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It was the heart of the college football Bowl Championship Series last month, when approximately 150 deans, faculty and administrators from prominent business schools gathered in New York for Ernst & Young's Campus Diversity and Inclusiveness Roundtable.

I can't tell you how often I hear my "older-school" counterparts tell me that their clients aren't using the Internet ... in any way. This includes portals, social media and, specifically, e-commerce (i.e., eBay and other online sales platforms). But I'm here to tell you this misconception is going to cause many professionals some serious issues once all the 1099-Ks start showing up.

Over the past seven months, I've written two articles that should be combined in order to have a significant impact on firm profits. One was on the reliance on checklists and the other on pricing.

The general administrator role takes manyforms: office, human resources, marketing or IT manager; chief operating officer; firm administrator - and even managing partner. But firms, especially smaller ones, should consider a consolidation of these operations to save the necessary partner time to grow their practices.

With proposals, counter-proposals, resolutions and thousands of comment letters circulating over separate standards for private companies, the often-polarizing 30-plus-year debate appears to be finally nearing a decision in 2012.

With the filing season well underway, the IRS is estimating that more than 144 million individual tax returns will be filed this year - some 4 million more than last year - and it expects to receive most of them by the April 17 deadline.

In a decade-plus of helming this publication, I often marvel at how many of the issues and trends impacting the profession the day I took office in September 2000 have returned front and center.

Just before the New Year, the Internal Revenue Service released much-anticipated temporary and proposed regulations on the capitalization of tangible property (so-called "repair regs").

There was really no reason to get my teenage son a new bed.

ALBERTA