COVID-19

Books and records. Bookkeeping. Accounting. Tax returns and quarterly filings. Business owners typically view these as required administrative duties and consider it an expense. Have you ever thought about your accounting systems as more than an expense, and how it may benefit you, above and beyond reporting numbers and forms?  

According to the American Society of Cost Segregation Professionals, a cost segregation is "the process of identifying property components that are considered "personal property" or "land improvements" under the federal tax code."

What does this mean?   

Typically, commercial real estate can be depreciated over a 39-year life. However, the IRS allows certain items, considered to be personal property, to be depreciated over a shorter life – five, seven, or fifteen years – thereby accelerating the depreciation of those assets.

The Labor Department’s latest jobless claims report showed that employees are still losing their jobs due to the COVID-19 pandemic, as another 1.5 million U.S. workers filed for unemployment this week. This is the thirteenth consecutive week that jobless claims have stayed above one million, and the 1.5 million number is higher than the 1.3 million jobless claims that economists had been anticipating.

On August 23, 2019, a relatively small twenty-two-page bill, known as the Small Business Reorganization Act of 2018 (“SBRA”), was signed into law by the President of the United States.

The law would become effective six months later, February 19, 2020, only weeks before a worldwide pandemic was announced, that would bring the US economy to a halt.

What is the Small Business Reorganization Act? 

As an appraiser for 25 years, I have found it presently a challenging time to do valuations for clients.  An appraiser’s goal is to deliver credible, supportable valuations that reflect one’s best unbiased professional  opinion on the value of the subject interest or company.  How do we achieve this goal when we do not know when the world will normalize from COVID-19? 

Nobody really saw it coming.  It was like a tsunami.  Few alive today can say they’ve lived through a pandemic.  Yes, we had heard about it.  We read stories coming from China, Korea, and Italy, but everyone was completely unprepared for this reality.  Shut down?  Everything?  Really?

I was recently a panelist for a webinar on Cybersecurity and Fraud Vulnerability during COVID-19. Many audience members owned or worked for small businesses, and were overwhelmed by the scope and scale of the risks the panel discussed. They didn’t know where to even start the process of addressing such risks. They wondered how a small business should approach the management and mitigation of cybersecurity and fraud risks without the sophisticated systems and financial means of larger companies.

Dylan’s iconic song was an anthem for social and political change, a call for people to realize change will happen, no matter what. More than 45 years later, the lyrics are still relevant, especially in the estate and gift tax universe. That means individuals and business owners must be sure to update their estate planning arrangements to take advantage of current conditions. There have been a number of important developments that should be considered to design an estate or gifting plan that best suits individual needs.

The U.S. House approved legislation Thursday, May 28, 2020, making it easier for small businesses and other recipients of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) funding to qualify for forgiveness of the loans.