Have you wondered whether you actually need to have a professional accountant? Here are 5 signs that confirm you do:

1)     You earn over $200,000 per year – Your odds of being audited once you start earning over $200,000 a year increases to nearly 4%. While this may not seem like a large number, it’s actually an increase of over 300%. Having your financials in order in case this does occur is vitally important once you become a high-earner.

2)     You are a business owner or are self-employed – Utilizing the services of an accounting professional is vitally important for any business owner or entrepreneur. Tax laws change annually. The current US tax code has over 7 million words in it. Making sure all of your deductions are included, your assets are depreciating properly, and you are maximizing your tax savings will wind up saving you money in the long run.

3)     You are setting money aside for others – When putting money aside for your children, grandchildren, or anyone you want to take care of, it’s very important to use a financial professional to decide which vehicles to use for tax-deferred or tax-free savings. This includes college savings plans or trusts.

4)     You are incurring large capital gains tax – The key to success in paying big capital gains tax is paying at long-term rates. An accountant can help you with a Qualified Small Business Tax Credit, minimize your taxes, and help you set long-term payment goals.

5)     You are experiencing rapid growth in your business – Not only is keeping your finances up to date time-consuming, it’s also complicated. When you’re experiencing rapid growth, it’s time to call in an accounting professional. Having more customers, employees, and vendors is going to require more paperwork and number crunching and can rapidly become impossible for you to manage.

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has revised the wage base for 2018. The Social Security wage base is $128,400 for 2018 and not $128,700 as previously reported by the SSA. The wage base for 2017 is $127,200.

Just as efforts to meet the Form W-2 deadline at the end of January get into full tilt, scamsters are at it again. The IRS has issued its fourth reminder for “National Tax Security Awareness Week” urging taxpayers to avoid identity theft by watching out for W-2 email scams that often surge during filing season.

Though most of the attacks making headlines are those aimed at large organizations or political groups, roughly a third of all data security breaches in the last few years have occurred in the health care industry. Of these, employee error caused three times as many breaches as external attacks. In addition, more than half of the businesses who experience a security breach have fewer than 1,000 employees.

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires all health care providers to take steps to protect the private information of their patients from hackers, thieves, and staff. While no data security system is foolproof, there are some best practices that can help to decrease your risk of an information breach, especially from employee error. Here are some of the best practices you should be enforcing:

• All computers should be placed where screens are not visible to patients or visitors.
• Every computer should have an encrypted password for access.
• All passwords should contain a mixture of letters, numbers, and/or symbols and should be changed regularly.
• Passwords should never be written down in any place accessible by the public. It is preferable that they not be written down at all.
• Every staff member must be fully educated about the importance of data security practices, their responsibility to follow these practices, and the potential repercussions for failing to comply.
• Office computers and internet should not be used to check personal email or visit non-work-related websites.
• Ensure all firewalls, software, and operating systems are kept up to date.
• Wireless networks should be shielded from public view.
• Every computer should have antivirus software installed and kept up to date.
• Do not access office data remotely from a shared computer or unknown WiFi network.
• Smartphones, tablets, laptops that have access to any work systems or emails should be password protected in case lost or stolen.
• All hard copies of patient data should be shredded.
• All transmitted data should be encrypted.
• Sensitive information, such as social security numbers, financial data, or other private information, should never be sent through email or instant messaging services.
• Consider purchasing cyber insurance protection.
• If a breach does occur, take appropriate action immediately. Contact your legal counsel for advice.

Your first and best defense against the theft of sensitive patient information is the integration of data security best practices into your practice policies. Meet with your team to discuss any changes you need to make and your expectations of compliance. Protect yourself, your team, and your patients by working to protect the integrity of your systems.

1)     The word “Tax” comes from the Latin “Taxo” which means “I estimate”.

2)     The Federal tax code was 400 pages in 1913 – in 2010…it was 70,000 pages

3)     The number of words in “Atlas Shrugged” is 645,000. The Bible has approximately 700,000 words. The number of words in the Federal Tax Code is 3,700,000.

4)     While every person who earns a paycheck pays Federal Income Tax, only 43 of 50 states charge their citizens income tax. The states that do not have income tax are Alaska, Florida, Nevada, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, and Wyoming.

5)     The IRS is a U.S. government agency that is responsible for collecting taxes and enforcing revenue laws. It is part of the U.S. Department of the Treasury.

6)     Over 1 million accountants are hired each year in America to help with taxes.

7)     In 1691, England taxed the number of windows on a house. As a result, people built houses with very few windows and even boarded up existing windows. This caused nationwide health issues due to lack of airflow and eventually ended in the tax being repealed in 1851.

8)     Emperor Peter the Great of Russia put a tax on beards in 1705.  He hoped this would encourage men to be clean shaved – a look that had become popular in Western Europe.

9)     The word “accountant” is from the French word “compter”, which means “to count or score”.

10)  England has a tax on television. Color TVs are taxed more than black-and-white TVs.  However, if a blind person has a television, he or she pays only half the tax.

11)  Disposable diapers are subject to sales tax in Wisconsin, but cloth diapers are not.

12)  In Texas, cowboy boots are exempt from sales tax.

13)  The Federal form 1040, was introduced in 1913. It was required of any U.S. permanent resident with a net income of $3,000 or more and was only three pages.

14)  Albert Einstein is quoted as saying: “The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax.”

15)  Alabama is the only state in the United States to have a playing card tax (10 cents). On the flip side, Nevada gives a free deck of cards with every tax return filed.

16)  The IRS provided approximately $416 billion in refunds in 2011.

17)  WWII led to the creation of the Bureau of Internal Revenue. This later became the IRS, which is the world’s largest accounting and tax-collection organization.

18)  One of the most significant relics of Egyptian history, the Rosetta stone, is actually a tax-related document. It was so important that it was written in three languages.

19)  According to some historians, plane geometry was actually invented by tax collectors and not Euclid (the famous Greek mathematician) in order to determine land size for harvest tax.

20)  In 1787, U.S. citizens could only vote if they were taxpayers.

21)  Newspapers use large sheets of paper because of the “knowledge tax”. In 1816 the British taxed newspapers per page, resulting in them using larger paper to add more content and shorten the number of pages.

22)  There is no known civilization that did not have taxes. The very first civilization, the Sumerians, recorded their tax records on clay cones.

23)  Since 2001, there have been more than 4,500 changes to the tax code.

24)  Taxpayers lose out on millions by not filing returns – tax payers gave up $950 million in refunds in 2012.

25)  More than one-fifth of paper tax returns contain an error.

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