Category: Acct/Tax TechTips

New COVID Relief Law Now Signed | Checks Start This Week

The Maryland Legislature passed Governor Larry Hogan’s Maryland RELIEF Act of 2021 this past Friday and the bill was signed into law on Monday, February 15. Beginning TODAY, Tuesday, February 16, Comptroller Peter Franchot and the staff of the Comptroller’s Office will begin processing more than $200 million in payments to our most vulnerable families, people stuck awaiting decisions on their unemployment insurance claims, and struggling businesses and nonprofit organizations.

Visit the RELIEF Act Information page on the marylandtaxes.gov website to:
• check eligibility for payments
• watch a video from Comptroller Franchot
• read Frequently Asked Questions
If you have any RELIEF questions, call (833) 345-0787 or email ReliefAct@marylandtaxes.gov

Sales and Use, Tobacco Taxes | Digital Advertising Tax Imposed, Tobacco Taxes Increased

The Maryland Senate voted to override Gov. Larry Hogan’s veto of a bill that taxes digital advertising in the state. The legislation was vetoed by Gov. Hogan on May 7, 2020. Tobacco taxes are also increased under the bill. Digital Advertising Tax Digital advertising includes ad services on a digital interface, including banner ads, search engine ads, interstitial ads, and other comparable types of ads.

The digital advertising tax rate is based on the assessable base (annual gross revenues derived from digital advertising in the state) at the following rates:

• 2.5% of the assessable base for a person with global annual of $100 million through $1 billion;
• 5% of the assessable base for a person with global annual gross revenues of $1 billion through $5 billion;
• 7.5% of the assessable base for a person with global annual gross revenues of $5 billion through $15 billion; and
• 10% of the assessable base for a person with global annual gross revenues exceeding $15 billion.

Returns and payments are required as follows:

• persons with annual gross revenues from digital ads in the state of at least $1 million in a calendar year must file a return and make payment on or before April 15 the next year;
• persons that reasonably expect annual gross revenues from digital ads in the state to exceed $1 million must file a declaration and pay estimated tax, on or before April 15, June 15, September 15, and December 15 of that year.

Tobacco Tax Increases

Tobacco tax rates are increased as follows:

• the tax per pack of cigarettes is increased from $2 to $3.75;
• the tax on other tobacco products is increased from 30% of the wholesale price to 53%.

In addition, the sales tax on electronic smoking devices is imposed at 12%. The sales tax for vaping liquid is 60%.

Effective Dates

Although the bill provides for effective dates of tax years beginning after 2020 for the digital ad tax and July 1, 2020 for the tobacco tax changes, under the Maryland Constitution, vetoed legislation is effective 30 days after the Governor’s veto is overriden. Since the veto was overriden on February 12, 2021, the effective date of the legislation is March 14, 2021.

See H.B. 732 for more information.

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

You know you’ve been around for a while when the stuff you were taught in school is later found to be incorrect. Case in point, Pluto is not a planet. My very educated mother just served us noodles, instead of nine pizzas. Some people take offense to this; as if Pluto, an object of impossible distance, an object that had existed for most of human history without human awareness of it, could know of its own demotion, let alone care.

From an accounting point of view, the concept of conservativism, once taught as one of the pillars of our profession’s conceptual framework has also been found to be outmoded. I’m not sure how I feel about it, but if you have strong opinions on this, please use the email below to share your thoughts!

One thing that hasn’t been outmoded, is the concept of professional skepticism.

To that end, I’d like to apply this towards those endless barrage of articles that spell the end of compliance at the hands of CAS.

Last year, in the ‘before times’, that oldest established granddaddy of publications, the Journal of Accountancy, published a survey that made statements that clients didn’t value compliance and the future of accounting lay in the cloud.

Now if you’ve been following these posts for the past 2 years, you’ll know that we have walked the bleeding edge of cloud technology in our firm, but there is no way that our clients don’t care about compliance. I don’t know about your clients, but my clients absolutely care about keeping their nose clean and see me as their primary means of doing that. Accountant as kleenex, as it were.

I don’t mean to besmirch the cloud. Bank feeds, when they work (that’s a future post), are a game changer, but they, and AI and the like are not the death knell of compliance. As long as we have a Congress that likes to change the tax laws, the laws of thermodynamics state that accountants will be the counter force to the inevitable entropy of our clients’ supporting documentation. (I may have fudged that last one; physics wasn’t my thing.)

What I never understood is why we have to have one thing over another, why we have to look for the silver bullet that cures everything. We don’t live in that world, any more than we live in a world where people don’t care about complying with the tax laws. People actually do care about complying with the laws. While you get a few that do it for altruistic and selfless reasons, most care because they just want to go along and get along without the government giving them any grief.

And also, the cloud is a useful tool to assist with compliance.

The professional skepticism of our training should see this false dichotomy for what it is.

Don’t be cowed into thinking that tax work is going away – it most definitely ain’t.

And also, the cloud can help take some of the burden out of compliance work.

One last thing, the acronym, CAS – client accounting services is the standard term. I prefer ‘cloud accounting services’ as it seems more accurate and BPO (Business Process Outsourcing) to refer to ‘client accounting services’. Call me a rebel – now that conservatism is out, we can stretch a little!

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

The Maryland Association of CPA’s Announces Appointments of Tom Hood and Jackie Brown

The Maryland Association of CPAs’ Board of Directors is proud to announce that Tom Hood, CPA, CITP, CGMA, is joining the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (the Association) as executive vice president of business engagement and growth. Hood, who has served as MACPA president and CEO for the past 24 years and is widely recognized as one of accounting and finance’s most influential figures, will report to the Association’s CEO, Barry Melancon.

The MACPA’s board has appointed Jackie Brown to succeed Hood as the association’s president and CEO. Brown, who has spent the past 40 years as part of the MACPA team and has served as its chief operating officer for the past 23 years, will provide continuity of leadership during the transition.

To learn more about this exciting development please see here.

U.S. Department of Labor lssues Rule to Simplify lndependent Contractor Classification | NFIB Small Business Legal Center

One question long presenting difficulty for small businesses is whether someone qualifies as an employee or an independent contractor under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Today, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) clarified this distinction with the issuance of a final rule setting forth the appropriate standard to determine who qualifies as an employee or independent contractor.

For more information, read the full release here.

Correction of Forms 1099-MISC for Certain CARES Act Subsidized Loan Payments |  Announcement 2021-2

This announcement notifies lenders who have filed with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), or furnished to a borrower, a Form 1099-MISC, Miscellaneous Information, reporting certain payments on loans subsidized by the Administrator of the U.S. Small Business Administration (Administrator) as income of the borrower that the lenders must file and furnish corrected Forms 1099-MISC that exclude these subsidized loan payments.

Section 1112(c) of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act, Pub. L. No. 116-136, 134 Stat. 281, 309-310 (March 27, 2020) (CARES Act), 15 U.S.C. 9011(c), authorizes the Administrator to subsidize certain payments of principal, interest, and any associated fees owed by a borrower on certain loans. Section 278(c)(1) of the COVID-related Tax Relief Act of 2020 (COVID Relief Act), enacted as Subtitle B of Title II of Division N of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, Pub. L. 116-260, 134 Stat.1182 (December 27, 2020), retroactively provides that such a payment is not included in the gross income of the person on whose behalf the payment is made. This provision is effective for taxable years ending after March 27, 2020, the date of the enactment of the CARES Act. Section 278(e)(1) of the COVID Relief Act. Section 278(c)(2) provides that no deduction shall be denied by reason of the exclusion of the loan payments from gross income.

For more information, continue reading Announcement 2021-2 here.

#TechTips: SurePrep & TaxCaddy, Pt II

In this installment of #TechTips, we discuss SurePrep & its client facing app, TaxCaddy. SurePrep Binder, as you may recall, is a work paper organizer that allows all levels of staff to review and organize a set of tax documents. TaxCaddy is the client facing side which allows clients to scan or take pictures and OCR the documents into your SurePrep software for review. This exciting tech will save you time and money!

Read more over on our blog.

Maintaining a Healthy Work-Life Balance During COVID-19

Unfortunately, due to the COVID-19 pandemic many professionals have found themselves at home for an extended amount of time. Achieving a good work-life balance takes careful thought and planning to avoid increased amounts of stress and burnout in your work.

