Accounting Today articles from September 2007

Accounting Today archives from September 2007

Tax Compliance: IRS: Please Comply!: The Treasury wants more voluntary compliance to tackle the growing tax gap.(United States. Internal Revenue Service)
September 10, 2007... While the Internal Revenue Service has issued a plan that adopts the IRS Oversight Board's goal of 86 percent voluntary compliance by 2009, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson cautioned against IRS efforts to ramp up enforcement excessively...

Succeeding at succession: Many CPA firms have succession plans in place - but not nearly enough.(certified public accountants)
September 10, 2007... With a wave of senior partners graying and a shortage of younger CPA professionals ready to take their place, the importance of creating - and maintaining - a succession plan for a firm's future is becoming more urgent than ever. It may...

SEC committee to assess financial reporting system.(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission)
September 10, 2007... WASHINGTON, D.C. -- In what Chairman Christopher Cox termed "a second front in an all-out war on complexity in financial reporting," the Securities and Exchange Commission has formed a Committee on Improvements to Financial Reporting and called...

In Brief.(case against BDO Seidman L.L.P.)(case against We the People Congress and We the People Foundation)(ruling against Jackson Hewitt Inc.'s Hileah Braxton and Tameka Donaldson )
September 10, 2007... BDO LOSES MIAMI AUDIT CASE MIAMI - BDO Seidman was ordered to pay $170 million in compensation and $350 million in punitive damages by a Florida jury that blamed the firm for negligence in failing to uncover fraud in its audits of...

White House mulls corporate tax 'simplification'.(Brief article)
September 10, 2007... WASHINGTON, D.C -- President Bush is considering the possibility of simplifying the corporate tax system, as long as the changes don't affect the amount of taxes the government collects. The president's announcement came on the heels of a...

GAO: Charities shorting Treasury by $1B: While willful failure to remit payroll taxes is a felony under U.S. law, federal authorities said that Exempt orgs rarely suffer for it.(Government Accountability Office)
September 10, 2007... WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Although U.S. taxpayers contribute billions of dollars annually to support charitable causes, many of those very same charities are dipping deeper into the pockets of Americans by chiseling on their own taxes, government...

Editor's Desk: I volunteer - not!
September 10, 2007... My father once told me that during his Army basic training at Fort Dix, N.J., in the early 1950s, his platoon was, on one blistering July day, preparing to embark on a 10-mile hike when his drill sergeant barked out that if there were any...

Letter To The Editor: No place for politics.(Letter to the editor)
September 10, 2007... I was disappointed in the political tone of the article titled "Experts: Easing middle-class taxes won't help" by Ken Rankin (Accounting Today, July 23-Aug. 5, 2007, page 3). The experts quoted in the article uniformly expressed a...

Taxpayers finding success with IRS Appeals.(United States. Internal Revenue Service. Appeals Division)
September 10, 2007... Of the roughly one hundred thousand cases a year that go before the Internal Revenue Service Appeals Division, more than 80 percent get resolved without going to litigation. That by itself is a good reason for tax professionals to utilize the...

In Brief.
September 10, 2007... IRS APPOINTS NEW COMMISSIONER WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Internal Revenue Service named Linda Stiff as the replacement for outgoing Acting Commissioner Kevin Brown. Brown stepped down to accept a job as chief operating officer at the...

New and expiring tax provisions for 2007: Keeping track.
September 10, 2007... With the Tax Code constantly in a state of flux with new tax laws, not to mention delayed effective dates on tax provisions, sunsetting provisions, and phase-ins and phase-outs, every year offers some new wrinkles for tax professionals to worry...

FASB proposes amendment to statement on hedging.(Financial Accounting Standards Board)
September 10, 2007... NORWALK, CONN. -- Responding to widespread uncertainties about the implementation of Financial Accounting Statement 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued a...

Change Of Auditors.
September 10, 2007... DELOITTE DECLINES ATARI RE-ELECTION Big Four firm Deloitte declined to stand for re-election as auditor to video game manufacturer Atari Inc. A regulatory filing did not give a reason for the decision. New York-based Atari said that its...

