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.

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.