Unproductive meetings are unpopular with workers and costly for businesses.  Experts advise companies to treat meetings as a last resort and to focus on making the meetings they do have more efficient. To read the full article in InTheBlack, click: Is it Time to Ban Meetings? ...

Self-directed IRAs and 401(k)s are increasingly popular.  CPAs are well-positioned to help clients ensure their retirement savings in these accounts do not fall into a prohibited transaction trap. To read the full article in AICPA, click: Don’t Let Clients’ Retirement Fall into this Trap. ...

Funeral Service Retirement Challenges The funeral industry is dynamic and one where often the directors “build to serve” and overlook the importance of “build to sell”. The authors here provide an overview of the valuation and consulting opportunities. ...

Does the IRS or Anyone Care? (Part I of II) In part one of this two-part article, the author presents the two methods for allocating value to common stock for 409a valuations, and then show how they affect the pricing of common stock. By way of background, to meet FMV, the standard of value requires measuring value under the representation of a hypothetical willing buyer and a hypothetical willing seller, b ...

Acknowledged king of the unicorns, Uber has raised over $8.8 billion of private funding since its founding in 2009, most recently at an equity value reported to be on the order of $70 billion.  In the wake of a highly-publicized internal investigation of the culture at the ride-sharing firm and a recent personal tragedy, founder Travis Kalanick is reportedly contemplating a three-month leave of absence from ...

Knowing what to do when your client receives a notice from the Internal Revenue Service can be a useful skill.  Here are 13 pointers, from what to do when the IRS sends a notice of deficiency to whether to extend the statute of limitation. To read the full article in The Tax Adviser, click: IRS Notice Response Tips Everyone Should Know. ...

Having a holistic understanding of your company's financial situation and value drivers is necessary to assess the organization’s performance, risks, challenges, and opportunities and drive long-term growth.  Learn three ways finance professionals can manage environmental, social, and governance risks. To read the full article in AICPA Insights, click: Three Tips to Manage Sustainability Risks and Drive Val ...

What Physicians Don’t Know About Their Agreements Could Hurt Them Nearly 45 years after the enactment of the federal Anti-Kickback Statute, it is still not uncommon to hear of physicians facing bribery allegations, large settlement amounts, and even jail time for breaking the statute’s anti-fraud measures. While evolving case law has certainly added to the complexities and prevalence of the statute’s enforc ...

Analysis in Matrimonial Matters As forensic accountants, we may be called upon to determine the value of the marital estate. Frequently, we either receive an avalanche of documents or very few documents. How do we distinguish what is valuable versus what is not? Why is the information so important in our forensic analysis of the case? In this article, the author answers these questions and shares her experi ...

The stock market rallied in the first five months of the year, with the Dow Jones and S&P 500 reaching record highs and continuing to climb.  Megan Richards, financial analyst with Mercer Capital, explains though, that IPOs remain scarce compared to prior years. To read the full article in Mercer Capital's Financial Reporting Blog, click: IPO Supply and Demand. This article is republished from Mercer Ca ...

The Internal Revenue Service issued a revenue procedure stating that it will once again issue letter rulings to taxpayers on whether a corporate reorganization in which debt is issued before a spinoff qualifies for nonrecognition treatment, which it has not ruled on since 2013.  Sally Schreiber, senior editor for Tax Adviser, explains. To read the full article in The Tax Adviser, click: Leveraged Spinoffs R ...

Whether it be retiring, shift in life path, or just moving in a different direction, Financial Planning presents a video on what to discuss with your clients and their all-important decision to sell. To read the full article in Financial Planning, click: How to Talk to Your Clients About Selling a Business. ...

The Case for Use of a Risk-Adjusted Rate in Damages Cases Robert Dunn and Everett Harry laid out a process for modeling and discounting future lost profits to present value in their article, Modeling and Discounting Future Damages. Not all experts agreed with the position presented by Dunn and Harry. In March, we revisited modeling and its level of acceptance. This article revisits the more controversial po ...

Valuation of Intangible Assets Valuation practitioners may want to spend a few hours reading a recent U.S. Tax Court case where the valuation of intangible assets was squarely addressed. This QuickRead article highlights the facts and three issues addressed in the decision. ...

In October 2015, the SEC adopted final rules governing the crowdfunding of startups and Regulation Crowdfunding was issued in May 2016.  The new rules allow non-accredited investors to invest directly in startup (and other) companies that can raise up to one million dollars every twelve months through crowdfunding.  Now, a year after Regulation Crowdfunding came into effect, Samantha Albert, senior financia ...

Fraudsters target people of all ages, but older adults with retirement savings are particularly lucrative targets.  And the consequences of fraud and exploitation can have a devastating impact on older adults who depend on their retirement savings after they leave the workforce.  Steve Vernon provides some very helpful tips towards preventing this despicable crime. To read the full article in CBS Money Watc ...

FASB is considering making changes to the U.S. GAAP financial reporting taxonomy that would be intended to improve the taxonomy's usability and the processes that support taxonomy-related activities.  Ken Tysiac, JofA editorial director, explains. To read the full article in the Journal of Accountancy, click: FASB Assessing Efficiency, Effectiveness of GAAP Taxonomy. ...

Context Matters This is the second of a two-part article. The first part, which addresses the efficient market hypothesis, is titled Proponents of the Efficient Market Hypothesis Always Want More Cowbell. Although many valuation practitioners are generally indifferent to context when valuing a business or asset, in litigation, as well as other areas that require valuation services, context matters. In this ...

Time to Evaluate Your Marketing Plans to Address Those Avoidable Mistakes In this article, Dr. Frederiksen describes five mistakes to avoid marketing a professional service organization. ...

How do you get buyers and sellers to execute an M&A transaction when the prospects of an industry are extremely uncertain?  Part of the answer may be to structure the deal in a way that defers payment of a (significant) portion of the purchase price in the form of contingent consideration.  In this blog post, Sujan Rajbhandary, vice president, interviews Travis Harms, who leads Mercer’s valuation for fi ...