Wealth management

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.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s custody rule governing investment advisors’ custody of client assets imposes various requirements and, in turn, costs on investment advisors, according to a new report by the Government Accountability Office.

The Financial Planning Coalition submitted a letter to the Securities and Exchange Commission saying it would "vigorously oppose" attempts to weaken the fiduciary standard for broker-dealers and submitted research showing a client-first standard does not limit advice to “mass market” clients.

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

The Internal Revenue Service has proposed tax relief for money market fund investors in response to concerns about proposed reforms from the Securities and Exchange Commission in the money market industry that could trigger so-called “wash sale’ tax rules.

John Napolitano, chairman and CEO of U.S. Wealth Management, sat down with managing editor Tamika Cody to discuss the mistakes CPAs make when they head into the world of financial planning.