Archives for March 2021

Carlsbad CPA Offers jduujhebabejh Accounting, Bookkeeping, and Tax Preparation Services

Candice Gerlach, a Carlsbad CPA and the creator and CEO of Candice Gerlach, CPA, Inc. in Carlsbad, California, has announced that they are offering accounting, accounting support, and tax preparation services. They want to point out that they are devoted to their clients and do their best to understand their customers’ needs. They use a proactive approach to tax planning and remain in touch with the customer throughout the year. They’re well informed on emerging problems and be sure that they are up-to-date regarding tax legislation to make sure that they are always prepared for the toughest conditions.

Candice Gerlach herself says,”We developed plans for both individual and business customers. And we work hard and long hours when they need us – even after tax year. So let us handle your most pressing fiscal problems, and make sure you know what your financials are telling you about the health of your business.”

Candice Gerlach, CPA, CFE, has almost 20 years of experience in public accounting. She has certification as Certified Fraud Examiner and Certified Public Accountant in Carlsbad, California. She has a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree and a BS in Accountancy level.

Throughout her career, she has concentrated on financial statement prep, white collar crime, and audits and tax compliance. She’d served gets the direct forensic accountant is many huge national financial crimes, including a Ponzi scheme worth $100 million. She’s also been involved in recovering funds for its Federal Receiver to return to victims, tracing laundered money in a variety of parts of the world, and supplying supporting documentation for many attorneys and law enforcement agencies.

In the present time, she is focused on taxation compliance problems in a wide range of areas, such as individuals, partnerships, estates and trust, such as closely held C and S corporations. She has a wide array of clients, ranging from young entrepreneurs to high net-worth individuals. She has also been employed in the diamond industry in which she became a Certified Diamontologist throughout the Diamond Council of America.

The CPA firm can help customers with different accounting and financial tasks. These include income tax preparation, estate planning, investment plans, charitable giving, retirement planning, cash flow planning, risk management, education funding, and elder preparation.

They could help with tax reduction plans that optimize the customer’s retirement plan gifts, making charitable gifts, and tax-loss harvesting in portfolios. In estate planning, it may help to take a look at a flowchart of the customer’s present estate plan to visualize what will happen to each of the client’s assets and the way the estate tax legislation will affect them. It is crucial to ensure that all estate planning documents are up to date, not the will, but also the health care documents, power of attorney, and any trust arrangements. It is also to make certain the beneficiary designations are up to date if there was a substantial life event, such as marriage, divorce, or death of partner.

The CPA firm can also help with the customer’s investment plans, particularly when there is increased market volatility. Regular portfolio rebalancing enables clients the maintain the correct quantity of risk in their portfolio. And for those who are retired and living off their portfolio, then they will need to keep a certain amount of cash reserve to cover their living expenses for a definite period of time so they will not be forced to sell stocks at a down market.

They can also help customers attain tax efficiency when making charitable gifts. For example, people can donate appreciated stock to have the ability to avoid paying for capital gains taxes. It may also be a fantastic idea to bunch charitable deductions.

People who are looking for help with their tax preparation or accounting tasks may want to check out the Candice Gerlach, CPA, Inc. site, or get them on the telephone, or via email.

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Worker says Amazon hung anti-union signs in bathroom stalls

NEW YORK (AP) — When Amazon found out that its workers were trying to form a union, the company put up signs across the warehouse in Bessemer, Alabama, including in bathroom stalls, a worker said Wednesday.

“No place was off limits,” said warehouse employee Jennifer Bates, who testified at a Washington hearing on income inequality.

Bates, who supports the unionizing effort, described on Wednesday how Amazon is pushing back against the biggest unionization efforts at the company since its founding as an online bookstore in 1995.

Besides signs, she said Amazon sends messages to workers’ phones and forces employees to attend meetings a couple of times a week that can go on for nearly an hour.

“The company would just hammer on different reasons why the union was bad for us,” Bates said. “If someone spoke up and disagreed with what the company was saying, they would just shut the meeting down.”

The stakes are high for Amazon. If organizers succeed in Bessemer, it could set off a chain reaction across Amazon’s operations nationwide, with more workers rising up and demanding better working conditions. Meanwhile, labor advocates are hoping a win at the Alabama facility could help push the labor movement in the South, which hasn’t been hospitable to organized labor.

But organizers face an uphill battle. Amazon, the second-largest private employer in the country, has a history of crushing unionizing efforts at its warehouses and its Whole Foods grocery stores.

