Last Month’s Fiscal Cliff Legislation Included Lots of Tax Provisions. But Not Just for Individuals — There Are Tax-Saving Breaks for Businesses Too. Here’s What You Need to Know. Bill Bischoff at The Wall Street Journal Small Business Blog reports that last month’s fiscal cliff legislation included some important tax breaks for individuals; a longer version of his article appears at MarketWatch. Here’s the short list.
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“It’s a Huge Case for the Patent-Law Community.” On One Side: Google, Facebook, Intuit. On the Other? IBM. “Because the patents are often unclear, there’s no way to know whether an infringement claim by a competitor or a troll is legitimate until you’ve spent $8 million in litigation fees,” said Mr. Schruers Ashby Jones in the Wall Street Journal reports this morning that a federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., will hear arguments Friday over a fundamental question that has vexed the technology industry for nearly two decades: When is a piece of software patentable?
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Increased Transparency, More Automation, and More Access to Capital Rod Ebrahimi, a columnist for the Entrepreneurs section of Forbes, writes that “Thousands of miles away from Wall Street, some David-sized companies in Silicon Valley are cultivating new trends that will change people’s relationship with money.”
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Want to Develop and Publish a Mobile App? Demand is Real and Growing. A Compelling Idea, Solid Plan, and Choice of App Marketplace are Key. Jeffrey Drew at The Journal of Accountancy reports that with the digital delivery of products and services emerging as a top technology trend, CPAs are beginning to explore the development of mobile apps. What they have found so far is that the path to the Apple App Store can be riddled with pitfalls. Find out how you can create and distribute a mobile app that boosts your business or career.
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Royalty Rates in the Life Sciences are Under Increased Scrutiny. But Has That Caused Rates to Decline? Several medical manufacturers were accused of violating federal kickback statutes. Federal enforcement prompted many companies in the industry to review and revise the terms under which they collaborate with and pay healthcare professionals for contributions of time, know-how, and intellectual property. Ed Gold and the Invotex team examine how this has affected royalty rates.
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Appraisers Should Focus on Objectivity and Competence and Be Ready and Flexible to Deal with Unanticipated Challenges—From Vague Case Law to New Evidence to Erupting Personalities. Rand Curtiss expounds on his philosophy that business appraisal is about boundaries: limits on what we can do. Every work challenge is filled with a large number of people, each of whom have different boundaries. Business sellers want emotionally high prices. Plaintiffs want to destroy defendants. Taxpayers want to minimize taxes. Scenarios are complicated by the fact that a central problem in business appraisal is balancing the purely scientific with a bit of the…
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The FBI Says it Busted an 18-Person Ring that Spanned 8 Countries and 28 States. Make Up. Pump Up. Run Up. Daniel Gross at The Daily Beast explains: It’s not the latest exercise fad. Rather, according to the Justice Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, it’s the three-step process through which an 18-person ring allegedly committed a stunning $200 million credit-card fraud. Here’re the basics of how it worked. Read the full piece at The Daily Beast for all the detail on this scoop: The complaint, which can be seen here, describes what an FBI agent involved in…
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Consider Three Types of Private Preferred Stock Transactions, Each with Varying Degrees of Relevance to an Indication of Fair Value: Simple, Strategic, and Tranched Preferred Financing Last year, the AICPA issued guidance on evaluating private transactions with regards to their relevance in estimating the Fair Value of other securities within an enterprise via the back-solve method. The McLean Valuation Services Group recaps that guidance and explains what it should mean in practice. Appraisers need to carefully follow specific criteria and they need to exercise reasonable judgment.
