NYSSCPA Members in the News

Next Gen Conference – Tracey Niemotko (Mid-Hudson)

Long Distance Learning: Mount Brings NYC Conference to Campus for Local CPAs

Mount Saint Mary College

For a group of about 20 Mount Saint Mary College students, alumni, and area professionals who couldn’t make it to New York City on July 25, the NextGen Conference for Young CPAs came to them instead. The Mount’s School of Business sponsored a satellite viewing of the presentation, held on campus in Aquinas Hall. The conference, hosted by the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants (NYSSCPA), was designed to help young CPAs to forge their own unique career path, learn important time management techniques, interact professionally with clients and other business partners, and more.

 

Other Accounting and Finance News

SEC Deputy Chief Accountant Croteau Departing

Accounting Today

Brian Croteau, deputy chief accountant at the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of the Chief Accountant, plans to step down. Croteau manages the activities of the office’s Professional Practice group where he helps oversee the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, manages auditor independence matters, and monitors standard-setting. His departure, which the SEC announced last Friday, comes on the heels of another shakeup in his office, after Chief Accountant James Schnurr was seriously injured in a bicycle accident.

 

The Accounting Exodus and Bringing Talent Back to Practices

AccountingWEB

Despite the rise of students pursuing accounting degrees, many accounting graduates are heading straight into business, bypassing practices altogether and often not going on to take the CPA exams leaving a wealth of talent not entering public practice. Careers In Audit’s global survey found 48.2% of those surveyed prefer to work within a business “rather than within an accountancy practice.” Only 33.3% said they would rather work in a practice. The remainder either wants to set up their own businesses, or change career paths.

 

Dollar Traders Call Fed’s Bluff

Wall Street Journal

As Federal Reserve officials signal potential interest-rate increases are possible this year, some investors aren’t convinced. Both this summer and last, officials were suggesting a rate rise by December, a change that typically leads the dollar higher. But a year ago, money managers held about $30 billion in bullish dollar bets, according to data from Scotiabank and the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

 

The War On IT: Ransomware and How Accounting Firms Are At Risk

CPA Practice Advisor

In this day in age, CPA firms need to be just as aware of cybersecurity threats as they are filing deadlines and tax guidelines. One of the most vicious cyber threats in history is affecting small businesses, individuals and accounting firms right now- ransomware. Ransomware is a type of malicious software that encrypts files, blocks access to computer systems then requires an anonymous payment, and has the ability to make a dramatic and devastating impact on your business.

 

IRS Guidance Issued: Investment Tax Credit Lessee Income Inclusion

The National Law Review

New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) temporary regulations provide guidance on the income inclusion rules that apply when a lessor elects to treat a lessee as having acquired investment credit property under Treas. Reg. § 1.48-4. As expected, the new temporary regulations also provide that a partner of a lessee partnership cannot increase its basis in its partnership interest for this income inclusion.

 

The Spirit of Accounting

Accounting Today

We’re writing about the April-June balloting on the American Institute of CPAs’ merger with the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants. This column addresses the biased election; the losers; and, future events.  Two points about the election show it was biased by design. The first evidence is the AICPA’s willingness to misrepresent the results while claiming victory.

 

4 Things Beneficiaries Who Receive IRS Form 8971’s Schedule A Must Know

JD Supra Business Advisor

When someone inherits assets, he or she is supposed to have a tax basis in the inherited asset for income tax purposes equal to the “fair market value” of the inherited asset at the date of death. The IRS is concerned that it is losing billions of dollars due to improper basis reporting for inherited assets: that is, the executor reports the assets on the estate tax return at one value, and then when those same assets are later sold, exchanged, or transferred by the beneficiary, the beneficiary reports the basis at a higher value.

 

FASB Proposes to Beef Up Disclosures on Business Income Taxes

Accounting Today

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed a new accounting standards update that would require public and private companies to change the way they report income taxes on their financial statements. The changes include distinguishing certain foreign and domestic income tax information, such as income or loss from continuing operations before an income tax or benefit, and the amount of income paid to any country that is a significant part of total income taxes paid by the company.

