Two Apps That Help You Move Cash These smartphone apps can help with mobile billing and accepting credit card payments. Greg LaFollette, strategic adviser with CPA.com, suggests that a look at mobile apps can make the CPA’s job and life better. To read the full article in the Journal of Accountancy, click: Expanding Your App-titude.
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Offering your clients specialized services—personal financial planning, IT specialization, and fraud and forensic accounting, among others—can help set you apart in today’s competitive CPA marketplace. Mark Koziel, CPA, CGMA, Vice President, Firm Services & Global Alliances, American Institute of CPAs, discusses how finding your niche can help you and your clients. To read the full article in AICPA Insights, click: AICPA Insights.
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GIPS are a set of ethical principles intended to serve prospective and existing clients of investment firms. However, compliance is the question. Mary Grace McQuiston, senior financial analyst with Mercer Capital, discusses this issue and the GIPS Guidance Statement on Alternative Strategies and Structures. To read the full article in Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog, click: Are You GIPS-Compliant? This article is republished from Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog. It is reprinted with permission. To subscribe to the blog, visit: http://mercercapital.com/category/financialreportingblog/.
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And What You Can Do About It How are prospects discovering professional service organizations? While referrals are important, the evidence suggests that more and more prospects are using other channels to retain professional services.
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Prepare, Verify, and Excel at Trial In order to recover lost profits in a commercial damage case, three standards must be met. First, plaintiff must show proximate cause; second, the foreseeability; and third, reasonable certainty. This article will focus on the third standard, reasonable certainty. Experts seeking to provide realistic lost profit estimates must be aware of this standard. The following discussion will review literature, court decisions, and practical efforts that may assist experts in addressing reasonable certainty.
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Is Your Finance Team the Best it Can Be? Finance teams that excel tend to have similar qualities. Here are five key characteristics, including strong leadership and effective use of resources. Kerry Maruna charts a path to get you on the right track. To read the full article in CFO, click: 5 Signs Your Finance Team Rocks.
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Fed Limits its Ability to Rescue Financial Firms The Federal Reserve has adopted restrictions on its ability to rescue failing financial companies. Howard Schneider reports in this article that under the rules, the Fed can provide only broad-based assistance and cannot rescue individual firms. To read the full article in Reuters, click: New Fed Rule Limits its Crisis Bailout Powers.
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Determining Whether Debt is Recourse or Nonrecourse When a partnership has a debt that is forgiven, its characterization as recourse or nonrecourse can make a big difference in its tax treatment, including being eligible to be excluded under Sec. 108, as this article explains. Mark Cook, partner with SingerLewak LLP, discusses how Sec. 752 should be interpreted under CCA 201525010. To read the full article in The Tax Adviser, click: Chief Counsel Advice Tackles Sec. 752’s Impact on Partnership COD Income.
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The Impact on Employed Physician Groups The CMS 2016 Hospital Outpatient Prospective Payment System and Ambulatory Surgical Center Payment System downwardly revised reimbursement for GI/endoscopy services and reduced by 0.77 percent the Physician Fee Schedule to all services because CMS failed to meet the one percent net reduction target for misvalued codes in 2016. In this article, the author discusses how the proposed CMS changes announced in July 2015 could impact gastroenterological and endoscopy group practices.
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Why the Choice Between Prime and Treasury Rate Matters Many bankruptcy practitioners have focused on the recent decisions in Momentive[1] that forced secured creditors to refinance prepetition loans at below market interest rates. Most of these practitioners’ publications focus on the courts’ findings and the potential implication on future matters. However, three interesting questions are not addressed in most (if any) of these publications.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission staff published a report of its review of the definition of “accredited investor”. Congress directed the SEC to review the definition every four years in Section 413(b)(2)(A) of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and the staff recently submitted their recommendations to the Commission. To download this report, click: Report on the Review of the Definition of “Accredited Investor”.
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Filing Tax Returns Early May Foil Identity Thieves People may be able to thwart crooks targeting their tax refunds by filing their 2015 tax returns as early as possible. Russ Wiles for USA Today, explains how clients can get some of the supporting paperwork completed now so their returns can be filed as soon as the Internal Revenue Service starts accepting them. To read the full article in USA Today, click: To Beat Crooks to Your Tax Refund, Start Taxes Now.
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How the Best Managers Practice Attentiveness Attentiveness is a common trait for managers who excel in the workplace. The best leaders treat employees as individuals, make feedback a priority, and listen to what their staff has to say. Sydney Finkelstein is the author of Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Manage the Flow of Talent from which this article was adapted. To read the full article in the Harvard Business Review, click: What Amazing Bosses Do Differently.
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With the New Year just around the corner, Mercer Capital is beginning their countdown a little early. Here are this year’s 10 most popular posts from The Financial Reporting Blog. Happy New Year 2016! To read the full article in Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog, click: Financial Reporting Blog: Best of 2015. This article is republished from Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog. It is reprinted with permission. To subscribe to the blog, visit: http://mercercapital.com/category/financialreportingblog/.
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The IRS is Challenging the Appropriateness of Discounts when Preparing a Valuation The current regulations, Revenue-Ruling 93-12, allow for discounts when valuing a Family Limited Partnership (FLP). The proposal is expected to potentially limit the allowed discount and consequently raise the taxable portion of the trust or estate structures. This article reviews the current requirements for FLPs, their history, and the potential exposure to FLP’s in the near future.
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Secured Creditors Lost Almost $200 Million in Economic Value Due to the Imposition of Below Market Interest Rates Many bankruptcy practitioners have focused on the recent decisions in Momentive[1] that forced secured creditors to refinance prepetition loans at below market interest rates. Most of these practitioners’ publications focus on the courts’ findings and the potential implication on future matters.
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Duff & Phelps has released its 2015 U.S. Goodwill Impairment Study. This is prepared in partnership with the Financial Executives Research Foundation, analyzing the general and industry trends of goodwill impairment of over 8,700 U.S. publicly-traded companies. To download your complimentary copy, click: Goodwill Impairment Study 2015.
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The 2014 Purchase Price Allocation Study by Houlihan Lokey is complete and available for you to download. Included in this study is their review of public filings for merger and acquisition transactions, and shows how they analyzed the portion of purchase consideration allocated to tangible assets, intangible assets, and goodwill. To download your complimentary copy, click: 2014 Purchase Price Allocation Study.
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Buyers do not offer premiums simply for the sake of gaining control, but rather, through exercising the prerogatives of control, those buyers expect to generate economic benefits. Travis W. Hams, leads Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Valuation Group, looks at the Appraisal Foundation’s white paper on the subject of JAB Holdings’ acquisition of Keurig Green Mountain. To read more about the results of this report in the Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog, click: Single-Serve Control Premium? This article is republished from Mercer Capital’s Financial Reporting Blog. It is reprinted with permission. To subscribe to the blog, visit: http://mercercapital.com/category/financialreportingblog/.
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How to Account for Current or Proposed Legislation in the Business Valuation Engagement Oftentimes a valuation engagement presents a unique set of challenges for the appraiser. For instance, a particular engagement may be the first look at how companies in a particular industry operate. Other times, it may be a look at a company experiencing a downturn, and the appraiser must determine how to properly determine its value, so as not to overemphasize the downturn, while not overvaluing the company at the particular date of valuation. Other times, particular engagements present the issue of how to adequately account for current…