Posted: February 8th, 2015

Questions

Paper, Order, or Assignment Requirements

***Please keep answers with question numbers.

1. You have been asked by the CFO of the company where you work or previously worked to evaluate the use of a professional service organization for processing the company’s payroll. Identify the top-three issues that should be discussed when considering contracting the services of a payroll service provider. Evaluate the impact, both positive and negative, of each issue on the process in question. Provide specific examples to support your response
2. Identify the key elements of a plan to outsource your firm’s payroll function. For each element of the plan, describe the impact of each element. Be sure that the elements address the necessary controls needed to safeguard your firm’s personnel data. Provide specific examples to support your rationale
3. Your firm is planning to move to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) reporting within the next fiscal year. Analyze the risks and rewards by moving to IFRS and the impact that technology will have on the change. Include the advantages and disadvantages of IRFS compared to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). Provide specific examples to support your analysis
4. Develop a proposal for migrating your firm to IFRS from GAAP. Discuss how you will educate your users in IFRS
Use the Internet to review at least two news articles or publications about current and future trends in the use of relational databases (questions 5 & 6)
5. From the research, assess the advantages and disadvantages of the continued use of the traditional relational database and then decide if businesses should be moving toward relational databases in the cloud. Justify your decision and provide specific examples to support your response.
6. Determine whether a company has an ethical obligation to share with external clients that key information about them is being stored in the cloud. Speculate how external clients would react if they were told in advance or it was kept from them and they found out another way
7. Your firm wants to move from a relational database model to the REA data model. Explain to your senior management the risks and rewards of such of a move. Be sure to provide specific examples to support your response
8. As we know, the REA data model is an emerging technology change. Make five recommendations for creating useful entity-relationship (E-R) diagrams. Rank them in level of importance, and then justify your ranking.
9. Per the text and IRC, a gift occurs when the transfer of property is complete and the gift is valued at the date of the transfer. Imagine a scenario in which a client creates an irrevocable trust for his two (2) grandchildren to ensure college education expenses are paid. The trust agreement requires the distribution of the income from the trust directly to the college or university the grandchildren attend for tuition while they are in college and directly to the grandchildren until age twenty-five (25) after completing college. The income from the trust is distributed directly to the grandchildren until they reach age twenty-five (25), if they do not attend college. When the grandchildren celebrate their twenty-fifth (25th) birthday, the income stream distribution reverts to the client’s spouse, and the spouse receives the property upon the death of the client. Examine the gift tax consequences of the transaction based on the use of the irrevocable trust, as compared to direct payments to the grandchildren
10. Gift tax-planning strategies can reduce tax for estate tax-planning purposes. Estate tax planning is very important for wealthy clients. Examine one (1) tax-planning strategy that a CPA could use for lifetime giving that would reduce overall estate and gift taxes for a client.
11. Several arguments exist for the repeal of the estate tax. Defend the most significant argument advanced in the repeal of the estate tax by its opponents. Justify your response
12. The Uniform Principal and Income Act of 2000 (Uniform Act) allows the trustee to make adjustments between the principal and income accounts as necessary under certain requirements. Examine the major reasoning for allowing such transfers by the trustee and recommend alternatives to the allowance of the adjustments. Justify your response