Before the pandemic we found it much easier to switch off work as we would leave the office and head home. Now home is the office and vice versa. To help break up this new norm we have 3 helpful hints which can help the home professional.

Read our tips on our blog.

2021: The Year of Alignment with John Kennedy – Tuesday February 16, 2021

The previous year has left an impact on all of us, and to not have been affected, changed or transformed would be both unrealistic as well as unfortunate. As we accelerate into 2021, and the next tax season, there is wisdom in making sure you and your team are in the best shape possible to hit the ground running.

On February 16th, we will address the health of you, your business, your team and your year. We will look at both the head and the heart of your business and direct insight and intention towards the “people” and “process” side of your firm, spotlighting mission, vision, values, accountability, communication, recognition and culture.

When companies and firms align their people and processes towards a common mission, vision, and outcome, the effort becomes less chaotic and more intentional, less reactive and more thought-out…more strategic, healthier!

Webinar Details:

• Date: Tuesday, February 16, 2021
• Time: 5:30 p.m. – 6:30 p.m.
• Price: Free! (Members Only)
• Speaker: John Kennedy
• *This is a non-CPE event. 

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

Two years ago, if you can believe it (where does the time go?), we covered a series of cloud based apps in the initial cycle of this blog. We’ll now revisit some of them to see which ones work, which ones didn’t, and mark an essential truth about cloud accounting: Gone are the days of deciding whether to pay for an upgrade to the next year’s version, or camping out to wait in line for a CD-ROM. The software we use today is constantly updated, patched, fixed, and improved. It’s a much better way of working, though it does mean that we don’t get to pretend we’re saving money by not upgrading to the next year’s software.

This time, we’re going to profile the app, SurePrep Binder and its client facing app, TaxCaddy.

Our firm has used these apps for three seasons now and we’re even more set on keeping this app than we were before, especially after this most recent tax season; a season to end all seasons.

A quick recap of what these apps are:

SurePrep Binder is a work paper organizer. It allows all the levels of staff (from admin to junior to reviewer to partner) to each read through and organize a set of tax documents. Each team member can sign off with a unique marker and they can also place tickmarks, highlights, and other notations directly on the source documents. As the return is finalized and file, the SurePrep binder is then printed to a PDF that preserves the notations and links. This PDF can then be posted to your firm’s secure portal (see our post about CanopyTax for secure portals) for safe storage.

The best part of this app is that there’s a feature that integrates the data in the SurePrep Binder into your firm’s tax software. Most of the major platforms are supported. We use Lacerte in our firm.

I swear; this is the most beautiful button in all of tax prep. It’s a little innocuous blue button with the word ‘Tax’ emblazoned on it. Pushing that button sends the W2s, the 1099s, the 1098s, the K1s, and even some other document types directly into your tax software. Data entry is reduced to simply pushing this button!

The software isn’t cheap, but it is less expensive than a junior accountant and it doesn’t make mistakes, nor does it take sick days. The robots aren’t coming; they are already here and you’d be remiss if you don’t consider implementing them into your practice. The efficiencies to be gained are beyond compelling.

TaxCaddy is the client facing side of the program. It is similar to Intuit Link only with a better interface and forgive the pun, it’s more intuitive to use, for all parties (preparers and clients). The TaxCaddy app features a mobile app, in addtion to a webpage, that can allow the client to use their mobile phone to take pictures of their tax documents.

This isn’t like a normal picture though. TaxCaddy’s software turns the image into an OCR’able document. This process is what allows the most beautiful button in all of tax prep to do its magic.

Additionally, TaxCaddy facilitates secure signing of engagement letters, 7216 Use and Disclosure consent forms, and the compliance questionnaire. You can also use their eFile Release Form signature request workflow.

We also post the clients’ tax returns to the app upon completion of the return. That way, when the inevitable request for a return comes in, we can direct them back to the app to download it.

Prior to SurePrep Binder and TaxCaddy, we had to have several file cabinets to store W2s, organizers, 1099s, and all the other paper that comprises a tax file. We would painstakingly pore over each document, hard code them into Lacerte, make scans of the documents and then return the documents to the client with their printout of the return. We would be reliant on a team of people, admin and production staff, to make all this happen.