These are not your father's financial statements.(Financial Accounting Standards Board)
September 10, 2007... Big changes are coming for financial statements, if the Financial Accounting Standards Board's recent discussion with its advisory board is any indication. This spring, at a meeting of its Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council,...

Giving back versus leaving a legacy.(accounting services)
September 10, 2007... In order to be a member of the Philanthropic Advisors Network, I pay my dues to the National Committee on Planned Giving. Accountants reading this article may also be members of this group, which provides both educational programming and...

In Brief.
September 10, 2007... INVESTORS OPPOSE SOX REFORM Two thirds of investors would be concerned about any easing of Sarbanes-Oxley rules, according to a national survey by the Center for Audit Quality, released in conjunction with the five-year anniversary of the...

SOX compliance: Adding software to procedures.(Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002)
September 10, 2007... You might think that five years after a bill was passed, figuring out how to comply with it would be pretty much cut-and-dried. That's simply not the case with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. While there is a good understanding of the kinds...

In Brief.
September 10, 2007... COUGAR MOUNTAIN UPDATES LINEUP Cougar Mountain Software released Version 12 of its CMS Professional Accounting, Fund and Point of Sale products. The new lineup includes three new types of reports. Snapshot reports offer a...

New Products.
September 10, 2007... SOFTWARE & SERVICES WHERE THEIR MOUTH IS There may be no guarantees in life, but there are in online application provider Intacct's new "Buy with Confidence" program. The company promises extremely high availability rates for its...

People.(Kerkering Barberio and Co. promoted Beth Johns)(Gene McGovern has joined CCH Tax Compliance)(Craig Peterson has joined Century Business Services Inc.)
September 10, 2007... CALIFORNIA Crystal Zhang and Gloria Cardon have joined the Valuation Department of Greenstein Rogoff Olsen & Co. LLP, Fremont, as valuation analysts.... Paul Ata has joined the Audit and Business Advisory Services Group of Haskell & White...

Firms.(four accounting firms have joined CPAmerica International)(Huron Consulting Group acquired Callaway Partners LLC)(Barnes Dennig and Company Ltd. won the business excellence award)
September 10, 2007... CALIFORNIA Bianchi, Lorincz, Huey, Hudson & Co. LLP and Kasavan & Pope LLP have joined to form Bianchi, Kasavan & Pope LLP, Monterey, Salinas, Hollister and Morgan Hill.... JGD & Associates, San Diego, received the Excellence in the...

Advertiser Index.
September 10, 2007... Advertiser Page 1st Global 19 ADP Small Business Services 15 ATX 25 BNA 11 CCH, a Wolters Kluwer...

The Perfect Storm of Productivity.(technology)
September 10, 2007... The challenges to the accounting profession have never been tougher. Staff shortages, new standards, and elevating client needs are causing many firms to re-think their workflow processes. Certainly technology plays a major role in increasing...

Editor's Note: Paper? What Paper?
September 10, 2007... There is a wonderful Dilbert cartoon where the boss hands the secretary a document and tells her to email, fax, and then mail it "just in case." As the secretary is taking the document she says, "Goodbye paperless, hello clueless." That...

Accountants Obsessive About Paper.(using document management software)
September 10, 2007... Accountants should be obsessive about paper. For decades, how efficiently an accounting firm filed, routed, and retrieved stored paper differentiated successful firms from their toughest competitors. While the importance of efficiency in these...

Setting the Stage for Greater Workflow Productivity.(CCH)
September 10, 2007... Five years ago, electronic filing of tax returns was still a relatively uncommon practice. But this past tax season, e-filing not only came of age with a record 70 million tax returns e-filed with the IRS, but moved from simply a transmission...

Catalyst to Go Paperless.(accounting services)
September 10, 2007... You've heard for years about the virtues of a paperless office, or, at the very least, striving for less paper in the course of your engagements. Productivity gains, more efficiency, better accountability, more satisfied clients who can argue...

