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.

Finding the right in-home care for your loved one is an incredibly important decision. Maybe your loved one needs medication supervision on a regular basis, or maybe they are recovering from a fall or surgery. In-home caregivers can provide non-medical services as well as homemaker tasks, as well as administering medication and helping with bathing and grooming. Finding the right person to care for your loved one means you’ll need to take some time to do your research, including interviewing several people that you feel might be the best match. But, before you set out on your journey of finding a new household employee, here are some mistakes that should be avoided.

Tuesday morning at Engage 2017 kicked off with a business titan sharing advice to an arena full of people. Kevin O’Leary (Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank) took the stage and shared with us lessons from his business and personal life. His advice revolved around creating and building successful businesses, something he clearly knows a lot about. This ended up being a theme for the week, focusing on your firm as a business and how to grow it into the future.

You may have heard people you know talk about hiring a nanny or au pair, but you may not be sure what the differences are between the two. Many people use the terms interchangably, not knowing that a nanny and au pair are two very different things. If you’re thinking about hiring an in home childcare provider, it’s a great idea to research which one would be the best fit for your family, au pair vs. nanny.

New York's comprehensive Paid Family Leave Act becomes effective January 1, 2018.

“Let’s meet about that” is a popular refrain that echoes regularly through the offices and hallways of organizations everywhere. Often though, said meetings are hastily arranged and largely unproductive. Although emergency “huddles” are sometimes called for, good meetings are well planned. Here are some important points to keep in mind.

Nevada has recently passed a new law that gives domestic workers a “bill of rights.” Here, we will go over the basic parts of the Nevada Domestic Worker Bill of Rights (NV DWBR) and how it could affect household employers in Nevada.