CMS’s unrealistic and contentious ‘Final Mandate’ governing nursing home staffing policies has been vacated by a US District Court judge.

A year ago, with the blessings of the Biden administration, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) finalized a staffing mandate that threw healthcare entities and nursing home owners into a frenzy. Fast forward to April 7, 2025, and a US District Court vacated the onerous federal mandate that held nursing home and healthcare facilities in a chokehold. The ruling concluded that CMS had exceeded its statutory authority by imposing federal staffing minimums at nursing homes—an important win for regulatory balance.

The mandate called for a minimum of 3.48 hours per resident per day (HPRD) of total staffing, allocating specific hourly requirements for registered nurses (RN) and nurse aides. It would have been phased in over three years, with rural communities getting an additional two-year grace period. But even with this phased-in approach, many in the industry argued that the requirements were logistically and financially impossible to meet.

Industry leaders fought the mandate tooth and nail. They maintained that they hadn’t yet recovered from the trials of COVID and were already burdened with severe, country-wide staffing shortages, specifically for nurses and support staff. They argued that the mandate’s staffing standards were unfeasible and threatened to shut down nursing homes and displace hundreds of thousands of residents in the process.

The American Health Care Association and the National Center for Assisted Living, an industry group, released an analysis citing the potential need to hire an estimated 102,000 nurses and nursing aides across the industry should they be forced to comply with the staffing regulations. To add insult to injury, the mandate did not provide financial support for recruitment or training for any of this potential additional staff—essentially mandating the impossible without offering a single tool to get it done.

“This unrealistic staffing mandate threatened to close nursing homes and displace vulnerable seniors.”

Clif Porter, CEO of the American Health Care Association/National Center for Assisted Living

US District Court Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump appointee, stated in his ruling that, while the policy was “rooted in laudable goals, the Final Rule still must be consistent with Congress’s statutes.” This was a charitable statement as the staffing mandate was never broadly supported—even among healthcare advocates or lawmakers on either side of the aisle.

It faced bipartisan opposition in Congress back in 2023, with bills in both chambers trying to block the rule. Nearly 100 House members wrote to then-Health Secretary Xavier Becerra, urging him to reconsider the proposed rule. Lawmakers from rural states were especially opposed, as meeting the mandate’s minimum staffing requirements would have been particularly challenging, if not impossible, in underserved areas.

“It’s a major victory for seniors, their families, and certainly for us in rural America. I think this decision safeguards access to care. I also think it paves the way for a more thoughtful approach, one that enhances quality, supports caregivers and ensures the sustainability of rural providers.”

Good Samaritan Society, President and CEO Nate Schema

With a Republican majority in both chambers of Congress and some rural Democrats’ disagreement with the rule, it is unlikely that the staffing mandate will be reinstated through legislation anytime soon. But, in today’s highly litigious environment, there are proponents of the staffing rule—including unions, consumer groups, and some prominent Democrats in Congress—that may urge the Health and Human Services (HHS) to appeal the court’s decision or explore alternative regulatory approaches.

For now though, many in the healthcare industry are relieved. The termination of the staffing mandate acknowledges their realities on the ground and validates the issues they are struggling with. Providers are already under immense pressure, balancing the rising costs of care, workforce shortages, and the expectation of delivering high-quality services. This ruling brings some breathing room to healthcare entities that have been doing their best to stay viable while maintaining integrity and quality standards of care.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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Most of us are scared silly to talk about death and prefer to avoid estate planning. Others mistakenly think that estate planning only applies to the ultra-wealthy who want to minimize estate tax burdens. In reality, estate planning is a necessity for people of all economic levels; it is a comprehensive strategy that defines how assets and responsibilities will be handled if one is incapacitated or passes away.

Estate planning includes the creation of a will or testamentary trust, the appointment of guardians for dependents, and succession planning. Succession planning, more specifically, is crucial for business owners who want to ensure a seamless continuation of their business after their departure. Regardless of one’s age, succession isn’t optional. It’s your legacy’s insurance policy, and like any other insurance policy, you need it to protect against unexpected circumstances — even if it means facing the uncomfortable idea of your mortality.

A well-structured succession plan prepares a business for all contingencies to ensure operational stability. Often, a founder of a family business will dedicate years of hard work to build a thriving enterprise, yet no succession planning—or poor succession planning—can dismantle this legacy in mere hours due to sibling rivalry, internal disputes, or confusion following the founder’s departure. A study by the Family Business Institute found that only 30% of family-owned businesses survive into the second generation, while a mere 3% persist into the fourth generation. While founders may hope for harmony among heirs, wishful thinking alone cannot replace a well-structured succession process.

A recent study conducted by Ameriprise Financial found that 70% of sibling disputes and financial quarrels stem from inheritance issues and parental finances. Even if a business owner devises a seemingly straightforward succession plan, such as transferring the entire company to designated heirs, several complications may arise. First, the transfer of business interests may impact the lifetime estate and gift tax exemption, potentially affecting the inheritance of other siblings. Second, the timing of the transfer must be strategically planned. Lastly, a clear plan must delineate the specific beneficial owners of the business and their respective ownership stakes.

A proper succession plan requires meticulous development and consultation with estate law professionals. It must outline the transition process, define the sequence of control, select a successor or successors, establish a management plan post-owner departure, and determine the valuation method for shares or ownership interests. The sequence of control is particularly vital for closely held family businesses, ensuring clarity on decision-making processes in the event of the owner’s incapacitation or death.

We’ve all heard the horror stories of individuals experiencing memory loss being influenced and exploited to make unauthorized and unsavory business decisions. A well-drafted succession plan must explicitly define “capacity” and specify the individual or entity responsible for making this determination, whether a physician, a legal professional, or a member of the clergy.

An effective succession plan must also consider the delegation of authority within the business. While it may seem logical to grant control to all the children who work in the company, involving uninvolved family members in decision-making could lead to inefficiencies and conflicts. A business administrator tasked with obtaining approvals for routine operational decisions may struggle to perform essential duties, particularly if they require consent from parties with competing interests. However, it may be prudent to require a collective vote from all stakeholders for significant business decisions or structural changes.

Estate and succession planning are fundamental components of securing a legacy. A well-crafted succession plan protects the business and the family from uncertainty, ensuring that the founder’s lifetime of hard work doesn’t fall apart overnight and endures for future generations. With strategic planning and expert guidance, business owners can avoid disaster, preserve family harmony, and secure the future for generations to come.

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Regulations around COVID-era tax programs were rolled out so fast and furious that accountants had to be on constant alert for updates and changes. So, it didn’t surprise us that the IRS has changed its mind regarding the proper reporting of the Employee Retention Credit (ERC). What is surprising, however, is how unceremoniously the IRS made an about-face on such a significant tax issue, acting as if that was its position all along. It all comes down to how to handle previously filed income tax returns for the periods when an ERC claim was submitted.

Many taxpayers previously struggled with the IRS policy that they must file an amended income tax return to correct their overreported wage expenses, even if the taxpayers haven’t received their money yet (see Notice 2021-20, Q&A 60, and Notice 2021-49, §IV(C) for example). The unwavering position of the IRS was that taxpayers were required to amend the return for the year in which the wage expense occurred, not the year the credit was received. Some taxpayers listened to the IRS and amended their income tax returns; some didn’t. Many tax practitioners struggled with their professional responsibilities advising clients regarding amending income tax returns.

In the event of an ERC audit, one of the first questions an auditor may ask is, “Did you file an amended return to reduce your wage deduction?” Some auditors felt that filing an amended income tax return was a condition precedent to making a proper ERC claim.

On March 20, 2025, the IRS revised its Employee Retention Credit (ERC) FAQs and issued new and surprising guidance on ERC-related reporting. In the “Income Tax and ERC” section of the IRS’s updated ERC website, the IRS explicitly instructs that to address overstated wages,

“… you’re not required to file an amended return or, if applicable, an administrative adjustment request (AAR) to address the overstated wage expenses. Instead, you can include the overstated wage expense amount as gross income on your income tax return for the tax year you received the ERC.

Example: 

Business A claimed an ERC of $700 based on $1,000 of qualified wages paid for tax year 2021 but did not reduce its wage expense on its income tax return for 2021.

The IRS paid the claim to Business A in 2024, so Business A received the benefit of the ERC but hasn’t resolved its overstated wage expense on its income tax return.

Business A does not need to amend its income tax return for tax year 2021. Instead, Business A should account for the overstated deduction by including the $700 in gross income on its 2024 income tax return.”

But what if the taxpayer did reduce his wage expense but his claim was later denied?

The IRS now instructs the taxpayer,

“…in the year their claim disallowance is final, increase their wage expense on their income tax return by the same amount that it was reduced.”

This provision is especially relevant because some “ERC years” are approaching the three-year statute of limitations for amendment. Until now, if the statute of limitations to file an amended return for the year the wages were originally paid had expired, the taxpayer had no practical way to account for this. In fact, many taxpayers who had filed amended returns and added back their overstated wages even received rejections from the IRS, who would not process their returns (and checks!) based on the expired statute of limitations. Now, the IRS permits and even instructs the taxpayer to make corrections in a later tax year.

The IRS’s reasoning for now having the income reported in the year of receipt is the “tax benefit rule,” which states that if a taxpayer takes a deduction based on specific facts but later the circumstances change and contradict those facts, he may need to “undo” part of that deduction by reporting it as income.

Instead of going back and amending the tax return from the year the claim was made, the IRS now allows you to correct the issue in the year you received the ERC by adding the overstated wage amount to the income for that year.

This new practical guidance is welcome for many tax practitioners and their clients. It eliminates the question of whether to file amended returns, allowing taxpayers to legitimately receive the full benefits of the ERC and remain in compliance with the IRS. It also provides an answer for those asked by the IRS why they haven’t yet filed an amended income tax return.

Others who have recently filed amended returns based on prior IRS guidance are wondering whether their returns will even be processed, and now they are in limbo as to whether to account for the ERC in the year of receipt. Never a dull moment for today’s tax practitioners!

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The Passive Foreign Investment Company (PFIC) rules have been in force for many decades, yet they remain a persistent source of angst for US taxpayers, particularly those in the financial services world.

PFIC rules were introduced in 1986 as part of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. Congress felt these rules were necessary to address US taxpayers who could easily move their liquid assets into offshore corporate structures and generate passive income. This passive income would be sheltered from US tax until the earnings would be repatriated to the US. The nature of passive income makes it easier to migrate out of the US to avoid US taxes.

Hence the PFIC regime — an anti-deferral mechanism that prevents US taxpayers from using offshore corporate structures to avoid paying US taxes on passive income.

What is a PFIC?

A PFIC is a foreign corporation primarily earning passive income or holding assets generating passive income.

Specifically, if more than 75% of a foreign corporation’s income is passive or more than 50% of a foreign corporation’s assets generate passive income, then the foreign entity would be considered a PFIC for US tax purposes.

For PFIC purposes, passive income generally includes the following types of income:

Dividends

Interests

Rents

Royalties

Capital gains

Impact of Owning a PFIC

Income from distributions and gains on dispositions of PFICs are subject to the highest tax rate applicable to the taxpayer type, regardless of the taxpayer’s tax rate bracket. In addition to imposing a higher rate of tax on many taxpayers, this also eliminates the qualified dividend and capital gains beneficial tax rates. An interest charge is also applied to the amount of recognized income considered to have been deferred.

Planning Considerations

Some planning opportunities are available to mitigate the harsh impact of PFIC ownership, but administratively, they can be challenging. Another burden of owning a PFIC is the additional disclosures and filing requirements related to PFIC ownership.

Taxpayers who invest directly in PFICs must address these issues at the more basic level. Venture capital or private equity fund investors encounter even more significant challenges, including layered compliance burdens, limited access to required tax information, and increased filing obligations.

Things got worse for investors in this space with the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Prior to the TCJA, many foreign portfolio companies relied on a fair market value method to value their assets, allowing them to consider the fair market value of the enterprise and treat it as a goodwill asset. This was particularly helpful when the foreign portfolio company would have stores of cash from investors sitting on the balance sheet but no other significant assets. Cash is considered an asset that generates passive income and would quickly put the company’s assets over the 50% threshold, making it a PFIC. The fair market value method allowed the company to take credit for the company’s value, which is an asset not reflected on the balance sheet, and treat that enterprise value as “goodwill” or some similar type of intangible asset that does not generate passive income – thereby keeping the passive assets below the 50% threshold.

This election to use the fair market value is not available if the foreign corporation is a Controlled Foreign Corporation. The TCJA provision that reintroduced “downward attribution” caused many more foreign portfolio companies to be considered CFCs and even more to have to undertake additional administrative burdens to determine if they were indeed CFCs under these new rules.

Fortunately, in 2019, the IRS introduced a safe harbor rule with respect to the downward attribution rule, providing some relief for foreign portfolio companies dealing with this issue. While the guidance provided some relief,, it still required additional analysis.

In January 2022, the IRS issued proposed regulations (REG-118250-20) addressing the treatment of domestic partnerships and S corporations owning stock in PFICs.

These regulations suggest an aggregate approach where the partnership and S Corp would not be considered shareholders. Rather, each partner or shareholder of these domestic entities would be responsible for making PFIC-related elections and calculations for PFICs in which they were not directly invested but rather through S Corps and partnerships.

Understandably, the financial services industry met these proposed regulations with some hysteria. The current approach is to allow the S Corp or partnership to file the PFIC-related disclosures, make the relevant elections, track these elections and attributes, and perform necessary calculations. Requiring that the individual partners and shareholders take on this function tremendously increases the administrative burden on taxpayers in the financial services industry.

On a positive note, the current status of these rules is only ‘proposed’ and not binding; many have chosen to carry on as they have until now.

Given these considerations, there remains uncertainty in this area, particularly affecting taxpayers and those in the financial services industry. It is prudent to stay informed, act proactively, and consult with professionals to minimize risk, and ensure compliance.

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Private equity firms have long been central players in the U.S. economy, driving investments in businesses, creating jobs, and stimulating the economy. Last month, lawmakers issued a renewed call to eliminate the capital gains tax treatment on carried interest, a crucial component of private equity, venture capital, and hedge-fund compensation. Private equity firms have responded by pushing back against this potential reform, lobbying to keep the current tax policy in place to preserve economic growth.

Explaining Carried Interest

Carried interest is a share of the profits that investment managers receive as additional compensation for successfully managing high-risk investments. Typically, carried interest constitutes about 20% of the profits generated by the fund, although the percentage can vary depending on the specific arrangement. This compensation is not a salary or fee for services rendered but a share in the profits of the fund, paid only after investors have received their initial capital back, along with a minimum required return, often referred to as the “hurdle rate.”

The core controversy with carried interest lies in its tax treatment. Under the current U.S. tax system, carried interest is classified as a long-term capital gain rather than ordinary income. The IRS treats it as a capital gain because the manager is perceived to be making an investment in the fund. As a result, the income derived from carried interest is taxed at the capital gains tax rate, which is generally 20% for long-term holdings compared to the ordinary income rate of 37%.

For carried interest to qualify as long-term capital gain, the underlying investments held by the fund must be held for more than a year. Prior to the 2017 tax reform, the requirement for carried interest to be taxed as long-term capital gains was not explicitly restricted, so fund managers could claim long-term capital gain treatment even if the assets were held for a shorter period.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) introduced Section 1061, which extended the holding period for investments to qualify for the lower capital-gains rate from one year to three years. This provision was designed to close a perceived loophole where fund managers could enjoy long-term gains as long as the investment was held for more than a year but still enjoy the lower long-term capital gains tax rate.

Trump’s Proposal and Its Impact

Section 1061 highlighted the growing political pressure to reform carried interest taxation. While the three-year holding period rule tightened the previous tax benefits, this proposal could subject fund managers to ordinary income tax rates on carried interest in entirety.

Trump’s push for higher tax on carried interest is part of his broader tax reform strategy. The proposal is aimed at generating additional tax revenue, which could offset tax cuts for corporations or contribute to reducing the federal deficit. According to a December 2024 estimate from the Congressional Budget Office, taxing carried interest as ordinary income could decrease the federal budget deficit by $14 billion over 10 years.

This could have profound implications for the private equity industry. Fund managers would see a higher tax burden, which could reduce the after-tax return on investments, ultimately impacting the overall attractiveness of private equity as an investment vehicle. Higher taxes could discourage fund managers from pursuing certain types of investments, particularly riskier long-term projects, which require substantial upfront capital. As a result, some private equity firms might seek to restructure their compensation arrangements or adjust their investment strategies to mitigate the impact of these tax changes.

For investors, the shift in tax treatment could result in lower returns on their investments, particularly as the structure of the private equity industry evolves in response to these reforms. We could potentially see a reduction in new funds, with the biggest impact felt at the smaller fund level. Changes in carried interest tax rules may increase structure complexity and compliance costs for private equity firms. Clients may be forced to restructure fund agreements to avoid the proposed tax consequences. However, the full extent of these effects remains uncertain, and private equity advocates argue that the proposals could ultimately reduce overall economic growth.

Pushing Back

Private equity firms have been vocal in their opposition to any proposed changes to the tax treatment of carried interest. One of their key arguments is that the current system helps to attract and retain investment in long-term growth opportunities. Private equity firms argue that by taxing carried interest at the capital gains rate, fund managers are incentivized to focus on creating lasting value rather than making short-term, quick-profit investments.

Industry advocates assert that the capital gains treatment encourages fund managers to take calculated risks on businesses that need capital to scale, innovate, and grow. These investments, in turn, lead to job creation, higher wages, and an increased tax base. Groups like the American Investment Council have published reports showing that private equity-backed businesses are major contributors to job creation, with private equity firms generating more than 10 million jobs across the United States.

Private equity groups have pushed back with significant lobbying efforts. They argue that the new tax structure could harm the economy by discouraging investment in high-risk businesses, particularly those in underserved sectors. They point to studies suggesting that private equity plays a critical role in improving the productivity of U.S. businesses and enhancing global competitiveness.

Moreover, private equity firms have argued that the industry already faces significant regulatory scrutiny and that additional taxes would place an undue burden on private equity funds. Firms that specialize in venture capital or other high-growth investments may be particularly affected, as they depend on the capital gains treatment to incentivize their partners to take on riskier investments.

Bottom Line

Proposed changes to Section 1061 could affect how carried interest is taxed and may impact the financial industry—beginning with high-level fund managers and executives, then extending to broader investment structures, compensation models, and investor returns. We advise clients to avoid surprises and model various exit scenarios, especially for assets close to the new holding period thresholds.

As President Trump and other lawmakers propose various reforms, the private equity industry stands firm in defending its tax structure. While reform advocates argue for a more equitable system, private equity firms emphasize the crucial role that carried interest plays in driving innovation, job creation, and economic growth. The outcome of this debate will have significant implications for both the private equity industry and the broader U.S. economy, making the conversation over tax reform a topic worth watching.

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An inheritor’s trust is not just another estate planning tool—it’s your secret weapon for keeping wealth protected and under control. This trust is designed to protect and manage the assets you pass to a beneficiary. An inheritor’s trust allows your beneficiary to receive his or her inheritance in trust rather than as an outright gift or bequest. It locks down the assets and shields the beneficiary from taxes, creditors, and bad decisions. The beneficiary gets his share, but the assets are kept out of his or her own taxable estate.

Having assets pass directly to a trust not only protects the assets from being included in the beneficiary’s taxable estate but also shields them from other creditor claims, such as those arising from a lawsuit or a divorce. The inheritance is protected because the trust, rather than your beneficiary, legally owns the inheritance and because the beneficiary doesn’t fund the trust.

To ensure complete asset protection, the beneficiary must establish an inheritor’s trust before receiving the inheritance. The trust is drafted so that your beneficiary is the investment trustee, giving him or her power over the trust’s investments.

Your beneficiary then selects an unrelated person — someone he or she knows well and trusts — as the distribution trustee. The distribution trustee will have complete discretion over the distribution of principal and income, which ensures that the trust provides creditor protection.

The trust should be designed with the flexibility to remove and change the distribution trustee at any time and make other modifications when necessary, such as when tax laws change. Bear in mind that the unfettered power to remove and replace trustees may jeopardize the creditor protection aspect of the trust, which could result in the inclusion of the trust property in the beneficiary’s taxable estate.

Because it’s your beneficiary, and not you, who sets up the trust, he or she will incur the bulk of the fees, which will vary depending on the trust. In addition, he or she may have to pay annual trustee fees. Your cost, however, should be minimal — only the legal fees to amend your will or living trust to redirect your bequest to the inheritor’s trust.

Wealth preservation

Another benefit of an inheritor’s trust is that it can help ensure that inherited assets remain within the family lineage. By keeping assets in the trust rather than transferring them outright to beneficiaries, the trust can prevent wealth depletion due to mismanagement, overspending, or other poor financial decisions.

The trust’s grantor can include specific provisions or restrictions. These may include setting limits on distributions or requiring certain milestones (like completing education) before beneficiaries can access funds.

Follow the law

Ensuring an inheritor’s trust is properly drafted isn’t just a legal formality—it’s essential for protecting both the assets and the beneficiaries. Trusts must comply with federal and state laws to avoid potential IRS audits or court challenges. Most importantly, by taking the time to establish the trust correctly, the grantor ensures that his or her beneficiaries receive the full benefits of their inheritance without unnecessary risk.

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After numerous promises and delays, the IRS and Treasury have finally issued Proposed Regulations addressing Previously Taxed Earnings and Profits (PTEP) of foreign corporations and the related basis adjustments.

The proposed regulations are a follow-up of Notice 2019-01, which was issued in response to 2017’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “TCJA”). This notice provided a preview on how previously taxed income should be tracked and allocated when distributed. The current proposed regulations present a framework for tracking and managing PTEP to ensure that US shareholders in controlled foreign corporations (CFCs) are not taxed twice on the same earnings.

US Shareholders in CFCs are subject to a handful of tax regimes which require them to recognize “phantom income,” or income attributed from the foreign corporation, without even having received a distribution of cash or property. These regimes include Subpart F, Global Intangible Low Taxed Income (GILTI) and the one-time Section 965 Transition tax, ca. 2017.

When an actual distribution of cash or property is made, these earnings could be subject to US tax for a second time. The PTEP rules provide that these earnings, previously taxed under one of the above-mentioned regimes, should be excluded from income when distributed, preventing double taxation.

The latter two regimes, GILTI and Section 965, were codified as part of the 2017 TCJA and resulted in a tremendous increase in the number of US taxpayers that were recognizing phantom income and in the amounts of PTEP that were in the system. Hence, the increased urgency for guidance on the practical application of the PTEP rules.

The 350-page proposal does not make for light reading, and experts claim it doesn’t cover many issues that still need to be addressed.

Below are some key points:

PTEP Accounting and Tracking – The regulations require tracking of PTEP at both the U.S. shareholder and foreign corporation levels.

Categorized, annual PTET accounts – Taxpayers must maintain annual PTEP accounts categorized by the different types of income inclusions (e.g., Subpart F income, Global Intangible Low-Taxed Income [GILTI], Section 965 inclusions).

Share-by-Share Basis Adjustments – This approach entails applying basis adjustments to specific shares or property, which prevents improper shifts and ensures accurate gains or losses upon sale.

Tiered structures present challenges because they involve multiple layers of ownership. Under Subpart F/GILTI/Section 965 rules, lower tier foreign corporation income can bypass intermediate holding companies and be allocated directly to the US shareholder, making it difficult to accurately account for PTEP.

Adjustments to basis are generally made at the beginning of the taxable year in which the inclusion or distribution occurs.

Foreign Currency Dollar Basis Pools – Taxpayers are required to maintain U.S. dollar basis pools to compute foreign currency gain or loss under Section 986(c).

Foreign Tax Credits Allocation and Apportionment – The proposal includes rules for allocating and apportioning foreign taxes to PTEP distributions.

The proposed regulations are set to apply only for future tax years of foreign corporations, starting on or after the date when the regulations are officially finalized. They are not retroactive.

Taxpayers have the option to apply the regulations retroactively to open tax years.

The proposed regulations are welcome and will be helpful for taxpayers who have had recognized Subpart F, GILTI or other phantom inclusions from CFCs. However, accounting for US investments in foreign corporations and keeping updated about the new ordering rules, basis adjustments, and distribution classifications is not for an amateur. Taxpayers should work closely with tax professionals who can help them update their tracking systems, accurately categorize PTEP pools, and strategize to avoid double taxation and address compliance issues.

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Like much else under the new Trump presidency, the country’s tax landscape is shifting and reshaping beneath our feet.

Thousands of federal jobs have been slashed, including a large swath at the IRS. This, coupled with an IRS hiring freeze, will reduce the IRS’s ability to pursue tax debt collection and slow down audits, collections, and legal actions. The Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE) access to the IRS’s Integrated Data Retrieval System will accelerate a swing toward AI-driven fraud detection and enforcement, and could increase scrutiny on delinquent taxpayers and open the door to a wave of litigation in defense of data privacy. Lastly, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) of 2017, which has kept tax rates low, key deductions and credits in place, and favorable tax breaks available, is set to expire by the end of 2025 and may or may not be renewed.

These potential changes have tax professionals worried about taxpayer health and the IRS’s capacity to enforce tax law and resolve tax controversy issues. Will scrutiny on delinquent taxpayers increase or weaken in 2025? Will there be sufficient IRS staff available to address delinquencies for tax debtors who want to resolve their obligations? What is the recalcitrant taxpayer to do in these tumultuous times?

What are taxpayers thinking

Taxpayers who are in arrears may wonder if it is the right time to come clean and resolve their outstanding tax issues, or to continue to cruise, hoping that IRS disarray will stand in their favor.

According to statistics generated by the Professional Managers Association, the IRS workforce stands at more than 100,000 total employees. Approximately 28,000 of those have been onboarded within the past year, and about 30,000 employees have worked there less than three years. The IRS, as of February 19, 2025, reports that it plans to lay off approximately 6,000 first-year probationary employees, despite the hiring freeze recently imposed by President Trump. These layoffs will disproportionately affect IRS employees in enforcement because they represent a large share of new employees.

While it’s true that the disorder in federal functioning may translate into diminished scrutiny, the dearth in staffing means that there won’t be agents and reps available to address taxpayers’ issues when necessary. If a taxpayer is at the “Final Notice” stage, automated notices will continue to be released, and a levy will automatically be imposed. However, there likely won’t be enough IRS agents to review appeals, release levies, arrange payment plans, or offer compromises for petitioners. We recommend that the delinquent taxpayer move to resolve his tax debt before he gets caught up in the IRS’ machinery and finds he has no recourse for his debt.

 What we’ve seen at the IRS

Our tax controversy team communicates with IRS representatives daily and has found that auditors, tax reps and agents share taxpayers’ state of confusion. They are stressed and anxious in the face of DOGE’s aggressive layoffs, wondering if or where the hatchet will fall next. Many are considering retirement to get out of the line of fire. New employee training has been frozen mid-stream, leaving longstanding agents worried about the extra burden they will shoulder to compensate for insufficient staff. Their state of limbo does not enhance operations. As one auditor told us, “Sorry if I sound muddled; it’s because I am.”

What You Should Do

Compliance is always the answer. File your taxes on time to avoid additional penalties. If you are in arrears, consider setting up a payment plan now, before IRS processing delays get worse. Stay abreast of policy changes; if TCJA provisions expire, your tax bill will change. Finally, if you are out of your depth, seek the help of an accounting professional.

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The market has two to three major corrections each decade, and always recovered afterwards to new highs.

Variations of this principle echo through advisory offices across the country during every market downturn. As financial advisors, a fundamental part of our job is talking clients off the proverbial ledge during market corrections and crashes. An equally important challenge, and one that receives far less attention, is pulling clients’ heads out of the clouds.

When markets plummet, clients often seek to abandon their long-term financial and investment plans. Conversely, they are often tempted to derail those same plans when market conditions are excessively favorable. “Maybe we should put just 20% of our money in Nvidia /Bitcoin / leveraged funds/ another ‘YOLO’ or high-risk, high-reward asset.” Every advisor has heard versions of this sentiment during euphoric market phases.

This presents a unique challenge in financial advising. To calm investors during downturns, an arsenal of historical data, charts, and evidence is available to prove that historically, markets have always recovered. This factual approach is effective because the pattern is well-established.

Managing euphoria is different. Booming markets often come with powerful narratives of fundamental change that convince investors that traditional strategies will not suffice, and aggressive positioning is not just desirable, but necessary to keep pace with a new reality. History offers little reassurance here because these moments always feel unprecedented.

In the late 1990s, investors piled into internet stocks, convinced that brick-and-mortar businesses were obsolete. The dot-com bubble promised a new economic paradigm where profits were secondary to “eyeballs” or views, i.e. a massive user base. Growth must be maintained at any cost. It was not just speculation; it was the future. Until, at least from an investing perspective, it wasn’t.

Sir John Templeton famously warned, “The four most dangerous words in investing are ‘this time it’s different.’ “Each era of market euphoria comes with a compelling story about why the old rules no longer apply. But history shows that markets eventually reassert discipline, and fundamentals still matter.

The best defense against both fear and greed is a well-crafted, long-term plan. A structured investment strategy keeps conversations grounded in clear financial goals, helping clients resist the emotional extremes of both downturns and booms. Interrupting a sound, long-term plan—whether due to panic or euphoria—can be costly. As advisors, our job is not only crisis management during bear markets, but also expectation management under all market conditions.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide or be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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On January 14, 2025, the US Treasury and IRS released final regulations on the classification of digital content and cloud transactions. These rules address how transactions related to software, including streaming content, SaaS, and other cloud-based solutions are classified for US tax purposes. The guidance is relevant specifically to cross-border tax provisions, including withholding on payments made to foreign persons, and specific rules under Subpart F & GILTI.

How transactions are classified impacts how they are taxed. The new regulations clarify whether digital transactions are classified as leases, sales, or services. Once the tax classification of a transaction is established, the taxpayer can rely on the existing sourcing rules to understand what is defined as US sourced and what is foreign sourced – and the implications of each. The goal of refining the regulations is to help businesses, including multinational corporations, understand how cross-border digital transactions will be taxed and to ensure compliance with U.S. tax laws.

Given that businesses have been engaged in cloud transactions for decades, this guidance is long overdue. The IRS has yet to issue guidance on the classification of more advanced technology-related transactions, such as those involving Artificial Intelligence or digital assets; and there is no current indication that such guidance is forthcoming. Ultimately, guidance that provides clarity on these topics help both U.S. and foreign companies comply with U.S. tax obligations, while they navigate the challenges of the digital economy.

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The US real estate market offers abundant investment options and attractive opportunities for foreign investors. However, achieving success in US inbound investments requires a clear understanding of US tax law and its implications.

All income related to an underlying US real property asset is taxed in the US. To ensure maximum returns, investors must be knowledgeable about potential tax liabilities before committing to an investment.

Rentals

Rental income from properties located in the US is subject to a 30% withholding tax on gross rental income. If the rental income is sourced from rental activity classified as “active rental income” it is taxed within the US, but not on the gross amount. Rather, it is taxed on the net income amount, at the graduated marginal tax rates applicable to the taxpayer based on their income bracket.

If the rental activity does not meet the “active rental” income threshold, there is an option for the foreign owner to elect to treat the activity as active in order to obtain the benefit of the reduced tax rate. The impact of such election would have to be considered prior to making the election.

Sales

Sales of US real property results in capital gains income that is subject to US tax. At the time of the transaction proceeds from the sale of US real property are subject to 15% withholding of the gross amount. This amount withheld could far exceed the actual tax liability due because the withholding is on the total proceeds not the gain. In a case where the tax withheld exceeds the actual amount due, the foreign investor would have to file an income tax return to claim a refund for the excess taxes withheld. There is an option to obtain a withholding exemption from the IRS, but this process can take up to several months and delay a transaction.

If the foreign seller is an individual, then the capital gains income may be taxed at the lower long term capital gains tax rate available to individuals.

Indirect investment

Foreigners do not usually invest in US real property directly. Typically, they choose to invest through a legal entity, like a partnership or an LLC. Partnerships and LLCs are transparent for US tax purposes; they are considered pass-through for U.S. tax purposes, where income is taxed at the investor level rather than at the entity level. Therefore, if foreign individuals invest directly in a partnership or LLC whose underlying asset is US real property, they will be required to file individual income tax returns in the US and pay their US taxes related directly to this income.

A key consideration for structuring an investment would be to ensure that the rental income would be taxed as low as possible in the US considering the benefits of various available elections. Another key consideration is to make certain that any taxes paid in the US related to income in an LLC or partnership structure, would be creditable in the investor’s home country.

Go corporate

Investing in the US real estate market through a partnership or LLC offers certain protections but can be less efficient and may create delays in cash flow due to the withholding rule that would apply. Another alternative is to invest in the US through a corporate vehicle. This can be through a foreign country holding company or through a US holding company. If the real estate is held through a corporation, whether it is domestic or foreign, the income will be taxed at the standard corporate tax rate of 21% plus any state and local income taxes that would apply in the district where the real estate is located.

Investing in US real estate through a corporate vehicle introduces an extra level of tax in the form of a dividend withholding tax. The real estate tax is taxed at the corporate level at a rate of 21%, and then it is subject to a 30% withholding when the earnings are distributed (or deemed distributed in the case of a foreign corporation). If there is a treaty in place between the US and the country of residence of the foreign investor, then this dividend withholding tax can be significantly reduced or, in some circumstances, even eliminated entirely.

US vs foreign corporation

When comparing the benefits of investing through a US Corporation or a foreign corporation there are several factors to consider. From a cash flow perspective, it is usually beneficial to structure the investment through a US corporation because:

There would be no withholding at source
The investor has more control over the timing of tax submission
The investor would avoid having taxes over withheld

Alternatively, the benefit of using a foreign corporation as an investment vehicle is that the stock in the foreign corporation is not considered US situs property and would avoid US estate taxes. Conversely, stock in a US corporation, even when held by a foreign person, would be considered US situs property and be subject to the US estate tax.

As demonstrated, in addition to the income tax implications, there are oftentimes estate tax implications to consider when designing a structure for US investment. Another factor that is often considered is the foreign investor’s ability to easily and efficiently reinvest earnings in the US market.

Do it through debt

After considering these complexities, it is no wonder that some investors choose to go a more simplified route by investing in US real property through bona fide debt instruments. This method is efficient and often does not attract US taxes. However, this approach limits the investors’ profit potential because in order to be considered debt, and possibly exempt from US taxes, the nature of the transaction must be true debt with a fixed rate of return.

Compliance

Once a structure is implemented, it is essential to understand the US tax compliance requirements. The IRS has robust requirements related to reporting entities and activities with foreign owners. Failure to comply with these requirements can result in significant penalties of $25,000 or more. Thus, even when an efficient structure is in place, inadequate compliance could ultimately lead to significant and unnecessary costs.

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We’ve all heard it before, “The stock market is too volatile!” Investors, analysts, and your brother-in-law’s best friend, the one who suddenly became a market expert after reading an article, all seem to grumble about the ups and downs of the market. But here’s the question — is this volatility really such a bad thing?

It’s clear that the stock market has been one of the most effective wealth building tools over the past century. The market’s ability to compound wealth over decades has made it a powerful mechanism for long-term growth. What if I were to tell you that market returns are largely attributable to its volatility? Sounds counterintuitive? Let me explain.

In investing, there is a concept called the Efficient Frontier. It’s a curve that shows the best possible return one can achieve for a given level of risk. Usually, risk is plotted on the X-axis and returns on the Y-axis. Higher returns require taking on greater levels of risk.

