If your company uses an outside professional to prepare its taxes, you’ll want to make sure that he or she is up to speed with the IRS’ rules regarding PTINs, or Preparer Tax Identification Numbers. Earlier this month, the IRS said it was sending letters to 100,000 tax preparers who failed to follow new regulations that now are in effect.

Last year, the IRS launched a new program “to increase its oversight of the tax return preparation industry.” The goal was to ensure that the individuals who prepare tax returns are “competent and qualified,” the IRS said in a notice. Until now, tax return preparers were not required to meet any competency requirements. more

More companies are beginning to realize the value of Enterprise Risk Management (“ERM”) as a discipline that can propel a business forward rather than hold it back. In the recent past, many ERM programs focused primarily on revisiting problems from the past or examining all risks regardless of size. While these types of exercises can keep people busy, they rarely benefit a company that is trying to navigate forward to achieve successful outcomes. more

In a recent post, I talked about an operational risk related to mis-managing product portfolios. This week, I tracked down Accept Corporation Vice President Hari Candadai to learn more about product portfolio management and how finance executives can understand and enhance this process.

Eric Krell: What is product portfolio management? Can this process also apply to services organizations?

Hari Candadai: Rather than just managing projects and schedules, the product portfolio planning management capability offers a more strategic approach to managing your portfolio of products and services. It’s about managing the full investment lifecycle of products and services from the proposal phase through execution and delivery. With this capability, now you can start with high level estimates and assumptions, and very quickly build business cases and make decisions from a revenue, cost, strategic, and resource capacity perspective regarding where to best invest your R&D spend. more

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that with commercial property prices still tumbling, companies have an opportunity to press for lower property tax evaluations. I asked Jim Kane, managing director with tax and business advisory firm True Partners Consulting, to provide some tips for a company looking to take a proactive approach to reducing property tax. Here’s his Top 5:

1. Have a property tax process in place that addresses compliance, valuation and appeals. Whether a company chooses to outsource the property tax function or retain a property tax professional, having a consistent property tax approach ensures that the organization is working toward only paying its fair share of taxes. more

An Oracle announcement in March about dropping support for a particular Intel chip (Itanium) triggered a clash among two IT giants. While it may make for fun viewing from the sidelines, Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) thousands of customers using the Oracle database have reasons to be concerned.

Many thousands of HP customers run Oracle software on Itanium-based servers. These customers rightfully are nervous, fearing the loss of support from Oracle for their critical database servers. As wiredFINANCE wrote previously, moving to a different server is not trivial. HP has tried to calm nerves with a recent FAQ here.

No matter how either of the vendors tries to soothe nerves, many companies will opt for technology migration. Eager to exploit a competitive opportunity, IBM is jumping in with migration deals. In truth, companies have options. more