By: Kasey Powell, CPA, CPE Kasey is a senior accountant, certified fraud examiner, and a member of the JMF Timber Practice Group. Kasey Powell Vcard Kasey Powell LinkedIn Profile This year represents the 20th anniversary of the inaugural Association of Certified Fraud Examiner's (ACFE) Report to the Nation on Occupational Fraud and Abuse: 2016 Global Fraud Study. [...]
Under the American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 (ATRA), the federal estate-tax exemption is permanently set at $5 million with a top 40% rate. ATRA also provides for inflation indexing of the exemption, beginning in 2013. The figures for the past four years, which show a modest increase for 2016, are as follows: Year Exemption [...]
Do you own investment real estate—say, an apartment building—that you rent out to tenants? Real estate can be a valuable and reliable source of income. Of course, the rental income is subject to tax, but the resulting tax liability may be offset by deductible expenses. In some cases, you might even qualify for a loss. [...]
By: Kim Smith, CPA, Tax Shareholder Kim is a shareholder, a member of the JMF Tax Department and in charge of the JMF State and Local Tax (SALT) group. With over 20 years of experience, she assists clients with corporate, partnership, and individual income tax reporting as well as complex multi-state income and sales tax [...]
A buy–sell agreement can be critical to a business owner intending to sell the business interest or needing to accommodate other changes within the organization. Typically, it can help ease a transition in leadership to the younger generation. Basic concept: The buy–sell agreement protects your family’s interests in the event you become disabled or die [...]
If you are an employer, you've probably heard that there are new laws about who qualifies for overtime pay. It's been about two years in the making. The most important items to understand are: The 2016 salary threshold is $913 per week or $47,476 annually for a full-year worker. That's adjusted down slightly from earlier reports. [...]
If you have been reading the tax press or even this blog, you will know plenty about the problems taxpayers are having with phone and email scams posing as the IRS. Well, now the IRS has announced that they will stop initiating field audits by telephone. So, the examiner will send a letter and then [...]
Like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in The Terminator, the research credit is back. This valuable tax break, which had officially expired and been restored more than a dozen times in the past, was extended again by the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes (PATH) Act, retroactive to the beginning of 2015. What’s more, the credit has been [...]
The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2015 ended two popular Social Security retirement benefit claiming strategies, “File-and-Suspend” and “Restricted Application.” Many married couples use the file-and-suspend strategy by having the higher wage earner file for benefits and then immediately suspend them so that the lower earning spouse can claim spousal benefits while letting their own Social [...]
The IRS has announced the standard mileage rates that may be used in 2016 instead of deducting actual expenses. The new rates, which have decreased or stayed the same, are as follows: For business driving, the rate is 54 cents per business mile (it was 57.5 cents in 2015). For medical and moving expenses, the [...]