In reality, the better way to view this concept is to exchange “Risk” for “Reason”. When an investment has a higher expected return, it does not always mean it carries more risk, rather, it means there is a significant reason for its higher expected return.

If we were to plot a standard investment on the chart above, beginning with the bottom left, we would see that the safest asset (for example, U.S. Treasuries) presently shows yields of approximately 4%. Any investment that promises more than that – meaning it has a higher expected return – must be accompanied by a “reason” that will move it out further to the right of the chart.

What could be some reasons for higher expected returns?

Loss Exposure. For example, real estate and private businesses have a higher expected return than treasuries, as there is capital at risk.
If a bank CD is locked in for a long period, it doesn’t necessarily mean it is a riskier investment. However, the extra limitation period will create the demand for a higher return.
If an investment is volatile, investors will expect a higher rate of return.

To put it briefly, if there is no reason, there is no extra return.

Let’s focus a little more on the last factor on the list, volatility.

The stock market represents the ultimate in volatility. Some years, it may be up 30%, while other years it may swing 20% downward. If you focus on any one year, the picture is chaotic; but if you consider the market’s long-term average, the picture becomes much clearer. The U.S. stock market has returned approximately 10% annually over the past century. That return isn’t an accident – it is the reward for enduring volatility.

If the stock market were as stable as a savings account, it wouldn’t return 10%; it would return something closer to 4% – like Treasuries. If the market would be as safe as Treasuries, investors would bid up prices where the effective yield would be similar to the risk-free rate. The volatility is what creates the opportunity for higher returns. With no volatility, there would be no reason for stocks to outperform.

Instead of being disturbed about market volatility, why not embrace it?! Volatility is not your enemy; it’s your ticket to higher returns. Volatility is a reason you get paid more. It’s the price you pay for participating in one of the greatest wealth-building mechanisms ever created. Beyond that, volatility offers opportunities to invest at times when investments are at reduced or discounted rates. Sir John Templeton put it best when he said, “For those properly prepared, the bear market is not only a calamity but an opportunity”.

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Americans are on the move. Retirees migrate towards warmer climates, job seekers move to areas with high job availability, cities with growing tech industries draw professionals, and post-pandemic remote employees have relocated from urban to suburban areas. As the demand for living space constantly shifts and readjusts, the real estate industry responds in kind.

Migration drivers

Americans’ migration patterns significantly impact the real estate market by influencing the supply and demand for housing. The continuing trend towards remote work means more people are searching for space in suburbia. Retail businesses are following migrating employees and moving to more suburban areas. There is less need for traditional office spaces – resulting in higher urban vacancy rates and declining rental rates.

Additionally, the growth of e-commerce has boosted the demand for industrial spaces needed for warehouses and distribution centers. Vacant office and retail spaces are being repurposed into residential, healthcare, or mixed-use properties to meet changing market demands.

The US Census Bureau reports that, over the next decade, the U.S. population aged 25–54 will grow by 12 million, while age 70+ population will increase by 15 million. This growing and aging population will expand and influence migration patterns, consumer spending, and health care needs. It will spur increased demand for related local amenities that have their own real estate needs – like retail and service-oriented real estate for restaurants, entertainment, or healthcare. Conversely, commercial real estate in areas experiencing ‘negative migration’ will suffer when a populace declines, experiencing a decline in foot traffic, increased vacancies, lower rent rolls, and lower property values.

Rental stats

The growing demand for affordable housing has intensified, exacerbated by the high cost of homeownership and weak single-family home inventory. The steep rise in the cost of purchasing a home has kept many households renting, by either choice or necessity. “Although it is the epitome of the American dream, it may no longer make sense to own a home,” says Shulem Rosenbaum, CPA/ABV, partner of Advisory Services and a member of Roth&Co’s real estate leadership team. “It is prudent to calculate the cost of owning a home versus renting, especially with the current limitations on the tax deductions on mortgage interest and a higher standard deduction.”

The U.S. Census Bureau calculates that almost half of renter households are considered “cost-burdened,” spending more than 30 percent of their income to keep a roof over their heads. A quarter of renters pay at least half of their income on rent. Not only does this high rent burden leave little for other necessities; it effectively locks households into a state of permanent rental because they cannot save for the downpayment and purchase of a home.

Additionally, an enormous number of baby boomers will soon need housing to transition into. The population of individuals ages 20 to 34, the prime renter age, will rise through 2030, then level off. The population in the 65-and-older cohort is also rapidly rising, and this group is increasingly choosing to rent multifamily and single-family units.

Supply growth plays a pivotal role in shaping the multifamily sector’s outlook. More supply tends to drive rents down, while limited supply pushes rents up. We believe that, over the medium term, the anticipated decline in new construction will help stabilize over-supplied markets. The resulting recovery in rent growth will bolster investor confidence and revitalize the sluggish transactions market.

Cap Rates

Capitalization rates in different geographic areas reflect migration patterns and are influenced by demand. Cap rates are lower in healthy, high-demand areas and higher in markets struggling with negative-migration. These fluctuations illustrate how the trends in migration influence investors’ perception of risk.

Areas experiencing growth and increased demand for real estate, such as the southern states of Florida, Texas, and Arizona, are showing lower cap rates. The strong demand and potential for profit offers the investor low risk opportunities. Conversely, areas losing populace, like New York City or San Francisco, show higher cap rates as demand for office, retail, and even some residential spaces decline.

Although many claim that real estate investment is suffering, due to the high interest rates and the changing landscape and migration patterns, there may be opportunities for prudent investors seeking to capitalize on these trends. Specifically, markets with higher cap rates may offer opportunities to acquire undervalued assets, provided investors are equipped to address the risks associated with negative migration.

Risk

Real estate has often been considered a passive investment with less risk than traditional businesses. However, recent trends have demonstrated that real estate must be approached as an active business. The competitive landscape, rapidly shifting dynamics, and the risk of product obsolescence demand a more strategic approach.

Real estate investors should operate their portfolios with the same innovation and agility as traditional businesses. “It’s not enough to rely on past performance or location value,” Rosenbaum notes. “Investors need to focus on calculating ROIs, monitoring market trends, and leveraging traditional business metrics to remain competitive and profitable.”

This business-like approach requires that investors continuously evaluate opportunities for redevelopment, adapt to changing market demands, and proactively manage assets to optimize returns. Whether it’s repurposing a property for new uses, investing in technology to enhance operational efficiency, or diversifying to mitigate risk, treating real estate like a business is essential in today’s market. “The key is to think ahead and be ready to pivot,” says Rosenbaum, “because in real estate, just like in business, staying stagnant is not an option.”

Basic Economics

Our client base and the broader real estate landscape have taught us one thing: Real estate is not immune from the most fundamental principle in economics – it’s always about supply and demand. Increased demand drives up property values and lowers cap rates, while properties that lose residents see less demand and higher cap rates. For investors, staying attuned to migration patterns and ready to capitalize on them is key to making decisive and profitable investment choices.

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Autism rates are skyrocketing across the country, reshaping the healthcare industry’s landscape for families, insurers, and providers. Does this surge in the autistic population make the ABA space a surefire investment opportunity? We believe there is great potential in this space, however, like any industry, a successful ABA agency comes with its own unique challenges and operational demands. To navigate these challenges and ensure long-term success, ABA agencies must focus on key performance indicators that drive both operational efficiency and profitability.

Escalating Demand

Applied Behavior Analysis or ABA has become widely known as the go-to therapy for treating individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Historically, insurers excluded ABA therapies, classifying them as educational rather than as medical services. However, the 2013 release of The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) significantly broadened the definition of autism and today, Medicaid and most insurance plans are mandated under the 2014 Affordable Care Act (ACA) and state law to provide coverage for autism treatment, including ABA therapy.

In a study issued in October of 2024, the journal JAMA Network Open reported that data gathered from over 12 million patients enrolled in major U.S. health care systems determined that between 2011 and 2022 the number of people diagnosed with autism climbed to a shocking 175%. Autism rates stand highest among the very young; according to calculations issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1 in 36 children were diagnosed with ASD in 2020.

Do the math – this could translate to an estimated 2.9 million autistic individuals by 2034.

Key performance indicators

Revenue per Client, Therapist Utilization Rate, and Accounts Receivable Turnover are essential key performance indicators. They provide measurable data that enables an agency to monitor cash flow, improve billing efficiency, and maximize revenue. They can help reduce delays in payments, thereby reducing a business’ working capital requirements and enabling appropriate cash flow. These metrics also serve to reflect whether an agency’s performance holds value to a potential investor.

Consider this fictional case scenario:

All-Smiles ABA Center is a friendly place and prides itself on its dedicated and professional staff.

The Accounts Receivables representative is often sick and behind in billing. She manages the agency’s finances by documenting when cash comes in and out, without keeping track of the revenue or expenses for each specific service or the date they are provided.

All-Smiles’ warmhearted therapists will often spend extra time with patients and understand occasional no-shows. The administrative staff is always ready to delay documentation until the client is comfortable with its services.

At the request of its clientele, the agency heavily promotes social skills groups, even though these sessions are reimbursed at much lower rates than direct one-on-one therapy. The majority of the agency’s clients are on Medicaid, which provides lower reimbursement rates, but the agency values its relationships and doesn’t want to make clients feel unwanted by focusing on a more diversified mix.

Accounts Receivable Turnover – All-Smiles billing and receivables processes are underperforming. Agencies must be able to consistently submit accurate and timely claims, in compliance with payor requirements to minimize rejected claims and payment delays. Timely collections are crucial to ensure that funds are available for salaries, and administrative and operational costs. Important metrics for accounts receivables include tracking average days in accounts receivable, collection rates by payor, and percentage of overdue accounts.

Therapist Utilization Rate – Compassionate and dedicated therapists may enhance services – but unbilled time translates directly into lost income. clients whose services earn lower reimbursements, or who take up extra, unbilled, therapy time are bringing in less revenue than it costs to serve them. Tracking an agency’s percentage of billable hours against total hours worked, the average caseload per therapist, and therapists’ cancellation rates maximizes therapist productivity and ensures operational efficiency. All-Smiles would also be wise to assess their client base and focus on clients with more robust coverage that yields reimbursements at higher rates.

Revenue per Client: Understanding how much revenue each client generates is essential in order to evaluate profitability, identify inefficiencies in billing, and ensure the business remains financially sustainable. Tracking revenue by service type helps the company assess which services yield the most profit. All-Smiles accounting and billing processes are so poor that it does not realize that its social skills sessions generate low revenues relative to therapist’s time. As a result, it fails to expand on therapy services or train additional staff and misses opportunities to boost profitability. Because All-Smiles operates on a cash basis and never reviews revenue and direct expenses on a date of service level, they are unable to properly track AR and know its accurate revenue, bad debt, and trends.

By analyzing the information revealed by these KPIs, an agency can track its revenues, scrutinize its performance, and use the data to create its own unique competitive advantage in the industry. It can evaluate profitability and identify opportunities to improve.

Working with our clients in the ABA space has proven that profitability in this industry is less about the volume of clients served and more about operational excellence and strategic management. For existing healthcare entities, the burgeoning autistic population offers promising opportunities to extend services and take advantage of this explosive growth. Established ABA agencies would be wise to analyze these key performance indicators to recognize red flags, maximize their returns, and set a value on their entity to attract potential investors.

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Real Estate Right Now is a video series covering the latest real estate trends and opportunities and how you can make the most of them. In the episode below, we discuss two major tax benefits of adopting energy-efficient practices. Click below to watch.

As a real estate investor, you can take advantage of government rewards by adopting energy-efficient technologies and practices. Two incentives investors should know about are the Section 179D deduction and the 45L Tax Credit. Here’s what you need to know:

Section 179D: The Energy-Efficient Building Deduction

This deduction is for building owners who install energy-efficient systems in their commercial properties. This includes interior lighting, mechanical systems and the building envelope. For government and nonprofit buildings, this deduction extends to designers, architects, and contractors.

For properties placed in service before January 2023: The deduction is up to $1.80 per square foot, indexed for inflation.
For Properties Placed in Service Between January 2023 and December 2032: The deduction is up to $5.00 per square foot -indexed for inflation.

However, projects initiated after January 2023 may require adherence to prevailing wage standards to qualify for the higher deduction amount.

45L Tax Credit

This credit is designed for multifamily developers and homebuilders who construct or reconstruct qualified energy-efficient homes, and then sell or lease them.

To qualify, developers must undergo a pre-certification process and regular building inspections, as well as pay prevailing wages.

This credit can be worth up to $5,000 per dwelling unit, depending on the type of home and energy-efficient measures implemented. For example, a developer with a one-hundred-unit development could receive a credit of 500,000!

If you believe your projects might qualify for these credits and deductions, consult with your financial advisor or tax professional to explore your eligibility and maximize your tax benefits.

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The Employee Retention Credit (ERC) was introduced in response to the COVID-19 pandemic as part of the CARES Act in 2020. It is a refundable tax credit with the purpose of incentivizing businesses to keep their employees on payroll during the disruptive pandemic period.

The ERC is calculated per employee and (for 2021) offers a credit of 70% of qualified wages paid to each employee during eligible quarters. Wages are capped at $10,000 per employee per quarter, resulting in a maximum credit allowance of $7,000 per employee per quarter.

Applying for the ERC should have been a fairly straightforward process, but a glitch in the IRS system triggered a spate of erroneous notices of disallowance to many applicants, causing complications, frustration, and losses for taxpayers.

The IRS claimed the disallowances were due to discrepancies in the number of employees reported by applicants. To support this accusation, the IRS points to taxpayers’ filed Form 941, Part 1, Box 1. Taxpayers are asked for the number of employees appearing on the payroll for the quarter. If the IRS finds that the employee count cited on Form 941 is less than the amount of employees claimed for the ERC on the employer’s 941X, it will disallow the credit.

The source of the problem boils down to the language used on the form. Form 941, Part 1, Box 1 of the 941 requests:

“Number of employees who received wages, tips, or other compensation for the pay period including Mar. 12 (Quarter 1), June 12 (Quarter 2), Sept. 12 (Quarter 3), or Dec. 12 (Quarter 4).”

The instructions explicitly request employee counts for a specific ‘snapshot’ of time – the 12th day of the last month of the quarter—rather than for the entire quarter.

In practice, the quarter ends on the last day of the last month of the quarter. Any fluctuation in employee count that an entity experienced between the 12^th and the close of the quarter will not be accounted for in the ‘Box 1 count’. The total number of employees for the entire quarter is not properly reflected in the original 941 filing because the filing requested the employee count only for the pay period including the 12th of the month, not for the whole quarter.

Thus, many discrepancies in taxpayers’ employee counts are not a result of payroll errors or fraudulent reporting, but instead are a reflection of the misguided and ineffective language used by the IRS when requesting taxpayers’ data. Employers are eligible for the ERC on all employees who were paid during the quarter, not only on the ones that were employed during the “snapshot” pay period.

We advise taxpayers who have received this type of disallowance notice to respond to the IRS in writing, with an explanation of their calculations – including the number of employees that may have been onboarded after the 12^thof the month, but within the quarter. If the taxpayer can support the employee count as reported on the Form 941 filing, there is every reason to believe they can reinstate their full legitimate credit, as provided by law. Many of our clients who responded in this manner have already received IRS notices confirming their full credit has been approved.

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What is International Tax?

Any time a business or individual engages in a financial transaction that crosses a border, there are international tax implications, and therefore an international tax advisor should be consulted. Some examples of such transactions are:

investing in non- U.S. investments
selling services or products to customers outside of the U.S.
hiring an employee outside of the U.S.
establishing a foreign subsidiary
collaborating with a business based outside of the U.S. in a joint venture
borrowing money from a non-U.S. lender, or
purchasing real estate in a different country.

What are some International Tax implications?

Any time you do business or make an investment, the country where the transaction took place has the right to tax the income you’ve earned. In our digital world, even if you don’t have any physical presence in a particular country, that country may still leverage a tax on the income generated within it. An international tax advisor can assist you in understanding what are the local country’s tax implications of your activities and what may be your potential tax liability. There will likely be income tax ramifications and a Value Added Tax (VAT), a tax which is common in Canada and many European Countries. Often, these additional taxes can be as high or higher than a country’s corporate income tax.

In addition to the foreign country’s tax implications, there are specific tax rules that address how the IRS taxes transactions outside of the U.S., and there are additional disclosure requirements. These requirements usually take the form of specific filings that report details of the foreign activity. Even when there may not be a significant taxable impact from the cross-border activity, there will be a filing requirement that, if left unmet, could result in heavy penalties starting from $10,000 per form. The costs of missing a filing requirement or planning opportunity in the cross- border context can be very high, more so than in a purely domestic context.

How can one benefit from using an International Tax Advisor?

Anyone dealing in any cross-border transaction could potentially need international tax services. Cross-border tax is fraught with traps for the unaware; it also offers many planning opportunities. Consulting with a knowledgeable international tax specialist can help you avoid unnecessary costs or potential penalties and inform you about opportunities to minimize your effective global tax rate.

Businesses with international connections and multinational corporations require insight into the international marketplace, as well as information regarding the global business arena.

Whether regarding regulations, compliance, or tax advisory, international tax consultants can help you navigate the complex web of the international market and help you achieve your business goals.

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Are you considering hiring a Chief Financial Officer (CFO)?

Congratulations! That means your business is growing, your revenue is rising, and you are evaluating how to best manage your financial reporting. Hiring a CFO is one of several solutions for a business seeking to upgrade its financial management team. Alternative choices that offer opportunities for growth include outsourced CFO services, Fractional CFO, and CAS providers. How can a business assess which option will best fit its needs?

A CFO is employed full-time as a senior executive. They develop financial strategies, manage cash flow, monitor risk factors, and perform financial forecasting. A CFO’s salary will typically account for 1% to 5% of a company’s revenue. If your business is complex, with multiple revenue streams or many affiliated entities, or has experienced significant and rapid growth, it is likely that you need a CFO on your executive team. The CFO assumes high- level financial responsibilities, such as raising capital, engaging in mergers and acquisitions, and managing compliance requirements. They stand at the forefront of the business’s strategic planning team and ensure the preparation of accurate and detailed financial reporting to serve stakeholders, investors, and banks.

What if your business is not yet ready for the expense of a full time CFO, but still needs upgraded financial support? Most small- to medium-sized companies could benefit from a CFO’s expertise, especially if they have defined growth strategies or are in the process of scaling up. But if the business is experiencing uncertainty or is in middle of a transition, it is usually not the ideal time to take on the added cost or commitment of a full time CFO. Outsourced CFO Services or a Fractional CFO may be a better option.

Professionals in these roles supply part-time or project-based high-level, financial expertise. Outsourced or Fractional CFOs work with multiple clients and will allow your business to access expert guidance on a flexible, as-needed basis. The services are tailored to your business, without making a permanent hire and taking on more overhead.

Client Accounting Services (CAS) firms take over day-to-day accounting tasks like bookkeeping, bill paying, and reconciliations. They can assume responsibility for cash flow management to make sure payments go out on time and that there are enough liquid funds to ensure that all business needs are met. They can work along with Fractional CFOs to handle a business’s financial management, and provide comprehensive support without the added expense of hiring multiple full-time employees.

A CAS team will keep your financial records in order to serve your tax preparation, filing, and regulatory needs and safeguard your business in case of audit. They can also assume high-level executive functions such as generating detailed financial reports, analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs), and providing insights into financial trends to help a business make informed decisions.

It may be time for your business to take a good look in the mirror. If it is facing rapid growth, has a complex financial structure, wants to embark on significant fundraising or M&A activity, is subject to serious regulatory requirements, or desperately needs strategic leadership, it’s high time to hire a competent CFO.

However, depending on your business’s long-term goals and budget, the services of a Fractional CFO supported by a CAS provider can enhance your business’s efficiency, streamline financial processes, and deliver the valuable data that management needs for strategic decision-making – all without adding another senior executive into the mix.

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Many businesses measure their success in terms of sales, but a better indicator is profitability. Turning a profit after paying for expenses means that a business is achieving its financial goals. But in order to consistently yield profits, the business needs to have liquidity.

Even if sales are sky-high, the bottom line can’t grow unless there is enough cash to fund and maintain operations to fulfill all those orders. There is, however, a tried and true method to maintaining liquidity while expanding a business: managing working capital knowledgeably and efficiently.

Cautious with cash

Working capital is the amount of accessible cash you need to support short-term business operations. The traditional way to measure liquidity is current assets minus current liabilities equals working capital. Regularly calculating working capital can help a business’s leadership team answer questions such as:

Are there enough assets to cover current obligations?
How fast could those assets be converted to cash if needed?
What short-term assets are available for loan collateral?

Another way to evaluate liquidity is the working capital ratio: current assets divided by current liabilities. A healthy working capital ratio varies from industry to industry, but it’s generally considered to be 1.5 to 2. A ratio below 1.0 typically signals impending liquidity problems.

A third perspective is to compare working capital to total assets and annual revenue. From this angle, working capital becomes a measure of efficiency.

Costs and credit

The amount of working capital a company needs, or its working capital requirement, depends on the costs of its sales cycle, operational expenses and current debt payments. Fundamentally, there must be enough working capital to finance the gap between payments from customers and payments to suppliers, vendors, lenders and others.

High liquidity generally equates with low credit risk. But having too much cash tied up in working capital may detract from important growth initiatives such as:

expanding into new markets,
buying better equipment or technology,
launching new products or services, and
paying down debt.

Failure to pursue capital investment opportunities can also compromise business value in the long run.

Focus on these factors

The right approach to managing working capital will vary between companies depending on factors such as size, industry, mission and market. In general, to optimize a business’s working capital requirement, focus primarily on the following three key areas:

Accounts receivable.The faster you collect from customers, the more readily you can manage debt and capitalize on opportunities. Possible solutions include tighter credit policies, early bird discounts, and collections-based sales compensation. Also, improve your administrative processes to eliminate inefficiencies.
Accounts payable.From a working capital perspective, since liquidity is key, you generally do not want to pay bills earlier than necessary. Except to take advantage of early bird discounts, it’s best to pay bills at or close to their due date. Be careful not to fall into arrears or nonpayment, which could damage your credit rating and reputation.
Maintaining inventory is a challenge of efficiently managing working capital. Excessive inventory levels may dangerously reduce liquidity because of restocking, storage, obsolescence, insurance and security costs. Conversely, insufficient inventory levels can frustrate customers and hurt sales. Be sure to give your inventory proper time and attention, such as regular technology upgrades and strategic consideration of ideal quantities.

The right balance

A successful business strikes the right balance of sustaining enough liquidity to operate smoothly, while also saving funds for capital investments and maintaining an emergency cash reserve. Management must assess precisely the business’s working capital and consistently work to optimize it.

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What Constitutes Self-Dealing?

In our previous article, we discussed excess benefit transactions and how they affect public charities. In these transactions, a nonprofit “insider” receives compensation or benefits that exceed the fair market value. In this article, we’ll focus on the rules that apply to private foundations. While many of the same rules apply to both public charities and private foundations, private foundations face additional restrictions—one of the most significant being the prohibition against self-dealing.

What is Self-Dealing?

The IRS has strict rules about self-dealing transactions in private foundations. Self-dealing occurs when a private foundation engages in a transaction with certain individuals or entities, called “disqualified persons,” that benefits them personally. These transactions can lead to severe financial penalties for the foundation and those involved.

Who is a “Disqualified Person”?

The IRS defines a disqualified person as someone who holds a significant position within the private foundation. Specifically, a disqualified person includes:

Substantial donors to the foundation.
Foundation managers, including officers, directors, and trustees.
Family members of the above individuals.
Individuals or entities who own more than 20% of any business that contributes to or benefits from the foundation.

Additionally, disqualified persons also include:

Corporations or partnerships where any of the above individuals holds more than 35% of the voting power.
Trusts or estates where these individuals hold more than 35% of the beneficial interest.

Disqualified persons also include government officials and others who have significant control over the foundation.

Why Does This Matter?

If a disqualified person owns more than the permitted percentage of a business, they may incur an excise tax on the excess holdings. The private foundation generally has a 90-day period to reduce these excess holdings through divestment, with potential extensions under specific circumstances.

What Transactions are Considered Self-Dealing?

A disqualified person cannot engage in certain transactions with the private foundation as they may be considered acts of self-dealing. These include:

Selling, exchanging, or leasing foundation property.
Lending money or extending credit to or from the foundation.
Furnishing goods, services, or facilities to the foundation, with few exceptions (e.g., interest-free loans).
Paying compensation or covering expenses for disqualified persons.

Additionally, the IRS treats transfers of foundation income or assets for the benefit of disqualified persons as self-dealing. This can even apply to certain government officials or transactions between entities controlled by the private foundation.

What Are the Consequences of Self-Dealing?

The IRS has very strong penalties for engaging in self-dealing. Under Internal Revenue Code Section 4941, a disqualified person involved in self-dealing is subject to a minimum 10% excise tax on the amount involved in the transaction. Foundation managers (such as officers, directors, or trustees) who knowingly participate in self-dealing face a 5% excise tax on the transaction amount.

It’s important to note that participation in self-dealing is not limited to actively engaging in the transaction. Failure to act or speak up when required—such as remaining silent or not intervening when there’s a clear duty to prevent self-dealing—can also result in penalties.

If the violation isn’t corrected, the IRS imposes a 200% excise tax on the amount involved for the disqualified person. Additionally, if foundation managers fail to take corrective action, they face an additional 50% excise tax on the amount involved in the self-dealing transaction.

Are There Exceptions?

There are a few exceptions to these self-dealing rules. For instance, payments made to disqualified persons are not considered self-dealing if they are for reasonable and necessary services that help the foundation carry out its exempt purposes. However, the IRS closely scrutinizes what constitutes “reasonable and necessary,” so it’s essential for foundations to carefully document and justify such payments.

Final Thoughts

When managing a private foundation, it’s crucial to avoid casual transactions and approach relationships with insiders carefully. Engaging in self-dealing or violating IRS rules can result in serious financial penalties and damage to the foundation’s reputation. To ensure compliance with the law, always consult with a tax professional or accountant before engaging in any potentially questionable transactions.

Non-profit organizations are always on the lookout for new and innovative ways to raise funds to support their mission. Accepting donations of appreciated stock is a game-changing strategy that deserves a place in every non-profit’s toolbox.

Fundraising managers may wonder, “Stocks? Isn’t that more of an investor thing?”, and they would be correct. However, accepting donations of stock or securities offers much more than an investment opportunity. It’s a tax-saving strategy that results in a win-win-win for the non-profit, its donors, and the causes it supports.

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In partnership with The OJC Fund, Roth&Co hosted a highly informative webinar providing valuable insights on year-end charitable giving and tax-saving strategies. The webinar featured Roth&Co Partner Michael Wegh, CPA, Roth&Co Manager Yisroel Kilstein, CPA, and Aron Pinson, CFA, Chief Investment Officer at Equinum Wealth Management. Click here to watch the recording, or read the recap below.

Charitable giving creates a “win-win” for taxpayers: it supports meaningful causes while offering deductions that reduce taxable income. Taxpayers have two options for claiming deductions on their returns: They can either take the standard deduction, or opt to itemize deductions, which allows them to include all their annual contributions. For those who itemize, tax-deductible donations can be a valuable tool for reducing overall tax liability.

It’s important to note, though, that not every charitable contribution qualifies for a deduction. Donations must be made to an IRS-registered organization or an official House of Prayer. In most cases, tangible property can be deducted unless goods or services are exchanged in return for the donation. For example, if you attend your child’s annual school dinner, you can deduct the entrance fee—minus the fair market value of the meal, as the meal constitutes a tangible benefit.

Intangible religious benefits—such as moral guidance or participation in religious services—are not considered taxable income, and are exempt from IRS reporting requirements. However, tuition payments for religious education are considered tangible benefits and do not qualify as deductible charitable contributions.

To claim a deduction for any given year, the donation must be made before December 31st of that year. Electronic contributions should be withdrawn from a bank account or non-electronic contributions should be postmarked by that date. Additionally, it’s essential to keep documentation in case of an audit. Written records are required for donations under $250, while donations over that amount must be substantiated with a ‘Contemporaneous Written Acknowledgement’ or receipt.

An individual’s charitable contribution deduction is capped based on the classification of the organization or recipient. For cash donations, contributions to public charities are generally limited to 60% of a person’s adjusted gross income (AGI). The percentage limit may differ for non-cash contributions (e.g., securities or property), which are capped at 50% or 30%, depending on different factors. Donations to private foundations are capped at 30% of AGI for most contributions, and 20% for capital gain contributions. Contributions to foreign charities are generally not deductible unless the charity is registered with the IRS. Donating to a Donor-Advised Fund (DAF) provides similar benefits as donating to a public charity (with the 60% AGI limit) while offering flexibility, ease of use, and simplified recordkeeping.

Charitable deductions can be strategically applied to maximize tax benefits. For instance, if you experience a high-income year, consider making a significant donation to a DAF before year-end. While you can recommend how the funds are distributed over the next year, your donation will be recognized in the current year, and the deduction can be claimed immediately. Conversely, in a year with lower income, you might consider “bunching” your contributions with the following year’s donations to optimize the tax impact in a year with a higher income.

Charitable giving not only supports causes you care about, but also offers meaningful tax benefits. Speak to your tax advisor to explore how your charitable contributions can be leveraged to enhance your tax strategy and support your overall financial well-being.

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In commercial litigation, it is common for business valuation experts to measure damages based on lost profits, diminished business value, or both. Here’s an introduction to these concepts.

The Basics
Generally, it’s appropriate to estimate lost profits when a plaintiff suffers an economic loss for a discrete period and then returns to normal. On the other hand, diminished business value is typically reserved for businesses that are completely destroyed or suffer a permanent loss, such as the destruction of an entire division or product line.

In rare situations, lost profits may fail to adequately capture a plaintiff’s damages. For example, suppose a defendant’s wrongful conduct damages a plaintiff’s reputation but doesn’t directly affect the plaintiff’s expected profits. Nevertheless, the defendant’s actions have rendered the plaintiff’s business less marketable and, therefore, less valuable. In this situation, diminished business value may be an appropriate measure of damages, even though the plaintiff’s business will survive.

Double Dipping
There are important similarities between how lost profits and diminished business value are measured. Typically, lost profits are a function of lost revenue caused by the defendant’s wrongful conduct and avoided costs that otherwise would have been incurred to generate the revenue. Once lost profits have been estimated, the amount is adjusted to present value.

Alternatively, business value is generally determined using one or more of the following three techniques:

Cost (or asset-based) approach
Market approach
Income approach

Because value is generally a function of a business’s ability to generate future economic benefits, awarding damages based on both lost profits and diminished business value is usually considered double dipping. A possible exception is the “slow death” scenario: A defendant’s wrongful conduct initially causes the plaintiff’s profits to decline, but the plaintiff continues operating. Eventually, however, the plaintiff succumbs to its injuries and goes out of business. In these cases, it may be appropriate for the plaintiff to recover lost profits for the period following the injury along with diminished business value as of the “date of death.”

There’s a Difference
Both lost profits and diminished business value involve calculating the present value of future economic benefits. However, the two approaches have distinct nuances, and the calculations used for each to determine damages will, in most cases, not yield the same result. For example, lost profits are typically measured on a pretax basis, while business value is often determined based on after-tax cash flow.

The fair market value of a business may include adjustments such as discounts for lack of marketability and key person risks, which are often not considered when estimating lost profits. Additionally, business value is based on what is “known or knowable” as of the valuation date, whereas lost profits calculations may sometimes account for developments that have occurred up to the time of trial.

Another differentiating factor lies in each approach’s perspective. Fair market value is generally based on the perspective of a hypothetical buyer, while lost profits consider the specific plaintiff’s perspective.

For example, while lost profits are typically measured on a pre-tax basis, business value is generally determined by after-tax cash flow. Often, a business’s value may include adjustments such as discounts for lack of marketability and key person risks. These may not be considered when estimating lost profits.

Moreover, business value is based on what’s “known or knowable” on the valuation date, but lost profits calculations may sometimes consider developments that have occurred up to the time of trial. Another differentiating factor is each approach’s perspective. Fair market value is generally based on the perspective of a hypothetical buyer, while lost profits can consider the specific plaintiff’s perspective.

Which Way to Go?
Lost profits and diminished business value are closely related, but they’re not identical. Contact us to discuss which measure is appropriate for your situation and how it might affect the outcome.

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On the campaign trail, Trump vocally championed American business interests and vowed to support corporate America and draw business back into the U.S. Now it’s showtime, and one area where we may see Trump’s plans begin to emerge is in changes to business tax law and policy. While no detailed tax plan has been issued yet, Trump has hinted at how tax policy may take shape next year.

Trump has proposed a 1% decrease in the corporate income tax rate, which presently stands at 21%, and he is suggesting a more substantial 15% rate for companies that manufacture in the U.S. This tax cut is relatively modest, but it will increase corporate profits and give businesses more resources to reinvest and grow. Unless the changes also address pass-through tax rates or deductions, there will likely be no significant benefits for small businesses organized as pass-through entities. There is the possibility that the tax cut could improve global competitiveness and tempt international corporations to return or transfer operations to the U.S., potentially stimulating modest economic growth.

Though a 1% decrease seems insignificant, given the scale of U.S. corporate earnings, it could have a noteworthy and negative impact on U.S. tax revenues and may increase the country’s deficit. Much will depend on how businesses use their 1% savings, where they allocate them, and how the broader economic environment reacts to the adjustment.

Trump also proposes to repeal the limitation on excess business losses for non-corporate taxpayers. The limitation, created by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 and extended through 2028 by the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, prevents non-corporate taxpayers from deducting excess business losses above $578,000 (2023-married filing jointly) or $289,000 (other), with any excess losses treated as net operating loss carryforward (subject to indexed thresholds).

Repealing this limitation would mean more deductions available for non-corporate taxpayers, including S Corps, partnerships, and sole proprietors. It would enable them to offset their business losses against other types of income, like wages or investment income, and overall, it would reduce their tax burden. Critics may claim that this tax cut favors the rich, who have multiple income streams and are more likely to have large business losses and other income to offset.

Besides tax relief, the injection of additional cash into businesses could spur growth and reinvestment. As above, this tax cut would also reduce federal tax revenues and may raise the deficit unless other revenue-generating measures are implemented.

Even with the possibility of a Republican-controlled Congress, it is uncertain whether Trump will be successful in pushing through tax cuts and policy changes. He may face backlash from the public for seemingly favoring the wealthy, or lawmakers may question whether his tax initiatives can benefit the overall economy. The Fed will be cautious of any changes impacting inflation and, by extension, interest rates. With so many economic moving parts, it is hard to predict whether or how Trump’s intentions will be realized.

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As we stepped into 2024, the investment landscape was filled with uncertainty. Several significant challenges loomed, posing threats to financial stability. Some of these challenges included:

Persistently high inflation
Widespread predictions of a recession by economists and strategists
Uncertainty surrounding the Federal Reserve’s next steps
A rapidly escalating national debt
Historically high interest rates
An imminent housing crash fueled by those high rates

These menacing issues were further intensified by the pending election, with its highly charged public sentiments and the expectation of political unrest and chaos.

Despite these challenges, the stock market has shown remarkable resilience, surging 27.56% year-to-date in 2024. This performance underscores an important lesson: attempting to time the market based on macroeconomic conditions or political developments is a futile exercise.

