E-mail is a double-edged sword, says Camico VP Christopher Piety.
via CalCPA
“While e-mail can serve as an excellent documentation tool,” says Piety, “it is prone to informal, unprofessional or inappropriate messages.”
A personal comment about someone can damage your credibility and undermine a legal defense. And e-mail can never be completely deleted.
Piety’s four rules for safe e-mailing:
- Document only facts, avoid speculation and refrain from comments on personalities or performance issues. Remember that nothing is “off the record.”
- Only maintain the final version of a tax return or other work product.
- Document contemporaneously. If you keep documentation notepads by every telephone, the process becomes a reflex action when the phone rings. Include the dates and times on telephone notes. Phone company records can corroborate these if they are disputed in a claim.
- Always document significant communications and follow up. Every client contact that is important can be used for or against a CPA, so it’s essential that all contacts are documented in a detailed manner. Follow-up communications are especially important when there is a change in the scope of an engagement; negative knowledge (e.g., the tax return is already late); a material action to be taken by the client; and a judgment call (e.g., the client has been informed of and has consented to a tax position).
There’s more in Preventing Liability Claims.
What are CPAs doing to cope with recession? Join the survey; get the answers.
By Rick Telberg/For the Finance Executive
CPAs in corporate finance are bravely battling one of their most difficult busy seasons in memory.
At a time when they should be concerned with year-end closes, annual audits and developing next year’s budgets, they are, instead, beset by crumbling revenues, rising costs and mind-boggling uncertainties.
In fact, the general economic situation is a top problem for 75% of the business-and-industry CPAs, according to my research for the AICPA. Tax code changes are running a distant second as a concern, followed by late K1′s and 1099′s and late-breaking changes in audit and accounting rules.
“Less staff due to reduction in workforce,” according to the CFO at a small company that builds resort properties, is making it harder to get all the required work done.
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Everything’s NOT getting up to date in Kansas City.
The SEC’s plan initially allowed early adopters to use IFRS by 2010 and required all public companies to adopt it by 2016. But new SEC chief Mary Shapiro says it’s not one of her priorities.
But is international convergence inevitable, with or without IFRS?
James Dornbrook in the Kansas City Business Journal says local CPAs are holding back: READ MORE →
Law school applications are up 4.3% at private schools and 2.4% at public schools.
“One administrator speculated that this unexpected uptick may be a reflection of the applicants’ frustration with the present non-legal job market,” says James B. Levy, Associate Professor of Law at Nova Southeastern University School of Law on the Legal Writing Prof Blog. “If you think it’s frustrating now, just wait fella’!”
State and local pension plans are hiding a crisis that’s been looming for years.
Says Bloomberg’s David Evans:
Retirement plans play accounting games with numbers, giving the illusion that the funds are healthy. The paper alchemy gives governors and legislators the easy choice to contribute too little or nothing to the funds, year after year.
The misleading numbers posted by retirement fund administrators help mask this reality: Public pensions in the U.S. had total liabilities of $2.9 trillion as of Dec. 16, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Their total assets are about 30 percent less than that, at $2 trillion.
With stock market losses this year, public pensions in the U.S. are now underfunded by more than $1 trillion.
That lack of funds explains why dozens of retirement plans in the U.S. have issued more than $50 billion in pension obligation bonds during the past 25 years — more than half of them since 1997 — public records show. The quick fix for pension funds becomes a future albatross for taxpayers.
The story begins with the tale of the Chicago Transit Authority here…
AIG has reinvented the definition of “cost.”
Gavin Magor at TheStreet.com says:
AIG has made it impossible to understand where the investment losses lie. AIG’s group insurance companies posted $23.6 billion in investment losses in the first nine months of last year, so this is an important detail.
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