Jim Ulvog

Maybe you should hold on to employment reference checks forever. A few other ideas on reference checks.

Most sources I have read over the years suggest the document retention timelines for employee files should be three years after the person leaves the organization.

Perhaps you should set to permanent the retention timeline for reference checks on applicants. Might want to extend that to all the materials that support your screening of employees.

That is the suggestion from Richard Hammar in his March/April issue of Church Law & Tax Report. (If your interest in this post has lasted this far into the discussion, you probably ought to be reading that newsletter, available from Christianity Today.)

The reason for permanent retention?

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Jim Ulvog

About that “invoice” to renew your fictitious business name for $150. It’s either a “misleading solicitation” or a scam. Take your pick.

About a week ago I renewed the fictitious business name used for my publishing projects. Paid San Bernardino county $55. Only reason it took 20 minutes to prepare it is that the county revised the form since my last filing. Since I’m a cautious accountant, it was obviously necessary to read all the instructions just to make sure nothing changed.

Also received an invoice in the mail today that looks like it is from the Fictitious Business Name office reminding me the FBN is about to expire and the fee will be only $150.

Hmm. The form I just filed said the fee was $55.

If you look carefully, the outside envelope and “invoice” both contain one statement each saying this is not an official government request.

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Jim Ulvog

Look for exposure draft on NPO accounting overhaul in mid-April

Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting News reports Not-For-Profit Financial Statement Proposal Set for April Release.   The exposure draft from FASB is expected in mid-April.

Comment period will be open until end of July. Article says there is no current indication of an effective date.

My previous comments here and here.

Jim Ulvog

Why I chose a gun. Evil exists.

General Peter van Uhm is the Netherlands chief of defense. In the following TED presentation, he explains why he chose a gun to make the world a better place. Others choose a pen or brush.

He intentionally picked up a gun.

I’ve not talked about my military service on my blogs. His presentation is a superb proxy for why I took my turn carrying a gun, especially one that held frightening power.

Here’s the reason in one phrase: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

For ministries in California, did you know you must turn over unclaimed property to the State Controller’s Office?

If your ministry has old payroll checks or old payments to vendors that have never cleared your checking account and you can’t find the employee or vendor, at some point in time you need to turn that money over the State of California. I think there are similar laws in most states.

I’m guessing you may not have realized that. I’ll make another guess that you aren’t alone.

Just read a background article on the issue, which is referred to as escheat. I learned there is a 12% annual penalty on any amounts that should have been turned over to the state but were not.

Since I’m making lots of guesses, here’s another one. As hungry as the state is for tax revenue, we may someday see auditors from the State Controller’s Office start looking for money from businesses and charities that haven’t escheated funds. Twelve percent over three or four years could add up to some decent return on an auditor’s time.

You remember that old question about what to do with those old outstanding checks that haven’t cleared?

Writing them off doesn’t work as the answer anymore.  Those outstanding checks belong to somebody else.

The correct answer is look again for the payee and then after the proper time runs (3 years according to the article), you should start the specified two-step process and eventually get the money to the Controller’s Office.

A word to the wise is sufficient. Remember to render under Caesar what is Caesar’s. Since we are talking about money you intended to pay someone, consider that the laborer is worthy of his wage even if you don’t know his current address.

Following article appeared in the California Board of Accountancy’s newsletter Update #77 and is reprinted with permission of the California State Controller’s Office and the California Board of Accountancy.

(For ease of reading, this will not be posted with quotes around the whole article.)

 

CPAS CAN HELP CLIENTS MEET UNCLAIMED PROPERTY REPORTING REQUIREMENTS

Written by the State Controller’s Office for use by the California Board of Accountancy

Do you have clients who are holding unclaimed property? Perhaps it is a returned security deposit or refund check. Or, it could be stocks, bonds, safe deposit box contents, or other property. With $7.6 billion in unclaimed property received by the State Controller’s Office (SCO) and an estimated 28.6 million owner accounts available to be claimed, chances are, you may have clients who need your guidance in this area.

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Jim Ulvog

Be careful on the ‘net. It is cruel and unforgiving. Draw wrong attention and you get dissected, then shamed.

If you are in any social media platform at all, you need to be really careful about what you say. You need to be cautious in saying things that are flippant or can be misunderstood.

The twitter shame mob

A PR manager from a company sent smart mouth tweets to her 170 followers. Sent a few before travelling to London. Checked her phone there, found no reaction, and sent a few more smarty-pants comments.

While on the 11 hour flight to Johannesburg, another person saw her tweet, and sent it to his 15,000 followers hinting the person was a bigoted racist.

You know where this is going. Oh, her extended family she was on her way to visit? They are all ANC supporters.

The attack tweet went viral.  By the time this person landed in South Africa, there was someone waiting to take pictures of her as she turned on her phone and saw the deluge. Huge numbers of people around the world were trashing her and visiting Orwell’s two minute hate on her.

