Snippets from Last Week

[1] To open, an apology to Ryan Ellis, Gina Gwozdz and Eva Rosenberg (Tax Mama) for overlooking them in my end of tax season memo last week. Congratulations are also in order for each of them.

[2] The conference went well. Lesley Davidson, Taylor Stevenson and I presented two papers: one on a management performance compensation plan for English soccer managers and a second on asset protection trusts (Tennessee recently became the tenth state to adopt this form of trust). XBRL is about to become HUGE, CPA firms with publicly-traded clients need to being sending seniors and managers to CPE on XBRL NOW! (if not earlier). Additionally, intermediate texts (and perhaps audit texts) need to add a chapter to cover the impact of XBRL. Finally, IFRS/FASB financial statement convergence also needs attention in textbooks, especially for intermediate accounting. The most disturbing presentation of the conference: an economist showed that housesholds with males born after about 1957 as primary earners and with income over $50,000 have a NEGATIVE return from Social Security (that means: you would be better off putting your Social Security contribution in a mattress than sending it to Washington). Marginally, but only marginally positive results (<2%), occurred if the household was dual earner or if woman (thanks to longer life expectancy) was the primary wage earner.

[3] Another snippet: a bank sign: "If you combine 'the' and 'IRS", you get 'theirs'."