CW Associates CPA's Hawaii on Remembering a Mentor’s Best Advice

Have you ever approached a crossroads in your career and weren’t sure which path to take next? Or maybe you were struggling—with no luck—to gain more confidence and visibility in your job. If you were fortunate enough to have a mentor at these critical junctures, there’s a good chance you gained valuable insights into the best solutions and smartest next steps. In fact, 75% of executives in a poll by the Association for Talent Development said that a mentor had been critical in helping them ascend to their current position.

Mentoring includes imparting wisdom that the mentor has gained through a lifetime of business and personal experience. We reached out to members on LinkedIn and asked them to share some of the best advice they’d received from mentors throughout their careers. Here’s what they had to say:

-          Approach life with an unwavering set of core values. Integrity is the most important. -- David Almonte, CPA, CGMA

-          It’s okay to tell a client, “I don’t know. I’ll figure out the answer and get back to you.” -- Ralph T. Shinn, CPA

-          There’s always going to be an excuse not to do something, whether it’s work, family, school. If you want to make real change, then you have to take a risk. -- Eric Butts, CPA

-          Don’t look for a job. Look for a customer for your services. -- Tom Quinn, CPA

-          Tell the financial and operations story, not just the numbers. -- Lucinda Coffman, CPA

-          As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Failure is the key to learning and learning is the key to success. -- David Almonte, CPA, CGMA

-          Sometimes you have to say “no,” particularly when your to-do list might limit your effectiveness. -- Richard Jones, CPA

If you don’t have one yet, you’ll find that a mentor has similar insights to offer, as well as specific ideas that suit your unique needs. The AICPA is piloting an Online Mentoring Program, a simple-to-use tool available for free to AICPA members. 

CW Associates CPA's Hawaii on Remembering a Mentor’s Best Advice

Have you ever approached a crossroads in your career and weren’t sure which path to take next? Or maybe you were struggling—with no luck—to gain more confidence and visibility in your job. If you were fortunate enough to have a mentor at these critical junctures, there’s a good chance you gained valuable insights into the best solutions and smartest next steps. In fact, 75% of executives in a poll by the Association for Talent Development said that a mentor had been critical in helping them ascend to their current position.

Mentoring includes imparting wisdom that the mentor has gained through a lifetime of business and personal experience. We reached out to members on LinkedIn and asked them to share some of the best advice they’d received from mentors throughout their careers. Here’s what they had to say:

·        Approach life with an unwavering set of core values. Integrity is the most important. -- David Almonte, CPA, CGMA

·        It’s okay to tell a client, “I don’t know. I’ll figure out the answer and get back to you.” -- Ralph T. Shinn, CPA

·        There’s always going to be an excuse not to do something, whether it’s work, family, school. If you want to make real change, then you have to take a risk. -- Eric Butts, CPA

·        Don’t look for a job. Look for a customer for your services. -- Tom Quinn, CPA

·        Tell the financial and operations story, not just the numbers. -- Lucinda Coffman, CPA

·        As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Failure is the key to learning and learning is the key to success. -- David Almonte, CPA, CGMA

·        Sometimes you have to say “no,” particularly when your to-do list might limit your effectiveness. -- Richard Jones, CPA

If you don’t have one yet, you’ll find that a mentor has similar insights to offer, as well as specific ideas that suit your unique needs. The AICPA is piloting an Online Mentoring Program, a simple-to-use tool available for free to AICPA members. 

CW Associates CPA's Hawaii: 5 tips for implementing FASB’s credit loss standard

Revenue recognition and lease accounting standards have had a big impact on financialinstitutions. But new standards on reporting expected credit losses may be even more significant for banks.

“This is much more related to a bank’s core business,” said Reza Van Roosmalen, a KPMG LLP managing director. “It’s the biggest accounting change I think that banks have been subject to in a long time.”

FASB’s expected credit loss standard, which was issued in June, changes the reporting requirements from an incurred-loss to an expected-loss approach and addresses concerns about financial instruments accounting resulting from the financial crisis that began in 2007.

The International Accounting Standards Board also moved from incurred-loss to expected-loss accounting with the issuance of IFRS 9, Financial Instruments, in 2014, although its impairment model differs from FASB’s current expected credit loss (CECL) approach.

The FASB standard was intended to align accounting with the economics of lending by requiring the immediate recording of the full amount of credit losses that are expected. As a result, experts say the credit risk group and the accounting group will need to work closely together to comply with the standard.

“There’s going to be a need for education from accounting to the rest of the business partners,” said Jonathan Prejean, a Deloitte & Touche LLP managing director. “Obviously, the credit risk function is going to be involved, and your forecasting and your planning, and even the lines of business and how they write their business.”

5 considerations

Here are five things experts say preparers may want to consider as they begin to implement FASB’s expected credit loss standard:

The standard is not just for banks. Financial institutions and their accounting for their loan portfolios will be affected the most by the standard. But it also applies to other organizations.

Lease receivables, trade receivables, and held-to-maturity debt securities are among the other assets organizations may hold that are within the scope of the standard.

“This is not just a banking standard, and it’s not just loans,” said Jonathan Howard, a partner in the Deloitte & Touche LLP national office. “It applies to all entities that have assets that represent the right to receive cash that they carry at amortized cost.”

Find the data gaps. Because the implementation date is a few years away for the FASB standard (2020 for public companies), Prejean said, companies have time to collect the data they need—if they don’t already have it.

