Funding Substance Use Disorder (SUD) services

Read this if you are a business owner or responsible for your company’s accounts.

US businesses have been hit by the perfect storm. As the pandemic continues to disrupt supply chains and plague much of the global economy, the war in Europe further complicates the landscape, disrupting major supplies of energy and other commodities. In the US, price inflation has accelerated the Federal Reserve’s plans to raise interest rates and commence quantitative tightening, making debt more expensive. The stock market has declined sharply, and the prospect of a recession is on the rise. Further, US consumer demand may be cooling despite a strong labor market and low unemployment.

As a result of these and other pressures, many businesses are rethinking their supply chains and countries of operation as they also search for opportunities to free up or preserve cash in the face of uncertain headwinds.

Income tax accounting methods

Adopting or changing income tax accounting methods can provide taxpayers opportunities for timing the recognition of items of taxable income and expense, which determines when cash is needed to pay tax liabilities.

In general, accounting methods either result in the acceleration or deferral of an item or items of taxable income or deductible expense, but they don’t alter the total amount of income or expense that is recognized during the lifetime of a business. As interest rates rise and debt becomes more expensive, many businesses want to preserve their cash. One way to do this is to defer their tax liabilities through their choice of accounting methods.

Some of the more common accounting methods to consider center around the following:

• Advance payments. Taxpayers may be able to defer recognizing advance payments as taxable income for one year instead of paying the tax when the payments are received.
• Prepaid and accrued expenses. Some prepaid expenses can be deducted when paid instead of being capitalized. Some accrued expenses can be deducted in the year of accrual as long as they are paid within a certain period of time after year end.
• Costs incurred to acquire or build certain tangible property. Qualifying costs may be deducted in full in the current year instead of being capitalized and amortized over an extended period. Absent an extension, under current law, the 100% deduction is scheduled to decrease by 20% per year beginning in 2023.  
• Inventory capitalization. Taxpayers can optimize uniform capitalization methods for direct and indirect costs of inventory, including using or changing to various simplified and non-simplified methods and making certain elections to reduce administrative burden.
• Inventory valuation. Taxpayers can optimize inventory valuation methods. For example, adopting to (or making changes within) the last-in, first-out (LIFO) method of valuing inventory generally will result in higher cost of goods sold deductions when costs are increasing.
• Structured lease arrangements. Options exist to maximize tax cash flow related to certain lease arrangements, for example, for taxpayers evaluating a sale vs. lease transaction or structuring a lease arrangement with deferred or advance rents.

Improving cash flow: Revisiting your tax accounting methods

Optimizing tax accounting methods can be a great option for businesses that need cash to make investments in property, people, and technology as they address supply chain disruptions, tight labor markets, and evolving business and consumer landscapes. Moreover, many of the investments that businesses make are ripe for accounting methods opportunities—such as full expensing of capital expenditures in new plant and property to reposition supply chains closer to operations or determining the treatment of investments in new technology enhancements.

For prepared businesses looking to weather the storm, revisiting their tax accounting methods could free up cash for a period of years, which would be useful in the event of a recession that might diminish sales and squeeze profit margins before businesses are able to right-size costs.

While an individual accounting method may or may not materially impact the cash flow of a company, the impact can be magnified as more favorable accounting methods are adopted. Taxpayers should consider engaging in accounting methods planning as part of any acquisition due diligence as well as part of their regular cash flow planning activities.  

Impact of deploying an accounting method

The estimated impact of an accounting method is typically measured by multiplying the deferred or accelerated amount of income or expense by the marginal tax rate of the business or its investors.
For example, assume a business is subject to a marginal tax rate of 30%, considering all of the jurisdictions in which it operates. If the business qualifies and elects to defer the recognition of $10 million of advance payments, this will result in the deferral of $3 million of tax. Although that $3 million may become payable in the following taxable year, if another $10 million of advance payments are received in the following year the business would again be able to defer $3 million of tax.

Continuing this pattern of deferral from one year to the next would not only preserve cash but, due to the time value of money, potentially generate savings in the form of forgone interest expense on debt that the business either didn’t need to borrow or was able to pay down with the freed-up cash. This opportunity becomes increasingly more valuable with rising interest rates, as the ability to pay significant portions of the eventual liability from the accumulation of forgone interest expense can materialize over a relatively short period of time, i.e. the time value of money increases as interest rates rise.

