Blog: Compliance

"Amazon handles the sales tax" is one of the most common things an accountant hears from an e-commerce client, and it is about half right. Marketplace facilitator laws do move the job of collecting and remitting sales tax on marketplace sales from the individual seller to the platform. They do not make the seller's sales tax obligations disappear. Sellers who treat the platform's collection as the end of the matter tend to discover the rest during a notice, a registration review or an ...

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Compliance:
Written Information Security Plan (WISP) for Tax and Accounting Firms10/8/2026

Every tax and accounting firm holds exactly the data identity thieves want: names, Social Security numbers, dates of birth, bank account numbers, income and employer details, often for whole families. That is why federal law treats a firm that prepares tax returns as a financial institution for data security purposes, and why the IRS now asks every preparer, at each PTIN renewal, to acknowledge that a written information security plan is required.

A written information security plan, ...

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Compliance:
FBAR Deadline: When FinCEN 114 Is Due and the Automatic Extension10/3/2026

The FBAR is the filing clients forget because it is not a tax return. It does not go to the IRS with the 1040, it is not on most organizers unless someone added it, and the person who needs to file it often does not think of a modest account abroad as "foreign financial accounts." It is also a filing where the penalties can far exceed any tax at stake.

The FBAR deadline itself is simple: April 15, with an automatic extension to October 15. The hard part is everything ...

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Compliance:
Form 941 Due Dates and Payroll Tax Deposit Schedules10/2/2026

Ask a client when payroll taxes are due and most will name the quarterly Form 941 date. That is the date the return is due, and it is usually the least risky date on the payroll calendar. The penalties that actually hurt employers come from the deposit schedule: monthly or semiweekly, set by a lookback period the client has never heard of, and overridden by a next-day rule that applies the moment a large payroll hits.

This post separates the two calendars. First the ...

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Compliance:
Form 1041 Due Date and Extension for Trusts and Estates10/1/2026

Fiduciary returns trip up good practitioners for a simple reason: they do not follow the calendar the rest of the practice runs on. An estate can pick a fiscal year. A trust usually cannot. The extension is shorter than the one you get on a corporate or partnership return. Two of the most valuable elections on the return are not tied to the return's due date at all, but to the 65th day after year end. If you track Form 1041 the same way you track 1040s and 1120-S returns, sooner or later one ...

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Compliance:
Does an LLC Taxed as an S Corp Get a 1099?9/26/2026

The short answer: generally no. An LLC that has elected to be taxed as an S corporation is treated as a corporation for information reporting, and payments to corporations are generally exempt from Form 1099-NEC and Form 1099-MISC reporting. The IRS instructions say so directly: payments for which a Form 1099 is not required include "generally, payments to a corporation (including a limited liability company (LLC) that is treated as a C or S corporation)."

The longer ...

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Compliance:
Form 8867 and the Paid Preparer Due Diligence Checklist9/20/2026

Form 8867 is a two-page form that most preparers complete dozens or hundreds of times a season, usually by clicking through a software interview. That habit is exactly the problem. The form is not the due diligence. It is the certification that due diligence happened, and the penalty attaches to the diligence, not to the paperwork.

The rules sit in IRC section 6695(g) and Treasury Regulations section 1.6695-2. They apply to any paid preparer who determines a client's eligibility for, ...

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Compliance:
Tax Preparer Certification: What's Required and What's Optional9/13/2026

People searching for "tax preparer certification" usually want to know one thing: what do I legally need before I can charge someone to prepare their return? The answer is less than most people expect at the federal level, more than they expect in a handful of states, and different again if the goal is to represent clients rather than only prepare returns.

There is no general federal license to prepare tax returns. The IRS requires a registration number, not a certification. On top ...

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Compliance:
The CPA Ethics Exam: Who Requires It and How It Works8/19/2026

Candidates spend a year or more preparing for four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination, pass the last one, and then learn there is one more exam between them and the license. In many states that is an ethics exam, separate from the CPA exam, administered by a different organization, and completely absent from most review course schedules.

It is not a difficult hurdle, but it is an easy one to discover late, and in some states it cannot be completed until a particular point in the ...

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