Financial Planning

Clients often walk in the door with a relatively predetermined idea about how they’d like to leave assets to their children. But for advisors, it is important to help clients take into account the issues they might not have considered on their own, or may not have considered important when developing their plan.

Congress should consolidate and simplify the types of tax-favored retirement plans now available to small business owners to minimize the cost and administrative burden imposed by the plans, the American Institute of CPAs told Congress.

Auditors filed fewer going concern opinions about companies last year, according to a new analysis of fiscal year-end 2012 filings, but that was largely due to company attrition rather than improved company performance.

Nearly seven out of 10 investors had confidence in the U.S. capital markets, according to a new survey by the Center for Audit Quality, and a record 79 percent had confidence in investing in U.S. publicly traded companies just prior to the government shutdown on October 1.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has scheduled an open meeting for Thursday to consider adopting attestation standards for auditors of brokers and dealers.

The CFA Institute has released the results of a survey of investor attitudes toward the varying proposals by the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board for accounting for expected credit losses.

Check out the digital edition of the October 2013 issue of Accounting Today.

The Internal Revenue Service has temporarily stopped sending out tax refunds, and the Tax Court has suspended operations during the federal government shutdown, as lawmakers in Congress continue their battle over delaying or defunding “Obamacare” for a year.

‘Obamacare’s’ opening day drew millions of consumers to the law’s core insurance exchanges, offering supporters and investors confidence that if the websites can stay up and running, customers will follow.

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