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Six Days of Package Delivery and Five Days of Mail. Does This Mean Stamp Prices Will Go Down by 16¢? Michael Cohn at Accounting Today reports that the U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday that it will end Saturday delivery of letters starting in August, but will continue to deliver packages, in an effort to cut costs. More: The Postal Service expects to generate cost savings of approximately $2 billion annually once the plan for five-day mail delivery and six-day package delivery is fully implemented. The move could have an impact on accountants and their clients who need to receive…
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The IRS Has a Nationwide Organization of Approximately 2,000 Taxpayer Advocates to Help U.S. Individual and Business Taxpayers Resolve Problems. Here’s How It Can Help Advisors and Your Clients. Nina E. Olson is the IRS’s National Taxpayer Advocate. Since 2001, she has led the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS), a nationwide organization of approximately 2,000 taxpayer advocates who help U.S. individual and business taxpayers resolve problems and work with the IRS to correct systemic and procedural problems. In this capacity, she reports to Congress annually on the most serious problems taxpayers face in dealing with the IRS and proposes solutions.…
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Few Business Owners Seem to Even Know How to Make a Good Guess at What Their Business is Worth. NY Times Introduces Technology to Help—and Certified Advisers Provide Extra Value. Mark Cohen, at The New York Times Small Business Guide, reports: “At 53, Joe Ritz is old enough to remember a time when many of the classic cars that now pull into his specialized repair shop were new. “It’s one field where it pays to be a senior citizen,” he said. It’s Critical for a Business Owner to Know the Value of His Business; Here are Tips on Technology, Advisors,…
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Aswath Damodaran, NYU’s Legendary Valuation Expert, Recently Argues that there’s a 90% Chance Apple is Undervalued. Here’s Why. This comes in the wake of Apple shares’ breathtaking plunge from recent highs. (That’s be about $700 in September to $425 or so today.) In a new blog post, Sam Ro at Business Insider reports that Damodaran thinks that management can learn a few things from the recent market volatility, and he offers some advice. Here are his four tips verbatim (emphasis courtesy of Business Insider’s Sam Ro: Build up credibility with investors: The company has to regain credibility with investors. Apple…
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Fed Buying Is Having Profound Implications. Bond Vigilantes Have Been Selling Heavily and May Continue. That Means We Still We Won’t See Much of an Impact on Interest Rates. Paul Santos at Seeking Alpha claims you don’t need to worry about the bond vigilantes anymore. I, personally, have always been a big fan, and think they will return. But hey: This is Mr. Santos’ opinion piece, not mine, so I’ll let him cut to the chase. Santos doesn’t claim they’re in hiding. He simply claims they’re gone. Santos asks: “So when did the mass killings take place in the U.S.?…
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A Valuation Principal Takes Issue With Revenue Ruling 59-60: “Does Analysis of Macroeconomic Conditions Add Credibility to My Opinion of Privately Owned Company Value In My Region?” Rick Warner, ASA, AVA, Principal, Great Lakes Valuations writes that “Most of us as appraisers are familiar with Revenue Ruling 59-60 and its prescription for factors to be considered as part of the valuation of the stock of closely held companies . . . And while I agree with most of what 59-60 has to say, I do have a bone to pick . . . with at least one of the…
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Annie Cushing is on a Mission to Rid the World of Ugly Data. Learn About Data Collection, Analytics, Technical SEO, Analysis, and Beautification. Annie Cushing, a Senior SEO at SEER Interactive, a Philadelphia-based online marketing agency, explains that “There comes a time in a marketer’s life when making pretty charts with a predefined dataset just doesn’t cut it. “And finding the sum and average of a column of data just doesn’t satisfy you anymore. Eventually — and it’s really inevitable — you will actually have to dive deep into the data and cull out a smaller dataset or manipulate it…
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At Issue: Standard & Poor’s Ratings of Mortgage Bonds Before the Financial Crisis Jean Eaglesham, Jeannette Neumann, and Evan Perez report at the Wall Street Journal that S&P is under fire. Here’s more:
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Exchange Would Make it Easier for Companies to Go Public in the U.S. But Would be Limited to Experienced Investors Dave Michaels at Bloomberg reports that a Securities and Exchange Commission panel suggested that an exchange limited to small businesses should be created. The exchange would make it easier for companies to go public in the U.S. but would be limited to experienced investors better able to assess the risks involved with lower disclosure hurdles. The Panel said the exchange should be limited to sophisticated investors, which it didn’t define. More:
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Obama’s New Vision: No Further Increases in Tax Rates; Instead Focus on Eliminating Loopholes and Deductions And just last week all the pundits were saying any sort of serious budget deal was dead. Now, The New York Times, CBS News, and Washington Post/Associated Press report that president Barack Obama said future deals with Congress on the U.S. budget could set aside the option of raising tax rates and, instead, focus on eliminating tax loopholes and deductions to reduce the deficit. “I don’t think the issue right now is raising rates,” Obama said. Instead, a focus might be on mortgage interest…
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Stakeholders Discuss Greater Institutional Investor Makeup, Governance Structures, Greater Regulatory Scrutiny Deloitte Insights contributes a piece to the CFO Journal on the Wall Street Journal site, part of a series designed to provide financial executives a customized resource to help them address the strategic, operational and regulatory issues they face in managing their finance organizations and careers, with top-line digests, research, perspectives and technical analyses. This Deloitte Insight reports on the Third Annual Hedge Fund Symposium Series held in New York recently. There, Joseph Fisher, who leads the Hedge Fund Audit practice for Deloitte & Touche LLP in New York, commented on how…
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Firms Need to Update Technology, Use Social Media, and Hire Younger Advisors, Says Tom Nally of TD Ameritrade Institutional Rachel F. Elson at reports at Financial Planning: Advisory firms need to start hiring young financial advisers to attract and keep the business of Generation X and Y investors, who will have accumulated $28 trillion of personal wealth by 2018, up from $2 trillion in 2011, said Tom Nally, president of TD Ameritrade Institutional. A recent survey showed that, if given the chance, 86% of young investors would fire their parents’ financial adviser, he said. More: