The AICPA presented Wayne Harding, a vice president of Great Plains Software, Inc., with its Special Recognition Award at the Institute’s Tech 2000 conference in Atlanta recently. Harding played a key role in the development of XBRL (extensible business reporting language), an XML-based specification that allows for the preparation and
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TOPICS
Information management and technology assurance
New AcSec Chairman
The AICPA named Mark V. Sever, a partner of Ernst & Young LLP, as chairman of its accounting standards executive committee (AcSEC), effective October 2000. Sever, who is a current AcSEC member, succeeds David Kaplan of PricewaterhouseCoopers, who completes his three-year term as chairman.
Confronting Retirement
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ALTHOUGH MOST CPAs HAVE their own personal retirement accounts, a surprising number of practitioners don’t have formal retirement plans for their businesses. AS RETIREMENT PLANS ARE DEVELOPED, senior partners may have doubts about whether their successors can honor future obligations, intend to stay with the firm or
IT Credential to Help CPAs Make Business Sense Out of Technology
Aimed at CPAs involved in information technology, strategic planning, management and implementation, the new certified information technology professional (CITP) designation the AICPA introduced in May was designed to leverage the CPA’s abilities as a strategist and general business adviser. “Market research reveals that business owners and executives need impartial guidance
Overnight to India
t sounds like magic: Send your back-office chores away at night and find the finished work waiting with your e-mail in the morning. Believe it or not, some CPA firms are doing it: e-mailing tasks to accounting and programming personnel in India, where the workday begins just as Americans head
Comments Requested on Newly Named Version of XML for Business Reporting
SPECIAL REPORT The first specification for a business-reporting variant (XBRL) of extensible markup language (XML) was the subject of an April symposium. The XBRL project committee held the meeting to encourage comments on the specification and to announce its new name. Until then, it had been known as XFRML—for financial
Lawmakers Tackle Privacy
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY E-COMMERCE PRIVACY ISSUES ARE HIGH PROFILE in Washington. Technology allows the easy accumulation and distribution of personal financial data as well as the theft of these data, and security must be ensured. INCIDENTS THAT CAUGHT THE ATTENTION OF Congress were a bank selling confidential information to third-party marketers;
Practice Management
CPA Firms Profit From Alliances, Says Survey CPA firms short on time and staff, but eager to meet their clients’ varied and extensive needs, are building up their service offerings and profits through alliances with organizations savvy about investments, insurance and regulatory compliance. This is according to a 1999 survey
Launch a Web Site—Now
Business-to-business transactions on the Internet are outpacing business-to-consumer transactions by 3 to 1, according to AdRelevance, a Web market research organization. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY AN ORGANIZATION WITHOUT a Web site in its marketing plan doesn’t have a realistic marketing plan. The Internet is becoming the preeminent medium for selling, buying, communications
Line Items
Media Circus Caused Lower Property Values But Not a Loss After O.J. Simpson was charged with murder, his Brentwood, California neighborhood was overrun with reporters, law enforcement officials and curious bystanders. As a result, the owners of the adjacent house and land experienced a sudden decline in the value of
Transfers Incident to a Divorce
Divorce can be a very complex matter, both emotionally and financially. The financial complexity is illustrated by the many tax implications of divorce. People going through divorces often find themselves in disputes with the IRS. The Tax Court recently decided one such matter. John and Louise Young were married in
Start Your Own Firm
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY IF YOU PLAN TO START YOUR OWN FIRM, it is imperative that you take steps ahead of time to ensure you start off on the right foot. WORK FOR A SMALL PRACTICE BEFORE you leave a large firm. Learn the profession, sharpen your skills, and learn how to
Court Rules on Lottery Payoffs
In United States v. Estate of Shackleford, the Eastern District Court of California ruled a taxpayer’s estate did not have to use IRS valuation tables to calculate the value of lottery annuity payments. It said use of IRC section 7520 tables would result in unrealistic and unreasonable values because of
S Corporation Stock Basis
When an insolvent S corporation negotiates a reduction in its liabilities, it recognizes cancellation of debt (COD) income. Because the corporation is insolvent, the income is nontaxable. Can shareholders in the S corporation increase the basis of their stock by the amount of their share of COD income? In 1986,
Taking Back the Dependency Exemption
In divorce situations, the custodial parent is generally entitled to take the dependency exemptions for the children (IRC section 152(e)). This applies as long as both parents provide more than half the children’s support and the children live with either or both parents for more than six months each year.
Technology for the New Millennium
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY WORKPLACE TECHNOLOGY has entered a new era. What started as a handy (but still optional) business tool in the 1980s evolved into a high-priority requirement in the 1990s. But now technology is much more than a business priority: It’s become a prerequisite. MOST WHITE-COLLAR workers lack the skills
Index Funds: Criticisms and Comments
The JofA received a number of letters regarding the two index fund articles that ran in the January 2000 issue. These included letters from readers who pointed out errors in one of the articles as well as readers who took issue with some of the statements the authors made regarding
Readers Find Technology Workshops Helpful
I just have to applaud you on the Technology Workshop series in the JofA . For three months in a row, the topics have been timely (for example, the Excel Pivot Table/Access tie-in, Auto Filter, Conditional Formatting). Could I suggest covering macros, buttons and visual basic for automating purposes? Scott
Thinks HMOs Wrongfully Blamed
I was disappointed that the article “Managing the Cash Gap” ( JofA , Oct.99, page 27) was allowed to be published with such a blatant, unsubstantiated slam against the HMO industry. The statement that “some health care providers can have 60 to 90 days in receivables, thanks to slow-paying HMOs
More About the Commerce Clause
Thank you for publishing the summary of the Alabama franchise tax decision (“For Whom the South Central Bell Tolls,” JofA , Jan.00, page 73). I would like to draw more attention to the burden that states place on individuals who perform services in multiple states. In more than 20 states
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