Wealth management

Check out the digital edition of the August 2013 issue of Accounting Today.

The American Institute of CPAs has sent a comment letter to the Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury Department highlighting potential problems for international tax entities from the IRS’s proposed regulations related to the net investment income tax.

A pair of Senate Democrats have introduced legislation to end unlimited tax write-offs on performance-based executive pay, allowing publicly traded corporations to deduct only up to $1 million in pay per employee.

Aronson LLC has acquired SpringReef Partners, a consultancy firm that offers wealth management services to high net worth families.

The Internal Revenue Service has finalized regulations governing certain transfers of property to regulated investment companies and real estate investment trusts.

Research shows what drove accounting firms to start offering financial planning services

A roundup of financial planning news from the previous month

You want to be the head coach of your clients' advisors

Congress gave final approval to legislation that would peg the interest rates on government-sponsored student loans to a market-based rate, ensuring that almost 9 million undergraduates will pay 3.86 percent interest on their next loan.

Whether it’s locked in audit and tax preparation systems, time and billing records, or lying dormant in individual Excel files, there’s a huge amount of value in data residing in CPA firms’ information systems simply waiting to be mined and turned into profitability and growth.

About 11 million U.S. students who need to borrow to cover their college costs would pay 3.86 percent on their next loans under legislation now headed for final passage by Congress.

Last month’s Supreme Court decision in U.S. v. Windsor held section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act to be unconstitutional.

CPA-focused business intelligence tool provider iLumen has added a survey platform as well as budgeting and forecasting capabilities to work in conjunction with its Client Intelligence and Industry Intelligence products.

The American Institute of CPAs has written a letter to members of Congress to support legislation that would block the U.S. Department of Labor’s 2010 proposal to change its definition of fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 to include appraisers of employee stock ownership plans.

With the formal release of the 2013 AICPA Guide, Valuation of Privately-Held Company Equity Securities Issued as Compensation, there are two valuation concepts that are new to the updated guide, but are already in fairly wide use.

There’s more to estate planning than simply trying to minimize taxes under the provisions of a will and various trusts, as criticism over the will of the late James Gandolfini attests. A number of estate experts have weighed in the provisions of the will, which was filed last week in Manhattan Surrogate’s Court.

Most CPAs these days consider themselves the trusted advisor, yet few are clearly separating themselves from their competitors. iLumen chief executive Rob Ganjon explains how practitioners can look to current tools to help make that distinction.

The Securities and Exchange Commission adopted a new rule Wednesday to implement a JOBS Act requirement to lift the ban on general solicitation or general advertising for certain private securities offerings for business startups, while also adopting rules to discourage fraudsters from touting the investments and to add new protections for investors.

To address the market demand for training in Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, the American Institute of CPAs and XBRL US, the nonprofit consortium for XBRL business reporting standards in the U.S., have introduced an XBRL US GAAP Certificate Program.

Only 14 percent of capital markets executives at leading investment banks believe the JOBS Act is having a positive impact on increasing the number of IPOs on U.S. exchanges, according to a new survey by BDO USA.