You might be thinking, “If the market weathered all these storms, doesn’t that mean it never goes down? Maybe investing is smooth sailing.” But that assumption couldn’t be further from the truth. Historically, the market experiences a 30% correction approximately once every five years, in addition to many smaller intermittent corrections. It’s far from a smooth ride. The takeaway is that predicting when the ups and downs will occur is incredibly difficult—arguably impossible.

Instead of getting caught up in fear or trying to anticipate market movements, a prudent investor focuses on maintaining a diversified portfolio and committing to their long-term financial goals. By tuning out the noise and staying invested, you can position yourself to benefit from the market’s resilience and the power of compounding your investment over time.

2024’s stock market resilience, despite a seemingly endless array of concerns, serves as a powerful reminder that time in the market—not timing the market—is the key to investment success. As we navigate the unpredictable road ahead, remain disciplined, stay invested, and trust in the long-term potential of the U.S. stock market to deliver substantial returns.

his material has been prepared for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide or be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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They say a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind. For businesses, messy or inaccurate financial records signify more than disorder; they reflect a company in chaos—one that is likely flying blind financially. Outsourcing Client Accounting Services (CAS) is an effective way to turn financial chaos into clarity.

For small businesses with revenues under $10 million, maintaining a full-time CFO can cost anywhere from 2% to 5% of annual revenue. If the expense of a full-time executive is too steep for your business, outsourced CAS services offer essential solutions to help you operate effectively and remain compliant. CAS services typically include accounting operations, strategic financial planning, cash flow management, budgeting, forecasting, and expert financial guidance.

Why Does a Business Need Accurate and Timely Financial Statements?

Financial statements are the building blocks of any well-run company. Accurate and timely financials are essential for:

Tax reporting and compliance
Financial planning and budgeting
Securing financing or attracting investors
Managing operations efficiently

Poorly executed financial reporting can invite tax audits, compromise financing opportunities, and damage a company’s prospects for a potential sale. On a practical level, not knowing the state of your finances leads to losing control over cash flow and expenses. Management cannot set or implement long-term business goals or develop effective strategies. Decision-making becomes impaired.

Bottom line? Bad books mean management will make bad decisions.

What is Financial Reporting?

Financial statements consist of three key components that provide insights into a company’s assets, liabilities, and equity:

Balance Sheet: This snapshot of a company’s financial standing at a specific point in time shows assets, liabilities, and the difference between them—known as shareholders’ equity (also referred to as net worth or owner’s equity).
Income Statement: Also called a profit and loss statement, this document reflects a company’s financial performance over a given period. It identifies revenues, expenses, and the resulting net income or loss.
Cash Flow Statement: This statement tracks the movement of cash in and out of a business during a specific period, showing how well a company generates and uses cash.

How Do Bad Reporting Habits Play Out?

Consider XYZ Corp., a company plagued by constant turnover in its finance department. Its CEO, more focused on improving his golf handicap than reviewing financials, ignored ambiguous and incomplete records.

The consequences were severe. The company couldn’t track cash flow; payments to suppliers were missed; employees’ salaries were issued late; and the company underreported taxable income, inviting an IRS audit.

The CEO was mid-swing on the fourth hole when the office manager called to inform him of the audit. The result? Fines, penalties, and reputational damage. Eventually, when XYZ Corp. tried to sell, buyers were unwilling to move forward because the company could not demonstrate consistent financial health. The company went bankrupt, and the CEO’s golf handicap remained depressingly high.

What Are the Two Most Essential Rewards of Sound Financial Reporting?

Informed Decision-Making
Accurate financial records are vital for making informed decisions. They enable management to assess company goals, forecast future revenues, and allocate resources effectively. Financial data can help identify internal trends: Are costs rising? Are revenues declining?

With this insight, management can make proactive adjustments to “right the ship.” They can prioritize expenditures, focus on strategic investments, and ensure long-term stability.

Improved Cash Flow Management
Cash flow describes the inflow and outflow of funds used for daily operations, such as taxes, payroll, inventory, and other expenses. By analyzing cash flow data, management can anticipate and prepare for periods of low cash flow. They can then prudently decide whether to postpone non-essential expenditures or perhaps secure short-term financing, if needed.

Efficient cash flow management ensures stability, prevents debilitating shortfalls, and gives management the flexibility to focus on growth and success.

Watch Your Bottom Line

Financial statements provide management with a clear view of future investments and expenditures while serving as benchmarks for performance assessment. They can also instill confidence in investors who need assurance before allocating capital.

For organizations that lack the size or capacity to staff in-house personnel for financial reporting, outsourcing CAS services can make a significant difference. Professionally managed back-office accounting operations allow management to focus on operations, strategy, and growth objectives.

Neglecting financial accuracy can result in missed opportunities, poor decision-making, and even legal consequences. Can your business afford the risk?

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With Trump’s recent victory, real estate professionals are counting on seeing significant rate cuts and enjoying potential benefits. These include a more vigorous market, relief for buyers, and more favorable financing conditions, by way of lower interest rates for investors. Bus this rosy forecast may be met with rain clouds.

Trump’s proposed tax cuts are meant to create a more business-friendly economic environment and may mildly stimulate the economy by increasing business investment. However, the Federal Reserve (Fed) exercises a dual mandate: to control employment and keep inflation down. If the economy weakens, the Fed usually responds by stepping in and lowering rates to stimulate growth. Conversely, when the economy heats up, more money is circulating in the system and inflationary conditions can develop. To manage inflation the Fed may raise rates to control and stabilize the economy. When the economy is healthy, the Federal Reserve is less inclined to lower interest rates, to prevent the risk of the economy overheating.

Trump also proposes to impose tariffs on imports; a move that unlikely to prompt the Fed to lower rates and may even have the opposite effect. Tariffs are inherently inflationary, as they raise the cost of imported goods; and that cost ultimately finds its way to the consumer in the form of higher sticker prices. When prices rise, the Fed would be careful to avoid further rate cuts and instead would consider moving rates upward to counter inflationary pressures.

Based on the above, the environment created by Trump’s proposals, while beneficial to businesses and taxpayers, is at odds with conditions that would motivate the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates. Improving the economy will benefit the country – but are unlikely to warrant a decrease in interest rates.

That said, there’s room for an alternative perspective. A strong economy is a double-edged sword when it comes to interest rates. In a stable and non-volatile economy, Treasury rates fall. Investors are seeking safer assets, the increased demand for Treasury bonds drives their prices higher and yields lower. This decline in Treasury rates creates a ripple effect throughout the financial system, influencing other rates. As Treasury rates decline the global lending environment reacts. International borrowers are drawn to the US’s favorable market rates and increasing demand for US debt drives down lending rates further, including consumer and mortgage rates. Treasury rates, global lending, and consumer rates share a reciprocal relationship. The ‘zero risk rate’ set by the Treasury becomes the baseline for lending, when it is at a low, borrowing becomes cheaper for everyone.

Potential chain reactions from fluctuations in the 10-year Treasury bond market and the Federal Funds Futures remain uncertain and may have broader economic benefits. Lower consumer and mortgage rates spur growth by increasing disposable income. More disposable income translates into more discretionary purchasing – a boost for the retail and service industries. Businesses will take advantage of more affordable lending terms and can invest in big-ticket projects, expansion, and technology – which promotes employment across many sectors.

Additionally, a potential inflation buster that could lead to lower rates is Trump’s proposal to ease drilling restrictions to boost domestic oil and gas production. Energy prices are a significant driver of inflation. Lower energy costs will also result in reduced price increases and more disposable income for taxpayers to spend on consumer goods.

While on the campaign trail, Trump proposed that the president should have influence over the Federal Reserve’s interest rate decisions. In response, Chairman Powell, a Presidential Appointee, made clear that he would continue to run the Fed as an independent entity. Trump may be motivated to dismiss Powell and replace the Fed Board with more dovish appointees who are more sympathetic to lowering rates. However, there is no legal mechanism to remove an appointee, and the President cannot directly discharge the Fed Chair without legal cause. Trump may contend that Powell was appointed by a president and therefore, a president can remove him. Alternately, he may attempt to publicly pressure Powell to resign. I believe that both alternatives would fail and would provoke market instability and public criticism.

What can we conclude from our current combination of economic and political landscape? Optimists can stay hopeful, but even while market predictors prophesize a steady gradual decline in interest rates, I believe it is improbable that the Trump administration will be the catalyst for steeper cuts than those already built into market predictions. My advice to clients is to refrain from making assumptions or business decisions based on the expectations of drastically lower rates. Exercise caution when underwriting or investing in deals that depend heavily on significant rate declines. Instead, investors should focus on making decisions that prioritize long-term growth and remain sustainable across a variety of economic scenarios.

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The Medicare Advantage Plan is an alternative to traditional Medicare that allows eligible participants to access their benefits through private insurance plans within Medicare. Medicare Advantage (MA) Plans have become an increasingly popular choice for participants because of the lower rates and added benefits offered. But for the skilled nursing homes responsible for delivering the services covered by MA plans, the fallout is far more unfavorable. Will MA plans irreparably damage the SNF industry?

Skilled nursing facilities generally receive lower reimbursement rates under MA plans than under traditional Medicare. The Federal government, through CMS, pays MA plans a fixed, or ‘capitated’, monthly amount per beneficiary – a per person, per month rate to cover health care services for each individual participant. Because the payments are fixed, there is the inherent risk that costs for a participant will exceed the capitated payment. If there’s a deficit, the SNF has to absorb it.

Managed care reduces the average revenue per patient day, but the staffing and administrative requirements to deliver the same level of care remain the same. The result? Tighter profit margins resulting from the shortfall put pressure on facilities to control expenses and avoid providing excess services. To effectively tackle this challenge, my colleague, Shulem Rosenbaum CPA/ABV, partner with Roth&Co’s Advisory division, shares that “SNFs must rethink their cost structures. Many SNFs have historically relied on a per-patient-day (PPD) variable cost model, where expenses fluctuate with occupancy and patient demand. This approach leaves facilities exposed to the instability of fixed or inconsistent reimbursement rates frequently seen with Medicare Advantage.”

One of our clients, a long-time SNF operator with over 50 facilities, shared his perspective about how MA plans have disrupted the financial landscape for skilled nursing facilities. “We’re left juggling to meet patient needs while navigating a system that doesn’t account for the real costs of care. It’s a challenge to stay financially viable.” The numbers prove him right. According to calculations made by Zimmet Healthcare, the dollar amount of SNF Medicare reimbursements lost this year to MA comes to over $10 billion nationally, with Pennsylvania losing almost $500 million and New York out by $634 million.

While SNFs revenues will always be restricted by federal and state requirements, there are ways to alleviate concerns about MA reimbursement and reduce volatility through strategic initiatives. SNF’s can maximize their revenues by building strong relationships with MA plan providers to negotiate better reimbursement rates or value-based contracts. They can work to reduce their reliance on MA plans and improve profitability by diversifying their patient base and attracting more self-pay and private insurance patients. As with any business operation, they can optimize efficiency by streamlining administrative practices, integrate technology, and brainstorm for additional cost-saving measures that won’t compromise the quality of care.

“A compelling solution is to adopt a fixed-expense model that reduces reliance on operational leverage,” Rosenbaum adds. “By reassessing and standardizing specific cost centers, SNFs can establish a more stable financial framework that is less affected by patient volume.” Another of our clients, a small, local SNF owner, had a different take on current challenges. “MA plan participation is growing, and we must learn to work with that. The evolution of the industry has made us take a hard look at how we manage our resources, pushing us to reassess and work smarter— which is something every operation needs to do from time to time.”

Ultimately, while Medicare Advantage plans may effectively help participants manage their healthcare costs, they restrict revenues and patient care options for SNFs. Will the rise in MA plans push the SNF industry to its breaking point? Times may be lean for SNF’s, but we believe that agile and creative facilities can effectively modify operations, maintain patient care, and adapt to working with MA plans to achieve a sustainable business model for the long term.

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When you peek under the hood at inflation data and the latest cost-of-living trends, you might feel some relief upon noticing that, while some high prices still sting, costs are stabilizing overall. All except for one notable, stubborn exception: housing.

Since the pandemic, home prices have shot up dramatically, pushing the dream of homeownership further out of reach for many Americans. Every market has its quirks, but on the whole, the median home price across the U.S. tells the same story – prices are up, and they aren’t trending downward.

To add insult to injury, interest rates were raised in 2022 and 2023 as a mechanism to quell inflation. The natural result should have been a downswing in housing prices. Yet, despite the hikes, home prices didn’t budge. So, now we’re getting hit with the classic one-two punch: higher home prices are prevailing and interest rates have been climbing.

Here’s a typical real-world example: Imagine you had your eye on a $600,000 house back in 2021. With a 30-year mortgage at a 3% rate and a $200,000 down payment, your mortgage bill would have come to an estimated $1,686 a month. Fast forward and today, that same house would likely be priced closer to $800,000, with mortgage rates now hovering around 6.5%. Assuming that the same down payment was applied, the monthly mortgage cost would jump from $1,686 to $3,792 – a staggering difference.

The Fed-fund rate is regulated by the Federal Reserve, while Treasury and Bond rates tend to be controlled by the market – and the rates typically align. However, when the Fed announced a recent half-percent rate cut on September 18th — intended to signal economic stability and control over inflation—many hoped it would signal some relief, especially with the Feds projection of more cuts on the horizon. But ironically, the market has pushed back and treasury bond yields and mortgage rates have actually risen. Economists are practically falling over each other to explain this strange turn of events.

At Equinum, we believe that, while rates might dip a little, the only way we’re likely to see a meaningful drop in home prices or mortgage rates, would be through a recession. In a recession, employment drops and there is less money circulating in the economy; people cannot afford homes and real estate prices fall. The Fed generally responds by cutting interest rates, hoping to stimulate the economy and pull it out of its inertia. While a period of recession may be good news for those seeking to purchase real estate, it comes at the expense of joblessness and unemployment. This solution presents a difficult dilemma: choosing between affordable housing and job stability, an uneasy balancing act that none of us wants to experience.

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Global crises and natural disasters are on the rise and in response, people all over the country are opening their hearts and their wallets to support those in need. But this rise in altruism has its challenges. In the wake of Hurricanes Milton and Helene, the Internal Revenue Service recently warned taxpayers to beware of scammers who exploit public generosity by creating fake charities that gather donations and steal sensitive personal and financial information. According to recent data from the Federal Trade Commission, in 2023, nearly 10,000 reports of charitable solicitation fraud were filed in the United States, resulting in a loss of approximately $22.5 million to donors. Scammers commonly take advantage of peoples’ generosity during the holiday season, and when natural disasters or other tragic events occur; and their victims are often the easier marks – seniors and groups with limited English proficiency.

Scammers are imaginative and don’t limit themselves to pulling on heartstrings only as a response to a natural crisis. In a shameful example of fake charity fraud, in 2023, student Madison Russo, fraudulently raised nearly $40,000 by claiming to have multiple cancers, including stage 2 pancreatic cancer and leukemia. She publicized her story on TikTok and set up a GoFundMe page for donations. Ultimately, she was challenged and, after failing to provide medical records or proof of her diagnosis, was convicted and sentenced to probation and restitution to her donors.

Sham charities can go corporate too. In a March 2024 announcement, the Federal Trade Commission, along with ten other states, brought suit against Cancer Recovery Foundation International, also known as Women’s Cancer Fund, and its operator, Gregory B. Anderson. The suit alleges that from 2017 to 2022, the organization collected more than $18 million from donors to support women cancer patients. It only spent 1.1%, or approximately $196,000, on financial support to patients, while a cool $775,139 went to pay Anderson, its operator.

The FBI warns citizens to avoid making financial contributions to groups that support terrorism. Foreign Terrorist Organizations (FTOs) are foreign organizations that are designated by the Secretary of State in accordance with section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA). The US Department of State provides a public list of Designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations and warns donors to keep their distance.

“We all want to help innocent victims and their families,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “Knowing we’re trying to aid those who are suffering, criminals crawl out of the woodwork to prey on those most vulnerable – people who simply want to help. Especially during these challenging times, don’t feel pressured to immediately give to a charity you’ve never heard of. Check out the charity first and confirm it is authentic.”

To that end, the IRS offers the Tax-Exempt Organization Search (TEOS) tool, which taxpayers can access on the IRS website to help them find or verify qualified, legitimate charities. Beyond this, how can a donor make sure that his or her charitable donations reach their intended recipients? The wise donor will do their research and will stick with charities they know and trust. It’s best to make targeted donations, designated towards specific purposes instead of to a general fund. Cyber-safety should always be paramount; never click on links or open attachments in unsolicited e-mails, texts, or social media posts. Also know that most legitimate charity websites end in “.org” rather than “.com.” Charities that ask for cash or wire payments raise a red flag. It is always more prudent to pay by credit card or write a check directly to a charity; and never make a charitable donation check out to an individual.

As charitable scams continue to evolve, it is vital for donors to stay vigilant and informed about how to identify potential fraud. Always verify the legitimacy of a charity through reliable resources, such as the Tax-Exempt Organization Search, Better Business Bureau or Charity Navigator, and be wary of unsolicited requests for donations. By staying aware and conducting due diligence, you can ensure that your contributions reach those who genuinely need support, while safeguarding yourself against scammers.

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Excel and Power BI are both powerful Microsoft tools used in data analysis and reporting, but each has its distinct strengths and applications.

Excel, as a spreadsheet program, offers strong capabilities used for basic analysis and reporting; it features detailed, manual data entry and calculations. Excel is suitable for small to medium datasets for use in financial analysis, and it’s a comfortable choice for users who are already familiar with its functions and formulas. The program is commonly used by businesses and students for creating budgets, tracking expenditures, calculations and analyses, and other statistical functions.

Power BI is the go-to choice for advanced analytics and visualization. It offers more automation and scalability for large datasets and its interactive functions are used for advanced data analysis, forecasting, tracking key metrics and other tasks that require manipulating and sharing data.

Power BI vs. Excel: Why Power BI Stands Out

While Excel remains a popular tool for data analysis, Power BI offers several advantages that make it a superior choice for modern businesses:

Enhanced Visualizations: Power BI’s advanced visual tools make it easier to present complex data in a visually appealing and interactive way.
Real-Time Data Integration: Unlike Excel, which often requires manual data refreshes, Power BI can connect to live data sources for continuous updates.
Scalability: Power BI handles large datasets more effectively than Excel, making it ideal for businesses that deal with high volumes of data.
Seamless Integration: Power BI supports a wide range of data sources, including cloud services like Azure, and enterprise systems like SAP and Salesforce, making it more versatile than Excel.

Who’s got the Advantage?

Whereas Excel is the workhorse we all know and love, Power BI provides attractive bells and whistles. Its extensive features for formatting, natural language queries, and editing and filtering are visually appealing – with a customized dashboard offering a 360-degree view. Users can more easily drill down into data with Power BI and automate and share interactive reports across teams and organizations. Ultimately, these capabilities can help businesses make better-informed, data-driven decisions. While Excel’s calculation and spreadsheet functionalities make it ideal for studying data, Power BI is a better choice for performance and sharing.

Why Choose?

Excel and Power BI, both created by Microsoft, can complement each other effectively and integrate well. There’s no real need to choose between them – they can be used together for optimal results.

Data created in Excel can easily be shared with Power BI without transition glitches. The same goes for other Microsoft Office applications, like Power Query and Power Pivot. An amalgam of these tools can save a business time, automate its processes, and allow it to optimize and upgrade its data management.

Ask us about how RothTech can help your organization leverage the full potential of Power BI for deeper insights and better decision-making.

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Cost segregation is a key tool that allows a business to reclassify certain property components and potentially reduce its tax burden through accelerated depreciation. Property owners who have developed, acquired, expanded, or renovated real estate can optimize their depreciation deductions and defer income taxes at both federal and state levels. While cost segregation is common in office, hotel, and retail spaces, it can benefit any type of commercial property.

For tax purposes, residential rental properties typically depreciate over 27.5 years, while commercial properties depreciate over 39 years. However, properties include more than the building structure itself—elements like plumbing, flooring, and sidewalks can be depreciated on accelerated timelines. By separating specific property components, investors can fast-track depreciation deductions, cut taxable income, and improve cash flow. This method is especially valuable in commercial real estate, where larger investments yield substantial tax savings. Cost segregation is one way private-market real estate provides unique tax advantages, making it a particularly appealing asset class.

When selling property used in your business, understanding the sale’s tax implications is essential, especially given the complex rules involved.

Basic rules

As an example, consider a property for sale that is either land or depreciable property used in your business and has been held for more than a year. Under tax law, gains and losses from sales of business property are netted against each other. The tax treatment is as follows:

If the netting of gains and losses results in a net gain, then long-term capital gain treatment results, subject to “recapture” rules discussed below. Long-term capital gain treatment is generally more favorable than ordinary income treatment.
If the netting of gains and losses results in a net loss, that loss is fully deductible against ordinary income. (In other words, none of the rules that limit the deductibility of capital losses apply.)

The availability of long-term capital gain treatment for business property net gain is limited by “recapture” rules. Under these rules, amounts are treated as ordinary income, rather than capital gain, because of previous ordinary loss or deduction treatment.

The beauty of utilizing cost segregation to accelerate depreciation is that it offsets income – until it is time to sell. That’s when the recapture rule kicks in. There’s a special recapture rule that applies only to business property. Under this rule, to the extent you’ve had a business property net loss within the previous five years, any business property net gain is treated as ordinary income instead of long-term capital gain.

Different types of property

Under the Internal Revenue Code, different provisions address different types of property. For example:

Section 1245 property. This consists of all depreciable personal property, whether tangible or intangible, and certain depreciable real property (usually real property that performs specific functions). If you sell Section 1245 property, you must recapture your gain as ordinary income to the extent of your earlier depreciation deductions on the asset.
Section 1250 property. In general, this consists of buildings and their structural components. If you sell Section 1250 property that’s placed in service after 1986, none of the long-term capital gain attributable to depreciation deductions will be subject to depreciation recapture. However, for most noncorporate taxpayers, the gain attributable to depreciation deductions, to the extent it doesn’t exceed business property net gain, will (as reduced by the business property recapture rule above) be taxed at a rate of no more than 28.8% (25% plus the 3.8% net investment income tax) rather than the maximum 23.8% rate (20% plus the 3.8% net investment income tax) that generally applies to long-term capital gains of noncorporate taxpayers.

Other rules apply to, respectively, Section 1250 property that you placed in service after 1980 and before 1987, and Section 1250 property that you placed in service before 1981.

Even with the simple assumptions presented in this article, the tax treatment of the sale of business assets can be complex. Tools like cost segregation, combined with a solid grasp of tax rules, can make a significant difference in tax outcomes and improve a business’ overall financial strategy when it sells business property.

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On September 18, 2024, for the first time in over four years, the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by 0.5%. Will this cut relieve the borrowing chokehold crippling the commercial real estate (CRE) industry? Opinions are mixed. Some say that it buys time for CRE holders, and that with the additional future cuts alluded to by the Fed, they will be able to hold out until refinancing becomes viable. Others claim that a rate cut will barely make a dent in the challenges that highly- leveraged CRE holders and investors are facing, and that banks will no longer wait patiently for them to address their debts.

According to CRE data firm Trepp, an estimated $2.2 trillion in commercial-property debt will be maturing between this year and 2027. CRE holders that invested using the artificially low, pre-pandemic interest rates are now seeking refinancing and find themselves in a very tight spot. The inevitable result is defaults and receiverships. Jeff Krasnoff, CEO of Rialto Capital, a real estate investment and asset management firm based in Florida, recently brought over fifteen foreclosure suits against borrowers from Signature Bank, which collapsed in 2023, alleging defaults exceeding $300 million. Other examples include investment firm Ashkenazy Acquisitions, multifamily syndicator GVA, and landlord Steve Croman, who account for approximately $751 million in defaults in 2024.

Until now, banks have been resorting to the “extend and pretend” game, where they’ve extended loan terms for struggling borrowers to help them avoid default, while waiting and hoping to see property values rebound. This unsustainable strategy is wearing thin, and, according to the Federal Reserve’s senior loan officer opinion survey released in May 2024, banks reported tightening their CRE lending policies during the first quarter of 2024. Banks are making efforts to reduce their exposure and have been quietly divesting troublesome portfolios of CRE loans in order to cut their losses – a reasonable move in light of 2023’s collapse of First Republic and Signature Bank, both of which were major commercial real estate lenders.

An analysis by S & P Global found that approximately 10% of the CRE mortgages maturing in 2024 are office properties. The post-pandemic shift toward remote and hybrid work arrangements have hit the office sector hard, generating vacancies and delinquencies. Trepp estimates that the U.S. office market has lost nearly a quarter of its value since the Federal Reserve began raising rates. Many of these office space owners are highly- leveraged or locked into floating rate debt and are struggling to stay viable. According to Shulem Rosenbaum CPA/ABV, Partner and business valuation expert at Roth&Co, the takeaway is that “overleveraging can be beneficial in stable markets, but carries significant risks in more turbulent times.”

What can we expect for the future? In a September 2024 press conference, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell indicated that the Fed would consider additional cuts, by, “making decisions meeting by meeting, based on the incoming data, the evolving outlook, the balance of risks.”

Powell expects that the economy will continue its trend towards falling inflation and rising unemployment – a trend that prompted this first rate cut. The consensus among analysts and central bank officials is that more interest rate cuts will be forthcoming in 2024 and into 2025. A drop in the interest rate means that borrowing costs will ease and capital will free up. This will make financing new deals more attractive to investors and developers. More transaction activity will spur competition, and increased demand will bring up property prices. While many analysts believe most lenders and real estate owners can hold out until rates drop enough for refinancing, the support from the Fed won’t be sufficient for some of the country’s most heavily leveraged property investors.

Will rate cuts pull the CRE industry out of its pandemic-induced coma? U.S. economist and Nobel laureate Milton Friedman was no fan of central banking practices and its manipulation of interest rates. He believed, “cutting interest rates doesn’t create capital” nor increase real wealth, “it just shifts it around,” redistributing existing capital within the economy.

Rosenbaum asserts, “We have yet to see the positive effects of the Federal Reserve’s recent rate cuts on the CRE industry.” Initial rate increases occurred during a period when the CRE sector was already grappling with high vacancies and rent forbearances, while key COVID relief programs, such as the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) were unavailable to many landlords. Other resources, like the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), were limited to businesses with small workforces. “While the Fed’s current actions may provide some temporary relief,” Rosenbaum contends, “we believe it is unlikely to deliver the comprehensive solution that the CRE industry urgently requires.”

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In today’s data-driven world, businesses of all sizes—from small startups to large conglomerates—collect vast amounts of data. However, the true challenge lies in transforming this raw data into actionable insights that drive informed decision-making. Microsoft’s Power BI is a powerful business intelligence tool designed to help organizations convert data into meaningful reports and visualizations, making data analysis more accessible, insightful, and actionable.

Why Power BI is Essential for Modern Businesses

1) Data Consolidation Across Multiple Sources: Power BI allows businesses to integrate data from multiple sources, such as Excel, cloud services, databases, and even the web. This unified data access means that businesses can analyze sales, operations, finance, and customer data all in one place, enabling cohesive decision-making across departments.

2) Real-Time Analytics: Power BI provides real-time data streaming, meaning businesses can track key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics as they happen. This allows companies to respond proactively to changes in market conditions or internal performance issues, rather than relying on static, outdated reports.

3) Advanced Data Visualization: While tools like Excel can visualize data to a degree, Power BI takes this a step further with interactive, highly customizable dashboards. These dashboards provide a clear view of complex datasets and help users easily identify trends, outliers, and opportunities through modern visuals like heatmaps, treemaps, and geographic maps.

4) Self-Service Business Intelligence: One of the greatest advantages of Power BI is its ease of use. Users across the organization, not just those in IT, can create their own reports and dashboards. This empowers all team members to make data-driven decisions and fosters a culture of data literacy throughout the organization.

5) Scalability and Affordability: Power BI is built on scalable data engines capable of handling large datasets without performance degradation. Additionally, its pricing structure is progressive, offering free options for small organizations using Power BI Desktop, and affordable licensing for larger enterprises that need cloud sharing and collaboration.

How to Set Up Power BI for Success

To maximize the potential of Power BI, proper setup and ongoing optimization are critical. Here’s a step-by-step approach:

1) Define Clear Objectives: Before jumping into Power BI, businesses should outline their goals. What key metrics are you tracking? What decisions do you hope to influence with your data? Aligning Power BI with these objectives ensures you are focused on the right data and insights.

2) Data Integration and Cleaning: Power BI excels when data is clean and consistent. Use tools like Power Query to prepare data from various sources, ensuring accuracy and reliability before analysis. Once cleaned, Power BI can pull in data from sources such as SAP, Oracle, Azure, and even websites.

3) Establish Roles and Permissions: To protect sensitive data, businesses should set up appropriate user roles in Power BI. The platform allows administrators to grant different permissions, ensuring that data is secure while still enabling collaboration across departments.

4) Foster a Data-Driven Culture: Training employees to use Power BI is essential for unlocking its full potential. Encourage team members to build their own reports and dashboards, fostering a culture where data literacy thrives.

Best Practices for Power BI Optimization

Even after setting up Power BI, ongoing refinement is essential to ensure the tool evolves alongside your business. Here are some optimization tips:

– Automate Data Refreshes and Alerts: Set up automatic data refreshes to ensure your dashboards always display the latest information. Use alerts to notify key stakeholders when KPIs reach critical thresholds, enabling faster responses to emerging trends.

– Optimize Report Performance: As data volumes grow, it’s important to optimize reports for performance. Techniques like DirectQuery and incremental refreshes can help keep reports running smoothly, even with large datasets.

– Design with Simplicity: Power BI dashboards should be clear and concise. Avoid overloading users with too much information, and focus on the most critical data points. Use consistent visualizations, round numbers, and clean layouts to enhance readability.

– Security and Governance: Power BI offers robust data security features, such as row-level security, allowing businesses to protect sensitive data while still leveraging the platform’s collaborative features.

Conclusion: Unlock the Power of Your Data with Power BI

Power BI transforms data into actionable insights, making it a critical tool for businesses looking to gain a competitive edge in today’s data-driven world. By integrating data across multiple sources, offering real-time insights, and enabling self-service reporting, Power BI helps businesses make informed decisions that drive growth, efficiency, and profitability.

With proper setup, ongoing optimization, and a commitment to fostering a data-driven culture, your organization can fully unlock the power of Power BI and harness the full potential of your data.

Ask us about how RothTech can help your organization leverage the full potential of Power BI for deeper insights and better decision-making.

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The IRS defines voluntary disclosure as “a way for taxpayers with previously undisclosed income to contact the IRS and resolve their tax matters.” It’s their way of offering remiss taxpayers the opportunity to mitigate potential penalties.

This new program refers specifically to the COVID-era Employee Retention Credit (ERC). If you claimed and received the Employee Retention Credit (ERC) for 2021 tax periods, but you are, in fact, ineligible, you will need to repay the credit. The Voluntary Disclosure Program, or VDP, may be your chance to regroup.

An analysis conducted by the IRS found that a whopping 60% to 70% of applications for the ERC show an unacceptable “level of risk.” This is IRS lingo for claims they believe have a high likelihood of being ineligible for the credit. Tens of thousands of these are slated to be denied in the coming months. This high percentage of erroneous filings has inspired the IRS to temporarily reopen the Voluntary Disclosure Program and give businesses the chance to repair or retract their improperly filed claims to avoid potential civil penalties, audit costs and possible litigation.

Round two of the Voluntary Disclosure Program (VDP) was launched on August 15, 2024 and will close soon – on November 22, 2024. The VDP offers a 15% discount on the repayment of a claimant’s errant claim and the opportunity to avoid penalties, audits, or fees associated with that incorrect claim.

The IRS is marketing this “discount” as defraying the high expenses that many businesses needed to pay their (overly aggressive) advisors or promoters in order to get the ERC in the first place. Couched in another way, the IRS is willing to pay 15% of the claim in order to get their hands on the other 85% and to get the business to rat on the promoters of ineligible claims.

The first ERC VDP earlier this year offered a more generous 20% discount, but that offer is gone. If a taxpayer believes that it is eligible for the ERC, but wants to recalculate to claim a different amount, it will have to file an amended return to report that reduced amount.

Only those who have claimed ERC for 2021 (not 2020) and have received the refund or the credit against their employment taxes, are eligible to take advantage of VDP 2.0. If a claimant has already received an IRS “clawback” notice demanding repayment, they’re out of luck. If they are in the middle of an employment tax exam for the credit period or are under criminal investigation, they have also lost their chance. When a claimant is accepted to the Voluntary Disclosure Program, they must execute a closing agreement explicitly stating that they are not entitled to the ERC – and the IRS doesn’t stop there. In its efforts to identify potentially abusive ERC promotors, the claimant will have to provide the names and contact information of the preparer or advisor who helped them submit the claim.

If you’ve applied for the ERC but have not yet received a credit or refund or have received a check but have left it uncashed, then you are not eligible for this program. Instead, the IRS offers a withdrawal process. This process effectively reverses your claim, treating it as if it was never filed. The IRS will graciously hold back from imposing penalties or interest as well. However, you won’t get the 15% “discount.” To date, the claim withdrawal process has led to more than 7,300 entities withdrawing $677 million.

The IRS continues hunting for erroneous or fraudulent ERC claims and has already mailed out thousands of letters disallowing unpaid ERC claims to businesses in these last few months. This deluge of letters represents more than $1 billion in ERC claims.

It is interesting to note that the IRS seems to be targeting only those that have already received their credits. For many businesses that have already received (and in most cases, spent) the monies, it would be very hard to part with what they already have in hand.

Do you need to rethink your ERC claim? Was your preparer above board? Was he or she knowledgeable about your business and informed about ERC qualifications? Was your eligibility based on “general supply chain disruptions?”

Our recent experience handling numerous ERC audits have shown us that the IRS has been operating under a policy of “deny first, ask questions later.” Your claim may deserve a revisit, and the Voluntary Disclosure Program may be your return ticket to proper compliance.

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“Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want and deserve to get it good and hard.”

— H. L. Mencken

It’s that season again — when those running for public office start making promises of all shapes and sizes, even those that defy the laws of economics. But let’s not forget their ultimate goal: to get more votes. As Churchill lamented, “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

Let’s examine a few recent examples:

Vice President Harris, in her “economic plan” released on August 15th, promised to ban price gouging. This term usually refers to sellers exploiting market power to unfairly raise prices. With grocery prices up 26% since 2020, addressing this issue sounds appealing. However, even The New York Times felt compelled to critique this proposal, quoting economist Jason Furman: “This is not sensible policy, and I think the biggest hope is that it ends up being a lot of rhetoric and no reality.” Harris’s economic advisers surely know that price gouging bans have never and will never work, but they’re banking on voters not noticing.

Then there’s former President Trump’s tariff proposal: a 10% tariff on all imported goods. While this might appeal to voters who favor “America First” policies and resist globalization, these tariffs would ultimately raise prices for consumers. Although certain adverse measures can be justified in certain areas like computer chips (national security) or medicine (as seen during COVID), they ignore the fact that importing cheaper goods has long kept American lifestyles more affordable.

A final example is the bipartisan silence on the solvency of Social Security and the national debt. Telling seniors they might face pay cuts, or juniors that they need to pay more into the system, doesn’t win votes. As a result, these topics remain taboo until they become ticking time bombs.

