ON SCENE: New York Accounting Show

The season’s first big confab, Flagg Management’s 7th Annual New York Accounting Show & CPE Conference, attracted throngs to a midtown hotel April 29-30, where CPAs caught up on CPE, chatted up vendors and hobnobbed with luminaries.  More Flagg-managed shows … Continued

The Tech Risks Accountants Would Rather Ignore

computer infectionNew study reveals widespread weaknesses in accounting firm technology strategies.

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Research

Accountants aren’t known for their risky decisions. Quite the opposite, in fact. In most things, accountants are paragons of caution and care.

That’s, “in most things.”

But as the “Accounting Firm Operations and Technology Survey,” published by CPA Trendlines, shows again and again, accountants are taking sometimes potentially disastrous risks with their firms and – worse – with their clients. READ MORE →

You’re Radically More Than You Realize

Are you guilty of random acts of consulting?

By Jody Padar
The Radical CPA

To me, the most trusted business advisor is the small busi­ness advisor. That’s what my customers see. My firm serves small businesses from the ground up to $10 million. Yes, we look at their numbers, but practically speaking one gains a lot when you’re in their financial underwear drawer.

Most of our conversations are around their questions. It’s a natural extension of the work we already do – financials, taxes, payroll, cash flow and forecasting.

MORE RADICAL CPA: 5 Radical Transparencies; Are You Ready? | 4 Questions Radical Firms Must Face | Being Radical Is All About Your Customer | Being Radical Starts with Being the Change | Why Start Being Radical Now? | Going Radical: The 4 Tenets of a ‘New Firm’ | Why Should CPAs Be Radical? | The Roots of ‘Radical’ CPAs | The First 3 Questions I Should Have Asked Before Starting My Own Practice

These people are not asking complex tax questions. They’re asking about IT, human resources, general licensing and for help with some decision-making. We’re small business consul­tants.
READ MORE →

IRS Seeks More Tools to Fight Refund Fraud

IRS Commissioner John Koskinen
Koskinen

FY 2016 budget provisions would expand authority for regulation, correctable errors.

Refund fraud, especially that caused by identity theft, remains “an ongoing battle” for the IRS, Commissioner John Koskinen said in testimony about the 2015 tax season before the House Ways and Means Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight.

“For that reason, and in spite of our budget constraints, we have continued to focus as much of our resources as possible on improving our efforts against identity theft,” he said, improving filters used to detect suspicious returns as they come in at a rate of more than 2 million suspicious returns so far, which is over 500,000 more than last year at this time. READ MORE →