Category: Uncategorized
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Tax concepts in marriage and divorce
When a married couple owes federal taxes there are different outcomes that may be applicable and available. This blog post lists some of the concepts that IRS recognizes that might be considered in any stressed marital tax settlement: Joint and several liability Injured spouse allocation and relief provisions Innocent Spouse Relief Separation of liability Equitable relief…
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Unregistered charity soliciting public donations
As a small business accountant working with nonprofit organizations I frequently find deficiencies in their accounting or legal filings. Minor oversights are commonplace and I’m pretty good at getting them resolved before they cause too much of a problem. But I’ve never come across such an egregious situation as a multi-million dollar nonprofit organization soliciting…
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Sobering message to nonprofit board members
I expect to deliver this message of my engagement findings to the CPA board member and treasurer of a nonprofit client over the weekend: 1) you are in a fiduciary environment with responsibility for other people’s money. 2) We all recognize there are weaknesses in the bookkeeping. 3) There is no evidence that the accounting…
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Revisiting CRM for sole practitioner
It is time for me to revisit the topic of Client Relationship Management systems. I put together notes here in 2014 and in 2012 for the NJCPA. I am looking for a CRM that is well-suited for a sole practitioner CPA practice. I’ve been using Pipedrive and there are many things I like about it. Price…
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QuickBooks professional education today
After a technology-plagued day of QuickBooks webinar presentations yesterday, I am hoping for a better experience today. Intuit is using 6connex.com technology that is apparently suffering from bandwidth issues at the source of the presenter’s location. The end result is that the presentation freezes and the viewer must log out and then log in again.…
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QuickBooks security risk
9/17/2016 Update – Apparently the only reported successful attacks are in Australia. Security experts reported a new scam yesterday (9/15/2016) targeting users of the desktop version of QuickBooks small business accounting software. The scam uses a virus attached to an email. When a user opens the email, the virus attacks QuickBooks and reportedly sends out…
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Health care crisis management
Our health care finance and delivery system was a state of national crisis when I left Wall Street and entered the small business advisory field in the 1980s. This was a huge concern for my first clients who were mostly building contractors. The connection between successful management of health care costs and overall financial success in…
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QuickBooks improves management reports
QuickBooks, the accounting platform used by about 2 out of 3 small businesses and nonprofit organizations, recently announced improvements in the formatting of machine-generated reports. This is important for several reasons: The automated reports save a lot of time and expense over the ‘old days’ when these reports had to be prepared by humans. The…
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My cyclical role as a health care adviser
Over the past 29 years I’ve talked with thousands of small business owners and self-employed professionals about their health care plans; how to regain control, manage expenses and protect yourself. I expected that ACA might put me out of business in that adviser niche and some writers and the BBB said that area of professional…
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‘Fiducuary rule’ claims first victims
Today a major national investment firm announced that it will no longer offer the choice of commission-based mutual funds in its retirement plan accounts. The change comes in response to the ‘fiduciary rule’ recently enacted by the Obama administration. This firm, Edward Jones, id the first to take such action. The firm hopes to convert the…