Practice management

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., is provoking some ire among conservatives for a comment he made Sunday that appears to be a bit of a retreat from his no-tax-increase pledge.

Unlike many others, I love getting tons of e-mail as it helps me see what makes an accounting firm stand out. And that was the case with the Summer 2008 issue of Rachlinnews, a PDF of which was e-mailed to me. I receive a great number of firm newsletters, those done by firms and by third-party providers.

The Senate has passed a housing rescue plan by a vote of 72-13 aimed at stemming the tide of foreclosures and shoring up Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

BDO Seidman reported that its annual revenue increased 11.9 percent to $659 million for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2008 from $589 million the previous fiscal year.

Camico Mutual Insurance, the largest CPA-owned mutual insurance company in the U.S., named Ric Rosario as its new CEO.

The plunge in home prices in the U.S. as a result of the collapse of the subprime mortgage market may force banks and lenders to write down as much as $1 trillion from their balance sheets according to one expert.Bill Gross, who manages Pacific Investments Management Co. -- the largest bond fund in the world -- said the massive writedowns would blunt bank lending as well as force the sales of assets.

Senators Max Baucus, D-Mont. and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, chairman and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, announced they would introduce six new measures to curb offshore tax evasion. The steps include: * Lengthening the statute of limitations for prosecuting individuals who fail to file a foreign bank account report. * Clarifying IRS authority to enforce filing requirements for these reports. * Clarifying the information that must be included in these reports. * Requiring taxpayers to file the reports with their individual and corporate income tax returns. * Revising the definition of ownership to include beneficial ownership of a corporation. * Including the reports in the Tax Code section that causes the statute of limitations not to expire before three years after the taxpayer furnishes the required information. The announcement was made at a hearing to discuss the findings of the Government Accountability Office investigation into the Ugland House, a law firm's office building in the Cayman Islands and the registered home to thousands of corporations. "Plainly, there's a lot of financial activity in the Caymans," said Baucus. "There's a virtual feast going on down there. That has led to some crowded halls in the Ugland House. And up to half of those Ugland House tenants - around 9,000 entities - are Americans." The investigation into Ugland House is somewhat misguided, according to Daniel J. Mitchell, senior fellow at Cato Institute. "The implication is there can't be 10,000 businesses in this building, but where a company is registered has nothing to do with where they conduct business. Companies are registered in Delaware because they have very good corporate and tax law. No one will argue that it's not normal to go to a jurisdiction that is very well regulated and regarded and where the courts are honest, as in the Cayman Islands."

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Reserve are each pushing to gain regulatory authority over investment banks. At a hearing on Capitol Hill, SEC Chairman Christopher Cox and New York Federal Reserve President Timothy F. Geithner each outlined plans for the monitoring of commercial and investment banks. Both laid blame for the "patchwork" of regulatory agencies in lieu of one overseer for much of the current roiling of the financial markets. Cox urged lawmakers to give his agency responsibility over investment banks pointing out that the commission currently has authority over the markets in which they operate. Earlier this year, the Treasury Department proposed merging the SEC and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission into a single entity while expanding the oversight capacity of the Federal Reserve.

The House passed a bill aimed at shoring up the mortgage industry and preventing foreclosures after the president dropped his veto threat.

The Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on the use of offshore corporate tax shelters in the Cayman Islands, on the heels of hearings elsewhere in the Senate on individual tax havens in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.

The tab for the proposed bailout of mortgage securities concerns Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could run as high as $25 billion, according to an estimate released by the Congressional Budget Office.

A Senate subcommittee plans to release another blockbuster report on the use of foreign tax havens after the first reports caused repercussions both here and abroad.

The Internal Revenue Service said it plans to send a second set of information packages to an estimated 5.2 million retirees and disabled veterans who have not yet filed their tax returns in order to give them their economic stimulus payments.

The New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has reportedly sent letters to 182,000 individual taxpayers asking them to justify the tax refunds they have requested.

Consideration of any tax reform for small business must take into account the difficulties small-business owners face when deciding how to structure their business and comply with the Tax Code’s complex requirements, said Dewey Martin, a Hampden, Maine-based CPA.Martin, who testified at the recent hearings before the Senate Finance Committee on business entities and small-business tax reform, is a small-business owner himself, as well as an advisor to 200-plus small-business owners and chair of the Accounting Department at Husson College in Bangor, Maine.

GAO SAYS IRS NEEDS TO IMPROVE INTERNAL CONTROLS

Going it alone is tough in the accounting profession. Better connections, improved ability to handle inter-regional and international business, better employee recruiting, and greater operating efficiencies are just a few of the elements needed to continue a healthy upward curve. Gaining these advantages, however, isn’t always easy. That is why many firms make the choice to join either an accounting network or an accounting association.No matter where a business is located or what niches and industries it serves, becoming part of a network or reaching out for an association affiliation can provide the tools to build a stronger business.

The event may be have been billed as The Forum for Women in Accounting, but the issues and topics discussed at the three-day confab here were decidedly not just for one gender.That was the overriding sentiment during the course of the conference, and one that resonated with the majority of the 250 attendees, which even included a handful of men.

The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division increased its enforcement activities last fiscal year after they fell behind in fiscal 2006, according to a new report.

Swiss investment bank UBS plans to stop offering offshore banking to U.S. residents after the bank was questioned about its clients' tax avoidance practices at a Senate hearing.