After three seasons using these apps (SurePrep Binder and TaxCaddy), our process is: post up the engagement letter and questionnaire, send out the invites. As people fill post up their docs, we can then bounce that down into the SPBinder, and then push the most beautiful button in all of tax prep. Then we review the data for accuracy – and we can have more time for analysis and planning. Completion of the return is another push of the button to create PDFs from Lacerte and post them to TaxCaddy.

It’s such an amazing thing to not have to worry about a bottleneck of paper return assembly, especially down the final stretch of the season.

We’ve saved on paper, copies, toner, postage, envelopes, staffing, and most importantly, time – even after taking the software cost itself into account.

The accounting industry is going through a succession issue at the moment. I’ve noticed that succession and transition isn’t limited to our industry; it’s going on with our clients, too. One thing the younger generations are demanding from their service providers, including tax preparers, is on-demand cloud based technology.

One way to future proof your firm is to embrace the future.

Food for thought.

Good luck with your coming tax season and stay safe!

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

One consequence of the nightmare that is COVID19 has been significant progress towards the dream of a paperless office. All things considered, I could do with more paper and less virus, but that’s not up to me.

Many pixels have been spilled about the need for firms to implement a secure portal. We covered one such portal, CanopyTax, about two years ago. Our firm has been using this app since 2018 and we love it. The company was founded by CPAs who handled a lot of controversy work. Their creation has many different features to it beyond just a basic document management system. This post will focus on a relatively new addition that is super relevant to what we’re all dealing with in this remote work environment.

The company publishes a mobile phone app for both practitioners and clients to download to their phone.

You’re probably thinking, Another app to clog up my phone. Really?

This app is actually useful. It has many features, but the most important one for now is that it can take pictures of documents and automatically upload them to your client’s specific profile on the portal.

But clients can take pics from the phone already — why is this different? Great question; I’m glad you asked.

Taking a pic with the phone’s camera app produces *.JPGs of dubious legibility. CanopyTax’s mobile app produces *.PDFs.

While working from home, and separated from our firm’s $10,000 all-in-one high capacity scanners/printer/copier, I’ve found myself using the mobile phone app to upload lots of documents such as bills, IRS notices, notes from meetings, etc.

It’s fast and easy to use — for us, and most importantly, for our clients.

Let’s face it, our clients are already using their phone to take pics of notices and other documents that they like to send via email (blank checks, W2s…sigh…), the notion of a ‘no click policy’ was never really workable, now in the age of COVID19, it’s impossible.

So, since we can’t eliminate a bad behavior of sending docs with PII through email or txt msg, we can at least redirect that same behavior to this app. Instead of taking a pic with the phone’s camera, they’re taking a pic with this phone app that posts the doc in *.PDF format to our secure portal.

It’s the little things.

If you’re interested in CanopyTax, drop us a line at the email below. Good luck and stay safe!

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org.

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

Code Section 7216, or as I like to refer to it, ‘the law of unintended consequences’, is always there, bubbling away beneath the surface like a slow growing tumor.

Here at the MSATP, we’ve produced a seminar on this subject and have also published a series of articles in The Free State Accountant that covered the law in depth.

For this Tech Tips post, we’ll keep it brief.

Many app providers are based outside the USA. Some of those apps have servers in the USA thanks to AWS, but others are based in their home countries. It’s important to look into these app companies to see what their processes are so you can get whatever disclosures are required.

For 1065, 1120, and 1120S returns, a simple paragraph in your firm’s engagement letter is enough to satisfy the requirements. For 1040 returns, you’ll need a letter using mandatory language, that must be separate from the engagement letter, and notably, must state the name of the person receiving the taxpayer’s information. When it comes to such apps, I don’t know how you’d identify the recipient’s name – these robots don’t have names; this isn’t Star Trek or Star Wars. (For information on the specific language for a 1040 engagement requiring a 7216 Disclosure consent, see IRS Rev Proc 2013-14, page 19.)

