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Publications

Does Your Business Have Strong Internal Controls to Avoid Inventory Theft?

Inventory can be a major component of current assets on the balance sheet, but is that number accurate? Inventory opens the gate to employee fraud, making strong internal controls over inventory reporting critical. Other aspects of inventory that should be considered are independent third-party counts, surprise inventory counts, using an inventory management system, and utilizing automation.

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Increasing the Selling Price of Your Business

The sale of a business can be one of the most critical and lucrative events in someone’s life. However, the execution of this process is subject to many moving parts, so proper planning is vital to the overall success of the sale. 

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No Smoking Gun? No Problem.

It is every investigative professional’s dream to uncover a “smoking gun” during an investigation. A “smoking gun” is the one irrefutable piece of evidence, too obvious for the subject of the investigation to deny. However, the vast majority of cases do not reveal a “smoking gun”, making the investigative professional’s job simultaneously more challenging and much more exciting. During an investigation it is vital to hire a knowledgeable forensic accountant who can identify several pieces of evidence and make critical connections between those pieces, building the case despite the absence of a “smoking gun”.

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Has Your Investment or Real-Estate Portfolio Decreased in Value? It May be Time for an Estate “Re-Freeze”

Over the past few months, we have all experienced a significant decline in our investment portfolios and real estate assets. Although these are tough times for all investors, the silver lining is that with proper planning, the lower market value can reduce the eventual tax upon death and maximize the tax deferred to the next generation by carrying out an estate freeze or re-freeze. This article will discuss estate freezes and re-freezes, as well as how they can be used to achieve significant tax savings.

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Do Your Financial Statements Speak to Their Users?

As a financial statement preparer, it is vital to keep in mind that not all financial statement users are accountants and as such, may lack the skillset and knowledge to interpret the statements. Financial statement users may shy away from the volume of pages containing regulatory disclosures. While preparing financial statements, it is important to step into the users’ shoes to create meaningful statements while ensuring compliance with reporting disclosure requirements.

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$140 Million Reasons to Retain Valuations Experts

Our valuation and tax teams were recently approached to assist a client with a potential estate freeze or a sale of the company. The business had been in operation for dozens of years and had grown to over 400 employees with $95 million in annual revenue.

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The Cost of Money Laundering

According to the United Nations, money laundering accounts for approximately $800 billion to $2 trillion (or 2-5% of global GDP) annually.¹ To put the impact of money laundering into perspective, Canada’s GDP was roughly $2 trillion in 2021. Thus, the potential financial impact of money laundering globally is equivalent to the GDP of Canada.

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Cooling Real Estate Market: A Tax Relief Opportunity for Estates

With the cooling real estate market, an executor of an estate may be left with a property that has decreased in value during the ownership of the estate. During these uncertain times, a question arises – can an estate take advantage of the decrease in market price to reduce taxes on the disposition of a principal residence?

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Top Accounting Challenges Faced Through Business Expansion

Taking your business from a Start-up to a Scale-up is an incredible milestone. As you focus on building your brand and raising capital to grow, it is vital to simultaneously focus on financial reporting. Having a proper financial reporting structure not only demonstrates success, but it also instills investor confidence in the business, and its management.

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The Importance of Policies and Procedures

Have you ever reviewed an expense transaction in a corporation’s books and wondered, “is this expense allowed?” Or have you ever expensed a transaction and asked yourself the same question?

If you have been in this situation, as a business owner or an employee, you are probably far too familiar with this “grey area”. There are those clear transactions that are not permitted, and often times you can identify these by merely appraising the vendor to whom the payment was made. On the flip side, you have other transactions that are undeniably business-related. Although it should be logical to decide whether or not to make that payment or swipe that corporate card, the question actually becomes, “will I get away with it?”

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