Historian Niall Ferguson recently highlighted his “personal law of history:” “Any great power that spends more on debt service (interest payments on the national debt) than on defense will not stay great for very long. True of Habsburg Spain, t ancient régime France, true of the Ottoman Empire, true of the British Empire, this law is about to be put to the test by the U.S. beginning this very year.” Tackling this issue isn’t politically advantageous, so it’s conveniently ignored.

While were not here to predict the future, it is important to recognize the incentives driving political stances. To draw from the Churchill well once again, “Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.” It’s high time for voters to wake up to economic reality – politics is often a game of fantasy.

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Non-compete agreements have always been considered a valuable business tool, especially after a merger or acquisition. However, these agreements have become more complicated in the wake of a new and controversial final rule, issued in April 2024, by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) proposing a ban on noncompete agreements for most employees and independent contractors. The rule would have gone into effect in September 2024.

To counter the FTC’s effort, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and several business groups filed federal lawsuits challenging the final rule, arguing that the FTC lacked the authority to enact the ban and that it violated the Constitution. By August 20, 2024, they prevailed, and the rule was struck down. The Court concluded that the FTC’s decision was “arbitrary and capricious,” stating that the Non-Compete Rule was “unreasonably overbroad.” The Court was specifically offended by the rule’s “one size fits all” solution to the potential hazards of a non-compete.

This ruling will not impact state laws on non-competes. Several states have already limited their use. Minnesota banned workplace non-competes in July 2023, and New York nearly passed a similar ban before it was vetoed. States like Indiana have also restricted non-competes in specific cases.

Non-compete agreements have been around for decades. Some are required at the get-go, as a prerequisite for employment, and some kick in upon termination of employment. The employer will require an employee to sign a non-compete agreement to protect the employer’s business interests, guard against disclosure of trade secrets, and prevent the employee from poaching customers or clients. These agreements will generally limit employment activities in the same field, for a specified period, and their goal is to protect the employer.

Non-competes also may come into play in business combinations. These agreements typically prevent the seller from competing with the buyer within a specified geographic area for a certain time period (usually five years or less).

A non-compete agreement may be estimated in various circumstances, including legal disputes, mergers, financial reporting and tax matters. The most common approach to valuing a non-compete agreement is the ‘with-and-without’ method. Without a non-compete agreement, the worst-case scenario is that competition from the employee or seller will drive the company out of business. Therefore, the value of the entire business represents the highest ceiling for the value of a non-compete.

The business’ tangible assets possess some value and could be liquidated if the business failed, and it is unlikely that the employee or seller will be able to steal 100% of a business’s profits. So, when valuing non-competes, experts typically run two discounted cash flow scenarios — one with the non-compete in place, and the other without.

The valuation expert computes the difference between the two expected cash flow streams and includes consideration of several other factors:

The company’s competitive and financial position
Business forecasts and trends
The employee’s or seller’s skills and customer relationships

Next, each differential must be multiplied by the probability that the individual will subsequently compete with the business. If the party in question has no incentive, ability, or reason to compete, then the non-compete can be worthless. Factors to consider when predicting the threat of competition include the individual’s age, health, financial standing and previous competitive experience. When valuing non-competes related to mergers and acquisitions, the expert will also consider any post-sale relocation and employment plans.

A critical factor to consider when valuing non-competes is whether the agreement is legally enforceable. The restrictions in the agreement must be reasonable. For example, some courts may reject non-competes that cover an unreasonably large territory or long period of time. What is “reasonable” varies from business to business, and is subject to the particulars of the business, the terms of the agreement, state statutes and case law.

What does this mean for your business? The legal battle over non-competes has drawn attention to their use, prompting the corporate world to reconsider work relationships without restrictive covenants. Non-competes will likely be viewed differently moving forward. As with all business-related legislation, businesses should stay updated and informed of changes and revisions that may affect its employment practices and its bottom line.

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Partnerships, and some multi-member LLCs, are a popular choice for businesses and investments because of the federal income tax advantages they offer – particularly pass-through taxation. In return, they must also follow specific, and sometimes complex, federal income tax rules.

Governing documents
A partnership is governed by a partnership agreement, which specifies the rights and obligations of the entity and its partners. Similarly, an LLC is governed by an operating agreement, which specifies the rights and obligations of the entity and its members. These governing documents address certain tax-related issues that dictate how profits and losses are allocated, outline tax responsibilities, and ensure compliance with relevant tax laws.

Partnership tax basics
The tax numbers of a partnership are allocated to the partners. The entity issues an annual Schedule K-1 to each partner to report his or her share of the partnership’s tax numbers for the year. The partnership itself doesn’t pay federal income tax. This arrangement is called pass-through taxation because the tax numbers from the partnership’s operations are passed through to the partners who then take them into account on their own tax returns (Form 1040 for individual partners). Partners can also deduct partnership losses passed through to them, subject to various federal income tax limitations, such as the passive loss rules.

Special tax allocations
Partnerships are allowed to make special tax allocations. This is an allocation of partnership loss, deduction, income or gain among the partners that’s disproportionate to the partners’ overall ownership interests. The best measure of a partner’s overall ownership interest is the partner’s stated interest in the entity’s distributions and capital, as specified in the partnership agreement.

An example of a special tax allocation is when a 50% high-tax-bracket partner is allocated 80% of the partnership’s depreciation deductions while the 50% low-tax-bracket partner is allocated only 20% of the depreciation deductions. All unique tax allocations should be set forth in the partnership agreement and must comply with complicated rules in IRS regulations.

Distributions to pay partnership-related tax bills
Partners must recognize taxable income for their allocations of partnership income and gains — whether those income and gains are distributed as cash to the partners or not. Therefore, a common partnership agreement provision is one that calls for the partnership to make cash distributions to help partners cover their partnership-related tax liabilities. Of course, those liabilities will vary, depending on the partners’ specific tax circumstances.

The partnership agreement should specify the protocols that will be used to calculate distributions intended to help cover partnership-related tax bills. For example, the protocol for long-term capital gains might call for distributions equal to 15% or 20% of each partner’s allocation of the gains. Such distributions may be paid out in early April of each year to help cover partners’ tax liabilities from their allocations of income and gains from the previous year.

When creating a partnership or LLC, it’s crucial to document tax considerations in a formal agreement to avoid future complications. This includes clearly outlining how income, losses, and deductions will be allocated among members, as well as specifying the tax responsibilities each member will bear. By addressing these tax issues upfront, partners and members can avoid potential conflict and ensure compliance with federal tax regulations.

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Political passions run deep but allowing them to dictate investment decisions can be perilous. A 2020 UBS poll revealed that nearly half (46%) of American investors planned to adjust their portfolios based on the outcome of the presidential election. This highlights a concerning trend: letting political affiliation influence financial strategy. Beyond the inherent difficulties of market timing, throwing political aspects into the mix can lead to even greater risk.

Then there’s the research that exposes a more insidious enemy: confirmation bias.

Confirmation bias is the cognitive tendency to seek out, interpret, and favor information that confirms our pre-existing beliefs, while disregarding or downplaying contradictory evidence. In simpler terms, we often see what aligns with our established views, and readily reinforce them while dismissing anything that may challenge them. The thinking is always that if the “other guy” wins, markets will crash.

Even more concerning, party affiliation often colors perceptions of the national economy, with the party in power typically receiving higher approval ratings.

This chart illustrates a persistent trend: we tend to feel good about the economy if our party is in power, and vice versa. So it’s not only a divide in regard to what will happen in the future, we can’t even agree on what is happening right now! The last time public opinion was in agreement regarding the economy was during the Clinton administration, when strategist James Carville famously declared, “It’s the economy, stupid!” Apart from that, there’s always been a clear divide.

What may be surprising is that historically, investing only under a democratic president yielded a much higher return than investing under only republican administrations. The growth of a $10,000 investment in 1950 would have been $405,540 under the Democrats, versus only $77,770 under the Republicans. But here’s the kicker – had you remained invested the whole time, the growth of that $10,000 investment would have come to $3.15 million dollars!

Does the president actually have any sway on this? Or are market cycles the main actor? It’s hard to say that President Bush was at fault for the great recession and housing crisis of 2008, and it was definitely good luck for President Obama, to be in office during the recovery. Markets and business cycles sing to their own tune, and don’t care who is warming the chair in the oval office.

Despite being informed and educated, investors will often still want to base their “thematic investing” decisions, where they invest in a certain sector or theme, on their projected election outcome.

Consider someone who believed President Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” slogan would boost the oil and gas industry. Despite this expectation, the SPDR Fund Energy Select Sector (ticker XLE) plummeted by 48% during his tenure. Similarly, those who assumed natural gas would thrive under President Biden have been disappointed, with most ETFs tracking natural gas being down by about 70% during his time in office.

The takeaway? When it comes to your investment accounts, leave confirmation bias at the login screen. Focus on what truly matters: your financial goals. By employing a well-defined strategy tailored to your individual needs and risk tolerance, you can navigate the markets with greater clarity and avoid the pitfalls of political influence.

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Maximizing current-year depreciation write-offs for newly acquired assets is a must for every business. Two federal tax breaks can be a big help in achieving this goal: first-year Section 179 depreciation deductions and first-year bonus depreciation deductions. These two deductions can potentially allow businesses to write off some or all of their qualifying asset expenses in Year 1.

Here’s how to coordinate these write-offs for optimal tax-saving results.

Sec. 179 deduction basics

Most tangible depreciable business assets — including equipment, computer hardware, vehicles (subject to limits), furniture, most software, and fixtures — qualify for the first-year Sec. 179 deduction.
Sec. 179 deductions are also allowed for nonresidential building roofs, HVAC equipment, fire protection systems and security systems.
Depreciable real property generally doesn’t qualify unless it’s qualified improvement property (QIP).

QIP means any improvement to an interior portion of a nonresidential building that’s placed in service after the date the building is placed in service — except for any expenditures attributable to the enlargement of the building, any elevator or escalator, or the internal structural framework.
The inflation-adjusted maximum Sec. 179 deduction for tax years beginning in 2024 is $1.22 million. It begins to be phased out if 2024 qualified asset additions exceed $3.05 million. (These are up from $1.16 million and $2.89 million, respectively, in 2023.)

Bonus depreciation basics
Most tangible depreciable business assets also qualify for first-year bonus depreciation. In addition, software and QIP generally qualify. To be eligible, a used asset must be new to the taxpayer.

For qualifying assets placed in service in 2024, the first-year bonus depreciation percentage is 60%. This is down from 80% in 2023.

Sec. 179 vs. bonus depreciation
The current Sec. 179 deduction rules are generous, but there are several limitations:

- The phase-out rule mentioned above,
- A business taxable income limitation that disallows deductions that would result in an overall business taxable loss,
- A limited deduction for SUVs with a gross vehicle weight rating of more than 6,000 pounds, and
- Tricky limitation rules when assets are owned by pass-through entities such as LLCs, partnerships, and S corporations.

First-year bonus depreciation deductions aren’t subject to any complicated limitations but, as mentioned earlier, the bonus depreciation percentages for 2024 and 2023 are only 60% and 80%, respectively.

So, the current tax-saving strategy is to write off as much of the cost of qualifying asset additions as you can with Sec. 179 deductions. Then claim as much first-year bonus depreciation as you can.

Example: In 2024, your calendar-tax-year C corporation places in service $500,000 of assets that qualify for both a Sec. 179 deduction and first-year bonus depreciation. However, due to the taxable income limitation, the company’s Sec. 179 deduction is limited to only $300,000.

- You can deduct the $300,000 on your corporation’s 2024 federal income tax return.
- You can then deduct 60% of the remaining $200,000 ($500,000 − $300,000), thanks to first-year bonus depreciation.

So, your corporation can write off $420,000 in 2024 [$300,000 + (60% x $200,000) = $420,000]. That’s 84% of the cost! Note that the $200,000 bonus depreciation deduction will contribute to a corporate net operating loss that’s carried forward to your 2025 tax year.

Manage tax breaks
Coordinating Sec. 179 deductions with bonus depreciation deductions is a tax-wise idea and a useful tool in a business’ tax strategy toolbox. Applied correctly, this strategy may allow your business to potentially write off some or all of its qualifying asset expenses in Year 1. That’s good for your books and good for your business.

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Taxpayers and practitioners agree that attempting to contact the IRS by phone can be a frustrating endeavor. Every year, millions of taxpayers seek IRS assistance by reaching out to the IRS’ toll-free and international telephone lines with their federal tax questions, requests for tax forms, to check on the status of their refunds, or to follow up with IRS correspondence or notices. All too often, they are met with long wait times, disconnected calls and general anxiety. The Taxpayer Advocate Service, an independent organization within the IRS, was created to champion the taxpayers’ cause by mediating between taxpayers and the IRS to help resolve tax issues. But a recent study of TAS phone lines conducted by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), found that catching TAS for a heart to heart talk is equally as challenging as contacting the IRS directly.

With the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) of 2022, $80 billion in supplemental funding was allocated to help the IRS up its game. One area of improvement focused on increasing the level of service via IRS telephone lines. In November of 2023, the Treasury Inspector General issued a report on the quality of customer service with the objective of determining whether IRS help lines were operational and able to provide taxpayers simple, fast, and accessible customer service.

Testers called 102 IRS customer service telephone numbers during the 2023 tax filing season to evaluate the quality of customer service and found that 21 of them placed the caller on hold for more than 30 minutes, before the caller ultimately ended the call. Other flaws emerged; taxpayers were referred to incorrect phone lines, the offer to provide messages in either English or Spanish was inconsistent, taxpayers did not always receive a return call as promised and hold times were excessive. In its Objectives Report to Congress for fiscal year 2025, the National Taxpayer Advocate service cited flaws in IRS taxpayer communications and advocated for the IRS to, “do a more comprehensive measure of phone service that includes the quality of the caller’s experience.”

Despite the Advocates Service’s best intentions, when TIGTA turned its spotlight on TAS itself, it didn’t fare much better. In July of 2024, TIGTA issued an evaluation report about how ready and responsive TAS phone lines were; the results sounded familiar.

TAS telephone lines were found to be inconsistent in providing taxpayers with the ability to speak with a TAS representative. TIGTA called all 76 local TAS telephone lines in the United States, using the telephone numbers listed on the TAS and IRS websites. Some telephone lines were found to be out of service, voicemail boxes were often full and unable to address the call, and recorded scripted messaging and callback times were inconsistent. Of the 76 calls made, only two were answered by a TAS representative. Automatic voicemail prompts promised that callbacks would be received anywhere between one business day to as long as four weeks. TIGTA also compared contact information for telephone numbers, fax lines, and local addresses between what was listed on the TAS and the IRS website and found several discrepancies. It identified voicemail messaging that had significant differences in the information being communicated.

After reviewing TIGTA’s draft report, TAS stepped up to the plate and agreed with much of its results and recommendations. TAS took corrective actions to make changes to voicemail messages, made updates to the IRS and TAS websites, and is striving to provide more consistent information to taxpayers. However, as claimed by its compatriot, the IRS, TAS management contends that it is short staffed and cannot adopt all of TIGTA’s recommendations.

Despite ongoing efforts to improve, IRS-taxpayer communications remain a messy business. In our experience, communicating with the IRS is best achieved by utilizing their call-back feature; which we have found to be fairly dependable and helpful. Nevertheless, when attempting to work out your issues with the IRS, patience and perseverance must rule the day.

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The commercial real estate industry is heading towards a financing chokehold and that may translate into overwhelming stress for traditional sources of credit – namely banks and commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS). CREnews.com, in its “Year-End 2023: CRE at a Crossroads”, reports that about $2.8 trillion in commercial real estate (CRE) loans are maturing over the next five years, with $544.3 billion coming due this year, the majority of which are owned by banks and commercial mortgage-backed securities. Commercial real estate owners are experiencing a weakened demand for office space and a softening of property values. Previously low interest rates will be unobtainable, making refinancing untenable, and receiverships and defaults are looming. Lenders will look to unload defaulted properties at a much lower value. Lender’s CRE exposure, coupled with rising deposit costs, high levels of uninsured deposits, and declining asset values, have left commercial real estate owners – specifically, those holding maturing debt – in a very dangerous space.

Nomura analyst Greg Hertrich, quoted in a recent Reuters report, says, “Almost 50 U.S. lenders could fail in the coming years under pressure from higher interest rates and operational problems.” This projection is strongly supported by the FDIC’s published list of “problem banks” which listed fifty-two banks totaling $66.3 billion in assets experiencing financial, operational, or managerial weaknesses. In another analysis, conducted by Consulting firm Klaros Group, a review of 4,000 banks found that 282 banks face the threat of commercial real estate loans and potential losses tied to higher interest rates.

Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve published its Financial Stability Report, disclosing its assessment of the stability of the U.S. financial system as of Q1 2024. The study solicited views from a range of broker-dealers, investment funds, research and advisory firms, and academics concerned about the risks to U.S. financial stability. The study reported that banks with a significant exposure to commercial real estate loans could be headed for substantial losses if the trend towards remote work, high vacancy rates and slow rent growth continues. Funding tensions were also attributed to high levels of uninsured deposits and declines in the fair value of assets. The report’s respondents also noted that because interest rates may stay higher for longer than expected, there is a higher potential for “renewed deposit outflows,” or to use the colloquial term, “a run on the bank.”

Should borrowers worry? Some say not. In testimony in a May 15 Capitol Hill hearing on bank oversight, regulators opined that the banking industry is resilient, despite last years’ spate of bank failures. Martin J. Gruenberg, Chairman of the FDIC Board of Directors, testifying for the House Committee on Financial Services, said that banks have sufficient capital on hand, and sufficient liquidity to weather the storm. Gruenberg tempered his prognosis by noting that the banking industry continues to face significant downside risks from inflation, volatile interest rates, and global instability. The economic outlook is uncertain and “these risks could cause credit quality and profitability to weaken, loan growth to slow, provision expenses to rise, and liquidity to become more constrained.”

Lenders are walking a tightrope and that tightrope could easily be snapped by a change in interest rates, a global crisis, or borrower panic. In response, borrowers should stay aware, and start thinking about upcoming refinancing often and early. Traditional lending sources are sure to be compromised in the immediate future, and their available funds constrained and reserved for the best performing properties. By staying informed, property owners can strategically position themselves to address their refinancing needs.

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Most not-for-profit entities are familiar with the hazards of excess benefit transactions, but this brief refresher may enhance vigilance and compliance. The stakes are high. 501(c)(3) organizations determined by the IRS to have violated the rules governing excess benefit transactions can be liable for penalties of 25% to 200% of the value of the benefit in question. They may also risk a revocation of their tax-exempt status — endangering both their donor base and community support.

Private inurement

To understand excess benefit transactions, you also need to comprehend the concept of private inurement. Private inurement refers to the prohibited use of a nonprofit’s income or assets to benefit an individual that has a close connection to the organization, rather than serving the public interest. A private benefit is defined as any payment or transfer of assets made, directly or indirectly, by your nonprofit that is:

• Beyond reasonable compensation for the services provided or goods sold to your organization, or

• For services or products that don’t further your tax-exempt purpose.

If any of your organization’s net earnings privately benefit an individual, the IRS won’t view your nonprofit as operating primarily to further its tax-exempt purpose.

Private inurement rules extend the private benefit prohibition to “insiders” or “disqualified persons” — generally any officer, director, individual or organization (including major donors and donor advised funds) in a position to exert significant influence over your nonprofit’s activities and finances. The rules also cover their family members and organizations they control. A violation occurs when a transaction that ultimately benefits the insider is approved.

Examples of violations could include a nonprofit director receiving an excessive salary, significantly higher than what is typical for similar positions in the industry; a nonprofit purchasing supplies at an inflated cost from a company owned by a trustee, or leasing office space from a board member at an above-market rate.

Be reasonable

The rules don’t prohibit all payments, such as salaries and wages, to an insider. You simply need to make sure that any payment is reasonable relative to the services or goods provided. In other words, the payment must be made with your nonprofit’s tax-exempt purpose in mind.

It is wise for an organization to ensure that, if challenged, it can prove that its transactions were reasonable, and made for valid exempt purposes, by formally documenting all payments made to insiders. Also, ensure that board members understand their duty of care. This refers to a board member’s responsibility to act in good faith; in your organization’s best interest; and with such care that proper inquiry, skill and diligence has been exercised in the performance of duties. One best practice is to ask all board members to review and sign a conflict-of-interest policy.

Appearance matters

Some states prohibit nonprofits from making loans to insiders, such as officers and directors, while others allow it. In general, you’re safer to avoid such transactions, regardless of your state’s law, because they often trigger IRS scrutiny. Contact your accounting professional to learn more about the best ways to avoid excess benefit transactions, or even the appearance of them, within your organization.

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One of the most pressing financial questions facing the United States today is about its outstanding national debt, which recently crossed the $35 trillion mark. That translates into about $270,000 per taxpayer—a figure that many say is downright terrifying. What will happen when this debt “comes home to roost”? How will it all end? These are critical questions, and the answers are far from simple.

Some people subscribe to Modern Monetary Theory (MMT), a macroeconomic theory suggesting that a country issuing its own currency can never run out of money in the same way a business or individual can. Without diving too deeply into this view, it’s important to note that this theory is highly controversial and has more critics than supporters. Just because you can print more money doesn’t mean you will never need to pay it back. At the very least, issuing more dollars could lead to inflation and in a dire scenario, might cause the dollar to lose its global reserve currency status.

While MMT economists advocate for a calm and collected couch-potato approach to this predicament, others take a more extreme stance. Let’s call these preppers “The Three G’s” Squad—those who are hoarding “Gold, Groceries, and Guns” for when the wheels of the U.S. system come off. These folks are preparing for something as drastic as a proper zombie invasion, focusing on stockpiling tangible assets and ensuring self-sufficiency in case of a severe scenario.

While there may be some merit to stockpiling canned food in your basement, we’d prefer a more strategic and less doomsday-oriented approachThis isn’t the first time the U.S. has been in a difficult spot. The great experiment known as the U.S.A., established by the Founding Fathers, has faced its share of challenges before, but it has always pulled through.

So, while you might feel the urge to “do something” and potentially overprepare, our strategy focuses on investing in the largest, most efficient companies in the U.S. These companies are well-equipped to navigate financial crises due to their resources, experience, and operational efficiencies. While the possibility of an extreme event leading to total chaos always exists, it’s more likely that circumstances will create a financial crisis requiring robust and adaptive responses. And who better to manage these challenges than the most capable and resourceful companies?

Consider this: In January 1980, an ounce of gold was trading at $800. Today, that same ounce is worth about $2,400. However, to have merely kept pace with inflation since 1980, gold would need to be priced at $3,200 an ounce. By contrast, $800 invested in the S&P 500 in January 1980, and left to compound (with taxes paid from another source), would be worth about $117,000 today. While noisy preparation might provide comfort now, it has historically come at a steep cost to our long-term serenity.

So, although no one can claim to know how the national debt situation will play out—it’s a complex and daunting issue—what may feel like underpreparing today can be the best preparation. You can choose to take dramatic steps and watch events unfold on TV from your basement (with all the baby corn, of course), but true preparation might actually lie in betting on a brighter future and on those that are best suited to realize it.

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When valuing a business, experts often go beyond the company’s financial statements and will interview management and request relevant documents to gain insight into the owners’ perceived value of the business. While this information should not replace a comprehensive valuation analysis, it can help identify discrepancies that need to be reconciled.

There are alternative indicators of value that experts may consider when valuing a business, and they are more common than one would think:

1. Buy-sell agreements

Owners often protect their business interests with buy-sell agreements. These agreements can provide a specific value for the business and may even contain valuation formulas to be used on an owner’s death or termination.

2. Prior sales

Arm’s-length transfers of ownership interests and offers to buy the company (or a portion of it) can shed light on a company’s value. Courts tend to give significant weight to prior sales and offers, especially when evaluating fair value for dissenting or oppressed shareholder claims. In some cases, courts may even consider transactions that happen after the valuation date. For data to be meaningful, the transaction should occur within a reasonable time frame; involve unrelated, credible buyers; and include business interests of comparable size and rights.

3. Past valuation reports

Valuation reports prepared for other purposes can provide insight into a company’s value. Comparability and timeliness are imperative.

4. Life insurance policies

Life insurance coverage can provide a useful indicator of value. When selecting adequate life insurance coverage amounts, most companies estimate the costs of buying out the owner or of losing a key individual.

5. Personal loan applications

Personal loan applications may be subpoenaed to provide evidence of a business interest’s value for owner disputes and marital dissolutions. When borrowers list personal assets on loan applications, they want to appear as creditworthy as possible. Conversely, when buying out another shareholder or obtaining a divorce, owners have a financial incentive to undervalue their business interests. When the amounts shown on loan applications and valuation reports differ substantially, the data may need further review.

Reliance

Though these indicators are a valuable tool in a valuation analysis, relying on them without a proper review of the terms and context may lead to inaccuracies. These metrics may not reflect current market conditions, financial health, or operational changes of the business. Buy-sell agreements could be outdated, prior sales may have been driven by unique, one-time circumstances, and life insurance policies might not reflect a true measure of a business’s worth. In Connelly v. United States, the court emphasized the importance of context, noting that these indicators must be carefully examined to ensure they represent a fair and accurate valuation.

Transparency is Key

Most valuation reports address these indicators of value, but sometimes they are overlooked, unavailable, or even withheld by the valuator’s client. It’s important to share all relevant information with your valuation professional. Alternative indicators of value may can be used to corroborate or refute a value conclusion. Analyzing financial statements, making time to review alternative indicators of value, and a good dose of common sense are invaluable in calculating accurate business value.

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In April 2023, taxpayers and tax professionals were elated by news that the U.S. Tax Court had ruled in favor of businessman Alon Farhy in his suit against the IRS. Farhy asserted that the IRS had no authorization to assess and impose penalties for failure to file foreign information returns. Their collective joy was tempered a year later when in May 2024, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C Circuit reversed the Tax Court’s initial ruling.

Farhy failed to report his ownership in two foreign entities in Belize and was assessed hefty Section 6038(b) penalties. The penalty scale for infringements under Section 6038(b) includes initial penalties of $10,000 for each annual accounting period, for every foreign entity for which the required information is not provided. Additional penalties include $10,000 for each 30-day period that the infraction occurs, up to a maximum of $50,000.

Farhy’s argument to the courts was unique; he did not deny his lack of compliance. Rather, he challenged the IRS’ authority to independently assess and issue Section 6038(b) penalties directly, for failing to file certain foreign tax information. If the IRS sought to collect penalties, he contended, it would have to pursue civil action by filing a lawsuit in federal court under Title 28 of the U.S. Code. In its surprising ruling, the Tax Court agreed with Farhy’s position, and acknowledged that Section 6038(b), unlike other penalty sections, does not include a provision authorizing assessment of penalties.

Farhy’s victory didn’t last long. A year later, the Washington, D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals reversed the decision, based on context and history. “… penalties imposed under section 6038(b) … are assessable. This conclusion is buttressed by more than forty years of congressional acquiescence to the IRS’s practice of assessing section 6038(b) penalties.”

Apparently, silence is acquiescence. The court decided that the responsibility to clarify, change, or reinterpret a statute falls upon Congress. If Congress hasn’t revisited this statute in forty years, it must have no objection to its interpretation. The Court of Appeals utilized the “tools of statutory interpretation” and looked “to contextual clues” to assess whether this specific penalty provision could be challenged. It concluded that that Congress meant for Section 6038(b) penalties to be assessable, “Read in light of its text, structure, and function, section 6038 itself is best interpreted to render assessable the fixed-dollar monetary penalties subsection (b) authorizes.” On June 4, 2024, Farhy filed a petition for a rehearing, but it was denied.

While Farhy v Commissioner was on appeal, the ruling was successfully applied in Raju J. Mukhi v. Commissioner. Mukhi racked up $11 million of foreign reporting penalties and brought several claims to court, a fraction of which were Section 6038(b) penalties. In regard to those penalties, the Tax Court reaffirmed its decision in Farhy, finding that the IRS lacked authority to assess the penalties under Section 6038(b). Farhy was heard in U.S. Tax Court and deals with tax law interpretation, while Mukhi was heard by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and involves immigration law. The overlap between the two cases highlights how rulings in one area can simultaneously impact decisions in other areas, influencing both IRS enforcement practices and federal law.

Litigation revolving around the IRS’ assessment authority for Section 6038(b) is likely to continue; but until there is a conclusive decision by the Supreme Court, taxpayers and practitioners can and should challenge IRS authority to assess these penalties in US Tax Court cases, where they fall outside of the D.C. Circuit. Ultimately, regardless of the courts’ decisions, the requirement to file still remains. Serious players in the international business space must be scrupulous in their tax compliance and stay mindful and aware of changing judicial interpretations of tax law.

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In a May 24, 2024, press release the American Health Care Association (AHCA) announced that, in conjunction with the Texas Health Care Association (THCA) and several Texas long term care facilities, it has filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In June, trade association LeadingAge, which represents more than 5,400 nonprofit aging service providers, joined the fray and announced that it has joined as co-plaintiff with AHCA. No surprises here. Since CMS’ April 22 release of its final mandate establishing new requirements for nursing homes staffing, healthcare associations and operators have been gearing up for a fight.

“We had hoped it would not come to this; we repeatedly sought to work with the Administration on more productive ways to boost the nursing home workforce,” said Mark Parkinson, President and CEO of AHCA. “We cannot stand idly by when access to care is on the line and federal regulators are overstepping their authority. Hundreds of thousands of seniors could be displaced from their nursing home; someone has to stand up for them, and that’s what we’re here to do,”

AHCA’s complaint argues that the agencies’ decision to adopt the one-size-fits-all minimum staffing standards is “arbitrary, capricious, or otherwise unlawful in violation of the APA.” Further, the lawsuit argues that the rule exceeds CMS’s statutory authority and imposes unrealistic staffing requirements.

The final mandate demands a minimum of 3.48 hours per resident per day (HPRD) of total staffing, with specific allocations for registered nurses (RN) and nurse aides. The allocations call for significant HPRD of direct RN care, and direct nurse aide care, and require the presence of an RN in all facilities at all times. Nursing home operators around the country claim that these requirements are unattainable, unsustainable, and unlawful; they could lead to widespread closures that will put the country’s most vulnerable population at risk.

Partnering with Texas nursing home industry leaders was a fitting move by AHCA as more than two-thirds of Texas facilities cannot meet any of the new requirements and suffer from a nursing shortage that is not expected to abate. The lawsuit emphasizes that, “Texas simply does not have enough RNs and NAs to sustain these massive increases. On the other hand, Texas has a relatively high proportion of licensed vocational nurses (“LVNs”) but the Final Rule largely ignores their important contributions to resident care.”

LeadingAge, with a membership spanning more than 41 states, represents the aging services continuum, including assisted living, affordable housing, and nursing homes. Katie Smith Sloan, president and CEO of LeadingAge, was vociferous in LeadingAge’s stance on the mandate. “The entire profession is completely united against this rule,” she said in a statement. LeadingAge voiced its opposition to the proposed mandate back in 2022, at the outset of Biden’s administration, and now joins the legal battle against its implementation, claiming that, “it does not acknowledge the interdependence of funding, care, staffing, and quality.”

At inception, the new mandate triggered strong opposition from industry leaders and lawmakers. Industry leaders claim the rural areas will take a harder hit than urban areas. Rural facilities are grappling with an unprecedented and acute shortage of registered nurses (RNs), rising inflation, and insufficient reimbursement. Additionally, both Republican and Democratic Congressmen joined in protest of the mandate and threw their support behind the Protecting Rural Seniors’ Access to Care Act (H.R. 5796) which would have effectively suspended the proposal. Ultimately, the staffing mandate was finalized before the House of Representatives took it up.

On the other side of the courtroom, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services’ (CMS) officials maintain that facilities will be able to comply with the mandate because the three phase plan will “allow all facilities the time needed to prepare and comply with the new requirements specifically to recruit, retain, and hire nurse staff as needed.” The lawsuit counters this assertion stating that a delay in deadlines will do nothing to fix the underlying problem.

“To be clear, all agree that nursing homes need an adequate supply of well-trained staff,” the lawsuit states. “But imposing a nationwide, multi-billion-dollar, unfunded mandate at a time when nursing homes are already struggling with staffing shortages and financial constraints will only make the situation worse.”

In conversations with our healthcare clients, the consensus that seems to be forming is that the new staffing mandate’s attempt to address healthcare staffing issues is simply not feasible. The mandate only exacerbates the post-Covid, turbulent environment of the healthcare industry. It is most likely that the legal assault against the mandate has only just begun as nursing home owners and healthcare companies turn to the courts to mitigate the effects of the mandate and to strongarm CMS into drafting a more equitable ruling. How the mandate will ultimately be implemented, which of its components may be reversed, and what adjustments and policy updates will arise, is yet to be seen. Stay ready for updates as the situation evolves.

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While bankruptcies are widely publicized and must follow the established governing codes, there is much more privacy and procedural flexibility when it comes to receiverships. And as we see more portfolios struggling in the current environment of higher interest rates, it’s critical to understand what receivership is and more importantly what it means for you.

Whereas bankruptcy is a method used by debtors to protect themselves from collection; receivership is a remedy that creditors employ to preserve interest upon a breach of contract i.e loan default. Once a breach has occurred, and the parties are unable to come to an agreement otherwise, the creditor will submit a claim to seek receivership in their state court. While a creditor also has the authority to file for involuntary bankruptcy, the receivership process is timelier, less expensive and more importantly, allows the creditor to nominate a receiver of their choice, albeit with the court’s ultimate approval. All these factors are crucial in accomplishing the lender’s goal of restoring their asset’s value.

The responsibilities, rights and compensation of the receiver are subject to the discretion of the court and not bound by strict procedures as seen in bankruptcies. Once finalized, the appointed receiver assumes complete management of the distressed company, controlling all its financial and operating functions. Depending on the litigation proceedings, as the business stabilizes, the lender will look to return the property to the debtor or transition the asset to a new permanent operator. While the company retains its principals in the interim, their authority and insight is limited, to their detriment. Should the business return to profitability or be sold for a gain, they will ultimately be responsible for any taxable income without the ability to proactively tax plan.

Courts view receivership as a drastic step and will encourage the lender and borrower to come to an equitable agreement instead. Should a portion of the debt be forgiven as part of such an agreement, this may result “cancellation of debt” income reported by the borrower. The additional tax liability can be a crushing blow for an already struggling taxpayer.

The two most popular exclusions under Code Section108 are to demonstrate that the company is insolvent or, more commonly, utilizing the ‘qualified real property business indebtedness exclusion.’ This exclusion can apply when real property that secures a debt is held for use in a trade or business and not primarily held for sale. The downside of utilizing this exclusion is that the taxpayer must reduce the tax basis of its depreciable real property by the amount of income he is aiming to exclude; resulting in a decrease in depreciation expense. While this is a worthy trade-off in the short term and can provide necessary breathing room, there are long-term ramifications the taxpayer needs to be aware of. A deteriorated tax basis translates into a higher capital gain should the property eventually be sold. All said, diligent tax compliance and strategic planning are essential to minimize adverse tax consequences during receivership.

While receivership might be perceived as a company’s death knell, it can also present unique opportunities for the company itself, as well as for entrepreneurs and other industry players. Economist Joseph Schumpeter introduced the economic principle of “creative destruction,” which describes how failures or disruptions in income for one entity or sector can create success for others. An entity that enters receivership has the chance to recover, redevelop and thrive. If it does not, others will take full advantage. Those looking to quickly repay creditors present savvy entrepreneurs with an opportunity to acquire assets that can significantly appreciate in value, at discounted prices, and under favorable terms. In business, there are always winners and losers, but opportunities are ever-present. Recognize them and position yourself as a winner.