The issuance of the standard gives them the ability to move forward with an implementation plan, and a big part of that plan will be finding gaps where they don’t have data they will need to perform the accounting required by the standard.

“They can start pulling that data and making sure they have it, and make sure they’re collecting it if they have the ability to collect it,” Prejean said. “If they don’t, make sure they can find a way to get it, and then make sure that it’s appropriate for financial reporting.”

This includes making sure the appropriate controls are in place around the data.

Use previous work. Banks may be able to take advantage of their work from previous compliance exercises as they implement FASB’s credit loss standard.

“It’s important for banks to think about how they could approach the standard in the most efficient and scalable way, and look for similarities and synergies and maybe even corroborate some of the data and modeling as far as they can with existing models,” Van Roosmalen said.

Multinational organizations that have been implementing IFRS 9 may use that work to their advantage as they implement the FASB standard. Banks that have undergone stress-testing exercises may be able to expand the scope of that work to assist with the accounting implementation.

Remember disclosures. Figuring out how to collaborate with the credit risk function, evaluate your existing credit risk model, and select the appropriate risk model for your loan portfolio will be a big part of implementation.

While focusing on those issues is important, preparers shouldn’t lose sight of the enhanced disclosures and the data that will be needed to fulfill the disclosure requirements.

Don’t delay. Gathering data may be a challenge, but Howard said getting a quick start and figuring out what data are needed will help organizations make a smooth transition.

“I’m not saying everybody needs to go do a dry run today,” he said. “But you’ve got time. So I think people need to start thinking about how they are going to apply the standard so they can set up the processes to go about collecting that data, capturing that data, so that might ease your transition.”

CW Associates CPA's Hawaii: Modernizing Fax Filings with the IRS

Federal and state agencies, including the court systems, are modernizing by allowing the electronic filing of petitions and other court documents. For example, Alabama, Texas, Illinois and Missouri have e-filing systems for court petitions. In 2014, two federal courts (2nd and 9th Circuit Courts of Appeals) piloted an e-filing program for all courts in which the user is authorized to file electronically. The program is expected to become national in the next few years.

The IRS is also modernizing, although not as fast as many practitioners (or the AICPA) would like. Calls to the IRS and cases can be routed to any IRS employee or office all over the country. We are seeing more appeals conferences conducted by telephone with the various service centers instead of in person and expect Skype-type conferences to become more common. For many years, the IRS has electronically processed bank account and wage levies on delinquent accounts. Now, the IRS is also able to issue electronic summonses to eBay and PayPal.

Since November, the IRS has expanded the acceptance of signed forms by fax, including consents to assess additional tax of any amount, taxpayer closing agreements involving any amount and consents to extend the time to assess tax.

This small step may eventually lead to virtual audits and virtual hearings. The expanded consent will be most useful and necessary to preparers who need to perfect (correct small ministerial errors in) the original but rejected e-filed returns during the filing process, resolve post-filing issues and perhaps file delinquent client returns. Original tax returns are not accepted by fax, except as part of return perfection, presumably to encourage e-filing. As such, an unsigned original return can now be perfected with a faxed signature. Generally, faxed signatures will be considered legally sufficient where the IRS has been in contact with a taxpayer, and that contact has been documented in the IRS files.

Note that the IRS will not independently send an acknowledgment of received faxes, but the taxpayer or representative with a power of attorney (POA) may call and request a verbal confirmation of receipt if they feel that the fax report that is generally generated by the sender is insufficient.

The IRS is working on Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) changes that reflect this new policy, which will apply to all divisions that assess and collect income tax, employment tax, excise tax, estate tax, gift tax, generation-skipping transfer tax, tax-exempt filings and employee plan determinations. However, most determination letters, including those for employee plans and exempt organizations, will not be accepted by fax. A list of forms that are now accepted (where the IRS has been in contact with the taxpayer and documented the taxpayer history file) includes:

• Requests for innocent spouse relief and injured spouse claims.
• Taxpayer statement about a refund.
• Installment agreements and offers in compromise (Forms 433-D and 656).
• Collection information statements (Forms 433-A and 433-B).
• Early referral requests, fast track mediation requests and requests for collection due process (CDP) hearings.
• Letters to designate a payment, request non-filing of a lien, or a lien release or lien withdrawal.
• Letters to request non-assertion of a penalty or to provide a reasonable cause statement.
• Election by a small business corporation (Form 2553).
• Consents to assess additional tax or to extend the statute of limitation on assessing tax.
• Taxpayer closing agreements.

-

In summary, the electronic world is here and the more the IRS is able to service taxpayers electronically, the better our experiences with the IRS will likely be. 

Check out the AICPA’s IRS Procedure & Tax Administration page, which includes resources to also help with your experiences with the IRS, such as an IRS Organizational Chart and IRS Hotlines Quick Reference Chart.

Valrie Chambers, CPA, PhD, Associate Professor of Accounting, Stetson University. She has over a decade of public accounting experience as owner/partner-in-charge of a CPA firm in Houston that specialized in advising small business owners. Dr. Chambers has been published in numerous journals and received the Texas Society of CPAs Outstanding Accounting Educator Award for mid-sized Texas universities in 2012. She has volunteered for the AICPA and the IRS’ Volunteer Income Tax Assistance in Corpus Christi.

Gerard Schreiber Jr., CPA, Partner, Schreiber & Schreiber CPAs. Gerard specializes in tax, accounting and consulting matters for individuals and small businesses. He serves on the AICPA IRS Advocacy and Relations Committee and has authored numerous courses and articles on various tax subjects.