On Wednesday, Amazon.com Inc. didn’t deny that it hung signs in bathrooms or that it held mandatory meetings. Instead it said in a statement that it is following all National Labor Relations Board rules and guidelines in Alabama and that it respects employees’ right to form, join or not join a labor union.

The Seattle-based company also said it takes Bates’s feedback seriously, but doesn’t believe her comments represent other employees.

“We encourage people to speak with the hundreds of thousands of Amazon employees who love their jobs, earn at least $15 an hour, receive comprehensive healthcare and paid leave benefits,” the company said in a statement.

The nearly 6,000 workers at the Bessemer warehouse have until the end of March to vote on whether they want to unionize.

Big names have come out in support of the unionization efforts, including Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont, and Stacey Abrams, the one-time Democratic candidate for Georgia governor who has become a leading voice on voting rights. Last week, Sen. Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, backed organizers as did Black Lives Matter. Most of the workers in the warehouse are Black, according to organizers.

Earlier this month, President Joe Biden released a two-minute video saying workers in Alabama and around the country had the right to unionize without intimidation from their companies, but he didn’t mention Amazon directly.

Bates, who testified virtually in the hearing Wednesday before the Senate Budget Committee, called working at the warehouse “grueling” because of all the walking she has to do in the facility, which is the size of 14 football fields. Bates said she hoped the union would set more break times, force Amazon to treat workers with respect and pay more than the $15 an hour minimum the company currently pays.

“All we want is to make Amazon a better place to work. Yet Amazon is acting like they are under attack,” Bates said. “Maybe if they spent less time and money trying to stop the union they would hear what we are saying.”

With Messi watching, new Barcelona president takes office

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — With Lionel Messi watching closely, newly elected Barcelona president Joan Laporta took office on Wednesday and promised to do his best to convince the star playmaker to stay.

Messi was at Laporta’s inauguration at the Camp Nou Stadium and embraced the new president during the ceremony.

One of Laporta’s biggest tasks will be to try to change Messi’s mind after he pushed to leave the club last season. He had his request denied by former president Josep Bartomeu but can leave for free when his contract expires at the end of this season.

“I’ll do whatever I can to keep Messi from leaving,” Laporta said, adding that he was certain the star player wouldn’t be considering leaving if the stands weren’t empty because of the pandemic.

Another big task for Laporta will be to restructure the club’s finances amid debts of more than 1 billion euros ($1.2 billion) caused in large part by of the coronavirus pandemic.

This will be Laporta’s second spell as Barcelona president. He was also in charge from 2003-2010, when Messi began playing at the club and when it had some of its greatest success.

Laporta also embraced captain Gerard Piqué, who also attended the inauguration along with Messi and Sergi Roberto. Coach Ronald Koeman also was at the ceremony.

“We were very happy then and we will be very happy again,” Piqué wrote on Twitter. “Congratulations Joan Laporta.”

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More AP soccer: https://apnews.com/hub/soccer and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Canada: Detained Canadians to go on trial in China shortly

TORONTO (AP) — The Canadian government confirmed Wednesday that China will soon begin trials for two Canadians who were arrested two years ago in apparent retaliation for Canada’s detention of a senior executive for Chinese communications giant Huawei Technologies.

Foreign Minister Marc Garneau said the Canadian Embassy in Beijing has been notified that court hearings for Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are scheduled to take place Friday and Monday. Spavor’s court hearing will take place Friday and Kovrig’s will happen Monday.

“The arbitrary detention of Mr. Kovrig and Mr. Spavor is a top priority for the Government of Canada and we continue to work tirelessly to secure their immediate release,” Garneau said in a statement.

“We believe these detentions are arbitrary, and remain deeply troubled by the lack of transparency surrounding these proceedings.”

The Global Times reported last week that the two men would “soon be tried” after they were charged with “crimes undermining China’s national security” in June 2020.

Kovrig, a former diplomat, and Spavor, an entrepreneur, were arrested in December 2018, days after Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was detained at the airport in Vancouver, British Columbia. The U.S. wants her extradited to face fraud charges.

China has revealed few details of the charges against the two, and Canadian diplomats allowed occasional visits have said little other than to call for them to be released.

The Global Times said Kovrig was “accused of having used an ordinary passport and business visa to enter China to steal sensitive information and intelligence through contacts in China since 2017, while Spavor was accused of being a key source of intelligence for Kovrig.”

Meng, who remains free on bail in Vancouver, is the daughter of the founder of Huawei, which China’s government has promoted around the world as one of its national champions. Her arrest enraged Beijing, which sees the U.S. case as a political move designed to prevent China’s rise, and it sent China-Canada relations into a tailspin.

