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The New Era of “No Tax” Policies: Selective Tax Exemptions and Their Side Effects

4 min read

No Tax on Tips, No Tax on Over TimeFormer President and current candidate Donald Trump introduced a new policy of his in a recent Arizona rally: No more income tax on overtime pay. This follows both Trump and Vice President Harris’ proposal for a no income tax on tips policy, as well.

Below we will look at the two recent proposals and what they could mean for both taxpayers and businesses.

No Tax on Tips

The no tax on tips policy looks to lighten the tax burden on service industry workers. According to the Fair Labor and Standards Act, anyone who “customarily and regularly” receives $30 or more in tips per month is considered a tipped worker. The mechanism to exempt tip income could possibly come through three different mechanisms.

One option would be to categorize tips as gifts. Service employees are often paid wages lower than the minimum wage (as low as $2.31 per hour), with employers required to “top-up” an employee to the federal minimum wage of $7.25 if tips don’t at least make up the difference themselves. As a result, considering tips as gifts may not legally work.

A second option is to treat a specified amount of tips as non-taxable income. Consider a policy, for example, in which up to $25,000 in tips is treated as non-taxable income. Legally, this is straightforward, but it could have various knock-off effects on those it is intended to help. For example, a taxpayer’s gross income could fall so low they no longer qualify for the earned income tax credit and end up being a net negative.

Finally, there is a third option of creating a new deduction; allowing taxpayers to first claim the income and then take a deduction to offset it. The issue here is that given the claimed income level of most tipped workers, an additional deduction may not be one-for-one incrementally beneficial to the standard deduction. In other words, so much of their income is already non-taxable, this wouldn’t make much of a difference.

Side-Effects

Depending on how the policy is structured, there are negative side effects that could accompany the policy change. Compliance with reporting tip income is already spotty at best. It’s not uncommon for tipped workers to underreport their tip income, especially for cash tips. The main concern is that employers and employees may try to game the system. There is a real chance that who is tipped changes and people may try to change compensation schemes so that other types of income are then changed to tip income to take advantage of the changes; especially for taxpayers for whom the law was never intended to help.

Non-Taxable Overtime

The second proposal is to exempt overtime wages from income taxation. The idea is that it would help workers who get to keep more of their money; and at the same time helping businesses, since employees would be incentivized to work more hours, thereby negating the need to hire more employees. While on the surface it seems like a policy to help the hardest working, there are potential problems.

Unfair to Regular Wage Earners

There are two possible issues. First, it leaves behind hourly workers who cannot work overtime due to other responsibilities, health or their job’s duties. It also disadvantages those who have to work multiple jobs (because their job doesn’t offer overtime, but they need the money).

Second, it doesn’t consider salaried positions. There are many salaried positions, where workers are exempt from overtime laws – and a large swath of these are not highly paid positions.

Administrative Complications

Employers and the IRS would need to deal with distinguishing between regular wages and overtime earnings. What is considered overtime is not always clear when there are pay concepts such as bonuses, shift differentials, commissions or other alternative payment arrangements. It would also add significant complexity to payroll systems.

Conclusion

While both policies are well intended, the devil is in the details. Implementation would need to be carefully considered; the intended taxpayers might not be the main beneficiaries; and there is room for fraud.

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Zero Trust Security Models: The New Standard Against Data Breaches?

4 min read

Zero Trust Security Models: The New Standard Against Data Breaches?As technology evolves, so have data breaches, which have become a significant threat to businesses of all sizes. We frequently hear reports of high-profile attacks on major organizations, global corporations, and even government agencies. Emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and machine learning make cybersecurity more challenging. They enable cybercriminals to automate attacks, create sophisticated phishing schemes, and develop advanced malware to evade traditional security measures. Hence, companies have no choice but to change how they approach cybersecurity.

To deal with these modern threats, Zero Trust security models are gaining widespread adoption as the preferred standard for effectively protecting against data breaches.

What is Zero Trust?

Zero Trust is a cybersecurity framework based on the “never trust, always verify” principle. Unlike traditional models that grant access based on network location, Zero Trust requires continuous verification of each user, device, and application attempting to access resources.

Instead of assuming that someone within the network can be trusted, Zero Trust demands constant authentication and least-privilege access. This means users are granted access to only the data and resources they need to perform their tasks. Basically, every interaction is assumed to be a breach.

How Zero Trust Differs from Traditional Security Models

Historically, businesses operated on a “perimeter-based” approach – trusting everything inside their network and guarding against threats from the outside. However, the once-clear network boundary has become unclear with the rise in remote work, cloud computing, and mobile devices. Breaches today can occur internally, often by compromised accounts, rogue insiders, or lateral movement of malware.

Cyberthreats have become such a huge problem that the U.S. government issued an executive order to help improve the nation’s cyber security by mandating that federal agencies adopt the Zero Trust architecture. This further pushes businesses to rethink their cybersecurity strategies.

