Who Will Lead the Next Generation at Your Firm? Succession Planning Starts Today |
Even as the tax season rages around you, the business issues of running your accounting firm continue to press for attention. Knowing the technical side of your practice sometimes seems like the easy part. It’s the tough questions that make many firms stumble, such as:
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How do you find the best staff?
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How do you grow your practice with the right clients?
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How do you train your staff to provide the best service to your clients?
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Where do you find the next generation of leaders in your firm and are you ready and equipped to grow those leaders?
These tough questions on firm management are the focus of CCH’s newest journal, CPA Practice Management Forum — a monthly publication featuring the best expert opinions and practical advice on firm management, recruitment and training and marketing and growth strategies. For the Premier Issue, CCH’s editors tackled succession planning. Learn how to find tomorrow’s firm leaders and start cultivating them today — and see why you should have two potential leaders for everyone you think your firm will need 10 years down the road.
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Family Limited Partnerships have long been a popular estate planning tool because they offer a way to reduce estate taxes and allow some measure of control over the assets by the older generation involved. But recent court cases have muddied the waters on the practicality of FLPs as the IRS has honed its arguments to the point that taxpayers are suffering losses consistently on issues that disallow the estate tax advantages of FLPs. While many IRS challenges of FLPs fell short several years ago, that trend is now moving in the other direction and any estate plan that includes an FLP will require a more careful look at the fact patterns in comparison to recent case law. In a recent issue of CCH’s Journal of Estate Planning, attorneys James K. Dossett Jr. and Stacy E. Thomas take a close look at some of the more notable recent case law, including the multiple Strangi cases, and reflect on how the landscape has changed for FLPs. They analyze the trouble spots in these planning tools and outline some risk management strategies you can put to work today to help your clients avoid successful IRS challenges of their estate plans. |
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When an active business is involved in estate planning — as opposed to passive assets such as investments — the estate planning questions can change radically as intangible assets such as goodwill, know-how and others become part of the financial and legal considerations. A business owner must take a number of steps over several years to create a transfer of an active business to an estate plan that will meet IRS scrutiny. Attorneys Margaret Kent and Robert Feinschreiber outline the specific assets that must be reviewed for active business in the distribution and personal service industries. Valuation issues will be critical, especially when accounting for goodwill and other intangibles. Ownership of various assets must be firmly established and reflected in any transfers that are done as part of an estate plan, the authors note in a recent issue of CCH’s Corporate Business Taxation Monthly. For an active business, estate planners face many challenges, and Kent and Feinschreiber give a good roadmap to where the challenges are and some potential solutions.. |
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The Internal Revenue Code has more than 140 civil penalties listed as punishments for certain acts or omissions committed by taxpayers and tax preparers. As you would expect, many of these penalties can be avoided by careful tax professionals who pay attention to detail and understand what the potential problem areas are. Among the most common taxpayer penalties are:
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Failure to file a return;
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Failure to pay tax on time;
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Failure to pay estimated tax;
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Failure to deposit tax;
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Negligence or disregard of rules or regulations;
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Substantial understatement of income;
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Civil fraud;
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Writing bad checks to the U.S. Treasury; and
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Substantial estate and gift tax understatement.
In a chapter from the Individuals and Small Business Tax Planning Guide, tax professionals Sidney Kess and Barbara Weltman outline these and many other areas where penalties arise, as well as the penalties that can be imposed on those who are treated as “income tax preparers” under the IRC. They offer many practice pointers and planning considerations to help tax professionals and their clients avoid penalties.
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