Accounting Today - October 2011

FASB issues goodwill impairment test standard BY MICHAEL COHN / NORWALK, CONN.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has finalized a new standard aimed at simplifying how organizations test goodwill for impairment.

The recently released standard — known
as Accounting Standards Update No. 2011-
08, Intangibles-Goodwill and Other (Topic
350): Testing Goodwill for Impairment — in-
cludes amendments intended to address
concerns expressed by private companies
about the cost and complexity of the previous
goodwill impairment test.

CCH

According to Leslie Bonacum, vice president of communications, CCH is enjoying its strongest e-filing tax season through its ProSystem fx Tax and Global fx tax compliance solutions. For the 2010 income tax filing season, CCH’s electronic filing platform was used to electronically transmit more than 11 million state and federal tax returns. At times, the CCH electronic filing platform transmitted nearly 100,000 tax returns an hour, with nearly a million tax returns filed on April 18. This was accomplished with an availability rating in excess of 99.995 percent.

CCH also has a new enhancement — the ability for tax preparers to get an e-mail notification when a tax return is accepted by the IRS and/or state taxing authority.

For the upcoming tax season, CCH will continue to add all new states and forms that become available for e-filing. Additionally, it will continue to evaluate existing software solutions to make them stronger and more comprehensive, and will continue to build out its customer service and support teams.

In 2012, as more professional firms digitize their workflows, one new workflow solution that CCH will be offering this year is the ability for tax preparers to batch-publish taxpayer organizers directly to ProSystem fx Portal, providing workflow efficiencies.

CCH Small Firm Services

For the upcoming season, ATX and Tax Wise will continue implementing the Modernized e-File platform, implementing the IRS Phase III of MeF to include 132 additional federal forms. Additionally, the two tax prep systems will continue state 1040 MeF forms and business MeF forms.

Improvements are also being made to en-
hance product workflow. New for 2011, ATX
will contain an expanded automated Sched-
ule D import function for the 1120 to help
simplify recording client stock transactions.
Another enhancement to take place this fall
is the new user interface for Scan & Fill. This
scan-based, automated document manage-
ment system will feature a new layout and was
scheduled to be launched in September.

Drake

For the upcoming tax season, assistant director of marketing Becky Reed revealed that updates of the preparation software include the addition of state apportionment screens in Forms 1120, 1120S and 1065 to simplify data entry for multi-state business returns. Business tax return preparation will produce a book depreciation schedule, and ownership