PKF Texas - The Entrepreneur's Playbook®

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Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m here with Chip Schweiger, one of our audit Directors and one of the faces of the PKF Texas SEC team. Chip, welcome to the playbook.

Chip: Thanks, Jen. Good to be here.

Jen: So, I know this is the time of year where public companies are getting ready to file their financial statements, their disclosures… What do they need to look at with their Form 10-Ks when they’re getting ready to prepare those?

Chip: Yeah. So, Jen, last year we put out an analysis: comment letter trends from the SEC based on the last three years of comments. We saw some things on there that you would expect: the use of non-GAAP financial measures, comments on the management’s discussion and analysis and comments on fair value measurements, but there are also some new items on the list.

Jen: What kind of new items?

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Continue Reading How Comment Letter Trends from the SEC Impact Public Companies

Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here once again with Frank Landreneau, a Director and one of the faces of the International Tax team here at PKF. Frank, welcome back to The Playbook.

Frank: Thank you.

Russ: Our last time together, we got into the Tax Cut and Jobs Act, and of particular interest to me was how the interpretation of how you handle certain things from that Act has sort of evolved and matured and maybe even changed over time now that we’re in it two years. There was one particular—I had asked you to give me an example of how that rolls out, and you said, “Yeah, there’s this one part of running an international business, where there’s, like, three options that have evolved, really.” Mainly, from international tax people like you. One was literally to create a corporation and, correct me if I’m going down this path wrong, but one was to create a corporation.

Frank: That’s correct.

Russ: The second one was to actually elect a holding company that would play like it was the company.

Frank: That’s right.

Russ: And the third, mostly I guess for SMEs, was to actually create something that you’re just treated like a foreign company. Was I even close on those three?

Frank: Very close, actually. In tax law there is a lot of elections that create a tax treatment that may not be in line with legal structuring and so forth.

Russ: Yeah, you want to avoid that legal stuff, don’t you?

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Continue Reading Three Structuring Options for International Business

Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here with Frank Landreneau, Director and one of the faces of the International Tax team. Frank, welcome back to the Playbook.

Frank: Thanks, Russ. Thanks for having me; always a pleasure.

Russ: You bet. Next time you’re on I am going to count to see how many times have you been on, because I’m sure it’s more than anybody else.

Frank: Okay, great.

Russ: But our topic today is primarily going to be the Tax Cut Jobs Act that I think was passed in 2017, started in 2018, and it’s mind boggling to me, because we’re still sorting that thing out. Is that right?

Frank: That’s exactly right. And it’s been a little bit over two years, but we’re still getting guidance even now and even there’s pending guidance that we’re anticipating on getting even this year as we speak.

Russ: How does a business person make decisions based upon this thing playing out over such a long period of time?

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Continue Reading Restructuring Strategies for Small- to Medium-Sized Businesses

Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here once again with Kristin Ryan, Audit Senior Manager and one of the faces of the PKF Texas employee benefit plan team. Kristin, great to see you again.

Kristin: Thank you.

Russ: Last time you were on we got into the SECURE Act and the impact on defined contribution plans, which was fascinating. I like doing this, because I get to learn stuff, too. But there’s a lot more about what actually the impact is on defined contributions; that’s why I want to talk about it again.

Kristin: Yeah, absolutely. So, we focused on defined contributions, the 401(k) plans last time. We want to focus on pension plans this time. So, one of the big things that I’m hearing about a lot with the pension plans is their relief for nondiscrimination testing for frozen plans. So, now a plan that’s frozen, participation frozen contributions, doesn’t have to do as much testing.

Russ: And why would they do that?

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Continue Reading How the SECURE Act Affects Pension Plans

Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here once again with Kristin Ryan, Audit Senior Manager and one of the faces of PKF Texas’ employee benefit plan team. Kristin, welcome back to the Playbook.

Kristin: Thank you. Glad to be here.

Russ: Okay, so, I understand we’re going to talk today about the SECURE Act?

Kristin: That’s right. So, the SECURE Act has been a big buzz lately. It was signed on December 20th by the President, and the over-arching goal is to encourage participation in plans and retirement savings.

