Weaver: Beyond the Numbers

Mistakes are costly in any industry, but when it comes to employee benefit plans, you're dealing with someone's retirement income and their livelihood. That's why being designated an employee benefits plan fiduciary is much more than crossing your T's and dotting your I's on paperwork.

In this episode of Weaver: Beyond the Numbers podcast, we discuss the role of fiduciaries with CPA Aracely Rios, an audit partner in assurance services. She'll discuss the role of good documentation in employee benefit plans and share helpful tips for navigating this landscape successfully.

"Their responsibility is acting solely in the interest of the plan participants for the purpose of providing retirement benefits, and acting prudently," Rios said.

Rios said the most common plan mistakes are not following the plan document exactly. For example, Rios often sees plan mistakes that pertain to plan amendments such as changes to the compensation definition added to the plan document, that were not executed by the fiduciary.

"Another one is untimely contributions. You might be short-staffed and thinking, 'Oh I'll get to it when I can.' But that's not acting prudently on your employees' behalf because that means lost earnings for them," Rios said.

The important thing to remember, Rios emphasized, is to have a policy and procedures in place. For more resources, including podcasts and articles, visit Weaver.com/thought-leadership.

On today’s episode of “Weaver: Beyond the Numbers,” Partner Rob Myatt explains how tax reform is affecting the energy industry. It’s an important topic with never-ending changes in the last few years, beginning with the Brady Bill and culminating in the 2017 Tax Cut and Jobs Act. It’s a true tax cut overall, but whether it helps or hurts an individual case depends on each specific tax situation.

Because most energy companies are structured as partnerships, tax reform didn’t do a lot to benefit the industry, but it didn’t have too many negative impacts, either — and there are trickle-down benefits. The impacts mostly emerge from lower tax rates, the 199A deduction, and a new rule allowing 100% expensing of capital expenditures. Click the link above to listen.

Subscribe and listen to future episodes of Weaver: Beyond the Numbers on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Technology continues to change the way that Americans are doing business. More consumers than ever are shopping online, helped by outdated laws about sales tax collection for remote sellers. Congress was asked to act and change the laws, but when they moved too slowly, the states took their own action. Enter South Dakota v. Wayfair, a lawsuit that made a lot of headlines in 2018. Now, retailers like Wayfair, Amazon, and others are forced to start meeting “economic nexus” laws, which state that the threshold for whether or not you must charge sales tax in a state no longer depends on whether you have a brick-and-mortar location there, but on your volume of sales or transactions with its residents. An estimated $34 to $35 billion are on the line here, so states are becoming increasingly aggressive about getting their money.

On this episode of “Weaver: Beyond the Numbers,” we interviewed George Rendziperis and Shane Stewart of Weaver’s State and Local Tax Services practice about how the landscape is changing with these new economic nexus laws.

Is your company complying with the new laws in every state where you have customers? What could happen if you don’t get into compliance within the next 24 months? How can you comply across state lines, and how will each state know if you owe sales tax? Listen here, or on Apple Podcasts & Spotify.

Trip Hillman and Kyle Morris join Weaver: Beyond the Numbers this week to talk about how companies can maintain compliance in today’s “cloud offering” society.

To the average user, there is still much uncertainty about the cloud. However, it has revolutionized business capabilities. It has allowed companies to scale without having to invest time and start-up dollars in pricey machinery and server rooms. Companies can also access the cutting-edge technology of huge corporations on a small business budget.

A lot of companies store information in the cloud whether it be email, document storage or data. There are cloud considerations for every company; Hillman and Morris explain on the podcast why it's so important that all businesses understand their security posture and maintain a compliance program.

In this episode of Weaver: Beyond the Numbers, host Shelby Skrhak sits down with Adam Jones, Strategic Governance Consultant for Weaver and owner of Capitol Jones Consulting Firm. Jones and Skrhak take a detailed look at how the state of Texas is fairing economically in 2019. In Jones' eyes, it's one of the best in the United States, and the numbers don't lie.

As he puts it, compared to the rest of the nation, the Texas economy just “rocks," and is extremely diverse. Texas proved itself to be a LIFO, or "last in first out" economy, meaning the last to be in and first to be out of the national recession, and is only continuing its march upward. It’s the only state in the union that can “produce citrus fruit and winter wheat in abundance” as well as lead in other markets, including energy and the manufacturing sector.

And that’s not all that’s thriving. The most recent Dallas Fed projection shows Texas at a 2.4 percent employment growth. Though Texas sees that as a “cooling” of the economy, compared to other states it's a solid number and is a sign of a healthy economy.

For context, the Texas Comptroller’s economic projection for the next biennium was originally pretty bleak at a $0 budget surplus, but is now seeing a revised projection of a $2.8 billion surplus.

In addition to the $2.8 billion, there’s also an economic stabilization fund, or “rainy day fund," sitting at a historic $15 billion. This puts the legislature on pretty good footing, and has a pretty decent fall back, according to Jones.

For more information about Texas’ current economy, including the spot price of oil, and how Texas continues to recover after Hurricane Harvey, give this episode of Weaver: Beyond the Numbers a listen.

The new FASB standard is having a drastic effect on lease accounting. Though what you pay isn't changing, how you pay and categorize your leases is seeing a major shift. Under the FASB standard, lessees must use their balance sheet to recognize operating lease assets and liabilities, not just capital leases, which puts a new strain on CFOs and their teams to adjust.