If your ministry uses an overseas bank account to further your mission, you may have a requirement to file a report called an FBAR if the balance is over a certain amount at any point in the year.
Even worse, if individuals in your organization, like you Ms. CFO or Mr. Treasurer or Mrs. Program Manager, have signature authority over that account, the individuals have a requirement to disclose that authority on their personal 1040. The individuals may also need to file an FBAR individually.
The New York Times has a great article introducing Evernote as a storage tool for all the stray web articles, spreadsheets and photos that don’t have a logical home otherwise (cross-posted from my other blog, Attestation Update).
Check out An App That Will Never Forget a File.
Here is an intro to a superb tool: (more…)
The IRS announced standard mileage rates for 2014. You can find the announcement in IR-2013-05, which says:
Beginning on Jan. 1, 2014, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be: (more…)
There is a narrow option for excluding the value of ministry provided housing from an employee’s taxable income. I’m not going to go into details because there are enough twists and turns that anything said could be misinterpreted as giving specific advice.
Fortunately, I don’t have to explain this. Corey Pfaffe, CPA, has already done so.
If this is of interest to you, check out his post:
The end of his article gives a path for research if you need to pursue this further.
Previous posts introduced the simple/complicated/complex/chaotic quadrants of the Cynefin Framework and discussed how that can be used to analyze development issues.
Implications for economics
This framework has huge implications for discussions of economic issues. So many areas come to mind that are actually complex but we treat them as if they are complicated.
The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) requires their members to submit annual financial statements as a condition of membership. A CPA is required to be involved with those financials.
ECFA has announced two changes to their requirement: the cutoff for a compilation and clarifying an independence requirement.
Before you make any changes, check with your funders to see if they will accept a change in the level of services provided by your CPA.
Previous posts introduced the Cynefin framework and described a bit of how it helps make sense.
Where it gets messy
Distinguishing between the complicated and complex quadrants is the biggest challenge.
As I ponder the Cynefin framework, I realize that distinction is the cause of many heated differences of opinion.
It is also the cause of many unintended consequences. I’ve talked about that a lot on my blogs.
Applying the solutions from the complicated quadrant to issues in the complex quadrant is the conceptual cause of most of the harm from those unintended consequences.
Fraud has tragic effects on innocent people who didn’t commit the fraud. The person who did the deed will pay a severe price far beyond what the judge imposes. Just like a stone thrown into a pond causes ripples all across the water, so a fraud ripples out to cause all sorts of harm.
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Previous post introduced the four quadrants of the Cynefin Framework: simple, complicated, complex, and chaotic.
One of the major implications of the framework is to highlight that the world is not neatly ordered.
In addition, leadership styles need to change based on the nature of the situation.
Boundaries
The parable of the Live-Saving Station
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjxgAbxaspg&feature=player_detailpage]
Text version can be found here. That site asserted in 1990 the text is used by permission and is copyrighted by Youth Specialties. Thus I won’t quote the text. You can check it out with one click.
For the last week I’ve been pondering a new tool to help understand the world around me. It’s called a sense-making model by its inventor.
The Cynefin Framework was developed by David Snowden. It’s pronounced cunevin or ku-nev’-in.
This series of posts will give an overview, provide two links to videos, and apply the model to several areas.
The model has four quadrants. The primary driver is how the relationship between cause and effect changes based on the nature of the situation.
Simple
Heroes I’m aware of would disagree they should be so labeled.
The comment I’ve often read is such heroes say they just did what anyone else would have done in the circumstances.
Well, no one else was in that circumstance, but they were. And they stood up to do a difficult job that was set before them.
On this Veterans Day, I salute one group of such heroes – the Doolittle Raiders. This weekend they held their last reunion.
My salute is a video shot during the 2013 Chino airshow. It is views of B-25s during a flyover.
In showing B-25s, I salute the Doolittle Raiders. In saluting them, I’m saluting all the heroes from WWII who served. By doing that I also salute all the heroes we don’t know of and all the others who did their job fighting to give us our freedom.
To all our heroes:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahhMvZdrO90&feature=player_detailpage]
Please remember as you watch the video I’m an accountant with a point-and-shoot camera, not a videographer or even a photographer. Yeah, yeah, I know it shows. (My video was very shaky. I allowed the YouTube software to stabilize the images. That produced the jumpy sides in the video. That’s a minor distraction in return for a huge jump in visual quality.)
Doolittle Raiders
Two great opinion pieces in the Chronicle of Philanthropy that are worth your time, both dealing with the ‘overhead’ issue. At first glance they seem to have opposing views. I think they are both correct with many good points, which illustrates the complexity of the issues.
I’m just getting to some news from back in early September. A veterans charity settled a lawsuit from the California Attorney General. The AG asserted excess compensation and diversion of funds to personal use.
My summary is based on these articles:
The settlement contains several terms:
Christianity Today has a brief update on the church lending scene in their article Churches: The New Risky Bet.
The article starts with almost good news of a megachurch in Florida that will meet their requirement of a multimillion balloon payment this year, but only by selling their property to the city and leasing it back for Sunday and Wednesday services.