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The usual question posed by business owners and their leadership teams when they meet to discuss strategic planning is something along the lines of, “How can we safely grow our company to reach the next level of success?” While that is certainly a good launching point, there are other basics to consider. One of them is the environmental, social and governance (ESG) concept.

3 critical components of ESG

ESG generally refers to how companies handle three critical activities:

• Environmental practices. This includes the use of energy, production of waste and consumption of resources.

• Social practices. This includes fair labor practices; worker health and safety; diversity, equity and inclusion. It’s all about a company’s relationships with people, institutions and the community.

• Governance practices. This refers to business ethics, integrity, openness, transparency, legal compliance, executive compensation, cybersecurity, and product or service quality and safety.

Missteps or miscommunications in these areas can spell disaster for a company if it draws public scrutiny or raises compliance issues with regulatory agencies; while integrating robust ESG practices into a company’s strategic planning and daily operations addresses this possible danger and offers many potential advantages.

Benefits

Strong ESG practices could lead to stronger financial performance and offers the following benefits:

• Higher sales. Many customers — particularly younger ones — consider ESG when making purchasing decisions. Some may even be willing to pay more for products or services from businesses that declare their ESG policies.

• Reduced costs. A focus on sustainability can help companies reduce their energy consumption, streamline their supply chains, eliminate waste and operate more efficiently. Conversely, bad publicity associated with government intervention, discrimination or harassment claims, can be costly and damaging.

• Improved access to capital. Clear and demonstrable ESG practices can provide growing companies with access to low-cost capital. Some investors consider a company’s ESG when making additions to their portfolios and may perceive those with ESG initiatives as lower-risk investments.

• More success in hiring and retaining employees. As climate change remains in the public eye, certain job candidates may favor companies that can clearly demonstrate sound environmental practices. Once hired, these employees will likely be more inclined to stay loyal to businesses that are addressing the issue.

Other aspects of ESG also speak to the current concerns and values of workers. Many of today’s employees want more than a paycheck. They expect employers to care for their well-being and protect them from threats such as corruption, unethical behavior and cybercriminals. Comprehensive ESG practices may reassure such employees and keep them close.

Your choice

The importance of ESG practices is not universally agreed upon in the business world. Some approach ESG formally and diligently, while others slide through potential issues. ESG practices are unique to each business and are subject to a company’s leadership team’s judgement. Nonetheless, as a business engages in strategic planning, taking time to consider the impact of ESG-related practices is time well spent. Its potential benefits can only add value in the long run.

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When it comes to investment discussions, it often seems as if the “bearish” voices have the upper hand. They sound smarter, more cautious, and more in tune with potential risks. It’s easy to feel that by dismissing their concerns, you look like you’re ignoring the data.

The same negative tone is also prevalent in financial media reporting. For example, the first two headlines that popped up in my search for this article were: “Nvidia’s Ascent to Most Valuable Company Echoes Dot-Com Boom” and “Megacap Stocks Are Extremely Overbought and Could Be Due for a Near-Term Pullback.” The news tends to be painted with a broad, negative brush – always highlighting the next big worry.

Financial blogger Michael Batnick has an insightful chart he calls, “Reasons to Sell.” The chart plots major news stories that have pushed the market down, alongside the S&P 500. It is fascinating that, while these stories did cause the market to drop for a week, or even a few months, they appear as only blips on the long-term chart. This demonstrates a crucial point: the market tends to recover from short-term shocks and continues its upward trajectory over the long haul.

Negative new stories that yell “Sell!” are ever present, but if you were to attempt to create a chart titled “Reasons to Buy,” the news stories in this category would be few and far between. The steady, long-term belief in the American economy, and its robust ability to rebound (potentially titled “Belief in Human Innovation”), rarely makes headlines. Yet, this enduring strength is the true reason to ‘Buy’.”

Believing that the economy will continue to grow over time may not be a strong counterargument when faced with short-term crises, but for long-term optimists, it means that the timing is always right. This thought is rooted in the concept of economic resilience and human ingenuity. The economy, particularly the American economy, has shown a remarkable ability to recover from downturns, and to innovate and grow. From the Great Depression to the 2008 financial crisis, every major economic setback has been followed by periods of significant growth and innovation.

The “bearish” team may sound more convincing and more focused on risks, but remember that while the market might dip due to legitimate concerns, history shows it tends to bounce back. Maintaining a long-term perspective, and faith in the economy’s growth and in human innovation, can provide a solid foundation for your investment decisions. Investing is not about timing the market; it’s about time in the market. The longer you stay invested, the more you benefit from the economy’s natural growth and the compounding effect of your investments.

While it’s crucial to be aware of risks and to stay informed, it’s equally important to maintain a balanced view. The negative headlines will always be there, but so will the underlying strength and potential of the economy. Trusting in long-term growth and human innovation can help you stay focused on your financial goals, even when the market feels uncertain.

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Back in September of 2023, the IRS declared a moratorium on the processing of new ERC claims, declaring that a substantial portion of the new claims were ineligible and were a product of clueless businesses lured in by promises from aggressive promoters and ‘ERC mills’. Aggressive promotion campaigns by ERC mills instigated a surge of problematic claims, ultimately obstructing IRS’ processing of legitimate claims for deserving businesses. Fast forward to June 2024 and, after coming under pressure from Congress, the IRS has announced that, in an attempt to crawl through the enmired, fraud-ridden ERC program, it will step up its processing and payments of older ERC claims.

Beleaguered IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel clarified that, “We decided to keep the post-September moratorium in place because we continue to be deeply concerned about the substantial number of claims coming in so long after the pandemic. We worry that ending the moratorium might trigger a renewed marketing push by aggressive promoters that could lead to a new round of improper claims. That would be a bad result to taxpayers and tax administration. By continuing the moratorium, we will use this time to consult with Congress and seek additional help from them on the ERC program. Based on what we are seeing, we believe closing the ERC program down to additional applicants would be the right thing to do.”

Werfel says that the IRS continues to be deluged by 17,000 new claims a week, despite the moratorium, and its inventory of claims stands at 1.4 million. According to the law, businesses can still apply for the credit until April 15, 2025, despite the fact that the pandemic is history. The IRS anticipates that tens of thousands of improper high-risk claims for the ERC will be denied. It conducted a review to assess a group of over 1 million ERC claims representing more than $86 billion filed and found that 10% to 20% of claims fell into the highest-risk group, with clear signs of ineligibility or possible fraud. Another 60% to 70% of the claims showed, “an unacceptable level of risk” which will draw extra analysis and scrutiny from the IRS.

Red flags tagging a claim as high risk are those that declare too many employees and wrong ERC calculations, claims based on a supply chain disruption, businesses that claim the ERC for too much of a tax period, or claims from businesses that did not pay wages or did not exist during the eligibility period. Claiming the ERC for partial shutdowns, where a segment of a business was partially shutdown, is also suspect.

Werfel assures taxpayers that the situation is not completely bleak. “For those with legitimate claims, this review helps the IRS with a path forward, and we’re taking action to help. Our review showed between 10% and 20% of the ERC claims show a low risk of red flags. So, for those with no eligibility warning signs, and received before last September, the IRS will begin judiciously processing more of these claims.” The IRS will work on a first-in-first-out basis, with older claims addressed first. It will not process claims that were submitted after Sept. 14, 2023, post-moratorium. Werfel advises taxpayers to lay low and wait for the IRS to sort things out instead of inundating the IRS toll-free line or contacting their accounting professionals to try to speed up the payment process.

While Werfel’s team sorts out its processing issues, the IRS Criminal Investigation unit is hard at work. It has already initiated 450 criminal cases of potentially fraudulent claims totaling a dollar value of almost $7 billion. Of these cases, 36 have resulted in federal charges. At the same time, the IRS has thousands of audits in the pipeline. “So, the bottom line for us on ERC is that we’re continuing to work on many different angles.” Werfel says. “And today’s announcement illustrates that we have a slow but steady path forward to help small businesses with no red flags on their claims, while denying clearly incorrect claims to continuing your work on those claims with question marks.”

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The 485x is a newly enacted tax credit recently unveiled in Governor Hochul’s FY 2025 Budget. This tax credit, also referred to as the “Affordable Neighborhoods for New Yorkers” program, replaces the 421-a tax incentive program which was created in 1971 to provide a partial real estate tax exemption for newly constructed housing. 421-a required that developers provide a certain percentage of affordable units to middle or low-income tenants in exchange for a 35-year tax credit. Over the years, the 421-a has been periodically suspended, reactivated, restructured, and has now reached its final expiration date. Like its predecessor, the 485x offers developers a long-term tax credit in exchange for the development of a percentage of affordable units; in addition, it seeks to secure fair wages for construction workers at projects benefiting from the program.

Both programs’ goals may be the same but the terms are different. The new program provides an up to 40-year exemption on taxes, an increase from the 35 years offered by the 421-a program. Additionally, the legislature gives the 485x a longer life than the previous initiative, setting it to expire by June 15, 2034. Provisions for the 485x demand a larger proportion of housing project units to be designated as affordable housing, which makes requirements for affordability more stringent, and also includes mandatory sustainability requirements.

For all projects over one hundred units, construction crew wages must start at a base wage rate of $40 an hour. For projects of more than 150 units, depending on location, the program demands construction workers’ total compensation range be the lesser of $63 to $72.45 per hour, or 60 to 65% of the prevailing wage. To keep up with inflation, these rates will increase 2.5% every year. Projects with more than one hundred units must reserve 25% of the units for tenants earning a weighted average of no more than 80% of the area median income, going down to 60% for projects with 150 units or more, depending on their location. If a developer takes it down a notch, buildings developed with 6 to 99 units will have to provide 20% percent of the units for tenants earning 80% percent of the area median income. Condominium and co-op projects are also eligible if they are located outside Manhattan and are valued at an average assessed value of $89 per square foot or less. Developers currently approved under the 421a program have been given an extended deadline and have until 2031 to complete their projects.

The 421a was unpopular and left to languish because developers complained that it was too stringent, while tenant advocates and unions grumbled that it did not do enough. Will the 485x fare better? It’s hard to say. Developers will have to dig deep and make definitive calculations to decide if the 485x credit will prove profitable with its added labor costs and rental income limitations. This is especially applicable to larger developments as the 485x’s tiered scale raises the required base pay per unit built.

Despite these constraints, brokers are reporting that the new law has awakened interest in qualified properties, and values have responded, showing a slow rise. In today’s troubled financing landscape, developers need an incentive to plunge into new projects. The 485x may provide that push. Lawmakers are hoping that the creation of the 485x will serve the dual purpose of wooing developers back into construction mode and helping the city achieve a fair balance between wages and affordability.

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Yogi Berra famously quipped, “Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.” That pretty much sums up how many people view living in New York. Long time residents are leaving New York in droves. However, although people are trying to escape high taxes, cold weather and congestion, they often want to keep some of the benefits and conveniences that New York has to offer. They often want to keep their (former) home in New York.

If you’ve moved away from New York but still have a home there, you may think you’ve abandoned the Empire state. But New York State might not have abandoned you (at least not your money). If you maintain a permanent home in New York, you may still be considered a resident for tax purposes.

This article will address the frequently asked question of “How do I get Albany’s hands out of my pocket?” Taxpayers often think that if they buy a Florida home and change their driver’s license and voter’s registration to Florida, they are no longer NYS residents for tax purposes. That doesn’t fly according to the NYS tax dept.

Like many states, New York has strict residency laws that will determine your tax obligations. If you’ve recently moved out of NY or are considering moving you should be aware of the legalities dictating residency and be prepared to defend your position in case of audit.

NYS has two tests to determine whether you are a NY taxpayer – the Domicile Test and the Statutory Residency Test. They can get you on either one.

One’s domicile is his place of permanent legal residence. It’s the place where one has the most family and professional ties and that one considers their home.

Five factors define whether a person is considered domiciled in NY State. None of these factors stand alone in determining what a domicile is, rather, they are considered in their totality. It is all about intention, as evidenced by your actions.

The first factor considered is your physical home. What location do you intend to use as your personal home? Where do you return to after you’ve been away? What is the size of your NY home as opposed to your non-New York home? Is one owned and one rented?

The second criterion revolves around your active business involvement. Where is your primary workplace? Where do you work from on a day-to-day basis? Working from a second home is still considered as though one is working in New York for tax purposes, unless a separate business location is established in the secondary location.

The third factor that NYS will review is how the taxpayer spends his or her time. Taxpayers are expected to spend more time in his or her new home state rather than in New York. A location tracker App like Monaeo can be helpful to support this.

The fourth criteria is ‘near and dear’. One’s domicile is the place where one keeps significant possessions. Where are your significant monetary and sentimental possessions located? New York State will not be convinced that you’ve moved if you keep your Picasso in your former home.

One’s family is the final factor. Where do your family members reside? Where do you host significant events and holidays? Are your children registered for school in your new hometown or in NY State?

Under law, one can only have one domicile. A New York domicile does not change until it is established that it has been abandoned and that a new domicile outside New York State has been established.

A “statutory resident” is defined as one who is not domiciled in NY State but maintains a permanent place of abode (regardless of ownership) in the state, and spends, in the aggregate, more than 183 of the taxable year there. Under audit, NYS will review calendars, expense reports, credit card statements, passports, cell phone records, and EZ PASS activity to make an accurate count of how many days you’ve spent in NY State. Partial days will count as a full day when making the count, with only very limited travel and medical exceptions.

If an auditor determines that a taxpayer is not domiciled in NY State, he will still attempt to establish that the Taxpayer is a statutory resident. In either case, whether being domiciled in NY State or being a statutory resident of NY State, the taxpayer is considered a NY State resident for tax purposes. If you are preparing to move out of NYS, but still plan to have some kind of continuing relationship with your former home, it would be wise to confer with your accountant and develop a preventative strategy to defend yourself in case your residential tax obligations are challenged.

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The Evolution and Impact of Artificial Intelligence
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has transitioned from a niche area of academic research to an essential tool that is transforming how businesses operate. For accountants and other business professionals, AI represents a powerful ally in streamlining operations, improving accuracy, and enhancing decision-making processes.

Understanding AI in Business
AI refers to the ability of machines to perform tasks that typically require human intelligence. This includes understanding language, recognizing patterns, solving problems, and making decisions. Over the past few years, AI has become more accessible and practical, particularly with the rise of tools like ChatGPT and other AI assistants. These tools can automate repetitive tasks, provide quick answers to queries, and even generate insightful reports, all of which are invaluable in the business world.

The Role of AI in Business Operations
AI is not a futuristic concept; it is already making a significant impact in various business operations. For instance, AI can assist in:
• Financial Analysis and Reporting: AI tools can sift through large datasets to identify patterns and generate detailed reports, helping businesses make informed financial decisions.
• Risk Management: AI systems can analyze historical data to predict potential risks and recommend mitigation strategies, thereby enhancing the overall risk management framework.
• Customer Service: AI chatbots can handle customer inquiries round-the-clock, providing timely and accurate responses that improve customer satisfaction.

The Practical Benefits of AI for Accounting
For business professionals, the integration of AI can bring several tangible benefits:
• Efficiency and Automation: AI can handle routine tasks such as data entry, invoice processing, and reconciliation. This frees up time for professionals to focus on more strategic activities, like financial planning and analysis.
• Accuracy and Consistency: AI systems reduce the risk of human error in data processing and calculations, ensuring that records are accurate and consistent. This is crucial for maintaining compliance and preparing precise financial statements.
• Enhanced Decision-Making: AI can analyze vast amounts of data quickly, uncovering trends and insights that might not be immediately obvious. This supports better decision-making and strategic planning.
• Improved Client Interaction: AI-powered chatbots can provide instant support to clients, answering common questions and performing basic tasks. This enhances the client experience and allows human staff to handle more complex inquiries.

Challenges and Considerations
While AI offers numerous benefits, its implementation comes with challenges, particularly in sensitive fields like healthcare. In these areas, AI must be used with caution due to privacy concerns, the need for regulatory compliance, and the critical importance of accuracy. Businesses must ensure that their AI systems are secure, reliable, and compliant with all relevant regulations.

Transformative AI Solutions
Part of the suite of AI-driven software solutions that RothTech has developed caters specifically to the needs of modern businesses. Here’s a closer look at how these technologies work and some of the benefits they deliver:

1. Advanced User Support with AI Chatbots
Our chatbots utilize Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) models, which combine the best of retrieval-based and generative AI systems. Here’s how it works: when a customer query comes in, the RAG model first retrieves relevant information from a vast database of knowledge. This knowledge is usually kept private by organizations using the tool, so “ordinary” AI models like ChatGPT have no access to it. It then uses this information to generate a response that is not only accurate but contextually aware. This process enhances the chatbot’s ability to conduct complex, multi-turn conversations and provide responses that feel natural and intuitive, thereby improving customer service interactions and efficiency. In addition, this type of chatbot can recognize user’s intents and perform actions ranging from simple API calls to orchestrated and complex workflows.

2. Revolutionizing Knowledge Management
Our knowledge exchange platform transforms how information is curated, accessed, and utilized within an organization. It acts much like an AI-driven mentor that is available round-the-clock. It can ingest data from a variety of sources, including internal reports, emails, databases, and even external publications, to build a comprehensive knowledge base. Real-time analytics on user queries and the system’s responses help identify gaps in information and areas for improvement, ensuring that every team member has the most accurate and relevant information at their fingertips. If needed, this system can seamlessly transfer control to a human operator, resulting in enhanced user experience.

3. AI-Driven Recruitment: Enhancing HR Efficiency
Using deep learning, we employ HR systems which are able to analyze a multitude of data points from job descriptions and resumes to match candidates with job opportunities. This AI-driven approach not only expedites the hiring process but also improves the quality of matches, which can enhance workforce stability and satisfaction.

4. Automated Monitoring of Web Applications
Our automated systems proactively monitor the health and performance of web applications, ensuring they deliver a seamless user experience. By identifying and addressing issues before they affect users, these tools maintain high standards of application reliability and security.

5. AI in Fraud Detection and Financial Auditing
Our AI systems analyze transactional data for patterns indicative of fraud and scrutinize financial documents using natural language processing to detect inconsistencies. These capabilities enhance the security and accuracy of financial operations.

6. Streamlining Insurance Processes
AI-driven automation in insurance workflows helps manage claims, underwriting, and customer service tasks more efficiently, reducing the burden on staff and improving client satisfaction.

7. Enhanced Reporting and Business Analytics
Our tools use advanced LLMs to process both structured and unstructured data, enabling comprehensive business analysis, database querying and insight generation, which supports informed decision-making.

8. AI in Medicine
We have successfully implemented an advanced computer vision project for MRI analysis. This project aims to assist clinicians in analyzing MRI scans more accurately and efficiently by leveraging AI to interpret medical imaging nuances.

The Future of AI: Agents and Agency

As AI technology continues to evolve, the concept of AI agents — semi-autonomous systems that can perform a variety of business functions — and AI agency, where AI represents businesses in interactions, is becoming more prominent. In addition, the newest Large Language Models presented just days ago are making a big step towards much more natural human-computer interaction—for example, GPT 4o accepts as input any combination of text, audio, image, and video and generates any combination of text, audio, and image outputs. Such advances of AI development will further redefine the boundaries of what machines can do in a business context, offering new opportunities for innovation and efficiency.

As AI technology continues to evolve, its potential to redefine business operations grows exponentially, promising unprecedented innovation and efficiency. However, businesses must also navigate the associated risks, including data privacy concerns and the need for robust regulatory compliance, to fully leverage AI’s transformative power while mitigating potential downsides.

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Private credit funds have exploded recently, with billions of dollars raised for private credit from U.S. investors in 2023 alone, following a decade of strong growth. According to PitchBook, the market grew from roughly $500 billion in 2012 to $1.75 trillion in 2022. Last year, Harbor Group International (HGI), a real estate investment and management firm, announced that its multifamily credit fund had reached a new milestone of $1.6 billion in capital commitments.

The rise in popularity of private credit funds can be attributed to a surge in businesses seeking new and alternative avenues to capital in a high interest rate environment. HGI’s fund invests in US multifamily credit opportunities, including senior mortgage loans, Freddie Mac K-series bonds, preferred equity and mezzanine debt investments, and investments in securitized multifamily mortgage products.

Private credit funds offer investors access to non-public markets and present a range of benefits not offered by traditional and public market investments, and through strong recent fundraising, have been able to enter the lending market with a focus on high‑yield deals.

While traditional banks are required to hold comparatively higher levels of capital to what they lend and are subject to rigorous regulatory scrutiny, private credit has greater flexibility in these areas. Private credit funds have also been outperforming traditional private equity ventures. In 2023, the private credit portfolios of seven listed private equity managers achieved a median gross return of 16.4%, compared to 9.8% for their private equity strategies, making private credit an attractive investment opportunity.

Private credit funds’ popularity is also due to the advantages they offer investors, especially at a time when markets are uncertain and overall dealmaking has slowed to the point where many private equity firms are struggling to get funding for leveraged buyouts. Some of these advantages include:

• Diversification – Spreading exposure across multiple sectors and credit profiles is key to mitigating portfolio risk. Private credit funds work across a diverse range of credit instruments, including senior secured loans, mezzanine, and distressed debt, to offer higher yields than other types of investments.

• Risk Mitigation – Private credit funds can take advantage of the risk mitigation strategies many companies have in place when they assess the viability of an investment. Asset managers can consider a company’s reputation, position in the market, longevity, risk mitigation and response strategies, and past financial performance when considering offering private credit. To take on the appropriate amount of risk and capture returns, long-term, fund managers must put each investment prospect through rigorous due diligence and risk management testing before committing.

• Custom Structures – Private credit funds can be highly flexible, creating customized investment structures to generate alpha for investors. Often, private credit funds can offer value-added features that traditional banks cannot, including warrant coverage, equity kickers, revenue or profit-sharing agreements, and performance-based incentives. Investors concerned with preserving capital can opt for senior secured loans, for example, while those seeking higher returns may opt for higher risk alternatives like distressed debt.

• Conversion to Equity – Credit facilities and loans provided to companies by private credit funds often come with covenants setting out terms for the lender in case of a breach. In certain circumstances within a private credit fund, when a borrower defaults on a loan or breaches a covenant, the credit facilities can be turned into equity.

Financial firms considering private credit funds as part of their overall investment strategy should seek to establish an investment strategy, develop a sound strategic approach to the size of companies the fund will target, and establish risk management and compliance protocols.

In April 2024, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) published the second chapter of its Global Financial Stability Report, which called for greater regulation and oversight of the private credit market. Consulting regularly with legal and tax advisors can help asset managers head off risk from potential regulatory overhaul while maintaining the flexibility that makes private credit attractive. Sound management remains the key to driving return on investment by addressing potential tax implications and avoiding the fines, litigation, and reputational harm that may arise from non-compliance.

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Healthcare entities regularly seek out merger and acquisition (M&A) opportunities to expand and diversify, but M&A becomes more expensive and less attractive when rising interest rates make the cost of borrowing prohibitive. Vacillating interest rates invite fluctuating costs of capital, disrupt valuations, and strain financing opportunities. Throw in the newly released staffing mandates and the combination of factors affects the overall volume of M&A transactions.

Interest rates and valuations generally work inversely. When interest rates climb, discount rates also rise. This brings on lower present values of future cash flows, which lowers valuations for companies. Fluctuating valuations affect the pricing of M&A transactions. Low valuations translate into potentially higher returns for investors and more M & A activity.

According to a recent report by Forbes, despite forecasts of reduced interest rates, the Federal Open Market Committee has not moved to cut them. Currently, it seems most likely that the FOMC will cut rates in September and December, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool. Lower rates will mean lower valuations and will lead to a higher volume of M&A activity.

Where do staffing mandates come in? The nursing home industry is in an uproar in reaction to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services new staffing mandate that will demand that nursing homes provide residents with approximately 3.5 hours of nursing care per day, performed by both registered nurses and nurse aides. This is the first time nursing homes are looking at staffing requirements set by the federal government and they are none too pleased. The mandate has been widely opposed by the nursing home operators, claiming that it is unreasonable, and more importantly, unrealizable.

Over the next three to five years, as the mandate’s requirements are phased in, providers will be faced with threatening staffing costs. According to the American Healthcare Association (AHCA), the proposed mandate would require nursing homes to hire more than 100,000 additional nurses and nurse aides at an annual cost of $6.8 billion. This signals inevitable closures and sell-outs in the coming years. The new staffing mandates threaten the healthcare industry as a whole, especially the activity of mergers and acquisitions. The saving grace may come in the form of a marked lowering of interest rates which can more likely than not keep M&A activity active and even trigger a robust year for healthcare in general.

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In November 1938, 1.1 million Californians voted to enact the first pension plan, known as the “Ham and Eggs” program. While this referendum failed by a few thousand votes, it was one of the many ideas floated in the tumultuous 1930s. Another famous plan was Francis Townsend’s proposal, advocating for a national sales tax that would furnish every American aged 60 or older with a $200 monthly pension payment.

Amid this era of throwing spaghetti at the pension wall, one program stuck: Social Security. As part of Roosvelt’s New deal, the plan’s inaugural check, a modest $22.54, went to Ida May Fuller on January 31, 1940. It marked the genesis of a system that has since burgeoned into a cornerstone of retirement planning.

Over the decades, Social Security has garnered not only widespread acclaim but also robust political fortitude. Its popularity among seniors, with over 90% actively receiving its benefits, has rendered it a cherished institution in the eyes of voters. Consequently, politicians have been wary of wielding reformative influence, fearing the formidable backlash from this sizable voting bloc.

However, despite its popularity, the program faces an ominous specter: the impending depletion of its trust funds by 2033. Potential remedies, such as raising the retirement age or reducing benefits, evoke memories of France’s tumultuous response last year to its attempt at reforming its retirement system, which was marked by months of fervent protests. More importantly though, due to its popularity among its greatest voting bloc, senior citizens, it’s become the third rail in politics. It’s pretty much political suicide to try to make changes. One level after killing your puppy (IYKYK😉).

As a result, Social Security resembles a driverless car hurtling towards an unavoidable collision, bereft of self-driving software to steer it away from calamity.

Our goal is not to succumb to hyperbole or indulge in doomsday predictions. Instead, we advocate for a proactive approach to retirement planning. Take the reins of your financial future; make sure to save diligently and invest astutely. If Social Security remains a reliable safety net, it will merely enhance your retirement journey, serving as a supplemental boon rather than a sole lifeline.

As President J.F. Kenedy famously said at his inaugural address, “Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country”. By saving enough for retirement, you will be removing the government’s burden to support you in your retirement, and what is more patriotic than that?

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Inventory is a critical component of most businesses’ Balance Sheet, but managing inventory effectively is often a challenging balancing act. A business needs to keep enough inventory on hand to meet its customers’ needs – but holding on to too much inventory can be costly. What are some smart ways to manage inventory more efficiently, without compromising revenue and customer service?

Reliable counts

Effective inventory management starts with a physical inventory count. An accurate count of inventory provides a snapshot of how much your company has on hand at any one point in time. This is easier said than done. The value of inventory is always in flux, as work is performed and items are delivered or shipped. To capture a static value as of the reporting day, companies may “freeze” business operations while counting inventory. For larger organizations with multiple locations, it may not be possible to count everything at once; so, they often break down their counts by physical location.

Accuracy is essential to calculating cost of goods sold, and to identify and remedy discrepancies between a physical count and inventory records. And there are always discrepancies. Errors made in data entry, shipping errors, inaccurately labeled products, theft, and sometimes even intentional misstatements are all common factors that can throw off an accurate inventory count.

Benchmarking studies

After a business has calculated its inventory as accurately as possible it can compare its inventory costs to those of other companies in its industry. Benchmarking is the process of measuring key business metrics and comparing them against other companies in the industry to see how the business is faring and how to improve performance. Trade associations often publish benchmarks for gross margin, net profit margin, or days in inventory, and a business should strive to meet — or beat — industry standards.

Efficiency measures

What can you do to improve your inventory metrics? The composition of your company’s cost of goods will guide you as to where to cut and what to modify. Consider the carrying costs of inventory, such as storage, insurance, obsolescence, and pilferage. You may be able to improve margins by negotiating a net lease for your warehouse, installing antitheft devices, or opting for less expensive insurance coverage.

To cut your days-in-inventory ratio, compute product-by-product margins. You might stock more products with high margins and high demand — and less of everything else. Consider returning excessive supplies of slow-moving materials or products to your suppliers, whenever possible. In today’s tight labor market, it may be difficult to reduce labor costs. But it may be possible to renegotiate prices with suppliers.

Inventorying your inventory

Management usually directs its greatest efforts into the growth of its business, which is appropriate; but this focus often puts inventory management on the back burner. This can be a costly mistake. Speak to your accounting professional for help in researching industry benchmarks and calculating inventory ratios to help minimize the guesswork in managing your inventory.

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Last month, the world mourned the loss of Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman, a pioneer in behavioral economics. His work shed light on the complex workings of our minds, where emotions often influence financial decisions, sometimes with negative consequences.

For instance, Eli Whitney, the man credited with revolutionizing the cotton industry, invented the cotton gin. This machine, as Wikipedia describes it, “quickly and easily separates cotton fibers from their seeds,” significantly increasing productivity. However, Whitney’s business decisions entangled him in a web of issues. Instead of opting for a sustainable approach, like selling the machines with a modest royalty, Whitney and his partner demanded an exorbitant one-third cut of any harvest using their gin. This excessive fee proved unacceptable to plantation owners and legislators and led to widespread piracy and imitation of their invention. Whitney, rather than becoming immensely wealthy, spent his days in court battles, barely breaking even.

Financial history is filled with similar stories of individuals succumbing to greed.

The Duality of Risk: Fear and Greed in the Herd

Shifting gears for a moment, let’s consider zebras. These fascinating animals typically graze in large groups called dazzles. Zebras who graze in the center of the dazzle have access to less desirable, matted grass but enjoy relative safety from lion attacks. Conversely, those on the periphery feast on lush green grass but are more exposed to predators.

This behavior exemplifies the interplay of fear and greed that influences our own decisions. The “greedy zebras” venture out for better food, while the fearful ones remain in the safer center.

When Emotions Take the Reins: Investing and the Fear/Greed Cycle

These same fear/greed emotions significantly impact investment decisions. When the market flourishes, and others seem to be profiting effortlessly, greed often takes hold, luring us into riskier investments.

The period between 2020 and 2022 serves as a prime example. With exceptionally low interest rates, many risky ventures appeared successful. This fueled envy among some investors and caused greed to cloud their judgment. Consequently, many made high-risk investments right before the Federal Reserve raised interest rates. This action, akin to a “lion attack” in our analogy, devastated many investors who had been “grazing outside the dazzle” at those risky investments.

The Kahneman Compass: Mitigating Emotional Biases

The key takeaway is that an investor must develop a broad perspective and identify potential risks. Are you venturing too far from the safety of the dazzle?

The insights of Daniel Kahneman offer invaluable guidance in this regard. He emphasized the importance of understanding cognitive biases, which can lead to poor decision-making. By taking a step back, critically evaluating initial reactions, and considering different viewpoints, individuals can lessen the influence of emotional impulses and make more informed choices. Additionally, Kahneman recommended seeking feedback from others and establishing frameworks for decision-making to counteract these biases.

While no method is foolproof, and even experienced investors make mistakes, being aware of these biases and attempting to assess risks is a crucial first step.

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CFOs and Tax Leaders share responsibilities and goals – but need to do a better job collaborating. These two pivotal business roles share responsibility for the financial stability, profitability, and growth of their businesses, but when they are not aligned on the strategic value of the tax function, the company will suffer the consequences.

BDO’s Tax Strategist Survey found that 78% of CFOs believe that the tax function offers strategic value to the broader business, and 75% believe the tax function is invited to weigh in on business decisions before they are made. In both instances, there is a clear signal that CFOs see the merits of fully engaging with the tax function.

However, tax leaders’ responses to the same survey seemed to tell a different story. Only 27% of tax leaders say that they were sufficiently involved in a wide enough range of business decisions to meet the threshold of a “tax strategist” — the type of tax leader who regularly takes a seat at the table to provide strategic input outside the traditional areas of responsibility of the tax function.

This disconnect creates an interesting challenge: if CFOs believe tax leaders are already adding sufficient strategic value, they may fail to include them in the wider decision-making process. This oversight could prevent leveraging the full potential of a tax team, leading to missed tax opportunities or even increased tax risk or liability. Tax leaders, for their part, believe they can be more involved, so something appears to be lost in translation. How can CFOs and tax leaders work together to enable a more strategic tax function?

Expanding Roles: CFOs and Strategic Tax Functions

The tax function’s role is expanding and becoming more complicated. Tax leaders must navigate increasing regulatory complexity, as major domestic U.S. tax policy changes occur with greater frequency. International trade treaties and regulations have changed markedly due to new presidential administrations and expanding geopolitical conflicts.

Tax leaders are increasingly involved in reputation management amid heightened demand for tax transparency from regulators and other stakeholders. Tax leaders and CFOs must work together to manage competing priorities of maximizing shareholder value and ensuring the company is not overpaying tax, while at the same time managing public scrutiny related to total tax contribution.

Tax Leaders: Learn to Speak the Same Language

In turn, tax leaders need to understand how the CFO’s role is evolving. Learning to speak the language of business and finance beyond tax means understanding the strategic priorities of the CFO and the business and how the tax function can positively impact those goals. Tax leaders must make sure that their highly technical tax language translates across the business so that tax planning strategies can be effectively communicated to the C-suite and accurately deployed.

Expanding the range of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) used to measure the tax function’s impact on the company can also help align goals and foster communication. Alongside essential benchmarks like effective tax rate or accuracy of tax returns, new benchmarks may dovetail with the CFO’s other goals – like capital allocation and risk management, helping to bring the tax function’s insights to a wider audience.

Developing the ability to calculate and communicate the tax implications of business decisions and policy shifts in terms that matter to the broader business is key to the tax leader becoming a trusted advisor to the CFO. Showing leaders across the company that the tax team can focus on bottom-line impacts while attending to technical tax details can demonstrate how the tax function’s abilities extend beyond compliance and into strategic value.

CFOs: Keep the Lines of Communication Open and Provide the Right Support

For CFOs, keeping the lines of communication open with tax leaders is essential to successful strategic tax planning. Inviting tax leaders to the table when major decisions are made is important, but will be merely symbolic if tax leaders do not have the resources they need to make strategic contributions. The CFO should work closely with tax leaders to ensure the tax team is equipped with the necessary resources, including skilled personnel, an effective staffing model, advanced technology, and ongoing training and development. This kind of support simplifies dealing with complex tax situations and allows tax leaders to focus on strategic contributions by automating routine tasks and providing actionable data insights.

CFOs and Tax Leaders: Foster Alignment in Action

When CFOs and tax leaders set goals together, communicate, and keep each other accountable, the magic can start to happen. Their alignment will drive better business outcomes, enhance decision-making, mitigate tax risk, and improve operational resilience. When well-aligned CFOs and tax leaders are strategic partners, they can unlock the full potential of the tax team and leverage highly technical knowledge to provide bottom-line value to the entire business.