The Affordable Add-On.(SourceLink)(Product/service evaluation)
September 10, 2007... SourceLink is an affordable QuickBooks add-on and is a great way for small businesses to get into document management. In addition to linking a file of any type that has an associated program that can display it, this tool also has the ability...

Think Digital, Not Paperless.(accounting services)
September 10, 2007... How you view a product has a lot to do with the benefits you ultimately receive. Here are two accountants: George and John. Both buy the same accounting system and cater to small businesses. George views his accounting system as simply an...

Hitting the Paperless Trail.(document management )
September 10, 2007... "Paperless" is more than just a buzzword-it's a modern work philosophy that can increase efficiency and boost your bottom line. Not only can it help your staff work better together, it can also optimize how you collaborate with and service your...

Paperless Tax Process Gains Momentum.
September 10, 2007... The paperless tax process has gone from a dream, to adoption by innovators, to a mainstream process. This trend is driven by increases in electronic filing, pervasive adoption of electronic document management systems, and a steady increase in...

Going Paperless with a Scanner Series.(Epson America Inc.)
September 10, 2007... As accounting firms transition to a paperless document management system, many accounting professionals face the challenge of finding a simple and economical method to convert paper documents into digital files, while still maintaining accurate...

From Cutting Edge to Cornerstone.
September 10, 2007... Enabling streamlined workflows, effective document storage and the ability to work and collaborate remotely, the paperless office promises productivity, efficiency and service gains that can ultimately improve the bottom-line for accounting...

Virtual Fax Services: Fulfilling the Dream.
September 10, 2007... The accounting industry, just like other industries, has been chasing the elusive paperless dream for years. Although great strides have been made in the realm of e-business, there is one decades-old technology that still presents a visible...

E-Invoicing Key to Paperless Accounts Payable.(Electronic Data Interchange)
September 10, 2007... In many ways, the accounts payable process is one of the most challenging when it comes to converting to a paperless approach to doing business. Because a typical organization's invoices are submitted by such a wide range of external suppliers,...

Leveraging Enterprise Workflow Solutions: Workflow is not confined to a single suite of products, but rather should be applied across product suites.
September 10, 2007... Ongoing staffing shortages and increased regulatory requirements combined have created a challenging obstacle course for today's enterprise (large) firms. However, those who have embraced advanced technologies and services and are taking...

Scanning is Easy Enough.
September 10, 2007... So you don't scan. Who blames you? We all know scanning's a chore. Scanners have been around forever, but most offices still don't use them. Why? Well, for one thing, no-one thinks of a scanner as fast. Even now, you're visualizing a bulb...

The Paperless Office.
September 10, 2007... Which of these paperless solutions are you currently using? Are you delivering and receiving financial statements and reports instantly and electronically to and from your clients and government agencies? Are you storing client records in an...

Paperless Enabled Solutions.(tax preparation )
September 10, 2007... Going paperless enables firms to deploy new and effective productivity solutions that are not possible in paper-based workflows. This page will discuss two such solutions that allow tax preparers to complete more returns in less time resulting...

Bennett to exit Intuit; Smith tapped as successor.(Steve Bennett)
September 24, 2007... MOUNTAIN VIEW, CALIF. -- Steve Bennett, who has served as president and chief executive at tax and financial software conglomerate Intuit Inc. since 2000 and led the company to record growth during his tenure, announced that he will step down...

Taxpayer panel exhorts IRS to license return preparers.(United States. Internal Revenue Service)
September 24, 2007... WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The Internal Revenue Service has been called on to develop federal licensing requirements for all paid tax return preparers - an approach that would involve potentially controversial competency rankings to help taxpayers to...

AICPA proposes network firm ethics.(American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)(Brief article)
September 24, 2007... NEW YORK -- The American Institute of CPAs' professional ethics division has issued a proposal that would outline the independence requirements of CPA firm networks and associations. It would extend the independence requirements to any...

Nonprofit, not nonprofessional: SOX, financial transparency, more for-profit vets on boards are shaping the sector.
September 24, 2007... Are more nonprofits slowly adopting certain traits of for-profit companies? The short answer is yes. Management at the nation's nonprofit entities is becoming decidedly more corporate as an increasing number of for-profit executives...

