4 Key Savings for CPAs: CAMICO’s Exclusive Policyholder Benefits

CAMICO was recently honored by the Washington Society of Certified Public Accountants (WSCPA) as the society’s 2014-2015 Business of the Year.
In the preceding issue of IMPACT (103), we asked readers to complete a brief survey to help CAMICO better understand the social media habits and practices of our policyholders. Here are highlights of the survey results:
CAMICO offers several hours of free CPE to policyholders each year through webcasts on the LearnLive platform (https://university.learnlive.com/camico). We provide education on risk management specifically for CPA firms, brought to you by our experts, many of whom are CPAs themselves. You won’t find this level of expertise and depth of risk management content anywhere else.
CAMICO webcasts are an outstanding way to fulfill CPE requirements, and they offer a number of advantages. For example, our webcasts:
The Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015 changes the due dates for partnership and corporate income tax returns as well as for FinCEN Form 114, Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR), among other items.
The marijuana industry is a prime example of a “current, emerging and future” risk area, given the number of perplexing difficulties CPAs face when trying to assess the special considerations pertaining to marijuana business clients and to the CPA firms that service such clients. At the heart of the difficulties is the split between federal law, under which marijuana is basically illegal, and the laws in states where voters or legislators have approved measures to allow the use of marijuana for medical and/or recreational purposes.
AICPA’s Accounting and Review Services Committee (ARSC) issued Statement on Standards for Accounting and Review Services (SSARS) No. 21 in October 2014. This Standard marked the conclusion of the ARSC’s Clarity Project, which clarified and modified existing standards covering the performance of review and compilation engagements for historic financial statements.
By Suzanne M. Holl, CPA
Clients will sometimes ask their CPA to assist them with human resources-related matters. A common scenario involves the CPA assisting in the recruitment of a new CFO, or assisting the client to “redesign an accounting department.”
CPAs often run into situations where they have been preparing tax returns for a married couple for several years, and the couple decides to get a divorce. Divorcing spouses who ask their CPA to provide advice and services to both spouses often present a potential conflict of interest. Friendly divorcing couples don’t always stay friendly, and who do they blame when things don’t work out the way they had hoped? The CPA.
CAMICO issued an updated Alert to our policyholders in response to the IRS February 13, 2015 release of Rev. Proc. 2015-20 offering tangible property regulations (TPR) relief to small businesses and rental real estate owners. Rev. Proc. 2015-20 provides a simplified procedure for small businesses to comply with the final tangible property regulations, although with some trade-offs.
During the past 28 years that CAMICO Claims and Loss Prevention specialists have helped CPAs with fraud exposures and damages, many lessons have been learned. For instance, CAMICO claims experience consistently shows that fraud and defalcation are major contributors to significant professional liability claims for CPAs, as illustrated by the following chart on “What Causes the Big Claims.”