Accounting method changes

Generally, taxpayers wanting to change a tax accounting method must file a Form 3115 Application for Change in Accounting Method with the IRS under one of two procedures:

• The “automatic” change procedure, which requires the taxpayer to file the Form 3115 with the IRS as well as attach the form to the federal tax return for the year of change; or
• The “nonautomatic” change procedure, which requires advance IRS consent. The Form 3115 for nonautomatic changes must be filed during the year of change.

In addition, certain planning opportunities may be implemented without a Form 3115 by analyzing the underlying facts.

Next steps for businesses

Taxpayers should keep in mind that tax accounting method changes falling under the automatic change procedure can still be made for the 2021 tax year with the 2021 federal return and can be filed currently for the 2022 tax year.

Nonautomatic procedure change requests for the 2022 tax year are recommended to be filed with the IRS as early as possible before year end to give the IRS sufficient time to review and approve the request by the time the federal income tax return is to be filed.

Engaging in discussions now is the key to successful planning for the current taxable year and beyond. Whether a Form 3115 application is necessary or whether the underlying facts can be addressed to unlock the accounting methods opportunity, the options are best addressed in advance to ensure that a quality and holistic roadmap is designed. Analyzing the opportunity to deploy accounting methods for cash savings begins with a discussion and review of a business’s existing accounting methods.

Please contact our Tax Consulting and Compliance team if you have questions or concerns about your specific situation. We’re here to help.

Read this if you work in finance or accounting or rely on financial reporting information.

Does your financial close process provide the information you need to make educated business decisions? 

Timely reporting of financial results is key to stakeholder decision making. As a result of market and regulatory obligations, companies and organizations are confronted with increasingly strict guidelines for the delivery of timely, accurate reports. Enormous amounts of information on transactions must be processed in a limited timeframe. This requires a great deal of effort on the part of your accounting and finance teams. 

The typical financial close process can be broken down into the following segments:

While this workflow seems straightforward enough, the financial close is not a single flat process, but the combination of many interrelated and often codependent processes—each with its own stages. The closing and reporting process is complex, and involves many different data suppliers and dependencies. Think your billing department, accounts payable, cash receipt, procurement, and more. All of these areas are likely to have data inputs that go into your financial close.
 

It often ends up looking like this when you consider each task:

 
To make the situation more challenging, as companies and organizations grow, the closing process can become more onerous and take longer to complete. Tasks in the financial close process are often added to an existing process—a process that may be more reactionary and based in historical practice, and may not have been well thought-out or planned for the current environment. Adding these tasks and increasing data inputs and outputs adds additional pressure to an incredibly important, but often forgotten task: analysis.

The majority of finance departments spend the bulk of their time on the financial close itself. Unfortunately, this can lead to delays, uncovering mistakes well after the fact, and reports lagging behind current business operations. The later the analysis is performed and the reports are distributed, the less useful they become for decision making. 

Financial close optimization

The good news? There is a strategy to optimize your financial close process, called financial close optimization, or fast closing. Fast closing is the periodic and structured closing and reporting process, in which all knowledge about the financial facts is collected and distributed to stakeholders more quickly.

There is an emerging trend for more frequent financial reporting, which allows companies and organizations to be more nimble and responsive to financial results, especially when facing an unprecedented crisis like the COVID-19 pandemic. Optimizing the financial close process allows for quicker reporting of business results to give stakeholders a more timely financial picture.

We understand the scarcity of human and financial resources continues to prove challenging to financial teams. Creating a culture of continuous improvement is a challenging task for almost any finance team—but given the benefits of a fast closing and the increased costs of a longer close, is this something that can be ignored any longer?

Look out for our next article on tips and strategies to optimize your financial close, which can lead to:

• Freeing up resources to provide finance teams more time for a deeper analysis of operating performance and other strategic objectives
• Providing more accurate and timely reporting
• Improving the organization’s audit readiness 
• Lessening the need for traditional routine tasks 
• Increasing focus on clients, patients, and customers by spending more time looking ahead to possible opportunities. 

If you have any questions on how to improve your financial close, please contact us. We’re here to help.

Read this if you are at a public health agency.