 

Two FASB Members Stress Flexibility of New Credit Loss Rules

BloombergBNA

Financial institutions will have flexibility in how they factor in forecasted economic conditions in setting up loan loss reserves under new accounting rules on credit losses, members of the Financial Accounting Standards Board said. Such messages, by board members Marc Siegel and Harold Schroeder in a July 21 FASB webcast on the month-old standard, likely will further reassure bankers—especially community bankers—that the board isn't looking for overly complex accounting to carry out the rules that go into effect in 2020 and 2021.

 

IMA Reaches 50,000 Mark for CMA Credential Holders

Accounting Today

The Institute of Management Accountants said Monday that it has reached a milestone of 50,000 holders of its Certified Management Accountant credential. In the fiscal year ending June 30, 2016, 2016, a record number of 3,838 accountants earned the CMA credential. In addition, the IMA reported that 18,761 new CMA candidates enrolled in the program, a 20 percent leap compared to last fiscal year, bringing the number of candidates who chose to join the CMA program in the past five years to 70,000.

 

New Legislation May Relieve Student Loan Tax Burden

Fox Business

Currently, borrowers who have all or part of their student loans forgiven Opens a New Window.  as a part of their income-based repayment plan, income-contingent repayment forgiveness program, or due to disability or death, have to pay taxes on the amount forgiven as if they had received it as income. Many borrowers see this as a win because the amount of taxes they pay is much less than their student loans.

 

Facebook Fails to Show Up for Seventh Tax Summons From IRS

Bloomberg Technology

Facebook Inc. officials failed to show up after getting seven summonses from the Internal Revenue Service demanding internal corporate records on one of its offshore tax strategies, according to an IRS court filing. U.S. authorities are examining Facebook’s federal income tax liability for the period ending Dec. 31, 2010 and are looking at whether the company understated the value of global rights for many of its intangible assets outside the U.S. and Canada that it transferred to a subsidiary in low-tax Ireland.

 

Practice Profile: The Millennial Riddle

Accounting Today

For quite a while now, nervous managing partners and harried HR directors struggling to solve the riddle of how to attract and retain Millennial staff could comfort themselves with the knowledge that no one else in the profession had a clue how to do it either. Well, not any more. While they would be the first to say they haven’t completely solved the riddle, Tennessee-based Top 50 Firm LBMC is one of a handful of pioneering firms that are starting to unravel it, and it has concrete proof that it’s on the right track, not least in its recent inclusion on Symplicity’s Best Places to Work for Recent Grads list, ranking as one of the 25 top companies in the entire country for young employees based on work-life balance, culture, mentoring, benefits, training and employee rankings.

 

Wall St. Wavers as Investors Assess Earnings

New York Times

Stocks on Wall Street had a muddled session on Tuesday, as investors worked through a large batch of corporate earnings from a range of companies including Gilead Sciences, McDonald’s and Texas Instruments. McDonald’s shares declined the most in one day by percentage since the financial crisis, weighing heavily on the Dow Jones industrial average. The Dow closed down 19.31 points, or 0.1 percent, to 18,473.75. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index was effectively flat, rising 0.7 of a point, or 0.03 percent, to 2,169.18.

 

Investors Warm Up To Big Bank Shares, Paring Sector Losses – WSJ

Nasdaq

Plenty of investors have shunned U.S. bank stocks this year, but some are seeing new hope for the sector. Large U.S. banks have outpaced the S&P 500 since J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. became the first of the biggest U.S. lenders to beat reduced earnings expectations earlier this month. While few expect the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates at its meeting this week, investors have new hope that they may one day climb, which could provide an extra boost to banks.

 

Should You Be Checking Your Client’s Email?

WealthManagement.com

How often do you log in?  To email. To post. To connect. To follow. To check bank balances, insurance policies, investment portfolios and credit cards. To access phones, tablets and computers. To download content. To make content. Maybe even to work on code to make “content”—as we know it—obsolete. With these digital interactions so pervasive, if not integral, in our lives, it makes sense that the Revised Uniform Fiduciary Access to Digital Assets Act (RUFADA) has been developed to enable you as a fiduciary to step into someone else’s shoes (or thumbprint) when they die or lose capacity.