Financial Planning

The current rollover process for 401(k) plans favors distributions to individual retirement accounts rather than the 401(k) plan that a new employer might offer, and a new government report suggests the Internal Revenue Service and the Labor Department could be doing more to make the process easier.

More than a third of U.S. adults expect to spend their tax refunds this year on meeting everyday expenses, according to a new survey by the American Institute of CPAs, as the expiration of the payroll tax cut takes a bite out of workers’ take-home pay.

How one wealth manager is industrializing his approach to partnering with CPAs

There are several ways to serve your clients in the financial planning world. No model is wrong or right -- but there are some that may work better than others depending upon the makeup of your firm.

Responding to concerns about their allowance model and in an attempt to simplify impairment guidance for financial institutions, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued several exposure drafts of proposed models to take into account “expected losses” rather than the current “incurred loss” model.

More than half of working Americans either have not noticed or been unaffected by the January 1 expiration of the payroll tax cut, according to a new survey.

— The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released a staff document that provides answers to questions about FASB’s recently issued proposal on expected credit losses.

Back in 1925, a taxpayer won the first case in the Board of Tax Appeals involving the deduction for horse-breeding activity expenses. Deducting expenses related to the “sport of kings” was so attractive that the estate of Cornelius Vanderbilt tried, and lost, two years later. In the intervening 88 years, about 200 taxpayers have litigated the issue, most with unattractive results. The IRS and the courts have essentially told taxpayers to “stop horsing around.”

The House Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee held a hearing this week to discuss possible tax reforms on financial products such as derivatives.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has added three new implementation guides to its series on using Extensible Business Reporting Language, or XBRL, interactive data tags in financial statements.