The other question to ask, when researching apps, is to inquire if they make use of offshore labor. Because the law defines the type of data covered as ‘taxpayer information’ as much broader than ‘personally identifiable information’, when a company uses ‘anonymized data for algorithm improvement’, its possible that this could be covered under 7216.

In other words, even if you don’t offshore, even if you look down on the notion of offshoring, you are not clear from 7216 if you use certain apps.

When it doubt, get the form filled out.

As an update on an app we covered about two years ago, SurePrep and its client facing TaxCaddy, recently announced that they are rolling out a feature that will make it easier to obtain the 7216 Disclosure Consent through their workflow for this coming tax season.

Good luck and stay safe.

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

There’s an old ‘School House Rock’ song about ‘Mother Necessity’. Without technology, where would we be? With all the edu-tech options out there, I find myself bringing up these old videos to show my school aged children. It’s odd thinking about such things from my own childhood as ‘vintage’, or ‘retro, but time marches on.

A few years ago, in preparing for the coming tax season, we looked at one of the primary bottlenecks to our process, engagement letters for businesses. Lacerte makes engagement letters and organizers ‘easy’ for 1040s, but the process for businesses was not as strong as it could be.

Enter the technical solution: two apps, GoProposal and Practice Ignition.

The apps aim to take the pain out of building an engagement letter and proposal, getting it signed, and the best part, once the client signs off, an invoice is created in your accounting system and emailed to the client – as if there was another reason to switch to Xero, the integration between these apps is such a time saver.

That’s not the end of the story though. As with all things in our profession, there are a few details to attend to.

The most important thing to understand about these two apps, and about Cloud Accounting Services in general is that it requires a different way of thinking about accounting and tax work, from a business prospective. We spend so much time working in our businesses that we just don’t have enough time to work on our business. These apps can help you take a big step forward in that direction.

We’ve been told to ‘productize’ and standardize our offerings. As if it were that simple. All of our clients are snowflakes; infinitely different from one another, and infinitely complex. And yet, there are elements of the process that can be standardized.

With apps like GoProposal and Practice Ignition, you can set the types of services you offer, group them by type (i.e. individual tax, business tax, payroll, bookkeeping, advisory, attest, etc), and set the way each of them are billed out (i.e. flat fee, $x per y#, etc). You can also link them to specific lines in your firm’s Chart of Accounts.

You can then build templates in advance and/or customize an engagement per a unique situation.

The document that is delivered to the client is a professional looking PDF that contains a proposal that summarizes what you’re offering (and charging) and an engagement letter. Embedded in the PDF is a button that allows the client to accept and sign for the proposal. That workflow then creates an invoice in your firm’s cloud based ledger and sends same to your client.

Like anything, the apps do have a learning curve, though they are intuitive enough that you can work your way through them in time.

Now is the time of year to consider such an app for your practice. Not only will you add efficiency to your practice, you’ll cut down on paper and make your firm’s operations just a little safer in this age of COVID19.

We’d like to hear from you! Please submit your own tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

Greetings from the lockdown, my fellow practitioners!

Today we’re going to profile an app called AutoEntry. This app provides a unique value proposition to the marketplace and demonstrates how far the cloud has come in such a short while. Yes, it’s true that certain jobs are under threat by the robots, but it’s also true that new jobs are being created.

AutoEntry is a program that seeks to automate certain facets of the data entry process. Specifically, A/P and A/R documents (bills and invoices), expense reports, and also bank statements. In our usage of the app, we focused on the bank statement process.

Before getting into the details, we’ll first give a little context. The situation should be familiar, sadly, to all of us. It was the midst of tax season, the work was piling up, and it was still early enough in the season when, even with years of experience, we still had the naive optimism that this season would be better. Despite the growing backlog, there was still a semblance of order and organization. Ahh, the before times…

And then, the call came. Followed by a series of emails, after hours txt msgs (that’s text messages for the digital illiterati), and more calls. A client was in need of a tax return for a refi and there was an urgent need to get the return done. Missed tax appointments, blown off reschedules, and unreturned phone calls not withstanding, queue needed jumping.

In the haze of overtime, the calculus of making the phone calls stop so we could get back to the work — that is to say the short term win, won out. (This type of thinking is a topic for another column!)

