On May 31, 2007, the Board of Directors of Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards, Inc. (CFP Board) announced the adoption of an updated Standards of Professional Conduct, which sets forth the ethical standards for CFP professionals. CFP professionals found in violation of CFP Board's ethical standards may be subject to public discipline, up to a permanent revocation of the right to use the CFP® marks.The updated Standards will become effective July 1, 2008.

The alternative minimum tax (AMT) continues to hit hard at taxpayers from all walks of life. Approximately 23.4 million people, representing 26% of all individual taxpayers, are expected to be subject to the AMT in 2007, according to the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. No real relief from Congress is in sight. And Wall Street is finally sitting up and taking notice.

U.S. House and Senate committee members are scrambling to enact legislation that would close what some call a loophole in the Tax Code, a provision that provides tax breaks to partnerships that engage primarily in passive activities and that are publicly traded.

Growing risk awareness and recent natural disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina, may have prompted an increasing number of companies to invest in disaster recovery (DR) as part of the business continuity program – but how safe is that investment?Just what, indeed, is being recovered? Few organizations have any real insight into the true extent of their corporate assets. In fact, on average, upwards of 50 percent of assets on the register cannot be located.Not only does this challenge the validity of the DR solution but it also raises huge questions in the event of an insurance claim.

Certified Financial Planner Board of Standards Inc.

As CPAs get deeper into financial services and wealth management, they will have to solve more and more complex financial problems which often cut across unfamiliar planning territory. One group of clients many firms hope to close, can be both challenging and rewarding. They are high net worth individuals, those clients who fit into the $10 million-and-above club. If you are fortunate in grabbing the opportunity to inform and perform for high net worth clients, you must stop and think about what is important to this group.What drives and motivates them?

By Simon HurstOf the main office applications used in professional firms, word processors are the least well used, spreadsheets the most overused, and databases the most underused. Part of the reason for this is that database applications are often seen as being the preserve of experienced developers, who use them to create comprehensive database applications.

Like life insurance, beneficiaries of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) and workplace accounts (401k, 403b and 457 plans) inherit the proceeds directly without having to go through probate court. And IRAs and 401(k)s have become popular in many estate plans in recent years because they are not subject to probate costs. But unlike life insurance, inherited tax-deferred accounts can trigger a big tax bill for beneficiaries if they transfer the funds to their banks before they talk to their accountants or financial advisers, SFGate.com reports.

Utah and Virginia offer two of the best plans to save for a child's college education and Alabama has one of the worst, according to a new report by Morningstar, Inc.Parents have been turning to so-called 529 plans to save for their children's college education, and Morningstar is making the selection process simpler by outlining the wide disparity in performance, costs and variety of investment options in the dozens of state plans available.Morningstar started its 529 survey in 2004, and Utah and Virginia have been at the top of the lists since then.