#audit
Independent audit and assurance engagements — SOC 2, financial statement audits, internal controls testing, evidence collection, and audit readiness for service organizations and growing businesses
The Cohan rule lets a court estimate an ordinary business deduction when you can prove the money was spent but not the exact amount — and Section 274(d) forbids that estimate entirely for travel, entertainment, gifts, and vehicles. Here is what reconstruction evidence actually persuades an examiner, why bank statements alone usually fail, and a six-step playbook for rebuilding a missing-receipt file.
Section 7611 lets the IRS examine a church only after a high-level Treasury official records a reasonable belief in writing, sends two separate notices, and agrees to finish within two years and stay away for five. This guide walks through each stage, the pre-examination conference, the five exceptions that remove the protection entirely, and the three bookkeeping failures that trigger most church inquiries in practice, namely unrelated business income, informal payroll, and campaign intervention.
An auditor issues one of four opinions — unqualified, qualified, adverse, or disclaimer — decided by two questions: whether the problem is a GAAP departure or a scope limitation, and whether it is material but confined or material and pervasive. This guide maps that grid, explains why a going-concern paragraph is not a qualification, and lists the bookkeeping habits that keep an opinion clean.
CMS released an updated Advance Beneficiary Notice of Noncoverage (Form CMS-R-131) on March 13, 2026, mandatory for fee-for-service providers since May 12, 2026. With chiropractic improper payments at 30.4% and nearly 90% of those errors from insufficient documentation, this guide covers ABN trigger points, the GA/GZ/GY modifiers, and the bookkeeping that turns signed notices into collected cash.
A certificate of insurance you cannot produce on audit day turns subcontractor payments into your own payroll, billed at your trade rates. Here are the seven things every subcontractor COI must show, the five triggers for demanding a new one, and why certificate holder status is not the same as being an additional insured.
A personnel file should hold job records only — medical documents, Forms I-9, and investigation notes belong in separate files. Practical rules for a five-file system, state access deadlines, and the stacked retention periods: EEOC one year, FLSA payroll three years, and I-9s three years after hire or one year after termination, whichever is later.
Congress set a 10-year statute of limitations for PPP fraud, so a loan funded in 2020 can be charged until 2030 and forgiveness is not a defense. This guide covers False Claims Act liability, the five eligibility tripwires still generating cases, and the six-year record-retention rule borrowers must meet.
The IRS normally has three years from the filing date to assess additional tax under IRC 6501(a), six years if you omit more than 25% of gross income, and unlimited time if you never filed or filed fraudulently. Parallel clocks run alongside it - 10 years to collect, 3 years to claim a refund, 4 years for employment tax records, and property basis until disposition plus 3 - which is why most CPAs tell small businesses to default financial records to six years.
ASC 850 requires four things in the footnote for every material related-party transaction — the nature of the relationship, a description, dollar amounts for each period presented, and any change in how terms were set — and it applies even when the price is fair. This guide identifies who counts as a related party for a small business (10%+ owners, officers, immediate family, and entities they control), shows a model two-paragraph footnote, and gives a 10-step year-end checklist plus a Beancount account structure that turns disclosure into a query.
Employers using electronic Form I-9 systems must update to the 05/31/2027 expiration date by July 31, 2026. This guide covers which editions stay valid, what changed in the 01/20/25 revision, the three-years-after-hire-or-one-year-after-termination retention rule, and which paperwork errors ICE now treats as substantive rather than technical.
The IRS has no single seven-year rule. Income tax records run 3 years, employment tax records 4, substantial income omissions 6, bad-debt and worthless-security losses 7, and unfiled or fraudulent returns never expire — while property records run until the limitations period closes on the year you sell. This guide maps each clock to the documents it governs and gives a retention schedule small business owners can follow.
A workers' comp premium is payroll ÷ 100 × class rate × experience mod, so the year-end audit re-tests both variables against your actual records. This guide covers the three audit types and what triggers each, the documents auditors request, why overtime premium is only excludable when recorded separately by employee and week under NCCI Rule 2-B-2, the 2026 NCCI officer caps of $3,400 weekly maximum and $1,700 minimum, and why payments to a subcontractor without a current certificate of insurance get charged to you as payroll.
