Practice Management

Fueled by the combination of aging partners who are sliding closer to retirement and the ongoing hunt for qualified staff, the accounting profession stands on the precipice of a major surge in mergers and acquisitions.According to Marc Rosenberg, CPA and president of The Rosenberg Associates, a consultancy in Wilmette, Ill., there has been a 30 percent reduction in accounting graduates from 1996 to 2000. "Although this has reversed somewhat, it has not improved to anywhere near the level that many think," he said. "In fact, statistics from the American Institute of CPAs' annual study of accounting firm graduates from 2001 through 2004 show that accounting graduates nationwide increased 8.9 percent. That's only 3 percent a year."

IRS TO START CHARGING FOR INDIVIDUAL TAX STATSWASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service announced that it will now sell individual income tax return statistics by Zip code - charging $25 per state, or $500 for the entire nation.

On the heels of its $1 billion-plus acquisition of online banking services provider Digital Insight, Intuit Inc. continued bolstering its niche offerings by inking a $142 million deal to acquire payments processor Electronic Clearing House Inc., or Echo.Under the terms of the agreement, the financial and accounting software concern will pay $18.75 per share in cash in exchange for each share of Echo common stock, including shares that are issuable upon exercise of options.

What do your clients really want? Conventional wisdom gives some obvious answers, and they are not news.Clients want help in growing their businesses and solving their business problems. They want a relationship that gives them comfort, and the feeling that their professionals really care. They want to know that their professionals are the most skillful available.

The boom times are here.Business is rolling in for most firms. Yet at the same time, I see enormous amounts of time and money wasted on initiatives that don't contribute to revenue growth - marketing dollars spent on the wrong initiatives, lead generation activities that will never produce a lead, and opportunities being chased that have no hope of closing.

The Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board said that the agency still has a ways to go before fully reaching the vision outlined in the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998.

As someone who’s held a driver license since Richard Nixon was in the White House, it’s hard for me to drum up any sympathy for the big oil companies.

Victims of the alternative minimum tax quirk that taxes nonexistent income of incentive stock options when the stock loses value received a welcome holiday gift from Congress.As one of its final actions before adjournment, the 109th Congress passed the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006, one of the provisions of which includes a scaled-down version of legislation originally sponsored by Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Texas, to fix the problem at the intersection of the AMT and stock options. The new law provides relief to many victims by accelerating the refund of stranded ISO overpayment credits that, under previous law, would not be returned within the taxpayer's lifetime.

The Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006 passed Congress on Dec. 9, 2006, and was signed by President Bush on December 20. Most of the provisions are good news for taxpayers - extending popular tax breaks, many of which had expired at the end of 2005.Still, the timing could have been better.

News of firm mergers and acquisitions continues to flow -- over the past week, a trio of firms announced deals that were effective as of the start of the New Year.