Returning Value Blog

Strategic planning for the coming year

Do you know where your business budget is?

This is the traditional time to draw up a budget for the coming year. Perhaps the way you previously developed the budget for your business has not been overly successful. Or maybe you have found as the year goes along that certain key factors were ignored or not given enough weight. In that case, the way you usually put together the budget may not be the best approach for your business.

As the dust settles from President-elect Donald Trump’s historic victory in this year’s presidential contest and the Republican sweep of the U.S. House and Senate, it is now possible to envision potentially significant tax legislation changes being proposed as early as 2017. The tax cuts proposed by President-elect Trump are among the largest proposed since the days of Ronald Reagan. Assuming that he follows up on these proposals and sticks to his promises, there are several major changes that the Trump administration seeks to make on individual and business taxes:

Form 1099-MISC: is an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax return document that covers reporting for a wide range of payments made to non-employee individuals (e.g., independent contractors) over the course of the year on behalf of your trade or business.  Personal payments are not reportable.

This past summer President Obama signed into law, a bill that included changes to due dates for certain tax returns. These changes had been proposed by AICPA members who wanted a more logical chronology so that information taxpayers needed to file 1040s or 1120s would be available on time. 

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) released the Accounting Standards Update (ASU) 2016-14, Not-for-Profit Entities (Topic 958): Presentation of Financial Statements of Not-for-Profit Entities on Aug. 18, and you can read the full ASU here.

Issued August 24, 2016, Rev. Proc. 2016-47 simplifies the process for correcting late rollovers from one tax-qualified retirement account to another. The guidance provides plan administrators and IRA trustees with an additional basis for accepting rollover contributions after the 60-day deadline.

Virtually every business owner will tell you it takes more than one person to build up and maintain a profitable business. In fact, it is likely that several “key employees” have contributed to the success of any given operation. However, while a business owner may be careful to make sure that he or she is adequately insured, the need to protect the business against the loss of key employees is often ignored or disregarded, which is a mistake.