The days of face-to-face business meetings are quickly disappearing. Business lunches and conference calls have now been replaced by emails and instant messaging.

As more business is done online, organizations must be able to interact with their clients online to succeed. This also holds true for accountants and bookkeepers.

It’s no surprise that small and medium-sized businesses are more at risk in the current economic climate than their bigger brothers and sisters. The key to minimizing this risk is for organizations to fully understand their business cash cycles. After all, cash is king.

A recent article published by InAVate outlines the key strategies that organizations can use to manage their cash successfully. In order to succeed, many of these strategies require assistance from the accounts payable department.

by Diane Yetter, president of Yetter Consulting Services, Inc. and founder of The Sales Tax Institute

Most companies are carefully monitoring all cash outflows as a direct result of the uncertain economy. At the same time, however, many states are increasing their audit resources and conducting more sales tax audits in an effort to combat revenue shortfalls.

In many businesses, it’s common for management to allow employees and contractors to use company cars for personal use. While this practice is normal and allowed, the IRS does require that personal use be treated as a taxable fringe benefit.

The IRS has released new guidelines for choosing which method companies can use to determine how much to tax employees and contractors for personal use of a company car. Depending on the value of the vehicle, employers can use a cents-per-mile calculation to determine the tax.

In any criminal case, witnesses are essential to getting a conviction. While the Department of Justice regularly offers witnesses immunity from prosecution in exchange for their testimony, the Securities and Exchange Commission has limited protections for witnesses in financial fraud cases…until now.

Recent changes to abandonment periods in Arizona mean that property holders can expect to file unclaimed property reports twice in 2010. Meanwhile, new due diligence requirements in California may help better reunite owners with their property.

According to Arizona Senate Bill 1003, beginning on Nov. 23, 2009, abandonment periods for all types of unclaimed property were reduced, some significantly. For example, the abandonment period on traveler’s checks was reduced from 15 years to three.

Who Gets, and Who Sends a 1099 when There are Third Party Payers or Third Party Payees

Payments to certain parties are not always received by those parties. Sometimes payments have been assigned to other parties, who accept the payments on the payee's behalf. This is called the assignment of income.

People guard their social security numbers closely, and with good reason. If the wrong person gets a hold of that information, it’s all they would need to commit identity fraud and potentially cause the victim significant financial grief.

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that the IRS recently issued a ruling that creates a pilot program allowing filers of Form 1099 (1098 and 5498 too) to include a shortened version of the payee’s Taxpayer Identification Number when filing paper returns.

The IRS has announced the 2010 standard mileage rates for business use of a personal vehicle. For 2010, the rates have been lowered to reflect a slight decrease in the cost of gasoline compared to a year ago.
Beginning Jan 1, 2010, the standard mileage rates for the business use of a car (including vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:

• 50 cents per mile for business miles driven;
• 16.5 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes; and
• 14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations.

Despite the fact that little attention has recently been paid to merging U.S. and international accounting standards, officials with the Securities and Exchange Commission say the project has not been scrapped.

While they claim that the weak economy of the last year may have led the project to take a temporary back seat, it has also demonstrated why merging accounting standards is necessary.