Background On Dec. 22, 2017, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”), modified certain provisions of the Income Tax Code. One of the most significant changes was the ability to expense 100 percent of the cost of certain eligible property in the year it is placed in service. Detailed information on the changes to bonus depreciation under the TCJA is available on our prior [...]

On July 26, 2018, GHJ’ (GHJ’s) Motion Picture and Television Participations Services team hosted the second edition of its 2018-2019 Happy Hour series, with the goal of connecting Entertainment Industry professionals with one another in a casual setting. During this event, Ben Sheppard, GHJ principal, held a Q&A session with Tom Ara, partner at Greenberg Traurig, wh [...]

Starting from its genesis on Jan. 3, 2009, the taxation of Bitcoin transactions, as well as other cryptocurrencies (further referred to as “Altcoins”) that emerged using Bitcoin’s open source code, has been the subject of conversation for many novice investors and crypto enthusiasts alike. However, it was not until the sudden increase to the total market capitalizatio [...]

This was originally published in the Los Angeles Business Journal on July 30, 2018. Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple said that,“Inclusion of diversity inspires innovation. The best companies in the land will be the most diverse.” Apple has long been the standard bearer for innovation. It is rare for the topic of innovation to occur without mention of Apple’s history of d [...]

Sunrise at Mesquite Flat Sand Dunes, Death Valley National Park – by Yan Jiang April 2018 I am fortunate to work with a Firm that encourages you to purse your passions. GHJ believes that when we allow ourselves to devote time and #BeMore to our personal passions, we in turn can better serve our clients. When I put time into my passion of photography, I feel better eq [...]

Click here to listen to GHJ Entertainment and Media Partner Ilan Haimoff discuss philanthropy in Hollywood with Ken Scherer of Scherer Strategies.

With today’s current Information Technology (IT) environment, data breaches and cyberattacks should no longer be an afterthought. Nonprofit organizations both large and small generate and manage large volumes of important information electronically and IT Security is essential to an organizations survival. An essential part of an organization’s survival and continue [...]

In modern day, women make up nearly 50 percent of the U.S. workforce (according the United States Department of Labor). And while women have come a long way in the fight for equality and equal pay, there is still a social paradigm shift that needs to occur in how women are viewed in the workplace by others, as well as how they view themselves, especially when it com [...]

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last week in South Dakota v. Wayfair (please see our previous Tax Alert on the subject) is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, state tax cases in the past 25 years. The high court’s decision allowing South Dakota the ability to require that sales tax be paid on online retail sales – even when a company does not have a physical pre [...]

On Thursday, June 21, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that out-of-state (i.e., internet) retailers may be required to collect sales taxes in states where they have no physical presence. In the South Dakota v. Wayfair case, the ruling gives states the authority to impose sales tax against these businesses, and the Quill case was deemed incorrect and overruled. Th [...]