As public health workforce challenges worsen through retirements, burnout, and added need for public health workers highlighted by the COVID-19 pandemic, funding levels for public health remain increased for the time being. This provides opportunities for states to leverage federal programs and funding streams to help ensure a strong and capable public health workforce to meet the needs of all communities. An important consideration for states is the level of cultural competence among their public health workforce.

Cultural competence: Definition and benefits

Cultural competence refers to the capacity to function effectively, both as an individual and an organization, in relation to community members’ cultural beliefs, behaviors, and needs. It allows public health professionals to provide more effective public health services to individuals and communities with cultures different from their own—through awareness, respect, and willingness to learn about cultural differences. The necessity of cultural competence in public health is especially timely due to new and existing disparities that have been highlighted by COVID-19 outcomes and the ripple effects of the pandemic.

Benefits of a culturally competent public health workforce include greater public trust in the public health system, more equitable and effective public health services, improved understanding of existing barriers and community health status, and the potential to reduce disparities and improve both healthcare access and health outcomes in historically marginalized communities.

As many states face significant workforce gaps and challenges in recruiting, training, and retaining staff, it is important to leverage best practices and key indicators of success to inform a sustainable and effective approach for workforce development. States may benefit from assessing gaps in cultural competence and related skills, and by identifying specific cultural competency areas and abilities they aim to achieve in the workforce. A strategic approach is necessary for maximizing the sustainability and long-term benefit of federal funding opportunities, such as those for public health workforce development in rural areas. 

Strategies and best practices for developing a culturally competent public health workforce 

There are many steps you can take toward building cultural competence in your agency. Some of them include:

• Develop and implement a periodic assessment of workforce cultural competence, and training to measure improvement and incorporate up-to-date best practices
• Recruit diverse staff to reflect the culture and demographics of communities, including the provision of linguistic support
• Create and improve pipeline training programs by collaborating with local colleges, universities, and schools of public health and identifying existing gaps in the workforce and in public health educational opportunities 
• Support inter-professional education and teams for community-based interventions, to foster collaboration between public health and healthcare professionals in the community to better meet needs 

Important first steps to improve and foster cultural competence in the public health workforce include setting goals related to building community partnerships and what those partnerships will achieve. 

Other steps for building cultural competence 

Additionally, collecting diversity data and demographic characteristics of the public health workforce, measuring and evaluating performance of the public health workforce and public health services, and reflecting community diversity within the workforce are necessary for developing a workforce that supports community cohesion and trust of community members. These steps can help you assess where you can strengthen services and how communities can be better reflected in the public health services they receive. Effective communication and language access are also critical steps to improve and foster cultural competence in the public health workforce.

BerryDunn can provide state public health and human services agencies with strategic policy and programmatic guidance and management support to maximize the benefits of federal programs to facilitate public health workforce development. 

If you have any questions about your specific situation, or would like more information, please contact our Public Health Consulting team. We’re here to help.

Read this if you are an employer that gives employee gifts.

The holiday season is officially in full swing! Unlike Ebenezer Scrooge, many employers are looking for ways to recognize the dedication and hard work of their employees. This gratitude often comes in the form of a holiday gift of some fashion. While this generosity is well-intended, gifts to employees can be fraught with potential tax consequences organizations should be aware of. This article will attempt to demystify the rules surrounding employee gifts to ensure organizations and their employees have a joyous holiday season.

Holiday gifts: Taxable or not?

So, are holiday gifts to employees taxable? The answer, as is so often the case with tax questions, is it depends. The IRS is very clear that cash and cash equivalents (specifically including gift cards) are always included as taxable income when they are provided by the employer, regardless of amount, with no exceptions. This means that if you plan to give your employees cash or a gift card this year, the value must be included in the employees’ wages and is subject to all payroll taxes. Bah humbug indeed!

Nontaxable gift options

There are however, a few ways to make nontaxable gifts to employees. In each instance the gift must be noncash (nor convertible to cash). IRS Publication 15 offers a variety of examples of de minimis (minimal) benefits, defined as any property or service you provide to an employee that has a minimal value, making the accounting for it unreasonable and administratively impracticable. Examples include holiday or birthday gifts with a low market value (a card and flowers, fruit baskets, a box of chocolates, etc.), or occasional tickets for theater or sporting events, among others. Again, cash and cash equivalents never qualify. The key is that the gift must be occasional or unusual in its frequency and must not be a form of disguised compensation. While de minimis benefits can be a gray area, the IRS has generally deemed items with a value exceeding $100 as too large to qualify as de minimis.

