Sales and Marketing

Because of the thousands upon thousands of press releases that I have seen, very few impress or take me by surprise. But the one at www.healthsouth.com/who_we_are/press_releases.asp did just that. In the release, HealthSouth Corporation announced that it has received a $440 million tax recovery from the IRS “for overstatements of taxable income attributable to financial fraud perpetrated by members of prior management.” This recovery includes a $296 million tax refund for the tax years 1996 through 1999, and $144 million of associated interest income.

Automatic Data Processing's Small Business Services division released an online payroll system aimed at accountants who service small businesses.

It finally happened: The first Baby Boomer applied for Social Security this week. Kathleen Casey-Kirschling, a former teacher who was born at one second after midnight on Jan. 1, 1946, applied for Social Security benefits over the Internet, starting what is likely to be an avalanche of applications for retirement benefits.

Here's the situation: Your client needs to upgrade their accounting software from an out-of-the-box program to a more sophisticated, customized system. You know it and your client is avoiding it. What should you do?You might have to get a little creative.

"We were stretching our ranks much too thin and we simply couldn't hire people fast enough to keep up with such a rapid growth. I felt the substantial growth was causing us to get away from our culture to have a solid work/life balance. If we had kept letting market conditions run their course on our firm without taking action, we could have lost what made us great--our employees. So we slowed down this rapid escalation and staffed up to provide employees with a good work/life balance."

After the delivery truck pulled up, a guy got out and yelled, “Buddy. We have your copy of Office 2007 here. Should we leave it in the driveway? I don’t think it will fit in the door. Watch it. That thing weighs a ton.”

The October issue of our sister publication CPA Wealth Provider has some information which will shock most. It is a ranking of CPA firms with financial planning practices by assets under management. Eleven have over one billion dollars under management. Yes, I said one billion dollars each with Plante and Moran Financial Advisors leading the pack with $5.255 billion. There are 41 firms listed with $100+ million of assets under management.

Forensic accounting is hot for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that as a specialty it has become very lucrative. So much so, I know of firms that have stopped during traditional tax and accounting work. Also, accounting and auditing standards are increasingly delineating new obligations with regard to practitioners’ duty to protect against fraud.

Female business owners are increasingly more educated and more willing to take risks, according to a newly released survey.

Two upstate New York CPA firms are merging, with the Rochester-based firm of Bernardi & Russo joining forces with Buffalo-based Freed, Maxick & Battaglia.