Practice Management

The May cover story for Practical Accountant focuses on how a number of firms are using formalized testing to determinate if a potential hire is right for a job. It also explores how testing is extending to other aspects of firms’ operations.

IFACnet, a search engine developed by the International Federation of Accountants and its members, has expanded its resources to address the needs of small and midsized accounting practices.

By now, tax practitioners know that e-filing is here to stay. Every year, changing mandates increase the number of businesses required to file their federal tax returns electronically, and the Internal Revenue Service offers more and better ways for tax pros to interact electronically with the service.Even if the e-file mandate hasn't affected your clientele, do yourself and your clients a big favor: Prepare for electronic filing early and take advantage of all of the electronic services now available from the Internal Revenue Service.

Only time will tell whether the bane of the 2006 tax filing year for the Internal Revenue Service is the scam-prone telephone tax refund, or the confusion that seems destined to arrive soon surrounding a number of extender provisions that were not included on the agency's original forms.The agency urged taxpayers to check and see if they qualify for the telephone excise tax refund after more than 10 million early filers did not request the one-time refund. In the first release of the year's weekly filing season statistics, about 30 percent of all taxpayers had not requested the telephone tax refund. Nearly half of those returns - more than 4.8 million - were completed by a tax preparer. "We are surprised how many tax preparers are overlooking the telephone tax refund," said IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, in a statement.

The Internal Revenue Service and the Treasury announced that they will work on creating detailed LIFO guidance for automobile wholesalers, manufacturers and dealers.The accounting issue confronting the automobile industry - which involves the proper treatment of the dollar-value, last-in, first out inventory method for pooling purposes of "crossover vehicles," which have characteristics of both trucks and cars - was selected for the Industry Issue Resolution Program.

The Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department announced the release of proposed regulations that would disallow foreign tax credits for foreign taxes purportedly paid in connection with certain artificially engineered, highly structured transactions.

When I first enrolled in college, I opted for a marketing course as an elective. At first, there was some trepidation on my part, because to me, marketing was a term my grandmother used when she intended to go grocery shopping. During my first day in class, I soon learned that the process of marketing had nothing to do with a visit to Grand Union or Safeway.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act brought the tax manager into the financial statement reporting process as never before. As SOX Section 404 internal control certifications were made with respect to each input into the financial statements, it became clear that one of the weakest areas for SOX 404 compliance was accounting for income taxes.Under FASB Statement No. 109, Accounting for Income Taxes, the process of providing for deferred income taxes had become so subjective and subject to differing interpretations that certification of the results was difficult, and comparability across financial statements appeared to be lacking.

Despite continued controversy over whether the use of private debt collectors is a direction the Internal Revenue Service should be moving in, a new federal report gave high marks to the first phase of the agency’s pilot program.

Reversing a trend of declining optimism over the past three years, CPAs serving as chief executive officers, chief financial officers and in other executive financial positions have a favorable view of the economy, according to the first quarter 2007 Business and Industry Economic Outlook Survey.