Intellectual property owners are entitled to financial compensation in exchange for granting rights to licensees. As licensing deals grow, it is important to develop monitoring or audit programs to hold licensees accountable. What is merchandise licensing? Licensing exists in almost every product category that you see in retail stores. The intellectual property (IP) [...]

I spend my life balancing (well, at least trying to balance) the responsibilities of being a father and husband, leading a firm and taking care of myself. I truly love it and am blessed to have all of the opportunities life has afforded. However, in this busy life I do sometimes find myself drowning. Between a full time sports schedule with the kids, the pressures of [...]

Clients of any industry, who do not have a state and local tax specialist, often rely on a tax consultant to resolve issues. A tax consultant’s priorities include not only compliance but extend to saving the company money where they can. While businesses may prepare their tax returns themselves or have a traditional CPA handle personal property tax compliance and tax [...]

While Thanksgiving and the other winter holidays are a booming time for the food and beverage industry, the end of winter does not mean industry profits need to take a nosedive. Spring is a great time to measure the effects of a bloated winter that is full of holiday cheer, as it follows into a lull in spending for the first few months of the year. By looking at the e [...]

Each leader brings personal experiences into the workplace and uses the tools of life to solve problems and further one’s career. We cannot avoid it; we cannot turn off one part of our lives if we are to live authentically. As multi-dimensional humans, we draw from what we know and ideally select the best of our journey to inform how we operate with integrity and ex [...]

San Diego Workforce Partnership, a San Diego nonprofit agency funded primarily by government grants, recently made the news when its former facilities manager was convicted of embezzling over $450,000 from the nonprofit over the course of five years. The facilities manager was responsible for approving janitorial invoices and directed the agency contractors to purchas [...]

excerpt from our 2017 Entertainment Whitepaper: The Evolution of Profit Participations / Navigating Disruption in the Motion Picture and Television Industry Jennifer Sullivan, Senior Marketing Manager at GHJ sits down with Ben Sheppard to discuss the role of litigation in today's Entertainment Landscape. SULLIVAN: What does the term “expert witness” mean for the enter [...]

With an ever-growing practice of outsourcing functions across the entertainment industry and an overall increase in reliance on third-party contractors to perform what in-house employees had traditionally done in the past, a key question comes to mind: What should entertainment companies do to monitor such functions from a cost control, compliance and/or risk manageme [...]

The changes to the meals and entertainment (“M&E”) and employee fringe benefits has been one of the most confusing and misunderstood areas under the new Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”). As more information becomes available about the TCJA, there appears to be some consensus as to what M&E and employee fringe benefit expenses will qualify for a deductio [...]

In December 2017, new tax laws (called the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act) were enacted and became the biggest tax reform since 1986. These new tax laws heavily impact many individual taxpayers and businesses, including those in the entertainment industry. Two elements of the new tax act that especially affect entertainment and media companies are the deductions for loan-out c [...]