Key Components of a Zero Trust Model

Zero Trust models are built on several core principles:

  • Continuous verification – Authentication is ongoing, requiring verification for every request made by a user or device.
  • Least-privilege access – Users receive only the minimum level of access needed to perform their jobs.
  • Micro-segmentation – Networks are divided into smaller zones, limiting the lateral movement of potential threats.
  • Contextual monitoring – Continuous monitoring of users and devices based on context – such as location, device health, and behavior – to identify abnormal activities.
  • Multi-factor authentication (MFA) – MFA requires users to provide two or more forms of authentication, such as a password combined with a biometric factor or a security token.
  • Encryption – All data must be encrypted to protect it from unauthorized access or interception. Encryption ensures that even if attackers manage to capture data, they cannot read or exploit it without the appropriate decryption keys.
  • Access Controls – Applying strict policies to determine who can access specific data and systems based on their role and identity.

Benefits of Zero Trust

  1. Stronger protection against data breaches – Zero Trust models significantly reduce the risk of data breaches by enforcing strict identity verification and limiting access to only necessary resources. Even if an attacker gains entry, micro-segmentation ensures limited movement, containing threats, and minimizing damage.
  2. Enhanced regulatory compliance – Zero Trust helps businesses meet regulatory requirements like GDPR and HIPAA by enforcing strict access controls and continuous monitoring. This approach simplifies compliance and ensures that only authorized users can access sensitive data, reducing the risk of fines.
  3. Improved visibility and control – With continuous monitoring, Zero Trust provides better visibility into network activity, making detecting suspicious behavior in real-time easier. This added control enhances security and operational efficiency, allowing immediate responses to potential threats.
  4. Reduction of insider threats – Zero Trust minimizes insider threats by requiring strict identity verification and limiting access, even for internal users. This makes it harder for malicious insiders or compromised accounts to cause significant damage within the network.
  5. Support for remote work and cloud environments – Zero Trust offers safe access to resources from any location. This flexibility ensures that businesses maintain strong security for both in-office and remote teams.

Conclusion

Zero Trust security models represent a significant shift from traditional perimeter-based defenses to a more dynamic and resilient approach. For business owners, adopting Zero Trust principles can provide peace of mind and enhanced protection in today’s unpredictable cyber landscape. With time, emerging technologies like artificial intelligence, IoT, and cloud computing will continue to shape the evolution of Zero Trust, making it an essential part of a robust cybersecurity strategy.

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How to Account for Stranded Assets

4 min read

How to Account for Stranded AssetsWith more than 14 million electric vehicle (EV) registrations in 2023 worldwide and 2023 seeing an increase in EV sales over 2022 by 35 percent, manufacturers are probably happy – but not those producing the traditional internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicles. This is according to the International Energy Agency’s Global EV Outlook 2024: Trends in Electric Cars.

This statistic is important because it illustrates how assets can be rendered less useful and potentially turn into stranded assets. A stranded asset, defined, is an asset that’s no longer able to provide its owner the profitable payback they originally expected. The difference is based on shifts, primarily negative, that impact the asset’s expected productive performance.

How & Why Assets Become Stranded

When an asset loses its earning power, normally due to extraneous circumstances, like the invention of a more efficient battery, it can become stranded. For example, a machine that’s exclusively capable of making an internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle can be considered stranded as the transition to electric vehicles (EV) is made. Since the machine is less valuable because it makes fewer and fewer ICE vehicles, it could be impaired or stranded.

This example illustrates that new technology, especially one that moves forward, can render equipment less useful than previously expected. Other ways assets can be stranded include administrative modifications, evolving societal conventions, etc.

Considerations for Stranded Assets by Testing an Asset for Impairment

The primary way to establish if an asset is stranded is to run an impairment test on it. Stranded assets impact the income statement via a non-cash loss, along with impacting the balance sheet by reducing asset value. Therefore, companies must report a loss on the income statement as it’s completely written off the balance sheet.

Whether it’s through the lens of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) or generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), whether an asset is intangible or tangible, when its value issue is less than book value or impaired, it must be written down.

GAAP Standard

The first step is to determine the carrying value. This is calculated by subtracting the accumulated depreciation from the asset’s original cost. From there, the asset’s projected undiscounted future cash flows (UFCF) are analyzed against the asset’s carrying value. If the total UFCF is less than the carrying value, an asset is considered impaired.

IFRS Standard

The first step also looks at an asset’s carrying value. From there, if either of the following two values is lower than the carrying value, it’s considered impaired:

  • Present value of future cash flows generated by the asset (the so-called “fair value in use” consideration)
  • Fair value less costs to sell the asset

Financial Statement Considerations

If an asset is impaired or stranded, whatever amount the asset drops by, it lowers the business’ asset’s value on the balance sheet. Looking at the income statement, it’s considered a loss. Additionally, since a devaluation is not considered a cash event, it doesn’t trigger any cash outflows. A real-world example can better illustrate this.

The following assumes a business reports its accounting under GAAP. It could be a company that produces fracking equipment to recover natural gas and crude oil. With the uncertainty of domestic fossil fuel policy, specifically where land can be explored, the threat of OPEC and/or Iran being able to determine their production, and the threat of increased government spending on green energy, fracking equipment has a current carrying value of $10 million. However, with increased competition from the three different factors, the same assets can produce an aggregate of $7.5 million in undiscounted future cash flows.

Based on GAAP, since the carrying value is $2.5 million more than the total undiscounted future cash flows, the business would need to record the same amount for an impairment loss. The journal entries would be:

Loss from Impairment Debit:. $2.5 million

Provision for Impairment Losses Credit:  $2.5 million

Conclusion

When it comes to accounting for stranded assets, it’s important to ensure guidelines are followed based on the type of accounting standards businesses must follow.