Holiday gifts can also be nontaxable if they are in the form of a gift coupon, if given for a specific item (with no redeemable cash value). A common example would be issuing a coupon to your employee for a free ham or turkey redeemable at the local grocery store. Nontaxable employee gifts can also come in the form of achievement awards, either for length of service or for safety achievements. The proverbial gold watch upon retirement is a classic example of such a gift. Here too, the award must always be tangible personal property—never cash or a cash equivalent. There are additional rules and value thresholds on any such gift. Please contact a member of your tax team to discuss these specific details further.

Whether employers are considering supplying gift cards, turkeys, or something in between, we hope all find this guidance helpful and still in the giving spirit! Coincidentally, at the end of A Christmas Carol, Ebenezer himself gives Bob Cratchit a turkey on Christmas day. Of course Mr. Scrooge would be aware of the potential tax consequences! We wish you all a very happy and healthy holiday season!

Not-for-profit resources

If you are a not-for-profit organization receiving charitable gifts, read Donor Acknowledgements: We have to file what?

Read this if you have a blended workforce with both in-office employees and remote workers.

It is hard to believe it has been nearly a year and a half since we started our remote work journey. At the time, many thought the move to working remotely would be short term. Then, a couple of weeks turned into a month, a month into another month, another month into a year and, some employers are now finally considering re-opening their offices.

Back in April 2020, we provided some internal control challenges, and potential solutions, faced by working in a remote environment. These challenges included exercising appropriate tone at the top, maintaining appropriate segregation of duties, and ensuring timely review, amongst others. Although these challenges still exist, there are new considerations to address as we transition into (hopefully) a post-pandemic world.

Blended workforces

As we mentioned in that article, since people have now been forced to work in a remote environment, they will be more apt to continue to do so. For some employees, the perks of ditching that long commute outweighs the free coffee they receive in the office. Employers have a decision to make—do we allow our employees the option to continue to work from home or, do we require employees to work from the office, as was standard pre-pandemic? Now that employees have exhibited the ability to work from home efficiently and effectively, it may be difficult to move all employees back into the office. Requiring all employees to return to the office could result in employees seeking employment elsewhere, and the option to work remotely is a selling point for many recruiters. Furthermore, disallowing remote work could cause employees to feel distrusted or undervalued, possibly leading to less efficient and effective work.

However, remote work comes with many challenges. Although video chat has been instrumental in navigating the remote work environment, it still has limitations. Nothing can beat in-person conversations and the relationships they help build. Nearly every video chat has a purpose, and unfortunately, you can’t just “run” into somebody in a video chat as you can in the office. Building camaraderie and instilling your company’s culture is difficult in a remote environment. And, if your workforce is blended, with some working in the office while others work remotely, building culture may be even more difficult than if your entire workforce was remote. Employees in the office may be less apt to communicate with remote colleagues. If you have a task you wish to delegate, you may think of giving the assignment to someone in the office prior to thinking of your remote co-workers that may be just as able and willing to complete the assignment. It will be important to ensure all employees are provided with equal opportunities, no matter of where they work.

Remote work policy

Regardless of your company’s decision to allow employees to work remotely or not, we recommend developing a remote work policy addressing expected behaviors. When developing such a policy, consider:

•  Will the policy’s provisions apply to the entire company or will there be different provisions by department? If the latter, consider what the implications may be on employee morale.
• Will there be a minimum amount of days per week that must be spent in the office?
• If employees are allowed to work remotely, do they need to work a set schedule or can the frequency, and which days they work remotely, change from week to week?
• Who should the employee communicate their decision to? How will this information then be shared company-wide?
• How do remote employees address document destruction? If they are handling sensitive and confidential documents, how should they dispose of these documents?
• Similarly, what are the expectations for protecting sensitive and confidential information at home?
• Are employees allowed to hook up company-provided equipment to personal devices, such as personal printers?
• If an employee is customer/client facing, what are the expectations for dress code and backgrounds for video chat meetings?
• What will staff development look like for individuals working remotely? Alternatively, what will their involvement look like in onboarding/developing new employees?
• What are the expectations for meetings? Will all meetings be set up in a manner that accommodates in-person and remote attendees? Are there meetings where in-person attendance is mandatory?

The importance of these considerations will likely differ from company to company. Some of these considerations may be addressed in other, already existing policies.

