News

Why is retaining talent consistently ranked as one of the greatest management challenges impacting the accounting and finance profession? What really drives the profession's perpetually higher-than-average turnover rates? The 2023 Illinois Society of CPAs Insight Special Feature, "Righting Retention," aims to answer those questions and more.

In a letter addressed to members of the House Financial Services Committee and Senate Banking Committee, the AICPA and all 54 state CPA societies, including the Connecticut Society of CPAs asked that H.R. 4035 and S. 2623, the Protecting Small Business Information Act of 2023, or similar legislation to delay, be included in any year-end legislative package. The bills would delay the Beneficial Ownership Information (BOI) reporting requirement until all three rules under the Corporate Transparency Act have been finalized to specify that all such rules would take effect on the same date.

Effective Jan. 1, 2024, an employee’s receipt of severance pay will now result in disqualification from receiving unemployment compensation benefits for the period of time covered by the payment.

Connecticut has passed four directives regarding CPA Exam credit retention.

Mfon Akpan, CGMA, DBA, an assistant professor of accounting at Methodist University, and Scott Dell, CPA, DBA, an assistant professor of accounting at Francis Marion University, explain why CPAs and other professionals can be left behind professionally if they don't spend time learning about tools such as ChatGPT. They talk about productivity gains, the competitive divide that could develop, and how, in the short term, more training is needed to fully harness generative AI.

The number of students earning U.S. postsecondary accounting degrees fell sharply in the 2021-22 academic year, according to a biennial American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) report on trends related to accounting graduation rates, the CPA Exam and hiring demand by accounting firms. Some 47,067 students earned a bachelor’s degree in accounting in the 2021-22 school year, down 7.8% from the previous year, according to 2023 Trends: A Report on Accounting Education, the CPA Exam and Public Accounting Firms’ Hiring of Recent Graduates. The number of students who earned a master’s degree in accounting, meanwhile, fell 6.4% to 18,238. In the previous Trends report, the comparative rates of decline were 2.8% and 8.4%, respectively.

Treasury's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) on Wednesday that would extend the deadline for companies created or registered in 2024 to file their first beneficial ownership information (BOI) reports. The NPRM (RIN 1506-AB62) would provide 90 days for those companies to file initial reports rather than the original deadline of 30 days from the earlier of the date on which the company receives actual notice that its creation or registration has become effective or the date on which the secretary of state first provides public notice that the company has been created or registered.

In response to significant health, economic, education, and travel disruptions resulting in CPA Examination candidate hardships, the Connecticut Board of Accountancy will extend credit periods through June 30, 2025, for CPA Examination credits that expired from January 30, 2020(1) through May 11, 2023(2), which have not been subsequently replaced by new credits for the same sections. (1) The United States Department of Health and Human Services declared a national Public Health Emergency. (2) The United States Department of Health and Human Services announced the expiration of the national Public Health Emergency.

On August 30, the Biden administration issued a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking from the Department of Labor to extend overtime pay eligibility to more than 3 million workers. The initiative comes following a similar attempt by the Obama administration over eight years ago to revise overtime eligibility regulations under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Under the new proposal, employers would be required to provide time-and-a-half pay for eligible workers who work beyond 40 hours per week. The previous threshold for this requirement set in 2019 by the Trump administration—$35,568—would be increased to $55,000.

New initiatives will be supported by individuals across the CTCPA membership. Looking for member engagement!

No policy issue has dominated the accounting profession over the past several decades as much as accountant education – specifically, the 150-hour education requirement.

A new or growing business may need to devise creative recruitment strategies to reach the most qualified individuals. In today's labor market, many small and medium-sized businesses face additional hiring challenges thanks to recent inflation and economic fluctuations, which have created uncertainty for both employers and job seekers.

When CTCPA member Destiny Hartmann says that the organization has changed her career trajectory, she’s not exaggerating. As a junior at Eastern Connecticut State University, Destiny volunteered to contact local CPA firms to try to get firms to come to the Eastern career fairs and talk with students.

By Timothy P. Hedley, PhD, CPA, CFF, CFE, Executive in Residence – Fordham University, CTCPA Chair-elect, and ESG Committee Chair

By Jim Norton, CPA, Principal – GRF CPAs & Advisors and CTCPA Advisory Council Chair

By CTCPA Chair Michael Maksymiw Jr., CPA, Aprio Firm Foundation

A U.S. accounting firm is not prohibited by a White House executive order regarding U.S. sanctions against Russia from providing tax advisory and preparation services to the U.S. subsidiary of a Russian company in certain scenarios, according to guidance issued Thursday by Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).

IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig updated members of the Senate Finance Committee Thursday on the Service's performance in the soon-to-be-concluded tax filing season, as well as longer-term assessments of its efforts to modernize its operations, fill staffing gaps, and improve taxpayer service and enforcement.

By Jim Norton, CPA, GRF CPAs & Advisors Budgeting. Planning. Budgeting and planning. Financial planning and analysis. FP&A. Projections. Models. Forecasts. Pro formas. These are just a handful of terms that are often used interchangeably when talking about the process of analyzing an organization’s financial position. The buzz phrase that seems to resonate most with people lately is financial planning and analysis, or FP&A.

Meet Joel Black, Chair of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board and Richard Jones, Chair of the Financial Accounting Standards Board.