The fact that the client was on Xero helped, but there was still the matter of 12 months of back data to enter. Now, Xero comes with an ability to upload a *.CSV file, and this feature can shrink the data entry time down considerably. Working with *.CSV files is really a topic for its own column – for purposes of this article, just know that some steps needed to happen before we could use the *.CSV file feature. Namely, we had to get the data out of 12 months of PDFd bank statements.

Depending on your version of Adobe, you could potentially copy and paste the text from the PDF into an Excel worksheet, but most likely, you’d spend hours trying to format that data. Unless you’re one of the few that know some of the formulas and formatting tricks to clean up the data. That too is a subject for its own article.

In this case, there just wasn’t time.

Enter AutoEntry. We created our account, sent them the PDFs of the statements and within a few hours we received a properly formatted *.CSV file. At that point, we did a data sort by name, coded the transactions per the G/L account number from the Chart of Accounts and then uploaded the file. Xero’s workflow allowed us to mark these transactions as fully reconciled with the upload. It was a tax season miracle!

Now for some detail: AutoEntry doesn’t price by a monthly subscription like the other apps we’ve profiled. They go strictly by usage. For those old enough to remember those classic arcades where you’d trade in a Lincoln or Washington for some tokens that could be used on the games, you will be familiar with the concept. You purchase some ‘tokens’ through the site; the more you purchase at once, the lower the per token cost is. Each page works out to about $0.33, which goes down depending on how many tokens one purchases at once. In our case, we were just trying it out so we bought about $20 worth. This particular project cost about $6. The time it saved was well worth it.

Comparing this with the other methods like QuickBooks Desktop, One Write Systems, Excel, and there is really no comparison. The algorithm took the data from the statement, rendered in a usable format, we then added the accounting codes and uploaded it to Xero. Done.

With all that said, I’m not ready to switch our entire firm over to the software, but it is a relief to know that such a tool exists when the need arises. Reason for this position is that when a bank feed is available, that is the first choice to use, but when feeds aren’t available, or the volume of data exceeds a feed’s capacity, this app should be next on the list of go to solutions.

We’ve got another project coming up where a different client opened up three new credit cards and forgot to tell us. While we were able to setup feeds for them in their Xero file, the feed could only pull a 90 day history. We’ll be using the rest of those tokens to back fill in the data from when they opened the cards to when the feeds started.

Hope this helps. Stay safe!

We’d like to hear from you: Please submit your tech tips to us! We will award a free subscription to The Tax Book to the person who submits the best tip. Please submit your tips to this email address: techtips@msatp.org

Thanks, and catch you next time!

TT

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

We need to talk.

Those four little words are laden with baggage, I know. In the crush of the most insane tax season since 1913, when every thing happened at once, when nothing makes sense, when the rules change daily, when our clients are freaking out and grasping at whatever shred of hope we can provide them, we need to have one more uncomfortable conversation.

Last year, as part of the IRS’ continued attempts to reduce taxpayer identity theft, we were required, as part of our PTIN renewal to state that we had a plan for what to do in case of a breach.

The good folks at Quest Insurance have some materials that can help you develop your tech plan if your plan resides between the ears, when it really should reside in a filing cabinet, or your firm’s secure portal.

This post of Tech Tips is not about your tech plan. It’s about your COVID-19 plan.

No one has been talking about this, and we need to. We’re numbers people, so I’ll lay this out by the numbers.

It has been widely reported in reputable news sources that it’s not a given that we will have a vaccine for this virus. It’s possible that a vaccine will never be possible. If there is a vaccine for this virus, it is a long shot for it to be available within eighteen months. Further, it has been reported (again, widely and from reputable sources) that we as a species won’t truly get a handle on this virus until ‘herd immunity’ approaches 70%.

So, some numbers: 70% of 7 billion humans is: 4.9 billion people.

Back in the beginning of our lockdown (Mid-March for those who’ve completely lost any sense of time; said for my own benefit as much as yours, gentle reader), there was an article detailing the experiences of people in Italy as they coped with rising infections and deaths and an austere lockdown. This was about the time that the news here was reporting how Italians would sing to each other from their balconies each night.

