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Sometimes it almost restores your faith.

The release of tax returns of presidential candidates has again brought popular media coverage of the issue of what is reasonable compensation for S corporation shareholders.

It is well past the time to think of accountants as bean counters. Unfortunately, the recent piece by Professors Miller & Bahnson ("Some evidence that the AICPA's management has lost its focus," December 2011, page 20) places the profession back into the audit closet.

CONNECTICUT

For The Spirit of Accounting's 10th anniversary in 2006, we reminisced about events over that decade, including this synopsis of a misjudgment that may be the worst ever:

For most major accounting firms, the Enron era set profitability back decades when they were forced to abandon their highly lucrative consulting arms in an effort to shed even the vague appearance of a conflict of interest.

CONFIDENCE EBBS ON RETIREMENT PLANNING

Aside from the meltdowns of the financial markets in the past decade, arguably not much has garnered more attention than international and emerging market investing.

Establishing a brand as a CPA firm is something that can take a lifetime.

"We've got to have a Facebook page!" That's the exclamation of most CPA and accounting firms. and then, while many pages go live, they sit almost lifeless, as one of an infinite number of silent trees in a dense forest.

WHERE'S MY REFUND?

As corporate responsibility and sustainability becomes more ingrained in financial reporting among U.S. companies, a number of CPA firms are seizing opportunities to meet rising investor demand for that non-financial information - specifically dealing with a company's environmental and social and governance footprint.

KPMG BUYS INDIRECT TAX BIZ FROM THOMSON REUTERS

If FATCA isn't keeping you awake at night, it should be, according to practitioners. Ditto for FBAR.

XERO RAISES $20M

As accounting professionals become more mobile, they are in turn discovering devices and technologies that enable them to move more of their work out of the office and discover new, more flexible ways of serving their clients.

It's not all that difficult to define enterprise-class accounting software. If it costs a lot more than your car, and requires a large team several months to install, it's enterprise-class. Defining mid-range and separating it from entry-level is not quite as simple. Though mid-range accounting software is generally sold and serviced by value-added resellers, it still often requires a team to complete the installation, and often takes weeks, rather than days or months.

Every business owner knows the drill: We made a profit this year so we need to spend our cash to save on taxes. I want to challenge you to think differently this year to “save cash,” not “save taxes.”

Millions of small business owners are unprepared for retirement, with a third of the women and a quarter of the men in a new survey having no estimate of how much they will need when they retire.

Hiring was up slightly, by 0.04 percent, but paycheck size declined slightly by 0.2 percent, from January to February, according to payroll provider SurePayroll.