Acuity Advisors

Close-up on restricted cash

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has amended U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) to clarify the guidance on reporting restricted cash balances on cash flow statements. Until now, Accounting Standards Codification Topic 230, Statement of Cash Flows, didn’t specify how to classify or present changes in restricted cash. Over the years, the lack of specific instructions has led businesses to report transfers between cash and restricted cash as operating, investing or financing activities — or a combination of all three.

The new guidance essentially says that none of the above classifications are correct.

FASB members hope the amendments will cut down on some of the inconsistent reporting practices that have been in place because of the lack of clear guidance.

Prescriptive guidance

Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2016-18, Statement of Cash Flows (Topic 230) — Restricted Cash, still doesn’t define restricted cash or restricted cash equivalents. But the updated guidance requires that transfers between cash, cash equivalents, and amounts generally described as restricted cash or restricted cash equivalents be excluded from the entity’s operating, investing and financing activities. In other words, the details of those transfers shouldn’t be reported as cash flow activities in the statement of cash flows at all.

Instead, if the cash flow statement includes a reconciliation of the total cash balances for the beginning and end of the period, the FASB wants the amounts for restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents to be included with cash and cash equivalents. When, during a reporting period, the totals change for cash, cash equivalents, restricted cash and restricted cash equivalents, the updated guidance requires that these changes be explained. These amounts are typically found just before the reconciliation of net income to net cash provided by operating activities in the statement of cash flows.

Moreover, a business must provide narrative and/or tabular disclosures about the nature of restrictions on its cash and cash equivalents.

Effective dates

The updated guidance goes into effect for public companies in fiscal years that start after December 15, 2017. Private companies have an extra year before they have to apply the changes. Early adoption is permitted. Contact us if you have additional questions about reported restricted cash or any other items on your company’s statement of cash flows.

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Business owners: When it comes to IRS audits, be prepared

If you recently filed your 2016 income tax return (rather than filing for an extension) you may now be wondering whether it’s likely that your business could be audited by the IRS based on your filing. Here’s what every business owner should know about the process.

Catching the IRS’s eye

Many business audits occur randomly, but a variety of tax-return-related items are likely to raise red flags with the IRS and may lead to an audit. Here are a few examples:

Significant inconsistencies between previous years’ filings and your most current filing,
Gross profit margin or expenses markedly different from those of other businesses in your industry, and
Miscalculated or unusually high deductions.

An owner-employee salary that’s inordinately higher or lower than those in similar companies in his or her location can also catch the IRS’s eye, especially if the business is structured as a corporation.

Response measures

If you’re selected for an audit, you’ll be notified by letter. Generally, the IRS won’t make initial contact by phone. But if there’s no response to the letter, the agency may follow up with a call.

The good news is that many audits simply request that you mail in documentation to support certain deductions you’ve taken. Others may ask you to take receipts and other documents to a local IRS office. Only the most severe version, the field audit, requires meeting with one or more IRS auditors.

More good news: In no instance will the agency demand an immediate response. You’ll be informed of the discrepancies in question and given time to prepare. To do so, you’ll need to collect and organize all relevant income and expense records. If any records are missing, you’ll have to reconstruct the information as accurately as possible based on other documentation.

If the IRS selects you for an audit, our firm can help you:

Understand what the IRS is disputing (it’s not always crystal clear),
Gather the specific documents and information needed, and
Respond to the auditor’s inquiries in the most expedient and effective manner.

Don’t let an IRS audit ruin your year — be it this year, next year or whenever that letter shows up in the mail. By taking a meticulous, proactive approach to how you track, document and file your company’s tax-related information, you’ll make an audit much less painful and even decrease the chances that one happens in the first place.

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The First Three Things Business Valuation Pros Consider

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Why financial restatements happen … and how to prevent them

When companies reissue prior financial statements, it raises a red flag to investors and lenders. But not all restatements are bad news. Some result from an honest mistake or misinterpretation of an accounting standard, rather than from incompetence or fraud. Here’s a closer look at restatements and how external auditors can help a company’s management get it right.

