Financial Planning

Many CPAs are passive in nature and afraid to ask clients to pay them extra for financial advice. Yet, often they are better positioned even than planners to suggest tax-efficient investment strategies.

Faced with possible dissent in their party, U.S. Senate Democrats are dropping estate tax language backed by President Barack Obama from their proposal to extend most George W. Bush-era tax cuts through 2013.

Approximately 86 percent of millionaires in the U.S. believe themselves to be self-made, according to a new survey by Fidelity Investments.

The recent IPO by Facebook founders led to their creation of grantor trusts to avoid paying taxes of at least $200 million. It underlined new uses of a technique that has been around for a long time. Grantor trusts, including defective trusts, are still the hot new thing.

Despite the slowdown this year of the economic recovery, financial professionals surveyed by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants and the Institute of Management Accountants believe that business conditions in the U.S. are improving, but they worry about conditions abroad.

A pair of experts from accounting firm Rothstein Kass have helped write a new book that offers an introductory guide to the capital markets.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has voted to require national securities exchanges and the Financial Institution Regulatory Authority to establish a market-wide consolidated audit trail to enhance the ability of regulators to monitor and analyze trading activity.

For Americans long subject to the complexities and confusions of the Internal Revenue Code, it may come as a shock to find that some believe the U.S. to be a tax haven.

An eye-opening report sheds a harsh light on the growing trend of sales of property tax liens to unscrupulous profiteers, all too often forcing the elderly and impoverished out of their homes due to outstanding tax debts.

Capital markets executives at leading investment banks have conflicting views on the recently enacted JOBS Act, according to a new study by accounting and consulting firm BDO USA LLP.