The Accounting Podcast

Stories in this episode:

• Here's How The New Postcard-Sized 1040 Differs From Your Current Tax Return
• The New Tax Form Is Postcard-Size, but More Complicated Than Ever
• California Unanimously Passes Historic Privacy Bill
• California Passes Groundbreaking Consumer Data Privacy Law With Fines for Violations
• Analysis: The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018

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Questions asked in this episode: 

• Does the decision affect sales of services online across state borders in addition to goods?
• Are there any strategies businesses can use to avoid sales or quantity thresholds for collecting sales tax?
• Will we see an increase in states taxing services? What process or technology should we look at for tracking sales by jurisdiction?
• Is it even worth it to comply?
• Will Amazon help out Amazon Marketplace sellers by doing more to track and collect sales tax?
• Are there any benefits to this decision for businesses?

Stories in this episode:

• South Dakota v. Wayfair, Inc. — Wikipedia — Check out the Wikipedia article on the SCOTUS decision for an overview of the case or to catch up on the news.
• Overstock.com Expanding Physical, Digital Presence Following U.S. Supreme Court Ruling — Overstock.com — Overstock.com issued a press release stating that the company plans to expand "its physical and digital operations, including supply chain, marketing, and recruiting, into states in which tax nexus concerns previously prevented the company from having a direct presence."

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Stories in this episode:

• Last week’s IPO, Avalara, is today’s big winner in internet tax rally — Accounting Today — Shares in the sales tax management firm rose as much as 32 percent after Wednesday’s ruling, extending gains to more than double since its public debut last week. 
• Supreme Court rules that internet businesses must collect all state and local sales taxes — Los Angeles Times — Check out this article for a chart showing states that will benefit most from the Supreme Court decision, including California, Texas, New York, and Florida
• Why Amazon is the winner of the Supreme Court sales tax ruling — CNBC — The Supreme Court overturned a ruling from 1992 that allowed online retailers to skirt sales tax collection responsibilities if they didn't have a physical presence in the state. But Amazon stands to benefit from the ruling, experts say. Amazon already collects sales tax on the products it sells directly, and the ruling doesn't make clear how third-party sales should be taxed.
• Steve Forbes: Internet sales tax would be fatal for small businesses — Fox News — Steve Forbes argued before the ruling that extending sales tax collection requirements to out of state, online retailers will have a dramatic, ugly impact on small businesses and entrepreneurs.
• The Land Of Duty Free — Planet Money — The Planet Money team follows the surprising origin of duty free stores, and try to answer the question: Are they really saving you any money?
• A machine has figured out Rubik’s Cube all by itself — MIT Technology Review — Unlike chess moves, changes to a Rubik’s Cube are hard to evaluate, which is why deep-learning machines haven’t been able to solve the puzzle on their own. Until now.

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Stories in this episode:

• IRS budgets $291M on technology for tax reform — Accounting Today — The Internal Revenue Service plans to spend close to $300 million to implement the new tax law, including approximately $20 million for an estimated 450 new forms, instructions and publications.
• Cloud Technology Advances the Accounting Profession: A Survey of Accounting and Finance Professionals — FloQast — 85% of accounting organizations face challenges hiring and retaining their talent. What are more than half of all organizations surveyed doing to address this hindrance? They are adopting modern technology to enable staff to be more efficient.
• Billable Hour ‘Makes No Sense’ in an AI World — Big Law Business — Panelists see a future where lawyer’s failure to use AI will be ethical lapse, malpractice liability

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Stories in this episode:

• Aprio to acquire HPC — Accounting Today — Aprio LLP, a Top 100 Firm, has signed an agreement to acquire HPC, a cloud-based accounting firm that services its clients online.
• Top 10 Accounting Firm IT Survey Surprises — CPA Practice Advisor — An IT survey reports that more than half of midsize and large accounting firms (51%) have outsourced their entire IT infrastructure to the cloud. This is a noticeable increase from 2016, when only 23% had made the jump.
• Vermont will pay people $10,000 to move there and work remotely — CNN Money — There’s a new law in Vermont that will pay new residents who work remotely for out-of-state companies up to $10,000.
• Gusto Launches Modern Directory of Accountants — CPA Practice Advisor — Gusto, the payroll, benefits and HR technology company, has launched a new partner directory of accounting firms that provide such services.
• Spotlight Reporting announces new wealth management partnership — Spotlight Reporting Blog — Spotlight Reporting has announced that wealth data software solution, myprosperity, is their newest integration and strategic partner. The partnership will “allow accountants and advisors to report on and advise on both business data and personal or family wealth in the powerful Spotlight Reporting tool-set.”
• QBO Payroll Done Right: Contractor Direct Deposit — QuickBooks Blog — In addition to helping businesses with employees run payroll more efficiently, QuickBooks payroll now supports businesses that want to pay independent contractors.
• New Feature: Proposal Reminders — Practice Ignition — With proposal reminders you now have the option to set a practice wide cadence for following up and re-sending proposals - automatically! Once you’ve set your cadence, Practice Ignition will take care of the rest.
• Slack and ADP: Looking up pay stubs and booking time off just got a lot easier — Slack Blog — Now with the new ADP Virtual Assistant app, you can get that information sent to you where you’re already working — in Slack. There’s no need to switch tabs, switch tools, or switch contexts, everything you need can be conjured up by typing “help” or using simple slash commands.
• Making payroll a breeze with Xero + Paychex — Xero Blog — Thanks to a new integration with Paychex General Ledger Service (GLS) you can quickly and easily connect to your Xero account, post payroll entries to your general ledger in just seconds and save time and reduce errors.

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Stories in this episode:

The Indicator - Time Bandits [Podcast] - Take a listen to Planet Money’s new daily podcast. This episode features time tracking software and how some employers’ policies are potentially causing “wage theft” by shorting employees on their paid breaks and rounding down to the quarter hour increment.

Business Insider - Slack's latest product update proves that vendor lock-in is over, but you may never want to leave Slack again - A new feature in Slack allows developers to build integrations where users can interact with other applications from directly inside Slack. For instance, now you can like, comment, and act on Asana notifications from Slack without having to leave the app.

Intuit - Intuit Third Quarter Revenue Growth Tops 15 Percent; Company Raises Full-Year Guidance - Intuit finished the quarter with over 3.2 million QuickBooks Online subscribers, up 45 percent.

Business Insider - Millennials trust Amazon and PayPal over banks when it comes to personal data - A survey of 2,000 Brits found a majority of 18-24-year-olds trust Amazon and PayPal ahead of banks when it comes to protecting their personal data.

ZDNet - What is GDPR? Everything you need to know about the new general data protection regulations - General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is coming. Here's what it means, how it'll impact individuals and businesses - and how to prepare for it.

Gizmodo - 50,000 Las Vegas Workers Are Ready to Go on Strike Over Fears of Robots Taking Their Jobs - More than 50,000 union workers in Las Vegas are set to go on strike if new contracts are not settled by June 1, and at the top of the list of concerns for the Culinary and Bartenders Unions is protection against robot replacements.

The Guardian - The financial scandal no one is talking about - Accountancy used to be boring – and safe. But today it’s neither. Have the ‘big four’ firms become too cosy with the system they’re supposed to be keeping in check?

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AutoEntry began life as OCREX, a tool for extracting transactions from paper bank statements. Not long after, the company expanded to extracting information from other types of documents, including receipts, purchase orders, and invoices.

One thing that makes AutoEntry different than other document processing solutions is that it can extract full line item detail from documents, making it very powerful for businesses that need to get granularity out of their bills. The pricing is also different than other solutions — AutoEntry charges per document, not per client or company.

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Stories in this episode:

• Microsoft, Commonwealth Bank, KPMG partner for Wiise joint venture — ZDNet
• Wiise Guys: KPMG Teams Up with CBA Bank to Sell Microsoft Accounting Software — Digital First
• PayPal confirms that it is buying payments startup iZettle for $2.2B in an all-cash deal — TechCrunch
• Become EXCEL-lent: Excel Tips & Tricks for Accountants — FloQast

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Mentioned in this episode:

• Buffett’s Berkshire Braces for ‘Wild’ Swings From New Accounting — Bloomberg
• Net Worth Composition By Levels Of Wealth: Build A Business Already — Financial Samurai
• The Wealthy Are Hoarding $10 Billion of Bitcoin in Bunkers — Bloomberg
• Episode 823: Planet Monet — Planet Money

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Stories mentioned in this episode: 

1. The IRS really needs a new computer system — Accounting Today
2. What Accountants On NetSuite Need To Know From SuiteWorld 2018 — FloQast Blog
3. When Identity Thieves Hack Your Accountant — Krebs on Security
4. A Robot Does the Impossible: Assembling an IKEA Chair Without Having a Meltdown — WIRED

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