This article went on to state that we in the US are trailing Italy’s experiences by a few weeks. The writer of this article, a US journalist based in Italy, noted that a few weeks prior to writing that article, she could say that most people knew of someone who had contracted the virus, and that on the date she was writing the article, most people would say that they knew someone who had died from the virus.

We need to examine where we are in this journey. Do you know someone who has contracted the virus? Do you know someone who has died from the virus? (I hope you don’t and you never do.)

My answer is yes to the first question and, mercifully, no to the second, as of now.

Many of us – though not all of us – have been able to lock our offices and work remotely. Many of us are taking precautions and sanitizing our groceries and wearing masks in public. This is all good, and we need to keep it up, even as these steps take their toll on our emotional reserves.

Let’s return to that 70% figure. If that is true; if what the scientists are saying is to come to fruition, then we need to ask ourselves this question: “What is our plan for if one of us or one of our family members contracts this virus?”

Do you have a plan for what will happen to your clients if you are unable to work?

MSATP has a committee, The Assistance Committee, whose sole purpose is to assist those firms that suffer a loss of one of its principals.

Understand that I’m not trying to be overly morbid, and one doesn’t need to die of this virus to suffer a severe business interruption event from it. But we need to address this issue. A few suggestions are in order:

1. Designate someone that can contact your clients in the event that you become incapacitated.
2. Designate someone that can access your office, your computer and paper files, in the event that you become incapacitated.
3. Keep your keys and passwords accessible to this trusted person so they can take over with minimal interruption.
4. Leave ‘a trail of breadcrumbs’ for your fellow accountants to follow should the need arise for someone else to pick up where you would have left off.
5. Notify your clients that you have a plan in place.
6. Reach out to MSATP for support and resources.
7. On the home front, designate an area of your home where you or your loved one can sleep, separate from the rest of the family.
8. Discuss these issues with your family members.
9. If you have a will or other documents, revisit them and make sure your family knows where they are kept.

We are accountants. We don’t have the luxury of ignoring the unpleasant matters that occur in society. If we see something, we have to say something.

70% herd immunity. Have a plan to deal with that number. And in the meantime, wash your hands.

By Jonathan Rivlin, CPA

As a part of the #WFH (Work From Home) movement, security — which has always been important — must take an even higher priority. And also helping our clients stay in business, keep up with all the new federal and state rules and programs, counseling a business owner through the notion that they are not “essential”…

We have a lot of compelling issues demanding our attention, and also, some of us are now teachers for our primary school-aged children.

Here’s something that will make your blood run cold: “2FA Scams.”

Many sites require “2FA” or Two Factor Authentication. The IRS requires it also.

What this usually means is that when you login to a website, that site will want to send you a 4, 5, or 6 digit PIN code via SMS to your cellphone. Some sites work with an authenticator app (Google and Microsoft each have their own app) that provides a 6 digit token that changes every 60 seconds.

That’s all well and good, assuming your cellphone hasn’t been stolen. And when I say stolen, I don’t mean as in physically.

It’s possible for your phone’s number to be ported to another device without your knowledge or consent. This is often called Sim Card Swapping.

In those cases, the thief would then receive all the 2FA notifications. And then, you’re toast; the thief then can change all your access codes, addresses, bank numbers, etc, and you’ll have profound difficulty proving this to a customer support rep over the phone.

The best way to protect yourself from this is to set either a PIN or challenge question with your cellphone provider. And here we get variations in security. Some cellphone problems don’t have this ability and their users are exposed. Others do offer this ability and provide some level of protection.

Here is a call to action: Call your cellphone provider and ask if they have the ability for the account manager to set a security PIN or password. If they do, great – set this up. If not, change companies to one that does. Here is an overview of the four major carriers:

• Verizon – provides an ‘administrative lock’ and ‘port freeze’ feature, but you have to call in to set it up.
• Sprint – requires PINs by default
• AT&T – allows, but does not require a password
• T-Mobile – prompts users to setup PINs

If you have AT&T, you need to act on this as this company appears to have the weakest security protocol.

Not only are our cellphones a vector for viruses (don’t just wash your hands, wash your phones!), but they are also a vector for identity theft. Out of all the things on your to-do list, this should be considered both urgent and important — as in, drop what you’re doing and attend to this.