CPE Catalog & Events

This session will explore the most common compliance errors impacting retirement benefit plans, including the impact of recent legislation. Gain valuable insights to enhance your auditing practices and ensure compliance. In this session, you will learn about the top compliance errors impacting retirement benefit plans, the available correction options, and the potential impact of recent legislation. This session was recorded on June 14,2024 at the Employee Benefit Plans Audit Virtual Conference.

This 8-part series, offered in partnership with Project Equity, equips CPAs and financial professionals with the expertise to advise clients on employee ownership as a strategic tool for succession, retention, and growth. This program provides a comprehensive understanding of employee ownership structures, including Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), Worker Cooperatives, and Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs). You'll explore the financial, tax, valuation, and legal dimensions of each model—learning how to assess feasibility, structure transactions, and ensure ongoing compliance. Explicitly designed for CPAs, the program bridges technical accounting and advisory practice, enabling professionals to guide clients through ownership transitions that align financial performance with long-term business goals. You'll gain practical insights into financing mechanisms, governance frameworks, and implementation strategies that support sustainable, employee-owned enterprises. Whether advising business owners on exit planning or supporting clients exploring alternative ownership models, CPAs completing this program will be prepared to deliver informed, strategic guidance that enhances both client outcomes and community impact.

Accepting, planning, and initiating forensic engagements are covered for new and experienced professionals.

If there is a potential error, the IRS will assess a tax and add a hefty penalty, without even knowing the facts. As a tax professional, you will be exposed to the IRS and their methods of penalizing taxpayers for the smallest of violations. This presentation will focus on the rules and regulations that create the penalty, and the reasons that exist that the IRS will consider to remove those penalties.

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) factors are increasingly becoming important considerations in many firms' capital allocation decisions. ESG integration is a strategy that can be employed to conduct a more robust financial analysis and to get a more complete picture of a company's valuation and its overall risk profile. This ESG Integration & Financial Analysis course examines how ESG initiatives and performance can influence a company's income statement, cash flow statement, and balance sheet. After covering the most important qualitative and quantitative factors that may impact a company's financials, we dive into a case study where we interpret ESG information from an example company's sustainability report, then model these various scenarios in Excel. We also work through several optional, advanced modeling techniques to support cleaner data visualization, including the use of Macabacus shortcuts.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to differentiate between different forms of broad-based employee ownership and understand the role of the Employee Ownership Advisor.  This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to comprehend the structure, purpose, and key features of ESOPs, evaluate the tax advantages and legal considerations associated with them, and analyze the governance and other important details of ESOPs.  This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to comprehend the structure, purpose, and key features of ESOPs, evaluate the tax advantages and legal considerations associated with them, and analyze the governance and other important details of ESOPs.  This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to comprehend the structure, purpose, and key features of ESOPs, evaluate the tax advantages and legal considerations associated with them, and analyze the governance and other important details of ESOPs.  This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to assess the potential benefits of employee ownership for their business clients, apply criteria to recommend the most suitable employee ownership form considering costs, timelines, and resources, utilize financial analysis techniques to evaluate debt capacity in employee-owned businesses, measure the impact of employee ownership on company performance, and effectively communicate the financial advantages of employee ownership to clients. This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to comprehend the lending prerequisites, evaluate the significance of personal guarantees, navigate the submission process, explore various funding sources, and identify the types of financing required for partial or partial onramp to full conversion in employee-owned businesses. This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to ensure adherence to compliance and legal obligations concerning employee ownership, navigate the documentation and regulatory filings specific to different employee ownership forms, and establish mechanisms for maintaining ongoing legal compliance in employee-owned businesses. This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

At the end of this module, participants will be able to create a comprehensive implementation plan for employee ownership, incorporating strategies for investing in education and fostering a supportive organizational culture, effectively communicating the transition process to employees and stakeholders, and providing continuous support and guidance to businesses operating under employee ownership. This course is offered in partnership with Project Equity.

Corporate clients concerned with succession planning and stock compensation often have heard about Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs). You will learn the fundamentals of what an ESOP really is, the tax advantages for corporations and the shareholders, and the benefits for employees. We will compare and contrast C corporation versus S corporation ESOPs.

While accounting and the practice of law are separate professions, the accountant must be conversant with essential legal concepts. Modern accounting practice requires familiarity with corporate legal structure, business entities, partnership operations, contracts, property rights, employment law, divorce, consumer protection, will & trusts, and even bankruptcy law. This course explores these specific areas with an emphasis on business and accounting issues. This informal and clear guide to the basic concepts of business law provides accountants with an excellent review of legal concepts that arise in any tax professional's practice. The attendees will gain the ability to recognize and discuss general legal concepts with both client and their counsel. Knowledge is power and nowhere is that truer than in the field law. To gain such a working knowledge of law, readily understandable explanations are given to essential and related business law subjects. The accountant is guided through the complex maze of literally hundreds of legal principles from acceptance to zoning.

"Just the facts, ma'am; just the estate planning facts." Designed to give a quick overview of estate planning essentials, this course surveys wills, living trusts, gifts, marital property, and probate avoidance. Will and trust types are examined in the context of general estate and gift taxation. Designed to eliminate estate problems and death taxes, the emphasis is on practical, cost-effective solutions. Talk about having it all in an overview course, there is even a quick review of immediate postmortem death tax planning and filling out Form 706.

Estate planning is when tomorrow becomes today! As a result of recent legislation, estate planning has been made surprisingly simple. This mini-course surveys wills, living trusts, gifts, insurance, marital property, and probate avoidance. The will and trust forms are explored along with living wills, durable powers of attorney, and nominations of conservator.

A comprehensive guide to estate planning and the taxation of trusts.

Are you a perfectionist? If so, you're in good company. 92% of professional leaders see their work impacted by perfectionistic tendencies. Additionally, 99% of accountants say they have experienced or are experiencing burnout.  We can't easily control external factors; the industry's pipeline deficit and intense demands of tax and busy seasons. However, perfectionism is something we do have control over and it's not to be dismissed or overlooked. When driven to perfection, accountants work even longer hours and feel overly self-critical. In this one-hour workshop, discover how perfectionism drives you to exhaustion and how to prevent burnout while still delivering high-quality work. 

What do you do when a setting, shortcut or command isn't available in Excel? Well, you create a macro, of course. Macros allow Excel users to extend the capabilities of Excel and create shortcuts and commands. In this session, you will use the recorder to create a macro that applies a built-in format setting. You will then write a macro in the visual basic editor to provide a shortcut to a popular Excel function. The course will also cover how to add macros to the Quick Access Toolbar so you can easily execute them in the future. Presented in Excel for Windows.   Note: Items presented may not be available in all Excel versions, including Excel for Mac, iPad or web.   The webcast was originally broadcast on May 3, 2016. Note: There is a minimum passing rate of 70% for this course.