud? There are a few topics that I don’t talk about or write about in this blog. It’s usually because they are some combination of distasteful, unethical. illegal, immoral, controversial and a ‘no-win’ situation. One of those topics is accounting fraud. I covered the…
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Five reasons to not extend your business tax return due date
As a tax planner and an advocate of automated accounting systems, I’ve said many times that preparation of the tax return is the least important and certainly least valuable service that I provide. I’ve used the phrasing, even over the objections of tax preparers, that the business tax return should almost effortlessly “fall out” of…