Avoid knee-jerk responses

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) defines a restatement as “a revision of a previously issued financial statement to correct an error.” Accountants decide whether to restate a prior period based on whether the error is material to the company’s financial results. Unfortunately, there aren’t any bright-line percentages to determine materiality.

When you hear the word “restatement,” don’t automatically think of the frauds that occurred at Xerox, Enron or WorldCom. Some unscrupulous executives do use questionable accounting practices to meet quarterly earnings projections, maintain stock prices and achieve executive compensation incentives. But many restatements result from unintentional errors.

Spot error-prone accounts

Accounting rules can be complex. Recognition errors are one of the most common causes of financial restatements. They sometimes happen when companies implement a change to the accounting rules (such as the updated guidance on leases or revenue recognition) or engage in a complex transaction (such as reporting compensation expense from backdated stock options, hedge accounting, the use of special purpose or variable interest entities, and consolidating with related parties).

Income statement and balance sheet misclassifications also cause a large number of restatements. For instance, a borrower may need to shift cash flows between investing, financing and operating on the statement of cash flows.

Equity transaction errors, such as improper accounting for business combinations and convertible securities, can also be problematic. Other leading causes of restatements are valuation errors related to common stock issuances, preferred stock errors, and the complex rules related to acquisitions, investments and tax accounting.

Want more accurate results?

Restatements also happen when a company upgrades to a higher level of assurance (say, when transitioning from reviewed statements to audited statements). That’s because audits are more likely than compilation or review procedures to catch reporting errors from prior periods. An external auditor is required to “plan and perform an audit to obtain reasonable assurance about whether the financial statements are free of material misstatement, whether caused by error or fraud.”

But after the initial transition period, audits typically catch errors before financial statements are published, minimizing the need for restatements. Auditors are trained experts on U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) – and they must take continuing professional education courses to stay atop the latest changes to the rules.

In addition to auditing financial statements, we can help implement cost-effective internal control procedures to prevent errors and accurately report error-prone accounts and transactions. Contact us for help correcting a previous error, remedying the source of an error or upgrading to a higher level of assurance.

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Hire your children to save taxes for your business and your family

It can be difficult in the current job market for students and recent graduates to find summer or full-time jobs. If you’re a business owner with children in this situation, you may be able to provide them with valuable experience and income while generating tax savings for both your business and your family overall.

Shifting income

By shifting some of your business earnings to a child as wages for services performed by him or her, you can turn some of your high-taxed income into tax-free or low-taxed income. For your business to deduct the wages as a business expense, the work done by the child must be legitimate and the child’s wages must be reasonable.

Here’s an example of how this works: A business owner operating as a sole proprietor is in the 39.6% tax bracket. He hires his 17-year-old son to help with office work full-time during the summer and part-time into the fall. The son earns $6,100 during the year and doesn’t have any other earnings.

The business owner saves $2,415.60 (39.6% of $6,100) in income taxes at no tax cost to his son, who can use his $6,350 standard deduction (for 2017) to completely shelter his earnings. The business owner can save an additional $2,178 in taxes if he keeps his son on the payroll longer and pays him an additional $5,500. The son can shelter the additional income from tax by making a tax-deductible contribution to his own IRA.

Family taxes will be cut even if the employee-child’s earnings exceed his or her standard deduction and IRA deduction. That’s because the unsheltered earnings will be taxed to the child beginning at a rate of 10% instead of being taxed at the parent’s higher rate.

Saving employment taxes

If your business isn’t incorporated or a partnership that includes nonparent partners, you might also save some employment tax dollars. Services performed by a child under age 18 while employed by a parent aren’t considered employment for FICA tax purposes. And a similar exemption applies for federal unemployment tax (FUTA) purposes. It exempts earnings paid to a child under age 21 while employed by his or her parent.

If you have questions about how these rules apply in your particular situation or would like to learn about other family-related tax-saving strategies, contact us.

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