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AMG LAUNCHES NEW CHANNELNew York - The Accountants Media Group, publishers of Accounting Today, Practical Accountant and Accounting Technology, has launched a new channel on its Web site, WebCPA.com, that will address issues and topics related to the multiple generations now co-existing in accounting firms.

During my three-plus decades as a member of the American workforce, I've been employed by some very good companies and some not-so-very-good ones. I won't regale you with stories of my experiences - both good and bad - as experience has taught me that those tales are best relived in a group setting accompanied by an adequate supply of adult beverages.Which brings us to the marquee subject of our opening issue of 2009 - our inaugural Best Firms to Work For feature, a ranking of 60 U.S. accounting firms that were rated as superior workplaces via a series of demanding criteria.

Today, the United States finds itself in the middle of a financial abyss, with Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch and Washington Mutual all high-profile casualties.How did we get here?

Accounting firm consolidator cbiz has agreed to acquire Mahoney Cohen, a New York-based CPA and business advisory firm, in an acquisition that is expected to contribute about $55 million in annual revenue.Terms were not disclosed. At press time, the deal was scheduled to close Dec. 31.

There is a general misconception that our industry is recession-proof. This mindset holds that since everyone needs to file a tax return or have an audit done, accounting firms should always have revenue coming in.This is simply not true.

EXECUTIVES: WORSE TO COMEMountain View, Calif. - Seventy-five percent of financial executives in North America say that economic conditions in their industry are worse or far worse than they were six months ago, and nearly a third expect conditions to get even worse, according to a recent poll from online forecasting applications provider Adaptive Planning and Business Performance Management. Compounding that malaise, over half of those polled admitted to missing their revenue targets for their most recent quarter.

The Internal Revenue Service Advisory Council's 2008 Report contains more than 70 recommendations on a wide variety of issues affecting tax administration. The recommendations focus on communication, relief and assistance due to the economic downturn."It's refreshing to see that communications are a concern," said Robert Kerr, senior director of government relations at the National Association of Enrolled Agents. "The IRS is charged with a bifurcated task - enforcement and education. In both realms they have to communicate fairly complex things."

E-FILING SURGES 12 PERCENTWashington, D.C. - Individual taxpayers e-filed nearly 90 million tax returns this year, an increase of more than 12 percent compared to last year, a record according to the IRS.

One technique for giving better focus to tax planning in a new year is to look back at the old one. Our column for this issue of Accounting Today uses this strategy, looking at significant 2008 tax developments from the perspective of their impact on tax planning in 2009.In examining 2008 developments for this review, we found that our results fit neatly into a Top 10 list - coincidentally, long a staple of New Year's forecasting. Our list gathers significant 2008 tax developments based on their impact on certain issues or themes. Our list focuses only on those developments that have an impact on strategies that may be implemented in 2009 - that's the reason why a significant amount of tax legislation didn't make the list, but also the reason why some letter rulings and similar types of developments made the cut.

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board has issued a proposed standard that would let federal agencies continue to prepare financial reports with reasonable, rather than precise, estimates of general property, plant and equipment.The proposed statement, Estimating the Historical Cost of General Property, Plant and Equipment - Amending Statements of Federal Financial Accounting Standards 6 and 23, would make it more possible for a handful of major government agencies to produce financial reports that meet generally accepted federal accounting principles - something the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration have never managed to do.