New from Quickfinder-QuickPackage QF-X

IRS Announces End of Package X!

The IRS will no longer release Package X, the handy print collection of crucial tax forms and instructions you rely on for tax preparation-but don't despair! Quickfinder Editors have gathered everything you need into two collections: QuickPackage QF-X for Individuals and QuickPackage QF-X for Businesses.

• Over 300 pages of IRS forms and instructions.
• Spiral binding that lies flat and allows you to easily copy the forms you need.
• Forms that are organized and easily found under logical tabs.

The AICPA's Small Business Practitioners Tax Forum was held July 17 - 18 in Chicago, Ill. This year's forum had a new focus on Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Compliance, demonstrated by the more than 130 pages of notes that accompanied Monday's first session "Tax Update" presented by conference chair Mark Mares. Fortunately, he didn't go through every item on every page, just the most significant legislative, judicial and administrative rulings from the past year that impact small businesses.

The same train of thought was projected into the future during the lunch presentation "The Legislative Crystal Ball". This informative lecture looked at legislation and legal issues currently working their way through Congress and the courts, as well as a discussion of the ideas put forth by the President's Tax Advisory Panel with hints regarding which ideas might be reappearing in other forms in the future.

On Tuesday, the exploration of legislative and legal issues continued but this time with from the state point of view. Dorice Pepin of TruePartners Consulting LLC presented "Multi-State Tax Traps for Small Business". Much of this session dealt with royalty and other intangible expenses that many states are attempting to tax and the legal challenges to these statutes. Gross receipts taxes and the streamlined sales tax project were also discussed briefly.

In general, it was an information packed two (or three, if including optional sessions on Sunday) days. The information was covered very swiftly, and not always in great detail, however, it was a great opportunity to learn what changes are most significant for small businesses this year.

Only LexisNexis Tax Center streamlines your tax research to help ensure you don't miss any critical information. Only Tax Center gives you access to an exclusive combination of federal, state and international content and SEC materials including cases, codes, regulations, analytical materials and news from CCH®, Tax Analysts®, LexisNexis®, Matthew Bender® and Kleinrock. Only Tax Center allows you to conduct a single search across all of this critical content and link between primary and secondary sources.

People have always been willing to change in order to improve the future. Consequently, old dogs can learn new tricks as they find more effective ways to adapt and leverage new technology, methods, processes, ideas, and social networks that help them improve the return on the investment they make in human capital. But can they create new tricks?

According to Ron Baker, author of the white paper "Old Dogs Can't Create New Tricks", it's not likely. Basically, what he means is that the older we get the less likely we are to create a ground breaking innovation. He supports this conclusion with historical evidence, although elder statesman Benjamin Franklin often skews the averages, and examples from the modern business world.

Even more importantly, he discusses the implications of his conclusion on the accounting profession. The accounting industry has a 27-year (and counting) innovation curve and he cites an AICPA statistic that 62 percent of their members are 40 or older. The risk of this is that the profession will stagnate and become irrelevant without an influx of new, younger, members. A better question is whether the old dogs will allow the puppies to create new tricks.

To read the entire white paper, "Old Dogs Can't Create New Tricks" by Ron Baker, Click Here.

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