Author: jfortenberry@fortenberrylaw.com

A fascinating article from Wired Magazine entitled “Paint by Numbers: It’s high art meets high finance. It’s social security for starving artists. How a tech whiz kid launched the first museum-quality pension fund.” Excerpt:

The idea was simple: Create a pension plan for artists by gathering a collection of their works and gradually selling them off to build a cash account. Over the course of their careers, some artists would succeed wildly; most would fail miserably. By spreading that risk of failure among a large pool of artists, Shniberg figured he could provide financial security to a group of workers unaccustomed to a safety net.

The TaxGuru has provided an abundant supply of tax humor for this April 15th. Enjoy! Especially here and here.

RothCPA.com has some great last-minute mailing and filing tips here.

Happy One-Year Anniversary to the Tax Prof Blog!

Netscape Money & Business has posted “The Most and Least Tax-Friendly Places to Live.” (Many thanks to Netscape Money & Business for listing Benefitsblog as one of the Editors’ Web Picks.)

And for those in need of that last-minute extension: “IRS Form 4868 – Application for Automatic Extension of Time To File U.S. Individual Income Tax Return[pdf].”

From the SEC, in an announcement yesterday:

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced today the adoption of a new rule that amends the compliance dates for Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 123 (revised 2004), Share-Based Payment (Statement No. 123R).

Under Statement No. 123R, registrants would have been required to implement the standard as of the beginning of the first interim or annual period that begins after June 15, 2005, or after Dec. 15, 2005 for small business issuers. Calendar year-end companies that are not small business issuers, therefore, would have been permitted to follow the pre-existing accounting literature for the first and second quarters of 2005, but required to follow Statement No. 123R for their third quarter reports.

The Commission’s new rule allows companies to implement Statement No. 123R at the beginning of their next fiscal year, instead of the next reporting period, that begins after June 15, 2005, or Dec. 15, 2005 for small business issuers. This means, for example, that the financial statements for a calendar year-end company do not need to comply with Statement No. 123R until the interim financial statements for the first quarter of 2006 are filed with the Commission. The financial statements for a company, other than a small business issuer, with a June 30 year-end, however, must comply with Statement No. 123R when the interim financial statements for the quarter beginning July 1, 2005 are filed with the Commission.

From PlanSponsor.com: “SEC Makes it Official: FASB 123 Implementation Date Moved Back Again.”

Also, from the Wall Street Journal: “SEC OKs Delay In Options Expensing.” Excerpt:

Don Nicolaisen, the SEC’s chief accountant, cited concerns that companies were already struggling to cope with a new congressionally mandated internal controls reporting requirement. Officials also hoped to bring consistency to financial statements that might otherwise have relied on varying options-expensing standards within a single fiscal year.

Reuters is reporting: “Bush will sign bankruptcy bill passed by Congress.” (View the final vote here.) The legislation–“The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005“–contains provisions impacting retirement plan assets. More on the bill later . . .

(Previous post mentioning the legislation here.)

The publishers of TechnoLawyer, a popular email newsletter network for lawyers and law firm administrators, have launched a new blog: TechnoLawyer Blog.

From Jim Calloway’s Law Practice Tips Blog:

At ABA TECHSHOW’s “60 Sites in 60 Minutes,” the site I showed that got the most crowd reaction was the Baby NameVoyager. It is a graphic representation of all of the common names given to babies from 1900 to 2003. Try several of your friend’s names and see how names gain and lose popularity over the years. The display is somewhat mesmerizing.

From SFGate.com: “OT Offer Marks Shift in Silicon Valley..” The article reports how one video game company told employees that “they would get the overtime pay they have demanded but not the stock options that have made millionaires out of countless rank-and-file Silicon Valley workers.” The articles goes on to report that “the change is a result of [a] lawsuit and comments from employees, who said in a November survey that they would prefer cash to merit-based bonuses and options tied to the company’s stock performance.”

Today’s Wall Street Journal is reporting that the SEC intends to delay the implementation date for FASB’s option expensing rule:

An announcement of the SEC’s decision could come as early as this week . . The new rules by the Financial Accounting Standards Board, which require companies to include employee stock-option compensation as an expense on their earnings reports, currently are set to take effect for fiscal quarters starting after June 15. The SEC’s staff has recommended that SEC commissioners vote to change the deadline, so that the rules instead would take effect for fiscal years starting after June 15.

Rev. Rul. 2005-25 (via Benefitslink.com) answers two questions:

(1) Is a married individual eligible to contribute to a Health Savings Account (HSA) if the individual’s spouse has non-HDHP family coverage that does not cover the individual? Answer: An individual who otherwise qualifies as an eligible individual does not fail to be an eligible individual merely because the individual’s spouse has non-HDHP family coverage, if the spouse’s non-HDHP does not cover the individual. Accordingly, that individual may contribute to an HSA.

(2) If the individual is eligible to contribute to an HSA, what is the maximum contribution limit? Answer: The maximum amount under section 223(b) that an eligible individual may contribute to an HSA is based on whether the individual has self-only or family HDHP coverage.

Those of you who like to read HR-related blogs will want to take note of a new one located at the Employment Law Information Network—The Employment Law Blog–authored by Patrick J. Della Valle and Suzanne H. Stenson.