Back to industry updates

The IRS’ annual “Dirty Dozen” list informs taxpayers about current tax scams, schemes, and dodges that could put their money, personal data, and security at risk. The purpose of the IRS’ Dirty Dozen is to warn taxpayers away from tax traps designed for them by corrupt promoters and shifty tax practitioners.

What schemes made the list for 2024? Here are some areas of impropriety that the IRS wants you to know about:

Social media: Not the ideal place for solid tax advice

Want some bad tax advice? There’s a lot to be found on social media. Scouring social media for answers to your tax problems could lead to identity theft and onerous tax debts.

Two of the recent schemes circulating online relate to the misuse of your W-2 wage information. One scheme involves encouraging people to use Form 7202 (Credits for Sick Leave and Family Leave for Certain Self-Employed Individuals) to claim a credit based on income earned as an employee and not as a self-employed individual. This credit was valid for Covid years 2020 and 2021 but is no longer operative. The second scheme encourages the invention of fictional household employees and the filing of Schedule H’s (Form 1040), Household Employment Taxes, to claim a refund based on false sick and family medical leave wages that they never paid. The IRS is on the lookout for these deceptions and will work with payroll companies, employers, and the Social Security Administration to verify W-2 information.

Beware of ghost preparers

“Ghost preparers” are a common scourge that emerges during tax season. These are unqualified, and sometimes unscrupulous preparers, without valid preparer tax identification numbers (PTINs), who offer filing services. They will often encourage taxpayers to take advantage of tax credits and benefits for which they do not qualify.

“By trying to make a fast buck, these scammers prey on seniors and underserved communities, enticing them with bigger refunds by including bogus tax credit claims or making up income or deductions,” says IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “But after the tax return is filed, these ghost preparers disappear, leaving the taxpayer to deal with consequences ranging from a stolen refund to follow-up action from the IRS.”

The IRS encourages taxpayers to check their tax preparer’s credentials and qualifications. A qualified preparer will always ask for the taxpayer’s receipts, records, and tax forms to determine his or her total income, and proper deductions and tax credits. Stay on top of your own data; an unethical tax preparer may try to boost your refund by taking false deductions or creating bogus income to claim more tax credits. E-filing a tax return using a pay stub instead of a Form W-2 is against IRS e-file rules and should serve as a bright red flag to the taxpayer.

The IRS warns taxpayers to beware of preparers that utilize shady payment terms like ‘cash-only’ payments or fees based on a percentage of the taxpayer’s refund. Taxpayers should also be suspicious if a tax preparer encourages them to have their refund deposited with them, instead of depositing it directly into their own personal bank account.

Beware of offer in compromise “mills”

Internal Revenue Service also renewed its warning to taxpayers regarding Offer in Compromise (OIC) “mills”. These are the unscrupulous preparers you’ve heard all over the media promising to make your tax debts disappear.

“These mills try to pull in steep fees while raising false expectations and exploiting vulnerable individuals with promises that tax debt can magically disappear,” says IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel.

The IRS’ Offer in Compromise is a viable option for the taxpayer who can’t meet his tax obligations, provided that he is able to justify financial hardship. The IRS evaluates every OIC application on a case-by-case basis and considers each taxpayer’s unique circumstances, factoring in the taxpayer’s income, expenses, asset equity, future earning potential and ability to pay. Taxpayers must be able to support and document their claim and pay an application fee to start the process. To confirm eligibility and prepare a preliminary proposal, taxpayers can use the IRS’ online OIC Pre-Qualifier Tool found here: https://irs.treasury.gov/oic_pre_qualifier/

While the OIC offers a chance for negotiation with the IRS, allowing taxpayers to present reasons for their inability to pay their full tax debt, it is a complex and time-consuming procedure governed by IRS guidelines. Aggressively marketed OIC mills that promise to resolve outstanding tax debts for pennies on the dollar are deceptive. Taxpayers who fall victim to these schemes may find themselves in even worse financial situations, facing increased debt and legal repercussions.

If you need to reduce your tax liability, reach out to your accounting professional and steer clear of predatory OIC mills.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide or be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

Back to real estate right now

Real Estate Right Now is a video series covering the latest real estate trends and opportunities and how you can make the most of them. In the episode below, we cover the main advantages of investing in student rental properties.

Student housing properties have earned a significant niche in the commercial real estate market, and while they may evoke a natural reluctance on the part of the investor, they actually offer several unique investment advantages.

Investing in student housing properties often carries less risk than investing in traditional multi-family properties. The need for student housing is on the rise, with a projected 46 million people falling into the college age-range by 2031. In response, off-campus rentals have been attracting capital from savvy investors.

Universities and colleges are historically unaffected by recession or economic flux. Education is always a commodity in demand. By association, student housing properties are also less susceptible to economic downswings. College enrollment runs in continuous cycles, so new housing is needed every semester. This means that demand for this type of property remains stable and cash flows are predictable, albeit the downside of constant turnover.

Because student spaces are usually shared by multiple renters, student housing offers the investor higher returns. It also offers opportunities to generate ancillary income by supplying amenities like parking, bike storage or a gym.

In terms of risk, student rentals have lower default rates than most multi-family units because parents are often the ones to cosign on their kids’ rentals.

Student housing is considered residential, and therefore qualifies for a 27.5-year depreciation schedule, as opposed to industrial and retail real estate, which has a 39-year depreciation schedule. This means there are more deductions to shelter the property income.

Of course there are some disadvantages to consider when you’re thinking of investing in a student rental property. These include lower cash flow in summer months and the high potential for damages. Investors in student housing must also be equipped to deal with an inexperienced renter population and should be prepared to communicate with renters’ parents, who are often involved in the rental process.

To identify lucrative investment opportunities in the student housing market, the investor should stay informed about which universities are growing in enrollment. Higher enrollment means the demand for off-campus housing will increase. A property’s location is an essential factor in assessing the property’s success. Student housing located near a main campus will attract renters more easily than one further away and can demand higher rents. Amenities are important to the student population, with Wi-Fi, gyms, and communal spaces acting as a heavy draw. Lastly, look out for college towns with a stable economy, or an economy that’s on the rise. Colleges and universities in growing towns will look to expand and attract more students – and those students will need housing.

Diversifying your investments to include student housing properties can insulate your investment portfolio from risk and may offer a profitable option for optimizing its value. Speak to your investment advisors to learn more about this promising investment.

Back to industry updates

In the wide, wide world of mergers and acquisitions (M&A), most business buyers conduct thorough due diligence before closing their deals. This usually involves carefully investigating the target company’s financial, legal, and operational positions.

As a business owner, you can perform these same types of reviews of your own company to discover critical insights.

Now you can take a deep dive into your financial or legal standing if you think something is amiss. But assuming all’s well, the start of a new year is a good time to perform an operational review.

Why Perform an Operation Review?

An operational review is essentially a reality check into whether – from the standpoint of day-to-day operations – your company is running smoothly and fully capable of accomplishing its strategic objectives.

For example, a real estate business relies on recurring revenue from established clients as well as new revenues, in order to survive and grow. It needs to continuously ensure that it has the knowledge, talent and resources to acquire, buy or lease properties to develop or resell. The point is, you don’t want to fall behind the times, which can happen all too easily in today’s environment of disruptors and rapid market changes.

Before getting into specifics, gather your leadership team and ask yourselves some big-picture questions:

Is your company falling short of its financial goals?

An operational review can spotlight both lapses and opportunities for increased profit and can offer recommendations to improve management performance.

Are day-to-day operations working efficiently?

Implementing system controls like automated financial tracking systems and data analytic tools can help real estate companies streamline their operations and improve efficiency.

Is your company organized optimally to safeguard its financial records and reports?

Protecting financial information is especially important in the real estate industry where most transactions involve large sums of money.

Are your company’s assets sufficiently protected?

Implementing system controls to protect your business and its properties can prevent unauthorized access; making regular inspections will identify any issues or damage.

What to look at

When business buyers perform operational due diligence, they tend to evaluate at least 3 primary areas of a target company:

Operations: Buyers will scrutinize a company’s structure and legal standing, contracts and agreements, sales and purchases, data privacy and security and more. Their goal is to spot performance gaps, identify cost-cutting opportunities and determine ways to improve the bottom line.
Selling, general & administrative (SG&A): This is a financial term that summarizes a company’s sales-related and administrative expenses. An SG&A analysis is a way for business buyers — or you, the business owner — to assess whether the company’s operational expenses are too high or too low.
Human resources (HR): Buyers typically review a target business’s organizational charts, staffing levels, compensation and benefits, and employee bonus or incentive plans. Their goal is to determine the reasonability and sustainability of each of these factors.

A Funny Question to Ask Yourself

Would you buy your real estate company if you didn’t already own it? It may seem like a funny question, but an operational review can tell you, objectively, just how efficiently and impressively your business is running. Roth&Co is happy to help you gather and analyze the pertinent information involved.

Back to industry updates

Roth&Co hosted a webinar on February 28, 2024, featuring Tax Controversy Manager Ahron Golding, Esq. The webinar discussed the recent approach that the IRS has been taking towards the Employee Retention Credit (ERC), scrutinizing ERC claims for abuse and fraud. Audits and criminal investigations on promoters and businesses filing questionable claims are intensifying, with thousands of audits already in the pipeline.

What is the IRS looking for? Here is what the IRS refers to as the ‘suspicious seven:’

Too many quarters being claimed

Some promoters have urged employers to claim the ERC for all 7 quarters that the credit was available. Since the IRS believes that it is rare for a business to legitimately qualify for all quarters, making a claim for all of them is a red flag.

Government orders that don’t qualify

In order for a business to qualify for the ERC due to a government order that compromised their operations:

the order must have been in effect for the periods claimed
the order must have been directed towards the business rather than towards the customer
the full or partial shutdown must have been by order and not simply via guidance or recommendation
the IRS is looking for the negative financial impact on the business

Claiming that an entire segment of a business was shut down, though that segment was not significant compared to the entire business, will cause a claim to be disallowed.

Too many employees and wrong ERC calculations

The laws are complex, and have changed throughout 2020 and 2021. Dollar limits, credit amounts, and the definition of qualified wages changed as well. Make sure your calculations are accurate.

Supply chain issues

The IRS is not looking kindly at claims based on general supply chain disruption.

Business claiming the ERC for too much of a tax period

If eligibility is based on full or partial suspension, then a business can only claim the ERC for wages paid during the period of actual suspension, not necessarily the whole quarter.

Business did not pay wages or did not exist during the eligibility period

If the business did not exist or pay any wages during the period of the claim, the claim will be disallowed by the IRS and prosecuted for fraud.

Promoter says there’s nothing to lose

Promoters that urged businesses to claim the ERC because they had “nothing to lose” were mistaken. Incorrectly claiming the ERC invites repayment requirements, penalties, interest, audits, and the expense of hiring someone to help resolve the error, amend returns, and represent the business in an audit.

The IRS has a comprehensive ERC eligibility checklist here.

Many businesses have neglected to take into account the issue of aggregation as it applies to the ERC credit. This can potentially effect employee count, revenue, and other crucial calculations.

Overall, the IRS is not too pleased with ERC promoters. IRS auditors have been trained to start an audit by asking who the taxpayer used to help prepare their claim. The IRS expects a taxpayer to utilize a trusted tax professional, rather than a dubious ‘ERC mill’.

What if the employer has an opinion letter to back up his claim? Generally, opinion letters are only as valuable as the backup data they provide. If a claim can be justified by hard numbers, it will help the employer if challenged.

If a business determines that it incorrectly claimed the Employee Retention Credit, it can use the ERC claim withdrawal process outlined here, so long as the business has not yet received the credit or hasn’t deposited an ERC check. Requesting a withdrawal means a business is asking the IRS not to process their entire adjusted return that included the ERC claim. If the IRS accepts the request, the claim will be treated as if it was never filed.

If a business incorrectly received the ERC before December 21, 2023, and deposited the check, they can apply for the ERC Voluntary Disclosure Program before March 22nd, 2024. This program allows participants to repay only 80% of the ERC they received as a credit on their return or as a refund. Click here for more details.

If your business received an opinion letter regarding ERC eligibility that you would like us to review, please email engage@rothcocpa.com.

This summary has been presented for educational purposes only and does not constitute a comprehensive study of the ERC tax laws or serve as a legal opinion or tax advice.

Back to industry updates

There are two accounting methods businesses use to figure their taxable income: cash and accrual. According to the IRS, your choice of accounting method should properly reflect the income and expenses you report for tax purposes. Very often, the cash method provides significant tax benefits for eligible businesses – but not always. It is imperative for your business to evaluate which method will work best to ensure that it achieves the most advantageous tax benefits.

Cash method – Are you eligible?

“Small businesses” are generally eligible to use either cash or accrual accounting for tax purposes, and some may also be eligible to use various hybrid approaches. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) defined a “small business” by establishing a single gross receipts threshold:

A “small business” is one whose average annual gross receipts for the three-year period ending before the 2024 tax year are $30 million or less (up from $29 million for 2023).

This is a notable change from before the TCJA took effect, where the gross receipts threshold for classification as a small business varied from $1 million to $10 million depending on how a business was structured.

Difference between the methods

The main difference between the cash basis and accrual basis of accounting is the timing of when expenses and income are recorded in your financial statements. Using the cash basis, a business will record transactions when payment is exchanged. Accrual basis accounting records income as it’s earned and expenses when they are incurred. For example, if a business pays for an insurance policy in one lump sum at the beginning of the year, using the cash basis, it will record this entire transaction when it’s paid. If using the accrual basis, the business would record a portion of the cost each month over the entire year.

Tax Advantages

For most businesses, the cash method provides both significant tax advantages as well as cash flow benefits. Because cash-basis businesses recognize income when received and deduct expenses when they are paid, they have greater control over the timing of income and deductions. Income is taxed in the year received, so using the cash method helps ensure that a business has the funds needed to pay its tax bill. Additionally, this method offers the bonus benefits of simplified inventory accounting, an exemption from the uniform capitalization rules, an exemption from the business interest deduction limit, and several other tax advantages.

The accrual method may be preferable if, for example, a company’s accrued income tends to be lower than its accrued expenses. This would result in lower tax liability. Other potential advantages of the accrual method include the ability to deduct year-end bonuses paid within the first 2½ months of the following tax year and the option to defer taxes on certain advance payments.

Switching methods

Besides considering the features offered by both methods, a business would have to carefully consider other factors before contemplating a switch. If your business prepares its financial statements in accordance with U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, it’s required to use the accrual method for financial reporting purposes. It would still be allowed to use the cash method for tax purposes, but it would require maintaining two sets of books – a costly and cumbersome choice. Changing accounting methods for tax purposes also may require IRS approval through filing. Before you make any changes, measure out the pros and cons for each method with your particular business in mind and reach out to the professionals at Roth&Co for advice and guidance.

Back to industry updates

A well-timed merger or an opportune acquisition can help your business grow, but it can also expose you and your business to risk. Buyers must consider the strengths and weaknesses of their intended partners or acquisition targets before entering into any new transactions.

When entering into any new buy/sell agreement, a robust due diligence process is imperative in order to avoid the risk of costly errors and financial losses. Due diligence means much more than just assessing the reasonableness of the sales price. It involves examining a company’s numbers, comparing the numbers over time, and benchmarking them against competitors. Proper due diligence can help verify the seller’s disclosures, confirm the target’s strategic fit, and ensure compliance with legal and regulatory frameworks.

What are the phases of the due diligence process, and how can they help in the decision-making process?

Defining Your Objectives

Before the due diligence process begins, it’s important to establish clear objectives. The work done during this phase should include a preliminary assessment of the target’s market position and financial statements, and the expected benefits of the transaction.

The process should also identify the inherent risks of the transaction and document how due diligence efforts will verify, measure and mitigate the buyer’s potential exposure to these risks.

Conducting Due Diligence

The primary focus during this step is evaluating the potential purchase’s financial statements, tax returns, legal documents and financing structure.

Look for red flags that may reveal liabilities and off-balance-sheet items. The overall quality of the company’s earnings should be scrutinized.
Budgets and forecasts should be analyzed, especially if prepared specifically for the M&A transaction.
Interviews with key personnel will help a prospective buyer fully understand the company’s operations, culture and its practical value.

AI – A Valuable Resource

With its ability to analyze vast quantities of customer data rapidly and proficiently, artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming how companies conduct due diligence. Using AI, the potential buyer can identify critical trends and risks in large data sets, especially those that may be related to regulatory compliance or fraud.

Structuring the deal

The goal of the due diligence review is to piece together all of the information reviewed into one coherent picture. When the parties meet to craft the provisions of the proposed transaction, the information gathered during due diligence will help them develop their agreement. For example, if excessive customer turnover, shrinking profits or a high balance of bad debts are revealed during the due diligence process, the potential buyer may negotiate for a lower offer price or an earnout provision. Likewise, if cultural problems are discovered, such as disproportionate employee turnover or a lack of strong company core values, the potential buyer may decide to revise some of the terms of the agreement, or even abandon the deal completely.

Hazards of the Due Diligence Process

Typical challenges in executing a successful due diligence process include:

Asking the wrong questions, or not knowing what to ask
Poor Timing – presentation or execution of documents may be delayed or unavailable
Lack of communication between potential buyers and sellers or their representatives
Cost – due diligence can be expensive, running into months and utilizing extensive specialist hours

We can help

Comprehensive financial due diligence boosts the quality of information available to decision-makers and acts as a foundation for a successful M&A transaction. If you’re thinking about merging with a competitor or buying another company, contact Roth&Co to help you gather the information needed to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits of a transaction that will serve the best interests of all parties involved.

Back to industry updates

“But Mommy, how is school supposed to be canceled if there’s nowhere near a foot of snow?” complains every 9-year-old when, once again, the meteorologist’s weather prediction goes awry.

As much as we love to gripe about the weather-predicting pundits, at least they tend to get it in the general ballpark. They may forecast a chilly 29 degrees topped with a foot of snow, which could end up being a 38-degree, slushy, killjoy. Yet while they don’t always nail the precise form of precipitation, we can still be confident that those aren’t the days to whip out the beach umbrellas from the garage.

Contrary to our almost-accurate weathermen, there is a group of predictors who often can’t even forecast conditions in the right direction (but somehow manage to keep their fancy office jobs). Ladies and gents, put your hands together for the brilliant economists and analysts of Wall Street.

Each Wall Street bank boldly predicts where the stock market is headed and whether or not the economy will face a recession. In early 2023, the Street foresaw a looming recession. A CNBC article from the final week of 2022 titled, Why everyone thinks a recession is coming in 2023, attested to this. But as we all know, the recession never materialized and economists slowly retreated from their initial predictions.

What about their knack for predicting the stock market’s trajectory? At the beginning of the year, the S&P 500 stood at 3,839. Here were the predictions from various Wall Street giants as to where we would end the year:

J.P. Morgan: 4200
Wells Fargo: 4200
RBC: 4100
Credit Suisse: 4050
Goldman Sachs: 4000
HSBC: 4000
Citi: 4000
Bank of America: 4000
UBS: 3900
Morgan Stanley: 3900
Barclays: 3725

At year-end, the index closed at 4770. Not even the most elegant office chairs, sharpest suits or fancy Bloomberg terminals can guarantee an accurate prediction. Sometimes, not even close to accurate.

It’s time to grab a pair of noise-canceling headphones and drown out the external clamor about what to expect. Instead, like we always say, focus on a long-term plan and stick with it – through thick and thin.

Are you prepared to work on a long-term plan? Reach out to us at info@equinum.com for your personalized path to financial success.

Back to industry updates

Whether you are running a small business or are the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, having great leadership is critical for the success of any organization. Great business leaders don’t just inspire their employees to work harder and achieve more – they create a positive work culture that fosters growth, development, and success. The best business leaders create a vision for their company and help their employees turn that vision into a reality.

Becoming a great leader is a process — one that thrives on embracing challenges, seeking feedback, building connections, and cultivating understanding. While some leaders have certain innate skills that allow them to thrive, the majority of business leaders develop the necessary skills through a continuous journey of learning and growth. According to Professor Linda Hill, chair of the Leadership Initiative and author of Collective Genius: The Art and Practice of Leading Innovation, great leaders have intentionally put themselves into situations where they’ve had to learn, adapt, and grow. Finding and capitalizing on these situations is critical for developing the tenacity and fortitude to motivate and guide others.

There are certain qualities that great leaders need to have, like excellent communication, problem-solving skills, and delegating skills. I’ve written about these skills before, and they are a must for any strong business leader. Here are 5 additional qualities for successful leadership – according to Professor Linda Hill, along with ideas on how to help develop them:

Curiosity

Great leaders understand that curiosity is a mindset. They enjoy exploring uncharted waters and trying to understand the art of the ‘possible.’ They can look at situations and problems from the perspective of external stakeholders, such as customers or competitors, which enables them to better consider the broader context, beyond just an internal organizational viewpoint.

How to nurture curiosity

Be open to new experiences and people outside of your immediate division, function, and industry. Don’t be afraid to question the status quo, even if the questions seem basic or naive. The inspiration for the Polaroid instant camera came when Edwin Land’s daughter wanted to see a photo her father had just taken. When he explained that the film had to be processed, she wondered aloud, “Why do we have to wait for the picture?”

Adaptability

As technology evolves, the world changes faster and stakeholder expectations grow quicker. As a leader, you need to be able to adjust to these ever-shifting demands and cultivate an agile work culture. Adaptability allows you to swiftly respond to different issues, pivot when needed, and embrace new opportunities and challenges.

How to strengthen your adaptability

Venture beyond your comfort zone and push yourself to work in new environments with different kinds of people. By taking on assignments and seeking experiences that demand flexibility, you can help foster your adaptability.

Creativity

Any idea that is new and helpful to your company – is creative. Diversity of thought is the driving force behind true innovation, as each of us brings our own unique perspective and “slice of genius” to the table.

How to cultivate creativity

A leader’s job is not to come up with all the great ideas on their own, but rather to establish an environment that nurtures creativity in others. Encourage and promote diverse perspectives on your team. Different viewpoints standing against each other is when creativity flourishes and great ideas are born.

Authenticity

Being genuine and true to who you are is fundamental to success in any role and is even more important in leadership roles. Your talent and skills are not enough; people need to trust your character and connect with you, otherwise they will not be willing to take risks with you.

How to show your authenticity

Understanding how people perceive you is crucial for growth, but asking for and receiving feedback is not easy. Seek feedback at a time when you can remain open, without becoming defensive. Start by asking for feedback in more casual, low-pressure situations and work your way up to more formal and intensive reviews.

Empathy

Understanding and connecting with others on an emotional level is crucial to building trust and strengthening relationships. Great leaders need to see their employees not as robots, but as valuable team members. Leaders need to understand what matters to their employees, what their priorities are, and be able to find common ground. Developing empathy will give you a deeper appreciation of the challenges others are working through, and will help you foster a more supportive and nurturing environment.

How to develop greater empathy

Make a point to interact with employees by asking questions about their work preferences, the pressures they’re under, and their strengths and weaknesses. Your goal is to build understanding and connection. If someone’s opinions or actions strike you as illogical, it’s likely you don’t understand what matters most to that person.

Leadership isn’t a quality you either innately possess or lack. It is the composition of different skills that can be developed and perfected over time.

Back to industry updates

Meetings are critical to a company’s success. Good meetings, that is.

Leading an effective and productive meeting is part science and part art. The science is in putting in the pre-meeting work to ensure that the essential elements of the meeting structure are in place. The art is in the way we run the meeting and promote positive engagement with participants. Here are six strategies to help you lead positive, engaging and efficient meetings that actually yield results.

Clearly Articulate the Purpose – Be clear and concise about the goal of your meeting. If you can’t describe why you’re holding a meeting in a sentence or two, you probably don’t need to have it. The meeting objective should have results-oriented terms and actionable goals.

Prepare an Agenda – Have the meeting leader prepare an agenda beforehand and send it to participants in advance. This will sharpen and clarify the purpose of the meeting and give everyone a chance to prepare. The agenda provides a compass for the conversation, so the meeting can get back on track if the discussion wanders off course.

Invite the Right People – Meetings are expensive and time-consuming. Avoid inviting anyone who is not needed to achieve the meeting objective. At the same time, be sure that you have enough participants for a productive, open discussion with diverse perspectives. A good meeting strikes a balance between minimizing attendees and maximizing the creative potential of a group.

Keep Detours Brief –The meeting leader’s job is to intervene when the conversation gets derailed. And nothing derails a meeting faster than discussing something that may be connected to the agenda, but not essential to the meeting. If you or someone else introduces an idea that’s only tangentially related or unrelated, get ‘in and out’ quickly so you can refocus on the purpose of the meeting. Set the climate for engagement by encouraging productive behavior and discouraging unproductive behavior. Nothing prevents engagement like letting bothersome behavior and random discussions run rampant in your meeting.

Keep the Meeting Short – Don’t overload your meeting agenda. Better to have four 30-minute meetings than a single 2-hour meeting. Setting a time limit for meetings is a respectful way to honor people’s time get them back to their schedules as promptly as possible.

End With Meaningful Action Steps – One of the biggest blunders people make when leading meetings is failing to record, recap, and follow up on action items, next steps, and important meeting outcomes. Leave the last few minutes of every meeting to discuss who is responsible for what, and what the deadlines are. Otherwise, all the time you spent on the meeting will be for naught. Every action item needs three things: 1) Clear deliverable; 2) Owner; and 3) Due date.

Meetings are a critical avenue for growing your business, improving productivity and communication, promoting team integration and increasing job satisfaction. It pays to run them well.

Back to industry updates

Here are some of the key tax-related deadlines affecting businesses and other employers during the third quarter of 2023. Keep in mind that this list isn’t all-inclusive, so there may be additional deadlines that apply to you. Contact your financial advisor to ensure that you’re meeting all applicable deadlines and to learn more about the filing requirements.

July 31

Report income tax withholding and FICA taxes for second quarter 2023 (Form 941) and pay any tax due. (See the exception below, under “August 10.”)
File a 2022 calendar-year retirement plan report (Form 5500 or Form 5500-EZ) or request an extension.

August 10

Report income tax withholding and FICA taxes for second quarter 2023 (Form 941), if you deposited all of the associated taxes due in full, and on time.

September 15

If a calendar-year C corporation, pay the third installment of 2023 estimated income taxes.
If a calendar-year S corporation or partnership that filed an automatic six-month extension:
- File a 2022 income tax return (Form 1120-S, Form 1065 or Form 1065-B) and pay any tax, interest and penalties due.
- Make contributions for 2022 to certain employer-sponsored retirement plans.

Back to industry updates

If a long-time business owner fails to establish a clearly written and communicated succession plan, the result can be chaotic. While there are many aspects to succession planning, one way to clearly document your goals — particularly if your company has multiple owners — is to draft a buy-sell agreement.

Avoiding conflicts

A “buy-sell,” as it’s often called for short, is essentially a contract that lays out the terms and conditions under which the owners of a business, or the business itself, can buy out an owner’s interest if a “triggering event” occurs. Such events typically include an owner dying, becoming disabled, getting divorced or deciding to leave the company.

If an owner dies, for example, a buy-sell can help prevent conflicts — and even litigation — between surviving owners and a deceased owner’s heirs. It also ensures that surviving owners don’t become unwitting co-owners with a deceased owner’s spouse who may have little knowledge of the business or interest in participating in it.

A buy-sell also spells out how ownership interests are valued. For instance, the agreement may set a predetermined share price or include a formula for valuing the company that’s used upon a triggering event, such as an owner’s death or disability. Or it may call for the remaining owners to engage a business valuation specialist to estimate fair market value.

By facilitating the orderly transition of a deceased, disabled or otherwise departing owner’s interest, a buy-sell helps ensure a smooth transfer of control to the remaining owners or an outside buyer.

This minimizes uncertainty for all parties involved. Remaining owners can rest assured that they’ll retain ownership control without outside interference. The departing owner, or in some cases that person’s spouse and heirs, know they’ll be fairly compensated for the ownership interest in question. And employees will feel better about the company’s long-term stability, which may boost morale and retention.

Funding the agreement

There are several ways to fund a buy-sell. The simplest approach is to create a “sinking fund” into which owners make contributions that can be used to buy a departing owner’s shares. Or remaining owners can simply borrow money to purchase ownership shares.

However, since there are potential complications with both options, many companies turn to life insurance and disability buyout insurance as a funding mechanism. Upon a triggering event, such a policy will provide cash that can be used to buy the deceased owner’s interest. There are two main types of buy-sells funded by life insurance:

1. Cross-purchase agreements. Here, each owner buys life insurance on the others. The proceeds are used to purchase the departing owner’s interest.

2. Entity-purchase agreements. In this case, the business buys life insurance policies on each owner. Policy proceeds are then used to purchase an owner’s interest following a triggering event. With fewer ownership interests outstanding, the remaining owners effectively own a higher percentage of the company.

A cross-purchase agreement tends to work better for businesses with only two or three owners. Conversely, an entity-purchase agreement is often a good choice when there are more than three owners because of the cost and complexity of owners having to buy so many different life insurance policies.

Getting expert guidance

Speak to your financial advisor for help creating, administering and executing a buy-sell agreement.

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Complaining, officially defined as ‘the act of expressing dissatisfaction,’ is an essential aspect of any organization’s communication. When done ineffectively, complaining can hurt the collective mood, individual relationships and organizational culture. But when done effectively, complaining can help manage risks, provide early red flags, uncover opportunities for growth and change, and even improve relationships and well-being.

Part of being a business leader is handling your employees’ complaints. While some larger companies have extensive dispute resolution and arbitration procedures, informal procedures are often the best method for the small business owner where each situation is dealt with on a case-by-case basis. Whatever method your business uses, if an employee complains about an employment-related situation, as a business leader, you should be prepared to handle it in a fair and consistent manner.

When considering how to handle complaints, it is important to understand why employees complain, and when and how complaining can be constructive or destructive. Different types of complaints have different underlying intents. When faced with complaints from employees, start by identifying the type of complaint:

Productive Complaints

A productive complaint is made with the intention of improving an undesirable situation. Productive complaints can bring in valuable feedback necessary to change practices or behaviors that are harming the organization. Productive complaints are used to improve an organization’s processes, products and services on behalf of all employees and customers.

Venting

Venting is an emotional form of complaining where an individual expresses their dissatisfaction about someone or something to others. The typical intent behind venting is to release bottled-up stress or frustration. Research shows that venting can have a positive impact because it helps people process stress and frustration while increasing team bonding. While managers are often nervous about employees expressing negative feelings about their work, as long as it doesn’t become toxic, these complaints play a role in every organization.

Chronic Complaining

Chronic complaining is when a person seems to enjoy complaining about everything (the temperature, their salary, their manager, or even the elevator speed). Chronic complainers often have pessimistic views of their role, their work, and the world around them. While many of their complaints may seem frivolous, chronic complainers are very good at picking out serious red flags in an organization that others may miss.

Malicious Complaining

Malicious complaining is a destructive form of complaining that’s used to undermine colleagues or gain an unfair advantage. An employee’s own benefit, rather than dissatisfaction with an organizational issue, is the true intent in this form of complaining.

While understanding the intent of a complaint is important, an employer should also have a strategy on how to listen to and act on complaints when they are received. Here are some helpful steps to harness the benefits of a complaint:

Validate and show thanks

Whether an employee’s complaint seems valid or superficial, it’s always important to take it seriously. Showing your employees that you value and respect their concerns – no matter how big or small – increases the trust employees have in you. Thank the messenger for showing trust in you to address the issue. Despite the fact that the message may be wrapped in negative emotions like frustration or disappointment, the fact that an employee would come to you to share their concerns rather than venting to a coworker or friend, is positive.

Be Curious

Make sure you really understand the problem. Allow the employee to talk without interruption, then ask open-ended questions until you have a clear understanding of the facts. Be curious and consider the employee’s intention. Is the complaint intended to fix a problem? Does it offer an opportunity for positive change? Is it a red flag for a future issue? Is it something that several employees have previously mentioned? Is the person just trying to be heard by venting about an unsolvable situation?

Consider a time buffer

When appropriate (and if the complaint isn’t extremely serious), consider implementing a “time buffer” – a short pause to reflect on the grievance, its impact, and potential solutions before having a conversation about it. This gives the employee time to articulate concerns with less emotion, more effectively. It can also allow you to prepare resources and ideas for a response.

Involve the employee in the solution

Involving the employee in finding a solution means asking for their input, suggestions and preferences, and then considering different options and actions together. By involving the employee in finding a solution, you show respect and trust in their judgment, and you also increase their buy-in and commitment to the outcome.

Understanding why employees complain is an important step in handling the complaints themselves. Then, by better managing employee complaints, managers can create a positive, high-performing work environment while monitoring and containing the risks and costs associated with complaining. When employees feel that they are being treated with respect and fairness, they are more likely to accept the solutions you suggest, even if it is not exactly what they wanted or expected.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, nor should it be relied upon for, legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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The IRS recently released guidance providing the 2024 inflation-adjusted amounts for Health Savings Accounts (HSAs).

HSA fundamentals

An HSA is a trust created or organized exclusively for the purpose of paying the “qualified medical expenses” of an “account beneficiary.” An HSA can only be established for the benefit of an “eligible individual” who is covered under a “high-deductible health plan.” In addition, a participant can’t be enrolled in Medicare or have other health coverage (exceptions include dental, vision, long-term care, accident and specific disease insurance).

Within specified dollar limits, an above-the-line tax deduction is allowed for an individual’s contributions to an HSA. This annual contribution limitation and the annual deductible and out-of-pocket expenses under the tax code are adjusted annually for inflation.

Inflation adjustments for next year

In Revenue Procedure 2023-23, the IRS released the 2024 inflation-adjusted figures for contributions to HSAs, which are as follows:

Annual contribution limitation. For calendar year 2024, the annual contribution limitation for an individual with self-only coverage under an HDHP will be $4,150. For an individual with family coverage, the amount will be $8,300. This is up from $3,850 and $7,750, respectively, in 2023.

There is an additional $1,000 “catch-up” contribution amount for those age 55 and older in 2024 (and 2023).

High-deductible health plan defined. For calendar year 2024, an HDHP will be a health plan with an annual deductible that isn’t less than $1,600 for self-only coverage or $3,200 for family coverage (up from $1,500 and $3,000, respectively, in 2023). In addition, annual out-of-pocket expenses (deductibles, co-payments, and other amounts, but not premiums) won’t be able to exceed $8,050 for self-only coverage or $16,100 for family coverage (up from $7,500 and $15,000, respectively, in 2023).

Advantages of HSAs

There are a variety of benefits to HSAs. Contributions to the accounts are made on a pre-tax basis. The money can accumulate tax-free year after year and can be withdrawn tax-free to pay for a variety of medical expenses such as doctor visits, prescriptions, chiropractic care and premiums for long-term care insurance. In addition, an HSA is “portable.” It stays with an account holder if he or she changes employers or leaves the workforce. Contact your employee benefits and tax advisors if you have questions about HSAs at your business.

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The traditional corporate ladder is no longer.

It used to be that an employee’s career would be at a single firm. As an employee proved themselves, they gradually moved into a better office, gained more responsibilities and earned a bigger paycheck. The path was clear and often linear. While titles changed and responsibilities grew, employees would measure services to their company in decades. The pinnacle of professional achievement was the corner office situated neatly at the top of a clearly defined corporate ladder.