In Brief.(Deloitte and Touche L.L.P.'s settlement with Adelphia Communications Corp.)(Rudolph Giuliani's tax proposals)(creditors' case against Refco Inc., Ernst and Young L.L.P. and PricewaterhouseCoopers L.L.P.)
September 24, 2007... JUDGE APPROVES $167.5M DELOITTE SETTLEMENT FOR ADELPHIA NEW YORK - A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved a $167.5 million settlement that Deloitte & Touche has agreed to pay to a trust set up by litigants for defunct cable television company...

Editor's Desk: All shapes and sizes.
September 24, 2007... I'm of the opinion that the seventh time you perform the same assignment, it should come that much easier. With any luck along the way, you'll encounter precious few surprises. Funny how that theory falls by the wayside each time the...

Commentary: CPAs I have known - Part 5.(certified public accountants)(Personal account)
September 24, 2007... CLINTON ROMIG When Katrina struck New Orleans, I thought of Clint and Dot Romig, who lived in Mandeville, La., three miles off Lake Pontchartrain, which, according to news reports, was flooding. Phone calls to the Romig home went...

Letter: Miller & Bahnson are the ones with closed minds.
September 24, 2007... Paul Miller and Paul Bahnson have criticized my op-ed ("It's time to modernize the financial reporting paradigm," Accounting Today, March 19-April 1, 2007, page 14) in their Spirit of Accounting column ("Finding a new wrinkle in smoothing,"...

AICPA sends out warning on proposed estate tax regs.(American Institute of Certified Public Accountants)
September 24, 2007... New proposed Internal Revenue Service regulations to determine the value of a taxable estate may create a series of traps for unwary executors and tax preparers, according to the American Institute of CPAs. Moreover, the regulations lead...

In Brief.(case of embezzlement)(United States. Department of the Treasury. Office of Inspector General's report on Internal Revenue Service )(Fred Thompson's tax proposals)
September 24, 2007... TAX COURT RULES FOR EMBEZZLER'S HUBBY WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Tax Court has ruled in favor of a taxpayer, David Billings, who asked to be relieved from liability for the tax owed on money that his wife embezzled from her employer...

Maximizing retirement savings outside of earnings.
September 24, 2007... Maximizing contributions to retirement savings plans is a priority with which few people would disagree. When money is needed for life's more immediate necessities or deemed necessities, however, retirement savings for that "distant future" may...

FASAB proposes displaying changes in assumptions.(Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board)
September 24, 2007... WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Things change. Even assumptions. When assumptions change - assumptions about interest rates, discount rates, actuarial projections, and the like - other things change as a result. It was the war in Iraq that indirectly...

Change of Auditors.
September 24, 2007... HERCULES RETAINS E&Y Houston-based shallow-water drilling contractor and liftboat services provider Hercules Offshore has engaged Big Four firm Ernst & Young as its new independent accountant, succeeding Grant Thornton, which was...

The roots of all evil in financial reporting.
September 24, 2007... One origin of "The Spirit of Accounting" was concern over the lack of ethics in financial reporting. Eleven-plus years later, the same concern is alive and, unfortunately, thriving. Despite collapses of corporations and an accounting firm,...

In Brief.(United States. Securities and Exchange Commission want changes in financial reporting)(Brief article)
September 24, 2007... SEC MULLS FINANCIAL REPORTING CHANGES WASHINGTON, D.C. - The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun asking for comments on a document that outlines a variety of proposed changes in the way companies do their financial reporting. ...

Stories of passion and tension.(financial advising)(Personal account)
September 24, 2007... Tension can be a good thing - and not only for the pharmaceutical industry. Advisors who appropriately pull the right tension strings will be the ones who win the clients. The key is to recognize tension and either disarm it or increase...

In Brief.(survey on retirement income of baby boomers)(ING America Life Corp.'s ING Renuity)(Tiburon Strategic Advisors' report on mutual fund industry)
September 24, 2007... BABY BOOMERS FOCUSING ON GUARANTEED INCOME Securing a significant source of retirement income guaranteed for life is a top financial goal for virtually all Baby Boomers, according to research sponsored by AIG SunAmerica and conducted by...

