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ATLAS AIR ENGAGES PWCAtlas Air Worldwide Holdings, the Purchase, N.Y.-based parent of cargo carriers Atlas Air and Polar Air Cargo, has retained Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as its new independent accountant.

Ask 10 accountants on the street what they think about the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, and 11 of them will probably say, "It costs way too much!" This message has been repeated so many times that no one seems to doubt it.Ask 10 accountants why their company or their clients don't report operating cash flow using the recommended direct method (instead of the virtually universal indirect method), and 11 of them will say, "It costs way too much!"

Your clients probably want to leave as much as possible to their heirs. However, if they don't take minimum distributions from their Individual Retirement Accounts after they reach 70-1/2, the government could take a substantial amount of those assets.The Internal Revenue Service can charge an excise tax of up to 50 percent if clients don't take the required minimum distribution from their IRA accounts or qualified retirement plans by April 1 of the year after the year they turn 70-1/2.

USE OF ALTERNATIVE INVESTMENTS TO INCREASE AHEAD OF BOOMERSRegistered investment advisors intend to ratchet up their use of alternative investments such as hedge funds, real estate, commodities and currencies in the next five years, according to a national survey released by Rydex AdvisorBenchmarking.

Insurance and financial services conglomerate New York Life Insurance Co. is donating $2 million to establish the New York Life Center for Retirement Income at Bryn Mawr, Pa.-based financial educator The American College.The company said that the purpose of the endowment was to help address the demand for sound retirement income solutions among retired Americans. The gift to the nonprofit educator of insurance and financial professionals will provide permanent support for programming and research.

It's little wonder that in many accounting firms, time and billing is still one of the most critical applications, as well as the one most likely to be neglected. The reasons for this importance are underscored by the name of the application itself.While you might argue that it's the expertise of your staff and the product that you sell, the actuality is that what the client pays for is the time your staff spends on their behalf. Value billing is a great concept, but even after all these years of trying to move clients over to this method of billing, many clients still want to see how much effort, in the form of time, is being spent on their account.

RESELLERS ANNOUNCE MERGERBlytheco Business Solutions and Macdonald Consulting Group, two high-volume Sage Software resellers, have merged to form Blytheco LLC.

Digital systems have breakpoints just like paper-based systems. Over the past 10 years, the requirements and capabilities of firm systems have changed, yet processes and people often have not made the necessary adjustments to leverage the available technology.With technology advancements always on the horizon and Microsoft's release of a new operating system and upgrade to Office 2007, firms should think about where they are today and where they want to be within three years.

Recently, a managing partner shared with me his answer to the question, "When does turnover begin?" His reply was, "At the beginning."Duh! Why didn't I think of that? So, if employee turnover begins with the selection process, what steps can we take to improve it? There are many steps in the recruitment and selection process - and as they say, the devil is in the details. Here are some suggestions:

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