Beyond The Fiscal Cliff:  Details to Act On Gail Perry at Accounting Web introduces a set of articles on the effect of the "fiscal cliff." A first article – New Tax Law Emerges Beyond the Fiscal Cliff – provides an overview of the key tax provisions that will affect your individual and business clients. It's followed by coverage of how the new law will impact federal estate, gift, and generation-skipping ta ...

2013 California Filings:   Aetna: 22 percent.  Anthem Blue Cross: 26 percent.  Blue Shield of California: 20 percent. Reed Abelson at the New York Times reported last week that health insurance companies across the country are seeking and winning double-digit increases in premiums for some customers, even though one of the biggest objectives of the Obama administration’s health care law was to stem the rapi ...

Consider Lifetime Client Value, Cost of Client Acquisition, and Retention Rate Is your CPA firm making the most of current relationships and doing all it can to expand into new ones?   While there are many metrics CPA firms use to evaluate quantitative performance, AICPA Insights suggests 12 metrics than can provide more qualitative feedback. These metrics can help CPA firms measure their reach with clients ...

Valuation Experts Need to Be an Integral Part of Every Business Owners’ Initial Plan. Herbert Kalman explains why business owners need to begin thinking about an eventual exit from their very beginning plans. Here’s solid advice on the value and structure of buy-sell agreements, formal business planning, annual valuations, networking, and other planning essentials. ...

There’s a Maze of Standards Out There. Here’s a Guide to Key Provisions in The Most Important Ones *AUTHORS NOTE* This article was written in May 2010.  In December 2010, the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure, section 26(a)2(b) were updated such that drafts and attorney communications are now specifically recognized as work product and not discoverable.  The exception to this is correspondence as it relates ...

Engage Employees with Teamwork and Consensus; Look Beyond Your Own Industry, and Execute Carefully In a recent issue of the Financial Planning Association’s Practice Management Solutions, Paul R. Brown identifies important factors successful business owners pay careful attention to when managing substantial change in their organizations successfully. Here’s what to pay attention to. ...

A Balance of Valuation and Litigation Work; Secrets to Enhanced Productivity Marcie Bour, Founder and President of the Florida Business Valuation Group, offers tips and strategies on time management, favorite appraisal tools, marketing strategies, the benefits of client diversification, and the value of networking and seeking out mentors. ...

The U.S. Must Cut $800 or $900 billion From Our Annual Government Spending to Maintain Mid-term Economic Solvency.  And That's Just the Beginning.     Flooding the system with trillions of dollars and deficits has bought the U.S. economic stagnation, writes Rob Slee in an August 20, 2012 post at MidasNation.   "What a lost opportunity. One thing we learned in MidasNation over the past few years is that when ...

Cost Approach is Best Used Simply to Allocate Value Under the Income Approach, Contends Mark Dietrich   Mark Dietrich is concerned that a recent presentation at the NACVA annual conference may have misrepresented the views he expressed with a number of other authors in a paper published in Hospitals and Health Systems RX that was titled Assessing Intangible Value in a Physician Practice Acquisition.  He cut ...

In 2009 Duff & Phelps and the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) first published the results of their comprehensive Goodwill Impairment Study. The 2009 Study examined U.S. publicly-traded companies’ recognition of goodwill impairment at the height of the financial crisis (the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009), and featured a comparative analysis of the goodwill impairments for over 5,0 ...

The Richest and Most Comprehensive Comparables: IBA Data, 24/7. Log On Today. Business valuation has often been called an art, not a science. Revenue multiples are one key method; another is the use of comparables. Many valuators use both. KeyValueData offers NACVA members access to the IBA comparables, which are the richest and most comprehensive set of comparable available in the valuation world. Here’s a ...

Accounting for Nuts:  Blame a misalignment of incentives for the scandal at Diamond Foods.    The Wall Street Journal's Holman Jenkins opines:  "Business people talk about "alignment of incentives." The lesson here may concern a peculiar misalignment of incentives."  He explains: Here's the executive summary: Diamond was a cooperative owned by California walnut growers until it became a publicly traded comp ...

The Exit Planning Institute Opens Northeast Ohio Chapter  The Exit Planning Institute (EPI), NACVA's Exit Planning partner and issuer of the Certified Exit Planning Advisor (CEPA) credential, has opened a new chapter that will be serving the Cleveland and Akron region in Northeast Ohio. The chapter president will be Christopher M. Snider, a partner at Aspire Management in Cleveland. Christopher M. Snider, C ...

Alphabet Soup AccountingToday's Danielle Lee writes that "A growing roster of professional designations fosters credential-mania," among CPAs, and devotes an article to surveying some of the most popular credentials today, including those from NACVA: The CVA. The National Association of Certified Valuators and Analysts' CVA credential does require a CPA license, along with coursework and an exam. Establishe ...

House lawmakers passed a bill today to overhaul the U.S. patent system for the first time in nearly 60 years, Nathan Koppel notes on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog: The House passed the America Invents Act on a 407 to 117 vote, WSJ reports.  The bill would change how the U.S. grants patents and award them to the party which is “first to file” an invention instead of the “first to invent” it. The change wo ...

David Wanetick, Managing Director at IncreMental Advantage, LLC, a valuation firm with expertise in valuing intangible assets and emerging technologies, based in Princeton, NJ,  opines at The Business Insider: Valuing a patent is complex and imperfect. Below we’ll go into some detail surrounding the methods used to determine a patent’s value. Each is applied under different circumstances, and impacted by ma ...

More Feedback: Editor: I read the May 2011 QuickRead – “Tips for Valuators” concerning stub years. I have run into this issue several times and I have seen it misapplied many times and I am glad you wrote about the topic. I noticed two points in the article that I believe need further clarification. The first thing that I noticed in the article is that the PV factors need to be modified as well if you are d ...

Calculation Engagement vs Valuation Engagement. In April, QuickRead featured some analysis of In Re: Marriage of Hagar in our Case Law—State section.  At issue in Hagar was the difference between a Calculation Engagement and a Valuation Engagement.  The Calculation Engagement the husband in the case presented was deemed unsuitable by a judge, in this particular case, because it the valuator admittedly didn’ ...

Have you had a chance to check out the Guard Series™ insurance policies?   Since claims against BV practices and properly credentialed professionals have historically been quite rare, these policies are deeply discounted.  NACVA and Primus Assurance Group (PAG) announced the policies' availability last fall, and since then PAG has built out its web site with lots of detail: Providing Professional Peace of M ...

LinkedIn Features Booming CVA/AVA Activity Have you visited LinkedIn lately?  The NACVA AVA/CVA Certification group as of this writing has 935 members.  Follow the link and join in the conversation! This year is NACVA's 20th Anniversary.  What milestones do you remember being a part of?   QuickRead's Conversations with the Masters staff is preparing for an interview with Shannon Pratt.  Do you have question ...