On Oct. 9, 2011, California Governor Jerry Brown signed Senate Bill 459 (“Bill”) into law. The Bill imposes significant penalties against employers if they are found to have been involved in “willful” misclassification of employees as independent contractors. The Bill is effective January 1, 2012.New Civil PenaltiesEmployers face a civil penalty of between $5,000 and [...]

Retailers and manufacturers doing business in California, with annual gross receipts of more than $100 million will have new disclosures to contend with. Effective January 1, 2012, retailers and manufacturers must disclose their efforts to eliminate slavery and human trafficking from their supply chain. This disclosure is supposed to be made on company website. If t [...]

The commercial real estate industry is no stranger to big accounting changes – all we have to do is look at how fair value accounting impacted the industry. However the impending update to lease accounting has a potential impact beyond obvious accounting. The best way to prepare for this latest update is to consider the proposed changes for lessees and lessors in toda [...]

New IRS Voluntary Classification Settlement Program for Workers Misclassified as Independent ContractorsFor years, the issue of classifying workers as independent contractors or employees has been an area of significant scrutiny by the IRS. At its core, the determination of employee versus independent contractor status boils down to whether and to what extent the empl [...]

Transactions often involve payment of fees by the acquiror or by the selling target. Traditionally the IRS has viewed such fees, referred to as “success-based fee”, as costs that produce significant long-term benefits, and therefore required to be capitalized. Taxpayers would be able to rebut the IRS presumption by demonstrating that the fees [...]

There are basic business principles we all recognize. Cash is king. Buy low, sell high. But as simple as these concepts sound, we also recognize how difficult they can be to execute.A CPA has the unique perspective of seeing the company from all angles and at a deep level of detail, sometimes finding little changes that can make a big impact.As a follow-up to our Marc [...]

On April 27, 2011, the California Supreme Court declined to review the Court of Appeal’s decision in Nortel Networks, Inc. v. State Board of Equalization. This precedential decision may have far reaching implications on the taxation of pre-written software, or “canned software,” for sales and use tax purposes. Examples of canned software include Microsoft Office, Quic [...]

We are frequently asked a simple question, “what are my chances of being audited?” While there is never a precise answer to this question, the IRS annually releases information about the audits that have been conducted in the previous year which provides a measuring stick. This information is compiled in an IRS publication called the Data Boo [...]

On April 5, 2011, the U.S. Senate voted to repeal the controversial information reporting requirements that were enacted as part of the package of last year’s Health Care Reform and Small Business Tax Incentives. The bill was previously approved by the House on March 3, 2011 and is now headed to President Obama, who is expected to sign the bi [...]

What food executives look for in today’s CPAsThink back to the days when you might visit a CPA only to find him sitting in the corner of his office, wearing green eye shades, hovering over a stack of documents trying to make heads or tails of a client’s financial statements or tax returns.Well, those days are long gone and that vision has been replaced by a close work [...]