Your 401(k) or social security may not be enough to provide you sufficient retirement. You may want to explore other retirement options such as a Roth IRA, HSA, or brokerage account.

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If you are a millennial, you’re in a perfect position to start planning for your retirement. The sooner you start, the more opportunity you have to build wealth and position yourself for a comfortable (and possibly early) retirement. You’ll also be among the 72% of your generation who have already begun saving. The key to creating a secure retirement is maximizing your return on investment (ROI) over time.

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On December 22, 2017, Congress passed, and the President signed, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). The bill had numerous provisions that lowered tax rates, eliminated deductions and implemented new tax concepts into the tax law. The lowering of rates and elimination of deductions are fairly straightforward to incorporate into our planning, compliance work, and the advice we give to you. For many questions regarding deductions, the answer is now NO, and different tax rates are a one-time change to computer formulas.

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When President Trump signed into law the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in December 2017, much was made of the dramatic cut in corporate tax rates. But the TCJA also includes a generous deduction for smaller businesses that operate as pass-through entities, with income that is "passed through" to owners and taxed as individual income.

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File Download: Fourth Quarter 2018 Market Perspective

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The IRS has some good news for certain taxpayers — it’s waiving underpayment penalties for those whose 2018 federal income tax withholding and estimated tax payments came in under their actual tax liabilities for the year. The waiver recognizes that the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act’s (TCJA’s) overhaul of the federal income tax regime made it difficult for some taxpayers to determine the proper amount to have withheld from their paychecks or include in their quarterly estimated tax payments for 2018.

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Qualified Opportunity Zones are a creation of the new Code Sections 1400Z-1 and 1400Z-2, enacted in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) in December 2017. These provisions are intended to incentivize investment in economically challenged areas by giving tax benefits to investors. 

The tax benefits from Opportunity Zones come in two forms: A deferral of current capital gain, and the potential exclusion of future capital gain. 

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In 2018, the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) released their 2018 Report to the Nations, based on the ACFE 2017 Global Fraud Survey, a survey conducted by the ACFE of its members from July 2017 through October 2017. As part of this survey, members were asked to provide information on the largest fraud case they were involved in from January 2016 through the survey date. The information from this survey was compiled into a variety of statistics to gain an understanding of the impact that occupational fraud and abuse has on businesses.

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The IRS has issued the standard mileage rates for 2019. The business-use standard mileage rate for 2019 is 58 cents per mile, up 3.5 cents from 2018. The standard mileage rate for moving and medical purposes will be 20 cents per mile in 2019, up two cents from 2018. The charitable mileage rate is set by statute at 14 cents per mile, so that did not change.

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Smaller-scale real estate rental activities are generally considered to be exempt from Form 1099 reporting requirements. With the arrival of the new pass-through income deduction of Code Section 199A, the determination of whether or not to file 1099 forms has new importance.

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