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Jim Ulvog

Good stuff for the nonprofit world – 2/15

I use the “good stuff” description on my other blogs for groups of articles I find of interest that might be of interest to my readers. Typically the articles don’t have much in common with each other. Think I’ll start doing the “good stuff” update here as well.

Here’s a few articles I’ve enjoyed over the last few weeks on nonprofit issues: burnout in helping others, good news for dissidents in denominational doctrine disputes, unintended consequences of free malaria nets. Three very different articles, but a common thread seems to be that life is complicated.

2/1 – The Guardian – The cost of caring – why I had to leave the charity sector – (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Price cut on print books

I’ve dropped the prices for the print copies of my books available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes store.

Here is what you can find on-line:

tragedy-cover

 Tragedy of Fraud – Insider Trading Edition

Story of Scott London’s fall from regional audit partner at KPMG to prison inmate because of his insider trading.

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Jim Ulvog

Rationalization in action is frightening to see

It is scary to see the power of rationalization. We humans can exert great effort to persuade ourself that wrong is right. With enough effort, we can persuasively argue that wrong is a positive good, the noble alternative.

It is unsettling to me when I see a client deeply believe that tax or accounting fraud is perfectly legitimate and I am the one who is in the wrong to suggest otherwise.  Worrisome is a watching a friend who believes that hurtful or destructive or nasty or evil behavior is Godly. Even more upsetting is when I catch my brain in full rationalization mode.

No, I’m not about to give any examples from clients, friends, or my life.

Unfortunately, we have a sad public example of rationalization racing at full power (sad pun intended).

(Cross-post from my other blog, Attestation Update.)

Some background on Lance Armstrong’s massive doping schemes

Many public sources report that Lance Armstrong has been found to use performance enhancing drugs for a very long time. He won seven consecutive Tour de France races.

According to Wikipedia, in 2012 he received a life-time world ban on all competitive events in all sports. His seven wins were revoked. He was found to have engaged in sophisticated doping schemes for many years.

In 2013, he admitted massive doping in an interview with Oprah Winfrey. He admitted using a long and specific list of banned substances and did so in each of the 7 Tour de France races.

Rationalization on display

Having set the background, let’s look at an article in The Guardian:  Lance Armstrong: I would probably cheat again in similar circumstances. Thanks to Professor Mike Shaub (twitter @mikeshaub) for pointing out the article.

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Jim Ulvog

More discussion on how to analyze a charity’s financial statements. Red Cross as an illustration.

There is some dialogue in the nonprofit world on how to characterize the ‘overhead’ of American Red Cross. Here’s a few articles.

1/9 – ProPublica – Senator Demands Answers on Red Cross’ Finances – Sen. Grassley is asking the American Red Cross to explain the math behind their widely repeated public comments that 91% of donations go to their services. Article says their audited financial statements reportedly show that 26% of expenses are for fundraising.

01/2015 – Charity Watch – Don’t Be Misled by Deceptive Charity Efficiency Claims – Do you see a big difference between these two statements?

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Jim Ulvog

Major overhaul of charity accounting rules on the near horizon

Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting News reports Proposed Changes for Not-for-Profit Reporting May Come in March. An exposure draft from FASB could be out in March.

This would be the biggest overhaul of NPO rules since statements 116 and 117 were released back in 1993. Has it been 20 years already? Wow.

Article point to several major areas of change: (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Yet another embarrassing tech error – sending a text message to the wrong person

Double check who is getting your texts.

We’ve all heard the stories of hitting ‘reply all’ instead of ‘reply’ when discussing something in an e-mail that shouldn’t go to ‘all’.

Here’s a new oopsie I learned about personally but at low cost.

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Jim Ulvog

At $15.62 an hour you are in the top 1% of earners

Admit It: You’re Rich is a discussion from Megan McArdle.

If you are making more than about $16 an hour, you are in the top 1% of income earners in the world. If your time horizon is the last few thousand years of history, sitting in the lower end of middle class or perhaps working poor, you would be in the very tip-top of the 1% for all of history.

(Cross-posted from my other blog, Outrun Change, because I think it may be of interest to readers of this blog.)

She is on the story of why people living on either coast are complaining they can barely get by on $350,000 a year.

I’m on it. So is David Sirota. And if your personal income is higher than $32,500, so are you. The global elite to which you and I belong enjoys fantastic wealth compared to the rest of the world: We have more food, clothes, comfortable housing, electronic gadgets, health care, travel and leisure than almost every other living person, not to mention virtually every human being who has ever lived. We are also mostly privileged to live in societies that offer quite a lot in the way of public amenities, from well-policed streets and clean water, to museums and libraries, to public officials who do their jobs without requiring a hefty bribe. And I haven’t even mentioned the social safety nets our governments provide.

So how is it that everyone who is making more than $33K a year doesn’t feel like they are incredibly, wonderfully, amazingly blessed to live a live of such luxury and comfort and ease?

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Jim Ulvog