Today, significant employee turnover has become a byproduct of the modern career path. Most employees spend 3 or 4 years at an organization before moving on. Despite this, most companies still see employee turnover as a negative attribute. During interviewing and onboarding, there is an underlying assumption that the employee will stay with the employer indefinitely, even though the average tenure of a modern worker is about four years, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. When the employee does leave, the process feels awkward – with neither side acknowledged or prepared for the inevitable moment.

In today’s world, employers need to closely review the real value of employee retention. Here are some reasons why employers should rethink their focus on employee turnover:

Retention does not equal engagement. Companies that focus too much on retention often get stuck with people who show mediocre (or even low) performance and have minimal ambition. Employees who want challenging, engaging jobs leave quickly when they see average performance being rewarded.
Lengthy employee tenures can be counterproductive. After a certain point, unless the employee has moved up in an organization, the longer an employee stays, the more likely they are to be unproductive, unengaged and unfulfilled. Businesses with a high percentage of long-tenured employees are less likely to be exposed to innovative ideas from new employees coming from other companies and industries.
Turnover is out of your hands. Employees leave companies all the time to pursue completely different career tracks and personal goals. No matter what you do or offer, employees may leave.

Some employers have embraced the notion of intentional attrition, often known as an “up-and-out” system. For example, at companies like McKinsey & Co., attrition isn’t negative. It’s normal. Employees know at the beginning of their time with McKinsey that they might not progress upward. With only a few senior positions available, McKinsey team members are encouraged to leave after a finite amount of time.

Like with any organizational change, it takes time and effort to push through the setback of losing great people. In the modern business world, the majority of employees are going to resign from their job at some point, but if you can create a culture that doesn’t penalize workers who resign, you can create an organization where highly successful people will want to work and grow. According to Bryan Adams, CEO and founder of Ph.Creative, here are several steps to consider:

Acknowledge that this isn’t forever from the beginning. Be honest from the start and acknowledge that your company may be a “stepping stone” to help your employees gain the experience and skills to find better opportunities elsewhere in the future. In return, expect exceptional performance from your employees and for them to be honest once they are ready to move on.
Focus on promoting internal candidates and boomerang employees. Some of your employees will want to stay at your organization for more than two or three years. However, they won’t stick around if you can’t offer them mobility. Be sure to show that you’re serious about recognizing impressive work by promoting from within whenever possible or rehiring former employees who have upped their skills and credentials.
Engage your alumni. Many people leave their jobs only to be replaced and forgotten by their former bosses. Another example from McKinsey, though, is that the firm proudly publishes articles on alumni and even offers alumni special recognition in the company. Consider putting together a program that encourages former employees to stay in touch and share news and events.
How you offboard people is key. Bid a positive farewell, celebrate their future successes and opportunities, and be grateful for their specific contributions. Keeping in touch and celebrating personal wins — and maybe even reaching out to feature or profile alumni as they move through their careers — encourages people to fondly remember their time at your company.

Rather than fighting to hold onto employees, companies are better positioned for success if they develop a culture that benefits from a healthy influx of people, ideas and practices. Employers must develop strategies that promote employee engagement, career development and succession planning to bring out the most appreciation and value from their employees. Employers who are willing to embrace this model of work – where employees give organizations 100% when they are there, and readily transfer knowledge to the next generation when they move up or on – will provide a significant competitive advantage.

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With concerns about inflation in the news for months now, most business owners are keeping a close eye on costs. Although it can be difficult to control costs related to mission-critical functions such as overhead and materials, you might find some budge room in employee benefits.

Many companies have lowered their benefits costs by offering a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) coupled with a Health Savings Account (HSA). Of course, some employees might not react positively to a health plan that starts with the phrase “high-deductible.” So, if you decide to offer an HSA, you’ll want to devise a strategy for championing the plan’s advantages.

The Basics

An HSA is a tax-advantaged savings account funded with pretax dollars. Funds can be withdrawn tax-free to pay for a wide range of qualified medical expenses. As mentioned, to provide these benefits, an HSA must be coupled with an HDHP. For 2023, an HDHP is defined as a plan with a minimum deductible of $1,500 ($3,000 for family coverage) and maximum out-of-pocket expenses of $7,500 ($15,000 for family coverage).

In 2023, the annual contribution limit for HSAs is $3,850 for individuals with self-only coverage and $7,750 for individuals with family coverage. If you’re 55 or older, you can add another $1,000. Both the business and the participant can make contributions. However, the limit is a combined one, not per-payer. So if your company contributed $4,000 to an employee’s family-coverage account, that participant could contribute only $3,750.

Another requirement for HSA contributions is that an account holder can’t be enrolled in Medicare or covered by any non-HDHP insurance (such as a spouse’s plan). Once someone enrolls in Medicare, the person becomes ineligible to contribute to an HSA — though the account holder can still withdraw funds from an existing HSA to pay for qualified expenses, which expand starting at age 65.

3 Major Advantages

There are 3 major advantages to an HSA to clearly communicate to employees:

1. Lower Premiums

Some employees might scowl at having a high deductible, but you may be able to turn that frown upside down by informing them that HDHP premiums — that is, the monthly cost to retain coverage — tend to be substantially lower than those of other plan types.

2. Tax Advantages x3

An HSA presents a “triple threat” to an account holder’s tax liability. First, contributions are made pretax, which lowers one’s taxable income. Second, funds in the account grow tax-free. And third, distributions are tax-free as long as the withdrawals are used for eligible expenses.

3. Retirement and Estate Planning Pluses

There’s no “use it or lose it” clause with an HSA; participants own their accounts. Funds may be carried over year to year — continuing to grow tax-deferred indefinitely. Upon turning age 65, account holders can withdraw funds penalty-free for any purpose, though funds that aren’t used for qualified medical expenses are taxable.

An HSA can even be included in an account holder’s estate plan. However, the tax implications of inheriting an HSA differ significantly depending on the recipient, so it’s important to carefully consider beneficiary designation.

Explain the Upsides

Indeed, an HDHP+HSA pairing can be a win-win for your business and its employees. While participants are enjoying the advantages noted above, you’ll appreciate lower payroll costs, a federal tax deduction and reduced administrative burden. Just be prepared to explain the upsides.

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A common question for people planning their estates or inheriting property is: For tax purposes, what’s the “cost” (or “basis”) an individual gets in inherited property? This is an important area and is too often overlooked when families start to put their affairs in order.

Under the fair market value basis rules (also known as the “step-up and step-down” rules), an heir receives a basis in inherited property that’s equal to its date-of-death value. So, for example, if an individual bought shares in an oil stock in 1940 for $500 and it was worth $5 million at his death, the basis would be stepped up to $5 million for his heirs. That means all of that gain escapes income taxation forever.

The fair market value basis rules apply to inherited property that’s includible in the deceased individual’s gross estate, whether or not a federal estate tax return was filed, and those rules also apply to property inherited from foreign persons, who aren’t subject to U.S. estate tax. The rules apply to the inherited portion of property owned by the inheriting taxpayer jointly with the deceased, but not the portion of jointly held property that the inheriting taxpayer owned before his or her inheritance. The fair market value basis rules also don’t apply to reinvestments of estate assets by fiduciaries.

Lifetime Gifting

It is crucial to understand the fair market value basis rules so as to avoid paying more tax than legally required.

For example, in the above scenario, if the individual instead decided to make a gift of the stock during his lifetime (rather than passing it on when he died), the “step-up” in basis (from $500 to $5 million) would be lost. Property acquired by gift that has gone up in value is subject to the “carryover” basis rules. That means the person receiving the gift takes the same basis the donor had in it ($500 in this example), plus a portion of any gift tax the donor pays on the gift.

A “step-down” occurs if someone dies while owning property that has declined in value. In that case, the basis is lowered to the date-of-death value. Proper planning calls for seeking to avoid this loss of basis. Giving the property away before death won’t preserve the basis. This is because when property that has gone down in value is the subject of a gift, the person receiving the gift must take the date of gift value as his or her basis (for purposes of determining his or her loss on a later sale). Therefore, a good strategy for property that has declined in value is for the owner to sell it before death so he or she can enjoy the tax benefits of the loss.

These are the basic rules. Other rules and limits may apply. For example, in some cases, a deceased person’s executor may be able to make an alternate valuation election. And gifts made just before a person dies (sometimes called “death bed gifts”) may be included in the gross estate for tax purposes. Speak to your financial advisor for tax assistance when estate planning or after receiving an inheritance.

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As a business owner, you’ll likely need to have your company appraised at some point. An appraisal is essential in the event of a business sale, merger or acquisition. It’s also important when creating or updating a buy-sell agreement or doing estate planning. You can even use a business valuation to help kickstart or support strategic planning.

A good way to prepare for the appraisal process, or to just maintain a clear, big-picture view of your company, is to learn some basic valuation terminology. Here are 5 terms you should know:

1. Fair market value

This is a term you may associate with selling a car, but it applies to businesses — and their respective assets — as well. In a valuation context, “fair market value” has a long definition:

The price, expressed in terms of cash equivalents, at which property would change hands between a hypothetical willing and able buyer and a hypothetical willing and able seller, acting at arm’s length in an open and unrestricted market, when neither is under compulsion to buy or sell and when both have reasonable knowledge of the relevant facts.

2. Fair value

Often confused with fair market value, fair value is a separate term — defined by state law and/or legal precedent — that may be used when valuing business interests in shareholder disputes or marital dissolution cases. Typically, a valuator uses fair market value as the starting point for fair value, but certain adjustments are made in the interest of fairness to the parties.

For example, dissenting shareholder litigation often involves minority shareholders who are “squeezed out” by a merger or other transaction. Unlike the “hypothetical, willing” participants contemplated under the definition of fair market value, dissenting shareholders are neither hypothetical nor willing. The fair value standard helps prevent controlling shareholders from taking advantage of minority shareholders by forcing them to accept a discounted price.

3. Going concern value

This valuation term often comes into play with buy-sell agreements and in divorce cases. Going concern value is the estimated worth of a company that’s expected to continue operating in the future. The intangible elements of going concern often include factors such as having a trained workforce, an operational plant and the necessary licenses, systems and procedures in place to continue operating.

4. Valuation premium

Due to certain factors, sometimes an appraiser must increase the estimate of a company’s value to arrive at the appropriate basis or standard of value. The additional amount is commonly referred to as a “premium.” For example, a control premium might apply to a business interest that possesses the requisite power to direct the management and policies of the subject company.

5. Valuation discount

In some cases, it’s appropriate for an appraiser to reduce the value estimate of a business based on specified circumstances. The reduction amount is commonly referred to as a “discount.” For instance, a discount for lack of marketability is an amount or percentage deducted from the value of an ownership interest to reflect that interest’s inability to be converted to cash quickly and at minimal cost.

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A lack of solid documentation is one of the most common mistakes employers can make when addressing an employee’s promotion, performance, behavior, or discipline issue. Not properly documenting, or not documenting at all, can hurt employers and employees in several ways. The value of good documentation is that it helps leaders provide useful feedback to employees, while also tracking both positive performance and areas of improvement. Documentation can make or break a manager’s ability to discipline, terminate, fairly promote, reward, and recognize employees.

Documentation is key to appropriate and effective disciplinary action. Although most employees never require discipline, some exceptions can occur, and it is useful to have a method that objectively, accurately, and fairly documents employee performance. Perhaps most importantly, solid documentation is critical should a terminated employee bring discrimination or other employment-related claims against the company.

One way to appropriately document workplace activities is the FOSA method. Identifying and documenting Facts, Objectives, Solutions and Actions (FOSA) helps ensure a fair and accurate recollection of events. The FOSA method helps keep a reliable record of employee performance, while also serving as a guide for managers when meeting to discuss an employee’s performance. Properly identifying the FOSA of every incident ensures that decisions are made correctly and that the employee clearly understands the expectations and steps to improve their performance.

Facts: Include specific facts explaining the who, what, where, when, and how. When recording the facts, keep them specific and focused on behavior, avoiding labels or attitude. Behavior is something that can be observed, whereas attitude is interpreted. Be careful not to interject your own opinions, emotions, or judgments. Include any information relating to dates, times, and previous discussions with the employee. For example, John increased sales by 7%, which exceeded his previously established goal of 5%. Michelle was 15 minutes late to work seven times in January.

Objectives: Objectives are your expectations. These can include performance expectations, work habit expectations, attendance and more. It can also include the impact of an employee’s behavior on peers, the organization, coworkers and customers. Define a specific behavior or result for the employee in measurable terms against which you (and they) can gauge performance.

Solutions: Solutions are ideas and suggestions in the form of assistance or coaching that can be offered to the employee to help him or her solve the performance problem. Examples of solutions include training, coaching, education or providing resources. The solutions offered should be designed to help the employee reach their objectives. Remember to include the employee when developing solutions because they may be able to come up with alternatives that you may not have considered. It will also help the employee become part of the solution while increasing accountability and a sense of ownership.

Actions: Actions are the steps in implementing the solutions. This is an important component because the actions communicate the importance of the situation and your commitment to helping the employee resolve the problem. In discipline situations, actions are the consequences for the employee if they do not improve their performance. The actions should clearly outline what will happen if the objectives are not met. When highlighting positive performance, the actions may be outlined as accomplishments or the positive impact that the incident had.

Do not put off documenting employee performance; be sure to write down the incident right away. Do your best to use objective terminology and stay away from vague language like “bad attitude” or “failure to get along with others.” Also, do not use terms such as “always” and “never,” as in, “Joshua never turns in his reports on time.” Using these types of absolutes without being 100% certain will undermine your credibility. Vague phrases that are unsupported by objective facts are almost as bad as not documenting at all.

Always remember that it is the responsibility of business leaders to create an environment of support, not fear. Most employees want to do a good job, and a good leader looks for the best in their employees.

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If you’re self-employed and run your business or perform certain functions from home, you may be able to claim deductions for home office expenses against your business income. There are two methods for claiming this tax break: the actual expense method and the simplified method.

How to qualify

In general, you qualify for home office deductions if part of your home is used “regularly and exclusively” as your principal place of business.

If your home isn’t your principal place of business, you may still be able to deduct home office expenses if:

You physically meet with patients, clients or customers on your premises, or
You use a storage area in your home (or a separate free-standing structure, such as a garage) exclusively and regularly for business.
Expenses you can deduct

Many eligible taxpayers deduct actual expenses when they claim home office deductions. Deductible home office expenses may include:

Direct expenses, such as the cost of painting and carpeting a room used exclusively for business,
A proportionate share of indirect expenses, including mortgage interest, rent, property taxes, utilities, repairs and insurance, and
Depreciation.

Keeping track of actual expenses can take time and requires organized recordkeeping.

The simpler method

Fortunately, there’s a simplified method: You can deduct $5 for each square foot of home office space, up to a maximum of $1,500.

The cap can make the simplified method less valuable for larger home office spaces. Even for small spaces, taxpayers may qualify for bigger deductions using the actual expense method. So, tracking your actual expenses can be worth it.

Changing methods

When claiming home office deductions, you’re not stuck with a particular method. For instance, you might choose the actual expense method on your 2022 return, use the simplified method when you file your 2023 return next year and then switch back to the actual expense method for 2024.

What if I sell my home?

If you sell — at a profit — a home on which you claimed home office deductions, there may be tax implications.

Also be aware that the amount of your home office deductions is subject to limitations based on the income attributable to your use of the office. Other rules and limitations may apply. However, any home office expenses that can’t be deducted because of these limitations can be carried over and deducted in later years.

Different rules for employees

Unfortunately, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended the business use of home office deductions from 2018 through 2025 for employees. Those who receive paychecks or Form W-2s aren’t eligible for deductions, even if they’re currently working from home because their employers closed their offices due to COVID-19.

We can help you determine if you’re eligible for home office deductions and how to proceed in your situation.

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If you own an interest in a closely held business, a buy-sell agreement should be a critical component of your estate and succession plans. These agreements provide for the orderly disposition of each owner’s interest after a “triggering event,” such as death, disability, divorce or withdrawal from the business. This is accomplished by permitting or requiring the company or the remaining owners to purchase the departing owner’s interest. Often, life insurance is used to fund the buyout.

Buy-sell agreements provide several important benefits, including keeping ownership and control within a family or other close-knit group, creating a market for otherwise unmarketable interests, and providing liquidity to pay estate taxes and other expenses. In some cases, a buy-sell agreement can even establish the value of an ownership interest for estate tax purposes.

However, because circumstances change, it’s important to review your buy-sell agreement periodically to ensure that it continues to meet your needs. The start of a new year is a good time to do that.

Focus on the valuation provision

It’s particularly critical to revisit the agreement’s valuation provision — the mechanism for setting the purchase price for an owner’s interest — to be sure that it reflects the current value of the business.

As you review your agreement, pay close attention to the valuation provision. Generally, a valuation provision follows one of these approaches when a triggering event occurs:

Formulas, such as book value or a multiple of earnings or revenues as of a specified date,
Negotiated price, or
Independent appraisal by one or more business valuation experts.

Independent appraisals almost always produce the most accurate valuations. Formulas tend to become less reliable over time as circumstances change and may lead to over- or underpayments if earnings have fluctuated substantially since the valuation date.

A negotiated price can be a good approach in theory, but expecting owners to reach an agreement under stressful, potentially adversarial conditions is asking a lot. One potential solution is to use a negotiated price while providing for an independent appraisal in the event that the parties fail to agree on a price within a specified period.

Establish estate tax value

Business valuation is both an art and a science. Because the process is, to a certain extent, subjective, there can be some uncertainty over the value of a business for estate tax purposes.

If the IRS later determines that your business was undervalued on the estate tax return, your heirs may face unexpected — and unpleasant — tax liabilities. A carefully designed buy-sell agreement can, in some cases, establish the value of the business for estate tax purposes — even if it’s below fair market value in the eyes of the IRS — helping to avoid these surprises.

Generally, to establish business value, a buy-sell agreement must:

Be a bona fide business arrangement,
Not be a “testamentary device” designed to transfer the business to family members or other heirs at a discounted value,
Have terms that are comparable to similar, arm’s-length agreements,
Set a price that’s fixed by or determinable from the agreement and is reasonable at the time the agreement is executed, and
Be binding during the owner’s life as well as at death, and binding on the owner’s estate or heirs after death.

Under IRS regulations, a buy-sell agreement is deemed to meet all of these requirements if at least 50% of the business’s value is owned by nonfamily members.

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Many small businesses start out as “lean enterprises,” with costs kept to a minimum to lower risks and maximize cash flow. But there comes a point in the evolution of many companies — particularly in a tight job market — when investing money in employee benefits becomes advisable, if not mandatory.

Is now the time for your small business to do so? As you compete for top talent and look to retain valued employees, would launching a retirement plan help your case? Quite possibly. And the good news is that the federal government is offering some intriguing incentives for eligible smaller companies ready to make the leap.

Late last year, the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023 was signed into law. Within this massive spending package lies the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement 2.0 Act (SECURE 2.0). Its provisions bring three key improvements to the small employer pension plan start-up cost tax credit, beginning this year:

1. Full coverage for the smallest of small businesses. SECURE 2.0 makes the credit equal to the full amount of creditable plan start-up costs for employers with 50 or fewer employees, up to an annual cap. Previously, only 50% of costs were allowed. This limit still applies to employers with 51 to 100 employees.

2. Glitch fixed for multiemployer plans. SECURE 2.0 retroactively fixes a technical glitch that prevented employers who joined multiemployer plans in existence for more than 3 years from claiming the small employer pension plan start-up cost credit. If your business joined a pre-existing multiemployer plan before this period, contact us about filing amended returns to claim the credit.

3. Enhancement of employer contributions. Perhaps the biggest change brought by SECURE 2.0 is that certain employer contributions for a plan’s first 5 years now may qualify for the credit. The credit is increased by a percentage of employer contributions, up to a per-employee cap of $1,000, as follows:

100% in the plan’s first and second tax years,
75% in the third year,
50% in the fourth year, and
25% in the fifth year.

For employers with between 51 and 100 employees, the contribution portion of the credit is reduced by 2% times the number of employees above 50.

In addition, no employer contribution credit is allowed for contributions for employees who make more than $100,000 (adjusted for inflation after 2023). The credit for employer contributions is also unavailable for elective deferrals or contributions to defined benefit pension plans.

To be clear, though the name of the tax break is the ‘small employer pension plan start-up cost credit,’ it also applies to qualified plans such as 401(k)s and SIMPLE IRAs, as well as to Simplified Employee Pensions. Our firm can help you determine if now is the right time for your small business to launch a retirement plan and, if so, which one.

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Roth&Co’s latest video series: Real Estate Right Now.

Presented by Alan Botwinick and Ben Spielman, co-chairs of the Roth&Co Real Estate Department, this series covers the latest real estate trends and opportunities and how you can make the most of them. This episode discusses more critical valuation metrics used to calculate the potential of an investment property.

Watch our short video:

In our last video we talked about three useful tools to help calculate the potential of an investment property: GRM (Gross Rent Multiplier), PPU (Price Per Unit) and Cap Rate (Capitalization Rate). Moving forward, here are additional metrics that can help an investor dig even deeper.

IRR

The Internal Rate of Return (IRR) is a metric used in financial analysis to estimate the profitability of a potential investment. It represents the annual rate of return on your investment, over the life of that investment. The higher the IRR, the healthier the return.

The IRR is calculated by computing the net present value of the investment. The Net Present Value (NPV) is the amount that the investment is worth in today’s money. To successfully analyze the data, future values must be considered against today’s values. Why? Because today’s money is more valuable than the value of the same money later on. This is also known as the time value of money.

When we calculate the IRR, we solve for “a rate”, so that the Net Present Value of the cash outflows and inflows is zero. That “rate” is the IRR. We achieve this by plugging in different interest rates into our IRR formula until we figure out which interest rate delivers an NPV closest to zero. Computing the Internal Rate of Return may require estimating the NPV for several different interest rates. The formulas are complex, but Microsoft Excel offers powerful functions for computing internal return of return, as do many financial calculators.

Simplified, here is how it works:

If you invest $10,000 in year one and receive an $800 return annually through Year 5, then exit the investment for $15,000, you would calculate the IRR as follows:

This scenario yields an IRR of 18%.

Here’s a similar scenario that yields a different result:

This scenario yields an IRR of 15%

Which scenario provides a better return? Looking at the bottom line is deceptive. By calculating the IRR for both investments, you would see that the IRR on the second investment, 15%, is a nice return. However, the first investment, with an 18% IRR, would be a better use of your money.

CoC Return

The Cash-on-Cash Return tells the investor how much cash the investment will yield relative to the cash invested. It measures the annual return the investor made on a property after satisfying all debt service and operating costs. This is a helpful analytic for many real estate investors who commonly leverage investments by taking out mortgages to reduce their cash outlay. The metric is the most helpful when liquidity during the investment period is important to the investor. One of the most important reasons to invest in rental properties is cash flow, and Cash-on-Cash return measures just that. Put simply, Cash-on-Cash return measures the annual return the investor made on the property after satisfying all debt service and operating costs.

Here is a simple CoC Return example:

Let’s say you buy a multifamily property for $200,000, putting down a $40,000 deposit, and assuming a $160,000 mortgage. Your gross rents are $30,000 monthly, with $20,000 of operating expenses. Additionally, you have $9,000 monthly debt service payment comprised of $7,000 interest and $2,000 principal. Because principal payments are not an expense, Net income is $3,000 annually.

However, when calculating Cash-on-Cash, you consider the debt service as well, bringing your return to $1,000 monthly, or $12,000 annually.

Comparing your investment’s yearly net income of $12,000 to the $40,000 down payment, you have a Cash-on-Cash annual return of 30%. While there is no specific rule of thumb for what constitutes a good return rate, the general consensus amongst investors is that a projected Cash-on-Cash return between 8% to 12% implies a worthwhile investment.

Financial metrics are important and useful tools that can help an investor make smart, informed decisions. Whereas any one metric may have limitations, by considering a combination of metrics commonly used for comparing, in addition to tracking performance or value, an investor can target a strategy and analyze risk in a potential investment opportunity.

This material has been prepared for informational purposes only, and is not intended to provide, nor should it be relied upon for legal or tax advice. If you have any specific legal or tax questions regarding this content or related issues, please consult with your professional legal or tax advisor.

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On Monday, December 20th, Roth&Co and Korsinsky & Klein hosted a webinar detailing important employment laws, including discrimination laws, leave laws and social media policies. It was presented by Avi Lew, Esq., partner at Korsinsky & Klein, and moderated by Chaya Salamon, Director of Human Resources at Roth&Co. Below is a detailed recap of the webinar. You can also watch the full video recap here.

Federal, State and City Employment Discrimination Laws

Avi’s comprehensive overview of diverse federal, state and city employment laws illustrated how complex and illusive they are and how they impact every employer. Whether yours is a small or large business, as an employer, you need to be educated, knowledgeable, and have access to competent legal support when it comes to employee related laws.

The primary federal employment discrimination laws which were discussed include: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act; the Americans with Disabilities Act; the Age Discrimination in Employment Act; the Equal Pay Act; the Fair Labor Standards Act; the Family and Medical Leave Act; and the Older Workers Benefit Protection Act.

These laws prohibit employers from discriminating against employees on the basis of – among other factors – color, race, religion, gender, age, national origin, marital status and disability. The list is long and constantly expanding, as is the definition of ‘employee.’ Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 has expanded to include discrimination by gender identity and now defines even independent contractors as ’employees.’

Employee Handbooks

Providing an employee handbook to your employees is no longer optional – it is required by law. An employee handbook is a vital resource in an employee claim of discrimination or harassment. An employee handbook protects the employer from liability and educates employees about the business’ policies and procedures.

An employee handbook is not a document you want to write yourself; using the wrong language can inadvertently violate a law or create a contract with the employee. Don’t include policies that your business doesn’t actually adhere to, and consider including provisions that address restrictive covenants, alternative dispute resolution terms and cyber-security obligations.

It is vital to document that your employees actually read and received your business’ employee handbook, which will be helpful to you in the event of future employee claims against you. Reviewing and updating your company’s employee handbook annually is necessary to ensure that you have policies and procedures in place before an issue arises.

Social Media Policies

Do you use social media sites to screen applicants? Have you ever rejected a potential employee because of something you found online? The National Labor Relations Act protects the rights of employees when it comes to certain work-related conversations conducted on social media, such as Facebook and Twitter.

This is a very grey area of the law and employers are advised to protect themselves by developing a clear policy that serves the company’s legitimate business interests without compromising the rights of its employees. It is important for the company to regularly review handbooks for potential violations and encourage management training.

Reasonable Accommodation

This is an important term that effects both employers and employees. It is usually unlawful to refuse to provide reasonable accommodation to someone with disabilities or to someone who claims hardship due to his religious belief. In order to avoid a charge of discrimination, an employer must be able prove that making accommodations to such an employee would fundamentally alter the nature of the business or cause it an undue burden. An undue burden is defined as a significant difficulty or expense.

Discrimination laws aren’t limited to federal law. For example, the NYC Human Rights law is one of the most powerful anti-discrimination laws in the country – even stronger than federal law. If you employ four or more employees (which includes independent contractors), this law applies to you.

The threshold for making a claim of discrimination under this law is very low and makes it easy for an employee to sue. Under the NYC Human Rights law, litigation is easily triggered and often becomes prolonged and expensive.

Small and Large Companies

Employment laws apply to small and large companies and it is the employer’s responsibility to be aware of its business’ obligations. Here are a few examples:

• Title VII discrimination laws apply to employers with 15 or more employees.

• The federal Fair Labor Standards Act sets standards for wages and overtime pay. It applies to all employers, regardless of how many employees they have.

• The ADA (American with Disabilities Act) and the Pregnancy Discrimination Act guards against discrimination for the disabled and for pregnant employees. It applies to businesses with 15 or more employees.

• The Age Discrimination and Employment Act (ADEA) protects seniors and applies to employers with over 20 employees.

• The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 (FMLA) is a federal law requiring covered employers to provide employees with job-protected, unpaid leave for qualified medical and family reasons. Both the FMLA and the Affordable Care Act apply to employers with over 50 employees.

• The NYC Paid Safe and Sick Leave Law provides employees with mandated sick leave time and requires that New York City employers provide up to 40 hours of paid leave each calendar year (or up to 56 hours if the company has 100 employees or more).

• The Stop Sexual Harassment in NYC Act requires all employers located in New York City with 15 or more employees to conduct an annual anti-sexual harassment training for all employees, supervisors and managers.

Employers have a responsibility to safeguard and protect both their businesses and their employees. When a business delays addressing an employment issue, it will most likely intensify, resulting in prolonged and expensive litigation that will damage the business and erode its work environment. Conversely, when an employment issue is addressed promptly and at its source, it can be remediated much more easily, avoiding costly violations, penalties and litigation. Employers must be vigilant in creating and documenting clear policies, abide by those policies and educate management to report issues promptly. Lastly, employers must be mindful of the constant changes in employment law that can impact their business, their employees and their bottom line.

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Roth&Co’s latest video series: Real Estate Right Now.

Presented by Alan Botwinick and Ben Spielman, co-chairs of the Roth&Co Real Estate Department, this series covers the latest real estate trends and opportunities and how you can make the most of them. This episode discusses critical valuation metrics used to calculate the potential of an investment property.

Watch our short video:

Investing in real estate can be profitable, rewarding and successful. At the same time, the real estate investment industry is also demanding, competitive and very often, risky. Success requires a combination of knowledge, organization and determination, and while this article may not be able to supply some of those requirements, it will help increase your knowledge about how to initially assess a real estate investment. Here are three useful tools to help calculate the potential of an investment property:

o Gross Rent Multiplier (GRM)
o Price Per Unit (PPU)
o Capitalization Rate (Cap Rate)

Gross Rent Multiplier (GRM)
When an investor considers buying a commercial or rental property, he’ll need to know how long it will take to earn back his investment. The GRM is a simple calculation that tells us how many years of rent it will take to pay off the cost of an investment purchase. The GRM formula compares a property’s fair market value (the price of the property) to its gross rental income.

Gross Rent Multiplier = Purchase Price / Gross Annual Rental Income

The result of the calculation represents how many years it will take for the investor to recoup the money he spent on the purchase of the property. The lower the gross rent multiplier, the sooner the investor can expect to get his money back.

Calculating an investment property’s GRM is not complex and will result in a useful metric, but in practicality, it does not consider operating costs such as the debt service coverage, the property’s maintenance expenses, taxes, local property values and other important factors that strongly impact the profitability of an investment
Experienced investors use the GRM metric to make quick assessments of their opportunities, and to quickly weed through their options. A high GRM may serve as a red flag, directing the investor to look elsewhere and spend more time analyzing more optimal options.

Price Per Unit (PPU)
Another tool in the investment arsenal is the PPU, or Price Per Unit. This calculates just that – the price per door on your investment property. The calculation is simple:

Price Per Unit = Purchase Price / Number of Units

In other words, the PPU is the amount the seller is asking per unit in the building. The PPU can provide a broad view of the market and can give you a good idea of how one property compares to another. The downside of the calculation is that it does not determine the ROI or Return on Investment. PPU does not take any other features of the property into consideration, so its usefulness is limited.

Capitalization Rate (Cap Rate)
The Cap Rate is a realistic tool that considers an investment’s operating expenses and income, and then calculates its potential rate of return (as opposed to the GRM, which looks only at gross income). The higher the Cap Rate, the better it is for the investor. Why is it realistic? Because the Cap Rate estimates how profitable an income property will be, relative to its purchase price, including its operational expenses in the computation.

Capitalization Rate = Net Operating Income / Purchase Price

Like any other calculation, the Cap Rate will only be as accurate as the numbers applied. If a potential investor under- or overestimates the property’s operational costs or other factors, the calculated Cap Rate won’t be accurate.

There is no one-size-fits-all calculation that will direct an investor to real estate heaven. However, utilizing basic tools like the GRM, PPU and Cap Rate will give an investor a broad view of the investment’s potential. Using these tools to jumpstart the due diligence process can help the investor determine whether further research into the investment is warranted and what a property’s potential for profit may be.

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Roth&Co’s latest video series: Real Estate Right Now. Presented by Alan Botwinick and Ben Spielman, co-chairs of the Roth&Co Real Estate Department, will cover the latest real estate trends and opportunities and how you can make the most of them. This episode discusses real estate professionals.

Watch our quick 1-minute video:

REAL ESTATE PROFESSIONALS IN DETAIL:

Qualifying as a real estate professional potentially allows a taxpayer to deduct 100% of all real estate losses against ordinary income. It also helps the taxpayer avoid the 3.8% Section 1411 net investment income tax on qualifying rental property income.

For many real estate businesspeople, especially those who own several rental properties, acquiring Real Estate Professional status can create thousands of dollars in tax deductions resulting in a zero tax liability at the end of the year.

How does one qualify as a Real Estate Professional?

Under the IRS’s Section 469(c)(7)(B), one can qualify as a real estate professional if two conditions are met:

The taxpayer must prove that he or she spends more time “materially participating” in real estate activities than in non-real estate activities.
The taxpayer must spend at least 750 hours per year “materially participating” in real estate activities

Material Participation

The IRS wants to know that the taxpayer is active in real estate activity and is not a passive investor. A taxpayer can try to establish material participation by satisfying any one of the seven tests provided in IRS Publication 925. The taxpayer may elect to aggregate all of his or her interests in rental real estate to establish material participation.

Passive or Non-Passive Income?

According to the IRS, non-passive income is money that you actually work for. It’s generally reported as W-2 or 1099 wages. Passive income is the money you earn without any particular labor, like interest, dividends…and rental income.

IRS Code Section 469 defines all rental activities, regardless of the taxpayer’s level of participation, as passive activity; and the taxpayer may only offset losses from a passive activity against income from a passive activity.

However, Section 469(c)(7) was later added to the law to avoid unfair treatment to those actually participating in the business of renting, selling or developing real estate. This provision provides an exception for ‘qualifying real estate professionals’ and allows them to treat rental activities as non-passive.

So, the rental activity of a taxpayer who qualifies as a real estate professional under Section 469(c)(7) is not presumed to be passive and will be treated as non-passive if the taxpayer materially participates in the activity.

Bottom line? As a qualified real estate professional, one can deduct of rental losses against his or her non-passive income.

Qualifying as a real estate professional can also be advantageous to taxpayers with rental income. A net investment income tax imposed in Section 1411 levies an additional 3.8% surtax on, among other matters of investment income, all passive income of a taxpayer. A taxpayer who qualifies as a real estate professional with rental income may choose to represent that rental income as non-passive and may be able to avoid this 3.8% surtax.

Does your business activity define you as a Qualified Real Estate Professional? Contact us for advice on how to take advantage of this significant status and how to minimize your real estate tax burden.

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As we approach the holidays and the end of the year, many people may want to make gifts of cash or stock to their loved ones. By properly using the annual exclusion, gifts to family members and loved ones can reduce the size of your taxable estate, within generous limits, without triggering any estate or gift tax. The exclusion amount for 2021 is $15,000.

The exclusion covers gifts you make to each recipient each year. Therefore, a taxpayer with three children can transfer $45,000 to the children every year free of federal gift taxes. If the only gifts made during a year are excluded in this fashion, there’s no need to file a federal gift tax return. If annual gifts exceed $15,000, the exclusion covers the first $15,000 per recipient, and only the excess is taxable. In addition, even taxable gifts may result in no gift tax liability thanks to the unified credit (discussed below).

Note: This discussion isn’t relevant to gifts made to a spouse because these gifts are free of gift tax under separate marital deduction rules.

