As mentioned in Family Office Hot Topics, technology is becoming a huge part of the family office day-to-day routine. Reporting systems can give families and advisors access to real time data anywhere in the world and security concerns associated with cloud services are all but gone. Modernizing how your office does business is especially important as second and third generations start their own families; everyone knows how we millennials like our screens and instant gratification! Donny Shimamoto (Intraprise Technologies) gave us a good overview of how to integrate new technologies into the family office.

If you’re considering hiring a nanny and you’re determining how much you want to pay, you should also factor in the cost of hiring a nanny payroll service that will have your back. A partner to help make sure you have everything covered in terms of payroll, taxes, and benefits. By hiring a nanny payroll service that you can trust, you’ll have peace of mind that hardworking payroll specialists are working to make sure you have everything in order the first time, so there are no surprises when it comes to tax time.

On December 20th, Congress passed the largest federal tax reform law in more than 30 years. Commonly called the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” (TCJA), the new law means substantial changes for individual taxpayers and businesses alike.

We’ve broken down some of the key provisions for both.

When you’re away at work, you want someone that can take care of your kids with love, attention to detail, and the utmost care. Finding the right person for this job can be quite a task and many times, it can be expensive. Have you considered a nanny share? A nanny share allows you to hire the nanny you want, for the price you can afford, because you are sharing the nanny and costs with another family.

Every year there are a host of changes to labor law and reimbursement rates that impact nanny household payroll. Below please find a quick overview of the significant changes that go into effect for nanny taxes 2018.

Randy Abeles (RSM) and Eric Johnson (Deloitte) teamed up to talk about current issues faced in family offices. Both of them work closely with family offices and deal with these topics on a regular basis. Like most of the other sessions I attended, this one focused heavily on advising family offices to treat themselves like a regular service providing business.

As an employer, you want to make sure your nanny feels valued and appreciated, so in addition to paying her a fair wage, it’s great to consider some additional benefits that you could provide that are tax-free. Household employees are eligible to receive non-taxed benefits and reimbursements, but some do have limits and procedures associated with them. Here, we will provide a few options for non-taxed benefits that you may be able to provide.

Earlier HWS reported on changes to tax-free employer assistance with nanny health insurance in 2017. As we approach the end of the year it is important to note that the reimbursement by an employer for nanny health care expenses - or any household employee's health care reimbursement - requires reporting of the benefit on the nanny's W-2 form.

Jason Deshayes (AICPA) delivered a session that was applicable to any business really, not just CPAs. Client service is a prime differentiator especially in smaller local firms. If you’re doing this wrong, you won’t be “doing” very long. Luckily Jason laid out some solid advice to make this easy for you. The session had three main focus points; finding fee increasing opportunities, going from service provider to trusted advisor, and best practices to act on now.