Vendor Profile: Analyze this! iLumen helps CPAs benchmark client financials.(certified public accountants)
September 24, 2007... The iLumen Financial Information Network hopes to enlighten those who work in the private sector. Created by iLumen Inc., a seven-year-old Atlanta-based financial information technology company, the network connects private companies,...

In Brief.
September 24, 2007... SAGE DRILLS DOWN MASTER BUILDER Sage Software has released Sage Master Builder V. 13, adding the ability to drill down multiple levels from reports. The feature is designed to give construction companies better visibility into their...

Firms may not have broken the $100-per-hour barrier.
September 24, 2007... The preliminary results of the 2006 Boomer Survey are in, and the survey shows that firms broke the $100-an-hour barrier for the second time in the past five years (2002-2006). Most of you are wondering what that statement means. You probably...

It's more than just managing!(accounting services)(Viewpoint essay)
September 24, 2007... Many accounting firms are well-managed. In fact, some are over-managed and under-led. There are numerous conferences and courses devoted to managing an accounting practice. The American Institute of CPAs, several state societies, most...

New Products.
September 24, 2007... SOFTWARE, HARDWARE & SERVICES A SHOT OF EXPRESSO Call it More's Law: The more useful an Excel spreadsheet is, the more people want to use it to store more information and more calculations, and the more difficult it is to keep versions...

People.
September 24, 2007... ALABAMA The Alabama Chapter of the Turnaround Management Association has named its initial Board of Directors: Steve Alexander, of Tidwell DeWitt LLC; Jay Bender, of Bradley Arant Rose & White LLP; Chris Carson, of Burr & Forman; Don...

Firms.
September 24, 2007... CALIFORNIA Rose Business Solutions, San Diego, has been named to the Microsoft Dynamics President's Club. FLORIDA CG Accounting Corp., Ft. Lauderdale, was voted the Best Accounting Firm in Broward County for 2006 by The Florida...

Coming Events.
September 24, 2007... SEPTEMBER 24: Revenue Recognition in Today's Business Climate, Illinois CPA Society. ICPAS, Chicago. Contact: (800) 993-0393. 24-25: Financial Institutions Conference, Texas Society of CPAs. Westin City Center, Dallas. Contact: (800)...

On the origin of specialties.(evolution in accounting services)
September 24, 2007... It wasn't all that long ago that family doctors were "general practitioners." You went to them for everything from removing a deep splinter to an outbreak of the mumps. Specialists were usually reserved for more dire conditions. Not...

The next generation: Adaptation and evolution.
September 24, 2007... In evolutionary theory, species evolve through multiple generations, so if there is no new generation, there is no change and growth. The current staffing crunch and the imminent retirement of the Baby Boomers represent significant...

Make room, make room!(accounting industry personalities)
September 24, 2007... Any good accountant will tell you that a number remains itself, no matter how much you may want it to be a bigger one. Take the number 100, for instance. As the profession expands both in the services it offers and in its importance to...

Q&A: A broad tent.
September 24, 2007... This year, we asked the Top 100 People whether it was possible for the accounting profession to engage in so many specialty services that it would lose its identity as a single profession. The resounding answer was, "No!" - though a few had...

Title fight.
September 24, 2007... If you read only one book this year, better make it two: Thomas Friedman's The World Is Flat and Jim Collins' Good to Great. When we asked the Top 100 candidates which books they would recommend, no other titles came close to garnering as...

More influentials than ever.
September 24, 2007... Each year, we ask candidates for our Top 100 Most Influential list who they feel are the most influential figures in accounting, and this year's results reinforced some long-term trends. First off, the top vote-getters are the same, with...

Advertiser Index.
September 24, 2007... Advertiser Page 1st Global 19 AccountantsWorld 47 AccuFund 11 ADP Small Business Services 23 The Advisory Board 12 CCH, a Wolters Kluwer company 7, 48, SR2 Genworth Financial 4 GuideStar 15 ...