Are your internal controls “blended workforce” ready?

If your company plans to allow employees to work remotely, you will need to assess if your internal controls make sense for both in-office and remote employees. Typically, internal controls are written in a manner irrespective of where the employee resides. However, there may be situations that require an internal control be re-worked to accommodate in-office and remote employees. For instance, do you have an internal control that references a specific report that can only be run in-office? If the control owner plans to transition to a hybrid work schedule, does the frequency of the internal control need to change to reflect the employee’s new schedule? Alternatively, does it make sense to transition this internal control to someone else that will be in the office more frequently?

Internal control accommodations

The transition to a remote environment was expeditious and many thought the remote environment would be over quickly. As a result, there may have been modifications to internal controls that were made out of necessity, although they were not ideal from an internal control standpoint. The rationale for these accommodations may have been the expectation that the remote environment would be short-lived. Although these accommodations may have made sense for a short amount of time, and posed little to no additional risk to your company, the longer these accommodations remained in effect, the greater the chance for unintended consequences. 

We recommend reviewing your internal controls and creating a log of any internal control accommodations that were made due to the pandemic. Some of these modifications may continue to make sense and, after operating under the new internal control for an extended period of time, may even be preferable to the previous internal control. However, for those modifications that do appear to have increased control risk, control owners should assess if the length of the pandemic could have resulted in inadequately designed internal controls. And, if so, what could the consequences of these poorly designed internal controls have been to the company?

Internal control vs. process

While reviewing your company’s internal controls, it will also be a good time to ensure your internal control descriptions actually describe an internal control rather than simply a process. Although having well-documented processes for your company’s various transaction cycles is important, a good internal control description should already incorporate the process within it. Think of your internal control descriptions as writing a story—the “process” provides background information on the characters and setting, while the “internal control” is the story’s plot.

For example: The Accounting Manager downloads the market values from the investment portfolio accounting system and enters the market values into the general ledger on a monthly basis. Once the journal entry is entered, the Accounting Manager provides the market value report and a copy of the journal entry to the Controller.

Although a savvy reader may be able to identify where the internal control points are within this process, it could easily be modified to explicitly include discussion of the actual internal controls. The text in bold below represents modifications to the original:

The Accounting Manager downloads the market values from the investment portfolio accounting system and enters the market values into the general ledger on a monthly basis. Once the journal entry is entered, the Accounting Manager provides the market value report and a copy of the journal entry to the Controller via email. This email serves as documentation of preparation of the journal entry by the Accounting Manager. The Controller then reviews the market value report against the journal entry for accuracy. Once approved, the Controller posts the journal entry and replies to the email to indicate their review and approval. The Accounting Manager saves the email chain as auditable evidence.

The text additions in bold font help provide a complete story. A new employee could easily read this description and understand what they need to do, and how to appropriately document it. Most importantly, the internal control is both in-office and remote environment friendly.

Transitioning back to the office has resulted in a mixture of excitement and anxiety. Routine office norms, such as shaking hands and having a spontaneous meeting over a cup of coffee need to be relearned. Likewise, policies and internal controls need to be revisited to address the changing landscape. The more proactive your company can be, the better positioned it will be to accommodate its employees’ demands, while also maximizing the effectiveness of its internal controls. Please contact David Stone or Dan Vogt if any questions arise.

Read this if you do business in New Hampshire.

On June 10, 2021, Governor Chris Sununu signed Senate Bill 3-FN (“SB3”) into law, clarifying New Hampshire’s state income tax treatment of federal loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (“PPP”). As a result of this legislation, New Hampshire now fully conforms to the federal income tax treatment of the debt forgiveness and deduction for expenses related to PPP Loans. New Hampshire businesses that had PPP loans forgiven may now exclude the debt forgiveness from gross business income and deduct the related business expenses in the same manner that they can for federal income tax purposes.

The exemption of PPP loan forgiveness from the New Hampshire Business Profits tax base is applied retroactively to taxable years ending after March 3, 2020, corresponding with the date of the enactment of the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act). New Hampshire taxpayers who received debt forgiveness through the federal Paycheck Protection Program should review their 2020 New Hampshire tax returns to evaluate whether an amended return should be filed for potential refund opportunities.  

If you have questions about how the tax law changes may affect you, please contact a member of our state and local tax team.