In addition to the changes made for Bonus Depreciation and 1099 reporting, several other items of interest were changed by the recent legislation for 2011 and 2012:

Beginning in fiscal year ending June 30, 2011, governments are required to separately identify amounts that are non-spendable. All other amounts will be classified according to resource constraints. The new classifications are as follows:

We would like to remind our clients of the importance of the new W-9 rules set into effect by recent tax legislation. We cannot stress enough that your attention to this new rule is crucial.

The red flags rule may actually go into affect on December 31, 2010. The Rule was originally supposed to become effective on January 1, 2008, with full compliance required by November 1, 2008. The FTC or Congress has delayed enforcing the Rule a couple of times in the last two years.

Enforcement of the rule has now been extended to December 31, 2010, while Congress considers legislation that would affect the scope of the included entities.

In March of 2009, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) issued Statement No. 54, significantly changing the requirements for reporting governmental funds balances beginning in fiscal year ending June 30, 2011. The new statement clarifies the definitions of individual governmental funds and changes some of the activities reported in certain special revenue funds.