Returning Value Blog

Are you an employer who owns a business where tipping is customary for providing food and beverages? You may qualify for a tax credit involving the Social Security and Medicare (FICA) taxes that you pay on your employees’ tip income.

Construction contractors, professional service firms, specialty manufacturers and other companies that work on large projects often struggle with job costing. Full cost allocations are essential to gauging whether you’re making money on each job. But some companies simply lump indirect job costs into overhead or fail to use meaningful cost drivers, thereby skewing their profit reports. Here’s what you should know to avoid this pitfall and get a clearer picture of your company’s profitability.

Before you jump headfirst into the year-end financial reporting process, review the role independent audit committees play in providing investors and markets with high-quality, reliable financial information.

This year, the optional standard mileage rate used to calculate the deductible costs of operating an automobile for business decreased by one-half cent, to 57.5 cents per mile. As a result, you might claim a lower deduction for vehicle-related expenses for 2020 than you can for 2019.

As a business owner/manager, you have many processes and tasks involved in your day-to-day workload. Scheduling, timekeeping, payroll, etc...How about new hire onboarding?

As you’ve probably heard, a new law was recently passed with a wide range of retirement plan changes for employers and individuals. One of the provisions of the SECURE Act involves a new requirement for employers that sponsor tax-favored defined contribution retirement plans that are subject to ERISA.

While February typically has 28 days, in leap years—such as February 2020—it contains an extra day. Employers who pay their salaried employees every week or every two weeks will encounter a year in which there is one payday more than usual. These employers should plan ahead to identify and address these "payroll leap years" in advance. It has been our experience that it is best to keep clients informed of pending leap years so that they can keep their employees informed as well. 

Some benefit plans are required to include an opinion from an independent qualified public accountant (IQPA) when filing Form 5500 each year. The IQPA examines the plan’s financial statements and schedules to ensure they’re presented fairly and in conformity with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). The financial statements and IQPA opinion are often referred to collectively as the “audit report.”

When the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) updated its rules for recognizing revenue from contracts in 2014, it only added to the confusion that nonprofits already had about accounting for grants and similar contracts.

In its 2018 decision in South Dakota v. Wayfair, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld South Dakota’s “economic nexus” statute, expanding the power of states to collect sales tax from remote sellers. Today, nearly every state with a sales tax has enacted a similar law, so if your company does business across state lines, it’s a good idea to reexamine your sales tax obligations.