China has also retaliated by placing restrictions on various Canadian exports to China, including canola oil seed and handed death sentences to four Canadians convicted of drug smuggling.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan’s are set to meet Thursday with their Chinese counterparts on Thursday in Alaska.

Automated strike zone coming to minors but a while from MLB

NEW YORK (AP) — If a minor league player says an umpire is acting like a robot this year, he might be right.

Computer umpires for balls and strikes are coming to a low-level minor league but are a while away from the big leagues.

Major League Baseball plans to use Automated Ball-Strike technology (ABS) in eight of nine ballparks at the Low-A Southeast League, which starts play May 4 across Florida as minor league baseball resumes after a one-year break caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Major League Baseball Umpires Association agreed in its labor contract that started in 2020 to cooperate and assist if Commissioner Rob Manfred decides to utilize the system at the major league level. MLB intends to include the subject in talks this year to replace the agreement with the players’ association that expires Dec. 1.

“It’s hard to handicap if, when or how it might be employed at the major league level, because it is a pretty substantial difference from the way the game is called today,” Chris Marinak, MLB’s chief operations and strategy officer, said Wednesday during an on-line presentation on 2021 innovation and fan engagement.

MLB tracks the accuracy of ball-strike calls by its plate umpires but doesn’t release the figures. Umpire Ángel Hernández, in a lawsuit filed against Major League Baseball, said his accuracy on ball-strike calls increased from 92.19% in 2012 to 96.88% in 2016.

The independent Atlantic League became the first American professional league to let a computer call balls and strikes at its All-Star Game in July 2019 and experimented with ABS during the second half of that season. It also was used in the Arizona Fall League for top prospects that year, drawing complaints of its calls of breaking balls.

“The goal here is really to focus on demonstrating system reliability and to start to get more athlete feedback from more players, coaches and umpires,” Marinak said. “The technology is really in pretty good shape.”

Minor league experiments this year also include pitch timers at Triple-A, Double-A and Low-A (15 seconds with bases empty, 20 seconds with runners), a limit of two pickoff attempts per plate appearance at Low-A with an automatic balk for a failed attempt on a third, a requirement pitchers must step off the rubber before pickoffs at High-A, a requirement infielders at Double-A have both feet on the infield dirt and an option to require two infielders on each side of second base; and 18-inch bases instead of 15-inch at Triple-A.

Marinak said players subject to the ABS will be measured before their first game, and the top of the strike zone will be 56% of their height and the bottom 28%. The strike zone will be measured two-dimensionally at the front of home plate.

“We have a significant amount of accuracy in this new system, I think slightly plus or minus 0.1 inches,” he said. “The technology has really matured and gotten to the point where it’s ready to go. The delay in terms of the next step in terms of trying to implement the automated-ball strike system is really getting the players to understand how it works and try to get feedback on the shape and the design of the zone and other sort of behind the scenes features about how the system is sort of structured and communicated with players.

“That’s our main focus now, is trying to widen the audience of players who have used the tool and try to get feedback around how we handle certain circumstances that probably don’t come to mind on a daily basis.”

One concern is what to call a pitch that comes through the strike zone and bounces on the plate, such as a sharp curveball, or a breaking ball at the chin that drops into the zone.

The rule book says the strike zone is square, the area over home plate ranging from the midpoint between a batter’s shoulders and the top of his uniform pants to the hollow beneath the kneecap. Marinak admitted “the zone is not actually called that way.”

“There’s a long history in the game of people just sort of just understanding by their eyes and their feel what’s either a strike and what’s not a strike,” he said. “And I think we have a lot of work to do to decide what is the zone with this automated system? Is it more of an oval-shaped zone, which is more consistent with what’s called today? Is it a square zone? Is it a three-dimensional zone? How does the zone shift from hitter to hitter? Is it literally the zone drawn every single pitch, as is written in the book, or is it a fixed zone that’s based on your height as a hitter, no matter how much you sort of squat down or stand up?”

MLB anticipates also using ABS this season in the Atlantic League, which is now a partner league, and possibly during the Arizona Fall League.

“So there’s a lot of those questions that need to be resolved before it could be used extensively at any sort of major league level. And that’s what our goal is for this year,” Marinak said. “And I just think it’s hard to handicap right now how that process is going to play out, how long it’s going to take, what the feedback from the players is going to be, what the feedback from the umpires is going to be and how we would translate that into a timeline to bring that into the major league level. And then there’s also the question of whether we like the way that it behaves or not or performs. And I think we need to get a better sense of that, as well.”

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More AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

Archives for March 2021

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