By Sylvia Chan, CPA, Tax Manager
The Tax Cut and Jobs Act (TCJA), P.L. 115-97 enacted in December 2017 has brought about exciting changes to the tax world. I would like to draw your attention to a provision that was written specifically to encourage U.S. companies to expand their operations globally without leaving the United States. Some technology companies have moved their intangible assets offshore to low-income tax jurisdictions and shifted the related income outside the United States. While tax-avoidance may not always be the primary motive, it was an inevitable truth that the U.S. Treasury was losing a portion of its revenue due to this income shifting tactic. (more…)
By Guest Blogger: Ed Correia, Founder of Sagacent Technologies
The majority of us are online regularly and during these interactions, businesses collect vast amounts of data about their clients. Your business gathers multiple pieces of information, such as birthdays, addresses, and purchasing preferences, not to mention credit card and other billing records. Right there, you now have all the information a hacker would need for identity theft. Not only does it cost your clients, but it costs businesses globally around $221 billion a year. (more…)
By Sheila Foley, Accounting Consultant
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was enacted in late December, 2017 and it significantly altered the tax laws applicable to individual taxpayers. The significant changes included: reduction in tax rates and modification of brackets, increase in the standard deduction, repeal of personal exemptions, limitation on deductions for state and local taxes, mortgage interest, home equity loan interest and elimination of deduction for miscellaneous itemized deductions. (more…)
By Sarah Renard, Senior Marketing Coordinator
It’s that time again, to send your monthly or quarterly company e-newsletter to your list of hundreds, if not thousands of subscribers. So you go through your routine of adding new clients/prospects/contacts since your last e-mail blast to your existing list, build your newsletter and click ‘send’ then move on to your next ‘to do list’ item. Unfortunately, the recent GDPR regulations may cause a hiccup in your routine. (more…)
By Wei Wei, Tax Senior
As you have been made aware from our series of webinars, e-mail updates and blog posts, President Trump signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act just in time for the new year and the Act includes new rules for the taxation of “qualified equity grants”. Internal Revenue Code Section 83(i) allows “eligible employees” to elect to defer taxation on the exercise of certain stock options or the settlement of restricted stock units for up to 5 years. Employees must make the election no later than 30 days after the employee’s rights in “qualified stock” are transferrable or vested. The election only defers income tax, the stock-based compensation received by the employee is still subject to employee and employer payroll taxes when vested. (more…)
By Josh Cross, Senior Audit Manager
After all the research and analysis put in working through the prior four steps, you are now able to begin the process for recognizing revenue for the transaction price (Step 3) which has been allocated to each performance obligation (Step 4).
Each performance obligation identified in Step 2 can be satisfied by either the transfer of a promised good or by performing a service to the customer. This distinction will be the main driver for the next decision that needs to be made, and that is, whether the revenue needs to be recorded over time or at a point in time. For a good majority of the identified performance obligations, a good or service will be transferred/consumed over a period of time and therefore revenue would be recognized over that same time period. ASC 606 has helped in this analysis by providing guidance, so to recognize revenue over time, one of the following criteria needs to be met: (more…)
By Josh Cross, Senior Audit Manager
Now that all of the performance obligations (Step 2) of the contract have been separately identified, it’s time to determine a transaction price. Seems easy, right?
ASC 606 defines the transaction price as “the amount of consideration to which an entity expects to be entitled in exchange for transferring promised goods or services to a customer, excluding amounts collected on behalf of third parties (for example, some sales taxes).” On the surface this sounds like an easy step for your entity to identify the price you are selling a product for, but in practice we know that not all transaction prices are fixed at the onset of the contract. When calculating the transaction price, an entity needs to consider all of the following: (more…)
By Josh Cross, Senior Audit Manager
The landscape of nonprofits is changing and ironically it is looking a lot like the for-profit start-up world. These social entrepreneurs are using the same methods and ideas used by the most successful start-ups in the marketplace today and most of it is centered on harnessing the power of technology. (more…)
By Erika Diebert, ASL Tax Senior
There is an opportunity for Qualified Small Businesses (QSBs) to utilize their unused federal 2016 R&D credits against their 2017 payroll tax liability (Employer portion of FICA). This was enacted as part of the PATH Act of 2015 but is just now becoming available starting with the income tax filings for the 2016 tax year.
The offset of payroll taxes will be available for R&D credits generated on the 2016 tax return from R&D expenses incurred in 2016. R&D credit carryovers from years prior to 2016 cannot be used. The maximum benefit allowed to be claimed in a tax year is $250,000. An election to use the credit against payroll taxes is made on an originally and timely filed (including extensions) Form 6765 by completing section D of the form. (more…)
