Archive for January 2017
Why 2016 may be an especially good year to take bonus depreciation
Bonus depreciation allows businesses to recover the costs of depreciable property more quickly by claiming additional first-year depreciation for qualified assets. The PATH Act, signed into law a little over a year ago, extended 50% bonus depreciation through 2017. Claiming this break is generally beneficial, though in some cases a business might save more…
Read MoreReady, set, audit
If your business issues audited financial statements and follows a calendar year end, your external auditing procedures have already begun. At a minimum, you’ve signed an engagement letter, sent over preliminary financial statements and allowed your CPA to observe any year end physical inventory counts. But there are some steps you can still take…
Read MoreWhat is a business?
Differentiating the purchase of a business from the purchase of a group of assets is something that the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has been debating for years. In January 2017, the board finally published guidance to help financial executives and accountants define what a business is in the context of a business combination.…
Read MoreNew HRA offers small employers an attractive, tax-advantaged health care option
In December, Congress passed the 21st Century Cures Act. The long and complex bill covers a broad range of health care topics, but of particular interest to some businesses should be the Health Reimbursement Arrangement (HRA) provision. Specifically, qualified small employers can now use HRAs to reimburse employees who purchase individual insurance coverage, rather than…
Read More2017 Q1 tax calendar: Key deadlines for businesses and other employers
Here are some of the key tax-related deadlines affecting businesses and other employers during the first quarter of 2017. Keep in mind that this list isn’t all-inclusive, so there may be additional deadlines that apply to you. Contact us to ensure you’re meeting all applicable deadlines and to learn more about the filing requirements. January…
Read MoreAccounting for M&As
Many buyers are uncertain how to report mergers and acquisitions (M&As) under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). After a deal closes, the buyer’s postdeal balance sheet looks markedly different than it did before the entities combined. Here’s guidance on reporting business combinations to help minimize future write-offs and restatements due to inaccurate purchase price…
Read MoreUse non-GAAP financial reporting measures with caution
The most useful metric to gauge a company’s performance isn’t necessarily net income, pretax profits or earnings per share, as defined under U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). In some industries, investors and lenders turn to non-GAAP measures for additional information. Before relying on non-GAAP metrics, however, it’s important to understand what’s included and excluded…
Read MoreClose-up on the use of XBRL in financial reporting
The use of eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) has slowly gained traction since 2009, when the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) began requiring public companies to submit regulatory filings tagged in XBRL. Could so-called “inline XBRL” help interactive data finally become more mainstream? Two-stage process XBRL is an interactive data format that allows financial statement…
Read More