According to a recent report by the Congressional Budget Office, about 56 million citizens, or roughly one-sixth of the U.S. population, will receive some sort of Social Security benefit this year. More that two-thirds of the beneficiaries are retired workers and their family members. Social Security payments this year, at about $733 billion, currently account for about twenty percent of the federal budget. Nearly all – 97 percent – of Social Security’s income results from the 12.4 percent tax levied on salaries up to $106,800. (During 2011, the employee’s portion of the payroll tax was cut by two percent, from 6.2 to 4.2 percent, as this IRS notice explains. This was a result of the Tax Relief, Unemployment Insurance Reauthorization, and Job Creation Act of 2010.)

Clearly, Social Security is an important source of income for many individuals. However, starting in 2010, the program’s outlays exceeded the revenue coming in. What’s more, at current rates of income and outflows, the Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) trust fund will be exhausted by 2017, while the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance (OASI) trust fund will be exhausted in the year 2040. “Once a trust fund’s balance has fallen to zero and current revenues are insufficient to cover the benefits that are specified in law, the corresponding program will be unable to pay full benefits without changes in law,” according to the CBO report. more

Last week I was in Palo Alto visiting Professor Charles Horngren to congratulate him on the 50th anniversary of the publishing of his epic textbook Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis (14th edition 2011, Prentice Hall: Boston, MA) . It has been the market leader since 1962. What is the secret to this book’s success? Let’s see what we can learn from Dr. Horngren.

One of the benefits of working with Dr. Horngren (who serves as the academic advisor to our Beyond Budgeting Round Table) is you get some insights into how he works. One way Dr. Horngren keeps his text alive is to always be learning. When I first invited him to participate in Best Practice research we were conducting on activity-based costing, I was only hoping that he would make time to provide some feedback on our summary report. Instead he joined us for five of the six site visits (the one he missed was due to a scheduled test he was giving that day but he took a red eye flight to be with us the following morning for the next site visit). more

Throughout much of the summer, and particularly in August, when families are purchasing notebooks, backpacks and other back-to-school accoutrements, a healthy chunk of states offer sales tax holidays, exempting consumer purchases during that time from sales taxes. This year, 17 states are hosting such holidays, the Tax Foundation reports.

For instance, in May, shoppers in Louisiana could forego sales tax on the first $1,500 they spent purchasing hurricane preparedness supplies, Thomson Reuters reports. Earlier this month, consumers buying clothing, school supplies, computers, and other items in South Carolina could skip the sales tax, also according to Thomson Reuters. more

The so-called recovery may be flaccid and the markets may be erratic, but one thing is certain: there is no recession when it comes to information and the need to store it and protect it. In a recent briefing IBM noted that storage demand is doubling every 18 months. Structured information—the kind contained in your databases, financial systems, ERP systems, and such—is growing 32% each year while unstructured data, which is everything else from email to documents to images, is growing at 63% annually.

IT analyst Greg Schulz makes exactly this point in his blog here. Check out his discussion of ways to address the inexorable growth of demand for storage.

At the same time leading storage vendors have been announcing new products that promise to streamline and simplify the storage challenges facing CFOs. Make no mistake, given the amount of spending directed at information storage and protection this should become a top fiduciary and compliance concern of every CFO. more