Russ: Well, I always think the way to encourage participation is have company matching funds. Is that right?

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Continue Reading The SECURE Act – What You Need to Know

Russ: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Russ Capper, this week’s guest host, and I’m here with Kristin Ryan, Audit Senior Manager and one of the faces of the PKF Texas employee benefit plan team. Kristin, welcome back to the Playbook.

Kristin: Thank you, Russ. Glad to be here.

Russ: I understand you’re here to tell us about a cool upcoming event.

Kristin: I am. We’re excited to have Monirah Bacnik, founder and CEO of brand28. She’s going to be here on February 6th at our office. We’ve invited clients and prospects to the event, and she’s going to be talking about employee engagement and communication strategies.

Russ: Communication strategies in this era is a little unique; you know, you’re dealing with this multi-generational workforce. It’s probably a challenge, isn’t it?

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Continue Reading Seminar Preview: Employee Engagement and Communication Strategies

Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, one of the faces of our fraud and forensics team. Danielle, welcome back to the Playbook.

Danielle: Thank you again for having me.

Jen: So, I’ve heard a little bit about treasury management. What do you do in that space, and what does that look like?

Danielle: Treasury management is just a fancy word for “banking services.” You’ll be able to reach out to your banker and find out what treasury management services they have, but it’s kind of the services that the bank offers you as a business customer typically.

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Continue Reading How Treasury Management Can Help Protect Your Business

Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, a director and one of the faces of our data analytics team. Danielle, welcome back the Playbook.

Danielle: Thank you again.

Jen: So, in this era of technology, and I mentioned in the intro—data analytics. One of the pieces that is data visualization. What are you seeing in that space, and how do you work with clients on that?

Danielle: Yeah, so, data visualization is what sounds like a scary term—people don’t really exactly know what it is—it pretty much is a fancy word for “pictures of graphs.” Just summering up data in a graph or a picture of some sort. A lot of people still seem to be very afraid to start, very afraid of, “What do I need to invest?” and afraid of, “What do I need to do?”

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Continue Reading What is Data Visualization and How to Get Started

Jen: This is PKF Texas the Entrepreneurs Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I am back again with Danielle Supkis Cheek, a director and one of the faces of our PKF Texas Consulting team. Danielle, welcome back the Playbook.

Danielle: Always happy to be here.

Jen: So, we’ve had a few other directors in here talking about lease accounting, and I know the standards have changed a little bit since the last time we had—I think it was Chris Hatten was here. Can you give us a little bit of an overview about what’s happened with the delayed lease accounting standards?

Danielle: Yeah sure. The AICPA’s Technical Issues Committee actually wrote an unsolicited letter to the FASB requesting an extension related to… it was really mainly tied to… that we have a lot going on with the Revenue Recognition implementation, I think we talked about the past. And then adding it to the leases, the leases can change your balance sheet a lot, and I think we’ve had a lot of people talking about the implications to your balance sheet of the actual standard, that it can impact your covenants or various ratio analysis.

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Continue Reading Get Started on Lease Accounting Now!

Jen: This is the PKF Texas Entrepreneur’s Playbook. I’m Jen Lemanski, and I’m here with Danielle Supkis Cheek, a director in our Entrepreneurial Advisory Services group. Danielle, welcome back to the Playbook.

Danielle: Thank you for having me again.

Jen: I know revenue recognition is a hot topic right now; we’re getting ready to go into audit season. What are some trends you are seeing where clients need to get ready since it’s kind of a new thing that they should be ready for?

Danielle: A lot of clients, particularly certain industry types, have a tendency to kind of not dismiss revenue recognition, but they don’t perceive it as large of an impact. There’s a lot of areas where the revenue recognition rules effectively didn’t change too much, but there’s some really specific nuances that did change, as well as the auditors are going to be looking at how did somebody assess to see if it changed or not. So even in industries that didn’t change very much, there is a certain amount of documentation that needs to be in place for the company having assessed it.

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Continue Reading How Revenue Recognition Impacts Companies