Payroll

Although it’s been almost five years since the floodgates were opened, we’re still seeing a steady stream of conversions to Roth IRAs. As long as Congress doesn’t clamp down on the rules, you can expect for this trend to continue.

Governor Deval Patrick signed legislation to increase the minimum wage in increments to $11 per hour by 2017. The law also lowers unemployment insurance costs.

CPA Practice Advisor will be closed on July 4 so that our staff can enjoy the Independence Day weekend with their families. As such, we will not be producing the CPA Payroll Advisor newsletter on that day.

New research by Money Anxiety shows that analytical consumers earned an average of $139 a year in interest income on a $10,000 certificate of deposit compared to only $62 in annual interest income earned by consumers who made an impulsive decision to move their money to liquid bank accounts such as checking, savings and money market.

Will Baby Boomers and Gen Xers have enough money to live on when they retire, and if not, when will they run short? New modeling by the nonpartisan Employee Benefit Research Institute (EBRI) finds that those in the lowest-income brackets are most likely to run short, many in the first year of retirement.

While hospital executives from across Massachusetts meet in Chatham this week, a nurses union is running a radio ad that criticizes Massachusetts hospital chiefs' compensation packages and calls for greater transparency of hospital finances.

On Monday, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) published two proposed Statements intended to significantly improve financial reporting by state and local governments of other postemployment benefits (OPEB), such as retiree health insurance. The GASB also published a third Exposure Draft that would establish requirements for pensions and pension plans that are outside the scope of the pension standards the GASB released in 2012.

Despite the growth of cloud-based technology, many accountants are hesitant to move all of their client data and firm management systems online. A survey conducted by CPA2Biz last fall found that 43 percent of CPAs have their doubts about the security of cloud-based applications, feeling “somewhat confident” or “not confident at all.”