As accounting practices grow, they often experience similar milestones. Author Martin Shenkman’s book gives accountants a framework to guide the growth of their practice, providing details needed for careful analysis of major business, tax and planning decisions at every phase. The milestones, and book chapters, are arranged in chronological order to discuss the planning, structuring and documentation of each life cycle stage to help readers understand the specific issues involved.

The cycles are identified as setting up a solo practice, hiring staff, transitioning staff from employee to prospective partner status, adding a partner, buying a practice, growing into a multipartner practice and retirement, terminating a partner, or winding down a practice. Each chapter provides detailed instructions and resources on these topics.

The book also includes a CD of sample forms, letters and checklists that readers can use to plan and execute the outlined strategies. Armed with the details contained in this book, owners or partners can become better educated to make the necessary decisions for the longevity and success of their firms.

By JofA Senior Editor Loanna Overcash

This story follows a fictional accounting firm, C&P, through its journey from dysfunction and slow growth to success. Although not a novel, the authors use a narrative format to teach readers about the Practice Growth Model, a way of looking at the resources needed to achieve effective growth for improved firm profitability.

Since taking over as managing partner seven years earlier, Joe Abriola realizes his firm has missed opportunities for growth. When the C&P partners also become aware of their failure to measure up against similar-sized firms, tensions and accusations mount. Change is clearly necessary for the firm’s survival.

Joe calls on a friend, Alex, who used a disciplined growth model to overcome his own firm’s struggles when he became managing partner 18 years prior. Since that time, Alex’s firm has successfully sustained 20% revenue growth.

With Alex’s guidance, Joe leads the C&P team of partners through an off-site strategic summit to develop a three-year plan for the firm’s revitalization. For C&P to grow, they need to develop a common vision and plan. The partners agree that they want to see 15% growth in overall revenues. But their current infrastructure does not support this type of growth.

The C&P partners must implement a system of best practices for disciplined growth that includes:

Developing a common client profile, or set of descriptors, that will help the firm become more efficient in identifying and servicing clients.

Keeping an up-to-date inventory of active opportunities.

Developing revenue segmentation where leaders of either industry niches or service lines own revenue and profit responsibilities for that segment and are held accountable for its direction.

Managing products effectively based on a discipline of defining, designing and developing a service before it is promoted.

As the changes are integrated, the partners and staff of C&P develop more synergy in their work and improvements are made. Of course, it isn’t an easy transformation for everyone, and they lose some people along the way who don’t or won’t perform up to expectations. But, overall, as the firm puts its strategy into action, they gain greater visibility, progressing in targeted business segments. The growing pains seem worth the effort when three years into the implementation of the plan, the firm is well on its way to achieving the long-term growth it first sought to obtain.

By JofA Senior Editor Loanna Overcash

If your New Year’s resolution about finding more satisfaction—monetary or otherwise—on the job has begun to fade, Wes Moss has a pep talk designed to get you back on track.

Moss is a certified financial planner in Atlanta. Fans of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” may recognize Moss’ name from among the contestants on the second season of the reality TV show.

Moss’ worry-fighting tips include sitting down at the beginning of each year to write out the year’s goals, both business and personal. He says that kind of goal-setting helped him get his stress under control.

He also advises readers to look for ways to turn roadblocks into resources. He took advantage of the time spent in Atlanta’s notorious traffic snarls to conduct interviews for his latest book and an earlier one, Starting From Scratch: Secrets From 21 Ordinary People Who Made the Entrepreneurial Leap.

In this book, Moss tells the stories of 18 people who found ways to earn more while worrying less. He begins with Linda Rabb, a food service worker who found a healthy six-figure salary and long-term security from the insurance services company Aflac.

In the chapters that follow, Moss offers varied examples of ordinary professionals who found more control over their careers and enhanced security by looking at work with a more entrepreneurial mind-set.

By JofA Senior Editor Kim Nilsen

Michael Graetz, a Yale Law School professor, has written many books and studies related to major tax reform. His previous books on income tax reform may be familiar to readers—The Decline (and Fall) of the Income Tax (1997) and the 1999 paperback version The U.S. Income Tax: What It Is, How It Got That Way, and Where We Go From Here. Graetz’s titles indicate the progression of his thoughts and research in a series of studies, which have culminated in his plan for comprehensive reform that is the subject of this book. Graetz probably hopes that Congress adopts the basics of his plan so that his trilogy can be complete. However, his fear is perhaps that instead this is only the start of a long series.

Graetz states that his plan “offers a nonideological, reasoned, fiscally sound and feasible way to modernize our tax system. It would avoid shifting the tax burden away from those most able to pay to families with less income or wealth, while allowing us to fund our government in a manner more conducive to economic growth and increasing standards of living for all Americans.” This plan, the Competitive Tax Plan, consists of six parts: (1) Enact a value-added tax; (2) eliminate the income tax for most Americans; (3) lower the corporate income tax rate; (4) retain the estate and gift taxes; (5) introduce a payroll adjustment or “smart cards” to protect low- and moderate-income workers; and (6) create incentives for states to adopt a similar model.

Businesses with annual gross receipts of less than $100,000 would be exempt from the value-added tax; married couples with incomes under $100,000 ($50,000 for single individuals) would not pay income taxes. Graetz offers a creative solution to minimize the regressive effect of a consumption tax with a “smart card” or payroll adjustment. To make more corporate income subject to tax and to discourage tax shelters, Graetz recommends greater conformity between book and tax accounting for publicly held companies.

Readers of earlier works will recognize the basics of the Graetz plan, but will discover many more details in this book. Graetz outlines the details of his plan while comparing it to other plans for major tax reform. Interested citizens without a tax background can understand his clearly written explanations, while the details in footnotes and appendices provide enough supporting information to satisfy the more serious tax expert.

All CPAs could find value in reading this book. Those in tax practice obviously need knowledge of tax reform proposals and by reading this book they could gain a basic understanding of all the major plans. Graetz’s comparison of his plan to the other plans serves as a primer on tax policy issues that are central to the debate over tax reform. Regardless of when (or if) one of these proposals is enacted, CPAs who read the book will be able to respond to questions from clients and other parties with an interest in this debate. Accountants who are not tax practitioners also have a stake, at the least as taxpaying citizens. Armed with this knowledge, CPAs can and should have a voice in the debate over the future of our federal and state tax systems.

By Tonya K. Flesher, CPA, Ph.D., professor of accountancy at the Patterson School of Accountancy, University of Mississippi