Occupational fraud is a scheme in which an employee abuses the trust placed in him or her by an employer for personal gain. Its formal definition is: The use of one’s occupation for personal enrichment through the deliberate misuse or misapplication of the employing organization’s resources or assets.

Cooperatives-What We Expect to See in 2013

The American Taxpayer Relief Act of 2012 was signed into law on January 2, 2013. This new law modifies or extends many business tax breaks, and also contains many changes to individual income tax. There are substantial additional changes in this act, but the following are most likely to impact you and/or your business.

A multiemployer pension plan is used by an employer to provide a benefit to their employees in a plan that is shared with multiple employers, usually in similar industries. Under previous accounting principles, employers were only required to disclose their contributions to the plan without disclosing the funded status of the plan.

What We Have Seen in Cooperatives in 2012

As a cooperative, you are allowed to allocate various taxable items to your members.  Common items include qualified patronage and the section 199 deduction.  This benefit comes with some specific rules regarding reporting to your members and reporting to the Internal Revenue Service. When cooperatives make allocations to their members, they generally  have up to 81/2...