Gift-splitting by married taxpayers

If you’re married, a gift made during a year can be treated as split between you and your spouse, even if the cash or gift property is actually given by only one of you. Thus, by gift-splitting, up to $30,000 a year can be transferred to each recipient by a married couple because of their two annual exclusions. For example, a married couple with three married children can transfer a total of $180,000 each year to their children and to the children’s spouses ($30,000 for each of six recipients).

If gift-splitting is involved, both spouses must consent to it. Consent should be indicated on the gift tax return (or returns) that the spouses file. The IRS prefers that both spouses indicate their consent on each return filed. Because more than $15,000 is being transferred by a spouse, a gift tax return (or returns) will have to be filed, even if the $30,000 exclusion covers total gifts. We can prepare a gift tax return (or returns) for you, if more than $15,000 is being given to a single individual in any year.)

“Unified” credit for taxable gifts

Even gifts that aren’t covered by the exclusion, and that are thus taxable, may not result in a tax liability. This is because a tax credit wipes out the federal gift tax liability on the first taxable gifts that you make in your lifetime, up to $11.7 million for 2021. However, to the extent you use this credit against a gift tax liability, it reduces (or eliminates) the credit available for use against the federal estate tax at your death.

Be aware that gifts made directly to a financial institution to pay for tuition or to a health care provider to pay for medical expenses on behalf of someone else do not count towards the exclusion. For example, you can pay $20,000 to your grandson’s college for his tuition this year, plus still give him up to $15,000 as a gift.

Annual gifts help reduce the taxable value of your estate. There have been proposals in Washington to reduce the estate and gift tax exemption amount, as well as make other changes to the estate tax laws. Making large tax-free gifts may be one way to recognize and address this potential threat. It could help insulate you against any later reduction in the unified federal estate and gift tax exemption.

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For many small to midsize businesses, spending money on marketing calls for a leap of faith that the benefits will outweigh the costs. Much of the planning process tends to focus on the initial expenses incurred rather than how to measure return on investment.

Here are five questions to ask yourself and your leadership team to put a finer point on whether your marketing efforts are likely to pay off:

1. What do we hope to accomplish? Determine as specifically as possible what marketing success looks like. If the goal is to increase sales, what metric(s) are you using to calculate whether you’ve achieved adequate sales growth? Put differently, how will you know that your money was well spent?

2. Where and how often do we plan to spend money? Decide how much of your marketing will be based on recurring activity versus “one off” or ad-hoc initiatives.

For example, do you plan to buy six months of advertising on certain websites, social media platforms, or in a magazine or newspaper? Have you decided to set up a booth at an annual trade show?

Fine tune your efforts going forward by comparing inflows to outflows from various types of marketing spends. Will you be able to create a revenue inflow from sales that at least matches, if not exceeds, the outflow of marketing dollars?

3. Can we track sources of new business, as well as leads and customers? It’s critical to ask new customers how they heard about your company. This one simple question can provide invaluable information about which aspects of your marketing plan are generating the most leads.

Further, once you have discovered a lead or new customer, ensure that you maintain contact with the person or business. Letting leads and customers fall through the cracks will undermine your marketing efforts. If you haven’t already, explore customer relationship management software to help you track and analyze key data points.

4. Are we able to gauge brand awareness? In addition to generating leads, marketing can help improve brand awareness. Although an increase in brand awareness may not immediately translate to increased sales, it tends to do so over time. Identify ways to measure the impact of marketing efforts on brand awareness. Possibilities include customer surveys, website traffic data and social media interaction metrics.

5. Are we prepared for an increase in demand? It may sound like a nice problem to have, but sometimes a company’s marketing efforts are so successful that a sudden upswing in orders occurs. If the business is ill-prepared, cash flow can be strained and customers left disappointed and frustrated.

Make sure you have the staff, technology and inventory in place to meet an increase in demand that effective marketing often produces. We can help you assess the efficacy of your marketing efforts, including calculating informative metrics, and suggest ideas for improvement.

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For many Americans, saving for retirement means participating in the 401(k) or 403(b) retirement plans offered by their companies. This leaves the self-employed and small business owners out in the cold when it comes to saving for retirement. Luckily for them, there are several options they can utilize.

Every American not covered by a company plan, can contribute to an IRA to save for retirement. The $6,000 contribution limit for these plans however, just won’t cut it for many. SEP IRAs were established as a way to help small-business owners establish retirement accounts for their businesses without the headaches that come with ERISA-sponsored plans. Later legislation introduced the solo 401(k), which also offers a simplified way for business owners to save for retirement and enjoy some of the benefits of a 401(k) plan that are not available with SEPs.

Here are the highlights of these two plans, and their key differences:

SEP IRA

A Simplified Employee Pension (SEP) IRA is a plan that can be established by employers, including the self-employed. SEP plans benefit both employers and their employees. Employers may make tax-deductible contributions on behalf of eligible employees to their SEP IRAs. SEPs are advantageous because they have low administrative costs, are easy to set up and allow an employer to determine how much to contribute each year, without annual requirements. The contribution limit for 2021 is the lesser of $58,000 per person and 25% of adjusted net earnings. (For self-employed income, the percentage is a little lower.)

One major benefit of a SEP IRA from the employee’s perspective is that an employer’s contributions are vested immediately. No loans are permitted from a SEP IRA. The deadline for SEP IRAs is the filing date, including extensions, which make it a good option if any discussion arises after year’s end. A drawback from the employer’s perspective is that the employer must contribute on behalf of all employees who earn a total annual compensation of more than $600 if they reach the age of eligibility, even if they are only part-time workers.

Solo 401(k)

Solo 401(k) plans are for sole proprietors, small business owners without employees (though spouses can contribute if they work for the business), independent contractors and freelancers.

With these plans, both the employer and the employee can make contributions. Like a regular 401(k), there is a Roth option to have after-tax funds contributed to these accounts. The contribution limit for 401(k)s for 2021, as an employee, is $19,500. If you are 50 or older, you can make an additional catch-up contribution of $6,500.

Wearing the employer hat, you can contribute up to 25% of your compensation. The total contribution limit (employee and employer contributions) for a solo 401(k) is $58,000 for 2021. This does not include the employee’s $6,500 catch-up amount for those over the age of 50. The calculation usually breaks down to the sum of $19,500 as an employee and $38,500 as an employer.

So, which one is a better option – a SEP IRA or a Solo 401(k)? The answer depends on your situation.

If you’re unsure which plan may work for you, please reach out to us at info@equinum.com. We’ll help you review your options and come to a decision tailor-made for your needs.

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For most of us, having a job, a boss and a workplace where we have a genuine sense of purpose is very important. Steve Jobs famously said, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do.”

As a business leader, motivating your employees and ensuring that they are engaged in their work is one of the most important things you do for your company. Research has shown time and again, that employee engagement is vital to a business’s success and profitability. According to the analytics and advisory company Gallup, engaged employees display higher levels of enthusiasm, energy and motivation, which translates into higher levels of job performance, creativity and productivity. This correlates to greater revenues and profits for your organization, as well as higher levels of well-being for employees and less turnover.

Despite the importance of employee engagement, just 35 percent of employees in the United States are considered “engaged” in their jobs. So, what is employee engagement and how do you improve it at your company?

Gallup, an industry leader in employee engagement, defines ‘engaged’ employees as those who are involved in, enthusiastic about and committed to their work and workplace. For engaged employees, it is about more than just a paycheck – they work harder and are more dedicated towards their employers, which is then reflected in their individual productivity. Disengaged employees are more likely to only do the bare minimum or even actively damage your company’s work output and reputation.

As a business leader, what can you do to improve the engagement of your employees? Well, it turns out that leaders and managers have a significant amount of input on employee engagement. According to Gallup, 70% of the variance in team engagement is determined solely by the manager. A study by the American Psychological Association found that 75% of Americans say their “boss is the most stressful part of their workday.” So here are a few ways that business leaders can increase employee engagement:

Include Me: Assuring your employees that their work and opinions are important is a simple yet important step to increase engagement. According to cloud-based software company Salesforce, professionals who believe their voice is heard are over four times more likely to feel empowered to do their best work. When you are considering solutions to business problems, encourage your employees to participate in the decision-making process, and give equal consideration to each employee’s suggestions, so they feel valued. Following the success of an important project or initiative, offer praise and emphasize how much you appreciate your employee’s contributions.

Inspire Me: Trust and autonomy are core ingredients that inspire engagement amongst employees. Be sure to delegate important tasks and projects to your team because it demonstrates trust and empowers your employees. To delegate effectively, ensure you are assigning tasks to employees who are equipped with the knowledge, skills and resources to handle them. Take time to clearly define the expectations and the required results, but leave your employees to accomplish the assigned task and don’t micromanage.

Grow Me: Many business leaders and managers are so focused on their own careers or success that they often forget about the careers of their employees. It is important for leaders to recognize that most employees are looking to be a part of an organization that offers a visible path for career progression. People want to feel that they have partners in developing their careers – and that goes beyond timely promotions. They want personal and professional development, such as the opportunity to cultivate new skills and experiences or by pursuing valuable certifications or degrees. As your employees’ careers develop and grow, your organization will be poised to reap the rewards.

Now more than ever, good pay and benefits are not enough to fully engage employees. You need to give your employees challenging work, truly value their contributions and show that you care about them and their careers. If you follow these steps, you will find that you have happier employees who are willing to work harder for you and your business.

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The New York State Tax Department has just issued a technical memorandum TSB-M-21(1)C, (1)I, and has put up an accompanying webpage that provides information on the new, optional Pass-Through Entity Tax (PTET).

The PTET, under new Tax Law Article 24-A1, is an optional tax that partnerships or New York S corporations can choose to pay. The tax allows eligible pass-through entities to pay state income taxes at the entity level, and it is deductible for federal tax purposes. A partner or shareholder of a pass-through entity that elects to pay PTET is entitled to a credit against his New York personal income tax equal to his “direct share” of the PTET tax. This allows the taxpayer to bypass the $10,000 limitation on deduction of state and local taxes imposed in 2017 by The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

The option applies to tax years beginning on or after January 1, 2021, and the election must be made annually. For 2021, the deadline to make the election is October 15, 2021. For future tax years, the annual election may be made on or after January 1, but no later than March 15.

For 2021, an electing entity is not required to make any estimated tax payments for PTET. Starting 2022, quarterly estimates will need to be made in March, June, September and December.

The PTET Annual Election application can be accessed online, and if you are an authorized person representing your business, you can opt in to PTET through its Online Services account.

To learn more about the PTET and the election process, visit Pass-through entity tax (PTET) periodically, or subscribe here to receive email updates about the pass-through entity tax.

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What if you decide to, or are asked to, guarantee a loan to your corporation? Before agreeing to act as a guarantor, endorser or indemnitor of a debt obligation of your closely held corporation, be aware of the possible tax consequences. If your corporation defaults on the loan and you’re required to pay principal or interest under the guarantee agreement, you don’t want to be blindsided.

Business vs. nonbusiness

If you’re compelled to make good on the obligation, the payment of principal or interest in discharge of the obligation generally results in a bad debt deduction. This may be either a business or a nonbusiness bad debt deduction. If it’s a business bad debt, it’s deductible against ordinary income. A business bad debt can be either totally or partly worthless. If it’s a nonbusiness bad debt, it’s deductible as a short-term capital loss, which is subject to certain limitations on deductions of capital losses. A nonbusiness bad debt is deductible only if it’s totally worthless.

In order to be treated as a business bad debt, the guarantee must be closely related to your trade or business. If the reason for guaranteeing the corporation loan is to protect your job, the guarantee is considered closely related to your trade or business as an employee. But employment must be the dominant motive. If your annual salary exceeds your investment in the corporation, this tends to show that the dominant motive for the guarantee was to protect your job. On the other hand, if your investment in the corporation substantially exceeds your annual salary, that’s evidence that the guarantee was primarily to protect your investment rather than your job.

Except in the case of job guarantees, it may be difficult to show the guarantee was closely related to your trade or business. You’d have to show that the guarantee was related to your business as a promoter, or that the guarantee was related to some other trade or business separately carried on by you.

If the reason for guaranteeing your corporation’s loan isn’t closely related to your trade or business and you’re required to pay off the loan, you can take a nonbusiness bad debt deduction if you show that your reason for the guarantee was to protect your investment, or you entered the guarantee transaction with a profit motive.

In addition to satisfying the above requirements, a business or nonbusiness bad debt is deductible only if:

You have a legal duty to make the guaranty payment, although there’s no requirement that a legal action be brought against you;
The guaranty agreement was entered into before the debt becomes worthless; and
You received reasonable consideration (not necessarily cash or property) for entering into the guaranty agreement.

Any payment you make on a loan you guaranteed is deductible as a bad debt in the year you make it, unless the agreement (or local law) provides for a right of subrogation against the corporation. If you have this right, or some other right to demand payment from the corporation, you can’t take a bad debt deduction until the rights become partly or totally worthless.

These are only a few of the possible tax consequences of guaranteeing a loan to your closely held corporation. Contact us to learn all the implications in your situation.

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Someone might have once told you that human beings use only 10% of our brains. The implication is that we have vast, untapped stores of cerebral power waiting to be discovered. In truth, this is a myth widely debunked by neurologists.

What you may be underusing, as a business owner, is your accounting software. Much like the operating systems on our smartphones and computers, today’s accounting solutions contain a multitude of functions that are easy to overlook once someone gets used to doing things a certain way.

By taking a closer look at your accounting software, or perhaps upgrading to a new solution, you may be able to improve the efficiency of your accounting function and discover ways to better manage your company’s finances.

Revisit training

The seeds of accounting software underuse are often planted during the training process, assuming there’s any training at all. Sometimes, particularly in a small business, the owner buys accounting software, hands it over to the bookkeeper or office manager, and assumes the problem will take care of itself.

Consider engaging a consultant to review your accounting software’s basic functions with staff and teach them time-saving tricks and advanced features. This is even more important to do if you’re making major upgrades or implementing a new solution.

When accounting personnel are up to speed on the software, they can more easily and readily generate useful reports and provide accurate financial information to you and your management team at any time — not just monthly or quarterly.

Commit to continuous improvement

Accounting solutions that aren’t monitored can gradually become vulnerable to inefficiency and even manipulation. Encourage employees to be on the lookout for labor-intensive steps that could be automated and steps that don’t add value or are redundant. Ask your users to also note any unusual transactions or procedures; you never know how or when you might uncover fraud.

At the same time, ensure managers responsible for your company’s financial oversight are reviewing critical documents for inefficiencies, anomalies and errors. These include monthly bank statements, financial statements and accounting schedules.

The ultimate goal should be continuous improvement to not only your accounting software use, but also your financial reporting.

Don’t wait until it’s too late

Many business owners don’t realize they have accounting issues until they lose a big customer over errant billing or suddenly run into a cash flow crisis. Pay your software the attention it deserves, and it will likely repay you many times over in useful, actionable data. We can help you assess the efficacy of your accounting software use and suggest ideas for improvement.

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Watch our quick 1.5 minute video:

COST SEGREGATION IN DETAIL:

What is cost segregation?

From a tax perspective, there are two types of property that depreciate differently:

Real Property: Actual buildings or structures that can be depreciated over 27.5 or 39 years.

Personal property: Furniture and fixtures, equipment and machinery, carpeting, electrical wiring and window treatments that can be depreciated over 5, 7, or 15 years.

As assets depreciate, their value decreases, reducing federal and state income taxes on their rental income.

Cost-segregation is an IRS-approved federal tax planning tool that allows companies and individuals who have purchased, constructed, expanded or renovated any kind of real estate to accelerate depreciation by reclassifying specific assets from real property to personal property reducing the federal and state income taxes owed.

How does it work?

A cost segregation study is required to breakdown commercial buildings into assets that could be reclassified as personal property. The cost segregation study provides real estate owners with information required to calculate the accelerated depreciation deductions for income tax purposes. The cost segregation study will also serve as the supporting documentation during any IRS audit.

On average, 20% to 40% of components fall into the personal property categories that can be written off much quicker than the building structure.

How much does a cost segregation study cost?

Cost segregation studies generally run between $5,000 – $20,000.

What properties are eligible?

Any commercial property placed into service after 1986, including any new acquisition, real estate construction, building, or improvements may qualify for a cost segregation study. Examples of eligible buildings include retail centers, office and industrial buildings, car dealerships, medical offices, multi-family unit buildings, restaurants, manufacturing facilities, and hotels.

When is the best time to conduct a cost segregation study?

Cost segregation studies may be conducted after a building has been purchased, built, or remodeled. However, the ideal time to perform a study is generally within the first year after the building is placed into service to maximize depreciation deductions as soon as possible.

Can I utilize cost segregation if my property is already in use?

Yes! A cost segregation study performed on a property in use and a tax return has been filed, is known as a look-back study.

You can then apply a “catch-up” deduction, which is equal to the difference between what was depreciated and what could have been depreciated if a cost segregation study was performed on day one.

The IRS allows taxpayers to use a cost segregation study to adjust depreciation on properties placed in service as far back as January 1, 1987.

Properties already in service are often overlooked when it comes to cost segregation, however the benefits of a look-back study can be quite significant.

What changed?

The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act passed in 2017 introduced the “100% additional first year depreciation deduction” otherwise known as “bonus depreciation” that allows businesses to write off the cost of most personal property in the year they are placed in service by the business. The bonus deduction is eligible until 2023.

What are other factors do I need to consider before claiming a depreciation deduction or bonus depreciation?

Active vs Passive Partners: Active partners can use the deduction to offset ordinary income. Passive partners can only use the deduction to offset passive income.

State Tax: The bonus depreciation deduction may only apply to federal income tax. Check with your state to see if they apply to state taxes as well.

President Joe Biden promised the end of many tax cuts. Could this be one of them?

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A complete set of financial statements for your business contains three reports. Each serves a different purpose, but ultimately helps stakeholders — including managers, employees, investors and lenders — evaluate a company’s performance. Here’s an overview of each report and a critical question it answers.

1. Income statement: Is the company growing and profitable?

The income statement (also known as the profit and loss statement) shows revenue, expenses and earnings over a given period. A common term used when discussing income statements is “gross profit,” or the income earned after subtracting the cost of goods sold from revenue. Cost of goods sold includes the cost of labor, materials and overhead required to make a product.

Another important term is “net income.” This is the income remaining after all expenses (including taxes) have been paid.

It’s important to note that growth and profitability aren’t the only metrics that matter. For example, high-growth companies that report healthy top and bottom lines may not have enough cash on hand to pay their bills. Though it may be tempting to just review revenue and profit trends, thorough due diligence looks beyond the income statement.

2. Balance sheet: What does the company own (and owe)?

This report provides a snapshot of the company’s financial health. It tallies assets, liabilities and “net worth.”

Under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), assets are reported at the lower of cost or market value. Current assets (such as accounts receivable or inventory) are reasonably expected to be converted to cash within a year, while long-term assets (such as plant and equipment) have longer lives. Similarly, current liabilities (such as accounts payable) come due within a year, while long-term liabilities are payment obligations that extend beyond the current year or operating cycle.

Intangible assets (such as patents, customer lists and goodwill) can provide significant value to a business. But internally developed intangibles aren’t reported on the balance sheet. Intangible assets are only reported when they’ve been acquired externally.

Net worth (or owners’ equity) is the extent to which the value of assets exceeds liabilities. If the book value of liabilities exceeds the book value of the assets, net worth will be negative. However, book value may not necessarily reflect market value. Some companies may provide the details of owners’ equity in a separate statement called the statement of retained earnings. It details sales or repurchases of stock, dividend payments and changes caused by reported profits or losses.

3. Cash flow statement: Where is cash coming from and going to?

This statement shows all the cash flowing in and out of your company. For example, your company may have cash inflows from selling products or services, borrowing money and selling stock. Outflows may result from paying expenses, investing in capital equipment and repaying debt.

Typically, cash flows are organized in three categories: operating, investing and financing activities. The bottom of the statement shows the net change in cash during the period. Watch your statement of cash flows closely. To remain in business, companies must continually generate cash to pay creditors, vendors and employees.

Read the fine print

Disclosures at the end of a company’s financial statements provide additional details. Together with the three quantitative reports, these qualitative descriptions can help financial statement users make well-informed business decisions. Contact us for assistance conducting due diligence and benchmarking financial performance.

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When not-for-profits first start up, fundraising can be an ad hoc process, with intense campaigns followed by fallow periods. As organizations grow and acquire staff and support, they generally decide that fundraising needs to be ongoing. But it can be hard to maintain focus and momentum without a strategic fundraising plan. Here’s how to create one.

Building on past experience

The first step to a solid fundraising plan is to form a fundraising committee. This should consist of board members, your executive director and other key staffers. You may also want to include major donors and active community members.

Committee members need to start by reviewing past sources of funding and past fundraising approaches and weighing the advantages and disadvantages of each. Even if your overall fundraising efforts have been less than successful, some sources and approaches may still be worth keeping. Next, brainstorm new donation sources and methods and select those with the greatest fundraising potential.

As part of your plan, outline the roles you expect board members to play in fundraising efforts. For example, in addition to making their own donations, they can be crucial links to corporate and individual supporters.

Developing an action plan

Once the committee has developed a plan for where to seek funds and how to ask for them, it’s time to create a fundraising budget that includes operating expenses, staff costs and volunteer projections. After the plan and budget have board approval, develop an action plan for achieving each objective and assign tasks to specific individuals.

Most important, once you’ve set your plan in motion, don’t let it sit on the shelf. Regularly evaluate the plan and be ready to adapt it to organizational changes and unexpected situations. Although you want to give new fundraising initiatives time to succeed, don’t be afraid to cut your losses if it’s obvious an approach isn’t working.

Maintaining strong cash flow

Don’t wait until your nonprofit’s coffers are nearly dry before firing up a fundraising campaign. Fundraising should be ongoing and constantly evolving. Contact us for advice on maintaining strong cash flow.

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Most business owners would likely agree that strategic planning is important. Yet many companies rarely engage in active measures to gather and discuss strategy. Sometimes strategic planning is tacked on to a meeting about something else; other times it occurs only at the annual company retreat when employees may feel out of their element and perhaps not be fully focused.

Businesses should take strategic planning seriously. One way to do so is to hold meetings exclusively focused on discussing your company’s direction, establishing goals and identifying the resources you’ll need to achieve them. To get the most from strategy sessions, follow some of the best practices you’d use for any formal business meeting.

Set an agenda

Every strategy session should have an agenda that’s relevant to strategic planning — and only strategic planning. Allocate an appropriate amount of time for each agenda item so that the meeting is neither too long nor too short.

Before the meeting, distribute a document showing who’ll be presenting on each agenda topic. The idea is to create a “no surprises” atmosphere in which attendees know what to expect and can thereby think about the topics in advance and bring their best ideas and feedback.

Lay down rules (if necessary)

Depending on your workplace culture, you may want to state some upfront rules. Address the importance of timely attendance and professional decorum — either in writing or by announcement as the meeting begins.

Every business may not need to do this, but meetings that become hostile or chaotic with personal conflicts or “side chatter” can undermine the purpose of strategic planning. Consider whether to identify conflict resolution methods that participants must agree to follow.

Choose a facilitator

A facilitator should oversee the meeting. He or she is responsible for:

Starting and ending on time,
Transitioning from one agenda item to the next,
Enforcing the rules as necessary,
Motivating participation from everyone, and
Encouraging a positive, productive atmosphere.

If no one at your company feels up to the task, you could engage an outside consultant. Although you’ll need to vet the person carefully and weigh the financial cost, a skilled professional facilitator can make a big difference.

Keep minutes

Recording the minutes of a strategic planning meeting is essential. An official record will document what took place and which decisions (if any) were made. It will also serve as a log of potentially valuable ideas or future agenda items.

In addition, accurate meeting minutes will curtail miscommunications and limit memory lapses of what was said and by whom. If no record is kept, people’s memories may differ about the conclusions reached and disagreements could later arise about where the business is striving to head.

Gather ’round

By gathering your best and brightest to discuss strategic planning, you’ll put your company in a stronger competitive position. Contact our firm for help laying out some of the tax, accounting and financial considerations you’ll need to talk about.

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The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically affected the way people interact and do business. Even before the crisis, there was a trend toward more digital interactions in sales. Many experts predicted that companies’ experiences during the pandemic would accelerate this trend, and that seems to be coming to pass.

As this transformation continues, your business should review its remote selling processes and regularly consider adjustments to adapt to the “new normal” and stay ahead of the competition.

3 tips to consider

How can you maximize the tough lessons of 2020 and beyond? Here are three tips for keeping your remote sales operations sharp:

1. Stay focused on targeted sales. Remote sales can seemingly make it possible to sell to anyone, anywhere, anytime. Yet trying to do so can be overwhelming and lead you astray. Choose your sales targets carefully. For example, it’s typically far easier to sell to existing customers with whom you have an established relationship or to prospects that you’ve thoroughly researched.

Indeed, in the current environment, it’s even more critical to really know your customers and prospects. Determine whether and how their buying capacity and needs have changed because of the pandemic and resulting economic changes — and adjust your sales strategies accordingly.

2. Leverage technology. For remote selling to be effective, it needs to work seamlessly and intuitively for you and your customers or prospects. You also must recognize technology’s limitations.

Even with the latest solutions, salespeople may be unable to pick up on body language and other visual cues that are more readily apparent in a face-to-face meeting. That’s why you shouldn’t forego in-person sales calls if safe and feasible — particularly when it comes to closing a big deal.

In addition to video, other types of technology can enhance or support the sales process. For instance, software platforms that enable you to create customized, interactive, visually appealing presentations can help your sales staff meet some of the challenges of remote interactions. In addition, salespeople can use brandable “microsites” to:

Share documents and other information with customers and prospects,
Monitor interactions and respond quickly to questions, and
Appropriately tailor their follow-ups.

Also, because different customers have different preferences, it’s a good idea to offer a variety of communication platforms — such as email, messaging apps, videoconferencing and live chat.

3. Create an outstanding digital experience. Customers increasingly prefer the convenience and comfort of self-service and digital interactions. So, businesses need to ensure that customers’ experiences during these interactions are positive. This requires maintaining an attractive, easily navigable website and perhaps even offering a convenient, intuitive mobile app.

An important role

The lasting impact of the pandemic isn’t yet clear, but remote sales will likely continue to play an important role in the revenue-building efforts of many companies. We can help you assess the costs of your technology and determine whether you’re getting a solid return on investment.

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Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, government officials are seeing a large increase in the number of new businesses being launched. From June 2020 through June 2021, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that business applications are up 18.6%. The Bureau measures this by the number of businesses applying for an Employer Identification Number.

Entrepreneurs often don’t know that many of the expenses incurred by start-ups can’t be currently deducted. You should be aware that the way you handle some of your initial expenses can make a large difference in your federal tax bill.

How to treat expenses for tax purposes

If you’re starting or planning to launch a new business, keep these three rules in mind:

Start-up costs include those incurred or paid while creating an active trade or business — or investigating the creation or acquisition of one.
Under the tax code, taxpayers can elect to deduct up to $5,000 of business start-up and $5,000 of organizational costs in the year the business begins. As you know, $5,000 doesn’t go very far these days! And the $5,000 deduction is reduced dollar-for-dollar by the amount by which your total start-up or organizational costs exceed $50,000. Any remaining costs must be amortized over 180 months on a straight-line basis.
No deductions or amortization deductions are allowed until the year when “active conduct” of your new business begins. Generally, that means the year when the business has all the pieces in place to start earning revenue. To determine if a taxpayer meets this test, the IRS and courts generally ask questions such as: Did the taxpayer undertake the activity intending to earn a profit? Was the taxpayer regularly and actively involved? Did the activity actually begin?

Eligible expenses

In general, start-up expenses are those you make to:

Investigate the creation or acquisition of a business,
Create a business, or
Engage in a for-profit activity in anticipation of that activity becoming an active business.

To qualify for the election, an expense also must be one that would be deductible if it were incurred after a business began. One example is money you spend analyzing potential markets for a new product or service.

To be eligible as an “organization expense,” an expense must be related to establishing a corporation or partnership. Some examples of organization expenses are legal and accounting fees for services related to organizing a new business and filing fees paid to the state of incorporation.

Plan now

If you have start-up expenses that you’d like to deduct this year, you need to decide whether to take the election described above. Recordkeeping is critical. Contact us about your start-up plans. We can help with the tax and other aspects of your new business.

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Businesses rely on internal controls to help ensure the accuracy and integrity of their financial statements, as well as prevent fraud, waste and abuse. Given their importance, internal controls are a key area of focus for internal and external auditors.

Many auditors use detailed internal control questionnaires to help evaluate the internal control environment — and ensure a comprehensive assessment. Although some audit teams still use paper-based questionnaires, many now prefer an electronic format. Here’s an overview of the types of questions that may be included and how the questionnaire may be used during an audit.

The basics

The contents of internal control questionnaires vary from one audit firm to the next. They also may be customized for a particular industry or business. Most include general questions pertaining to the company’s mission, control environment and compliance situation. There also may be sections dedicated to mission-critical or fraud-prone elements of the company’s operations, such as:

Accounts receivable,
Inventory,
Property, plant and equipment,
Intellectual property (such as patents, copyrights and customer lists),
Trade payables,
Related party transactions, and
Payroll.

Questionnaires usually don’t take long to complete, because most questions are closed-ended, requiring only yes-or-no answers. For example, a question might ask: Is a physical inventory count conducted annually? However, there also may be space for open-ended responses. For instance, a question might ask for a list of controls that limit physical access to the company’s inventory.

3 approaches

Internal control questionnaires are generally administered using one the following three approaches:

1. Completion by company personnel. Here, management completes the questionnaire independently. The audit team might request the company’s organization chart to ensure that the appropriate individuals are selected to participate. Auditors also might conduct preliminary interviews to confirm their selections before assigning the questionnaire.

2. Completion by the auditor based on inquiry. Under this approach, the auditor meets with company personnel to discuss a particular element of the internal control environment. Then the auditor completes the relevant section of the questionnaire and asks the people who were interviewed to review and validate the responses.

3. Completion by the auditor after testing. Here, the auditor completes the questionnaire after observing and testing the internal control environment. Once auditors complete the questionnaire, they typically ask management to review and validate the responses.

Enhanced understanding

The purpose of the internal control questionnaire is to help the audit team assess your company’s internal control system. Coupled with the audit team’s training, expertise and analysis, the questionnaire can help produce accurate, insightful audit reports. The insight gained from the questionnaire also can add value to your business by revealing holes in the control system that may need to be patched to prevent fraud, waste and abuse. Contact us for more information.

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Last month I discussed emotional intelligence, a research-proven and incredibly reliable indicator of an individual’s overall business success. Popularized by Dr. Daniel Goleman, emotional intelligence (EI) is defined as the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as recognize and influence the emotions of those around you.

In his research, focusing on nearly 200 large companies, Goleman found that the most effective leaders were those with a high degree of emotional intelligence. He also found that at the highest levels of these companies, where differences in technical skills are of negligible importance, EI played an even greater role in determining the success and productivity of leaders and their teams.

As emotional intelligence has grown into a must-have skill for businesses, two major issues have arisen with its application. First, many people who learn about EI, often simplify the concept into merely being “nice.” Secondly, business leaders often believe that by learning about EI at a seminar or online workshop (or by reading a couple of articles), they have done enough to become emotionally intelligent.

As outlined in last month’s article, the components of emotional intelligence are self-awareness, self-management, social awareness and relationship management. Clearly, none of these components are the same as “niceness.” While being nicer to others and more empathetic can be a result of developing EI, believing that EI is synonymous with “niceness” will obscure and minimize many important traits of emotional intelligence.

In the competitive business world, “niceness” can sometimes be described as someone who tries to avoid conflict. For leaders who might be conflict-averse, it can be difficult to clearly explain to employees what is expected of them. These leaders can often be easily manipulated and taken advantage of by employees who do not want to work hard or who want to accomplish goals that are different from their employer’s objectives.

Being proficient in each of the four components of emotional intelligence can allow leaders to develop the skills to be confrontational when necessary, but to do so more strategically and productively. It encourages leaders to have powerful, productive conversations that build up their ability to influence and lead.

Recognizing that emotional intelligence is more than just “being nice” is important, but so is understanding that the skills, attitudes, and behaviors which compose EI must be continuously worked on and practiced. Remember that genuine leaders are not just born. It takes many years of hard work and the ability to learn from difficulties and disappointments to become an effective leader. In the rush to get ahead, many would-be leaders skip important personal developmental steps. Some of these people get to the top of companies through sheer determination and aggressiveness or by their brilliant technical skills. However, when they finally reach the leader’s chair, they are very ineffective because they never worked on their personal development.

Developing emotional intelligence is about more than just training and learning the vocabulary. It takes commitment and practice. Everyone can, theoretically, change, but few people are seriously willing to try. Good coaching and training are helpful and valuable tools. Accurate assessments are also an important part of the equation. In the end though, business leaders must commit to changing and practicing that commitment every day. Developing EI is not about being perfect, but about being more emotionally intelligent more of the time.

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There’s a harsh tax penalty that you could be at risk for paying personally if you own or manage a business with employees. It’s called the “Trust Fund Recovery Penalty” and it applies to the Social Security and income taxes required to be withheld by a business from its employees’ wages.

Because taxes are considered property of the government, the employer holds them in “trust” on the government’s behalf until they’re paid over. The penalty is also sometimes called the “100% penalty” because the person liable and responsible for the taxes will be penalized 100% of the taxes due. Accordingly, the amounts IRS seeks when the penalty is applied are usually substantial, and IRS is aggressive in enforcing the penalty.

Wide-ranging penalty

The Trust Fund Recovery Penalty is among the more dangerous tax penalties because it applies to a broad range of actions and to a wide range of people involved in a business.

Here are some answers to questions about the penalty so you can safely avoid it.

What actions are penalized? The Trust Fund Recovery Penalty applies to any willful failure to collect, or truthfully account for, and pay over Social Security and income taxes required to be withheld from employees’ wages.

Who is at risk? The penalty can be imposed on anyone “responsible” for collection and payment of the tax. This has been broadly defined to include a corporation’s officers, directors and shareholders under a duty to collect and pay the tax as well as a partnership’s partners, or any employee of the business with such a duty. Even voluntary board members of tax-exempt organizations, who are generally exempt from responsibility, can be subject to this penalty under some circumstances. In some cases, responsibility has even been extended to family members close to the business, and to attorneys and accountants.

According to the IRS, responsibility is a matter of status, duty and authority. Anyone with the power to see that the taxes are (or aren’t) paid may be responsible. There’s often more than one responsible person in a business, but each is at risk for the entire penalty. You may not be directly involved with the payroll tax withholding process in your business. But if you learn of a failure to pay over withheld taxes and have the power to pay them but instead make payments to creditors and others, you become a responsible person.

Although a taxpayer held liable can sue other responsible people for contribution, this action must be taken entirely on his or her own after the penalty is paid. It isn’t part of the IRS collection process.

What’s considered “willful?” For actions to be willful, they don’t have to include an overt intent to evade taxes. Simply bending to business pressures and paying bills or obtaining supplies instead of paying over withheld taxes that are due the government is willful behavior. And just because you delegate responsibilities to someone else doesn’t necessarily mean you’re off the hook. Your failure to take care of the job yourself can be treated as the willful element.

Never borrow from taxes

Under no circumstances should you fail to withhold taxes or “borrow” from withheld amounts. All funds withheld should be paid over to the government on time. Contact us with any questions about making tax payments.

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