The New England Accounting Advisor

With passage by the Senate on June 23, 2015, the General Assembly gave its approval to the state's $8.7 billion FY2016 budget, tax-and-spend legislation that eliminates state income tax on Social Security benefits for many Rhode Islanders as well as removes taxes on utilities for businesses. Specifically, the budget eliminates the sales tax that non-manufacturing businesses pay on electric, natural gas and heating fuel bills. The tax will be eliminated in FY2016 at a cost to the state of $20 million. The original proposal had the tax phased out over a five-year period at a cost of $4.9 million in FY2016.

Comment period extended until end of June
 
The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) proposed amending ASU 2014-09 Revenue from Contracts with Customers (Topic 606) to clarify two key issues: how to properly identify performance obligations and account for licenses for intellectual property in the new standard.
 
The new standard requires entities use a five-step revenue recognition approach:

A CBIZ Talks podcast about Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting requirements

The Affordable Care Act requires all IRS reporting for 2015 to be completed by early 2016 and that’s not going to be easy.

Kathleen Hayes and Michael McKee from Bloomberg Radio’s Taking Stock program recently talked with Ron Morrison, Business Unit President of CBIZ Clearview, about what employers with 50 or more employees need to do for ACA reporting.

A CBIZ Tofias Talks podcast about what the new proposed revenue recognition standard may mean to you

Revenue recognition is a lot more than just when your business collects cash or when it delivers goods or services.

That’s the issue that Kathleen Hays and Michael McKee from Bloomberg Radio discussed with David Lewin, Managing Director and Leader of the CBIZ Tofias Accounting Advisory Practice.

Click on the image to the right to download this podcast. Highlights of the discussion include:

A CBIZ Tofias Talks podcast about income tax and economic nexus

Can a state tax your company even if you don’t have a physical location or payroll obligations there?

Spoiler alert: in some states, yes (with more states to come).

That’s the question that Kathleen Hayes along with Michael McKee on Bloomberg Radio discussed with Tarra Curran, Managing Director in the Tax Group at CBIZ Tofias and Leader of the New England State and Local Tax Practice.

Employers Must Prepare Now for New Reporting Requirements

While the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has imposed a number of changes for employers since its inception in 2010, one of the upcoming reporting requirements may be the most challenging yet. The ACA added Sections 6055 and 6056 to the Internal Revenue Code, which requires insurers and applicable large employers to file information returns with the IRS and to provide statements to their full-time employees, similar to Form W-2, about the health insurance coverage offered by the employer.

A CBIZ Tofias Talks podcast about US corporate taxation

For reasons of lower taxes, does it make sense to move your life sciences company overseas?

That’s the question and topic Michael Corrente, Managing Director in the CBIZ Tofias Tax Group and Leader of the Life Sciences Practice, recently discussed with Kathleen Hays and Michael McKee during Bloomberg Radio’s show Taking Stock.

Click on the image to the right to download this podcast and hear Michael discuss:

Two federal agencies are scrambling to recover from data breaches that compromised Social Security numbers and other identifying information. The breaches indicate just how vulnerable entities can be to hackers.

In 2013, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and the G20 Countries developed a 15-Point Action Plan in an effort to address Base Erosion and Profit Shifting (BEPS). The OECD and G20 Countries worked together on this Action Plan in an attempt to address concerns about aggressive tax planning by multi-national enterprises (MNE) to reduce their tax liabilities by shifting profits to low or no tax jurisdictions. Part of the Action Plan called for changing transfer pricing documentation to enhance transparency, certainty, and predictability for tax administrators and taxpayers. The United Kingdom and Australia are two examples of countries that have quickly adopted the transfer pricing documentation guidance. MNEs need to reevaluate their transfer pricing documentation to ensure that it meets the standards set forth by the Action Plan, while considering the nuances of the rules in the various countries in which they do business.

The vast majority of states impose some form of a corporate income tax (CIT) to raise revenue from business entities. Although CITs can be complex, most businesses are familiar with how they work since most state CITs are based largely on the federal income tax code. However, not all states impose CITs. In fact, Texas, Ohio and Washington, three of the largest states, currently impose a gross receipts tax (GRT) instead of a CIT. Given the differences between GRTs and CITs, it should come as no surprise that multistate businesses, especially those based outside of those three states, are often confused as to how GRTs work. Herein we provide a general overview of GRTs, a brief description of the taxing schemes in Texas, Ohio and Washington, and some key distinctions that multistate taxpayers should be aware of concerning GRTs.