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If youre running a smaller tax and accounting firm, you probably dont run your business the same way large firms do. Your tech stack is probably more focused on streamlining workflows, improving project tracking, and finding solutions for customer collaboration. And while thats great for building a flexible and responsive accounting firm, it also means that your firm is less likely to use data analytics tools to grow your business which means youre missing out.

A small practice incorporating the right strategies and tech-enabled services can set its clients up for success and the firm up for big-time growth. But how do you do it?

In this webinar, our small firm technology experts Georgia Smith and Stephanie Plaza will cover:

Program level: Basic (no prerequisites required)Field of Study:Information TechnologyReceive 1 hour of free CPE credit for participating in this live webcast.

Presented by

Georgia Smith is a product manager for Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting North America and has over 25 years of experience in tax preparation. Georgia owns and manages a tax preparation and bookkeeping business that serves individuals, small businesses, and small non-profits.

The insights that Georgia gains into the pain points of the small tax and accounting business owner helps guide her work at Wolters Kluwer, where she focuses on supporting small firms and creating the vision and strategy for the ATX product line.

Stephanie Plaza is a technology product manager Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting North America. For over 10 years Stephanie has been helping small business grow in the tax preparation space starting out on the banking side and moving to tax software over 5 years ago. Stephanie is passionate about enhancing the tax compliance software to help her customers get more work done faster and driving cloud migration to support the technology shift to online products. When she isnt working Stephanie enjoys traveling with her husband and daughter and her active role on the board of a homeless shelter in her hometown of Easton, PA.

Gail Perry is the editor-in-chief of CPA Practice Advisor. A veteran of accounting journalism, she also speaks at many accounting events, trade shows, and webinars. Gail is the author of over 30 books (includingMint.comFor Dummies, The Idiots Guide to Introductory Accounting, and Surviving Financial Downsizing: A Practical Guide to Living Well on Less Income), and she maintains a small tax practice. Gail is a graduate of Indiana University where she earned a bachelors degree in journalism. She returned to school to study accounting at Illinois State University, earned her CPA, and worked for Deloitte in Chicago for several years as a state and local tax accountant. She has taught introductory accounting and personal finance courses, and she is a former computer applications instructor at the Indiana CPA Society. Gail is a member of the AICPAs PFS Credential Committee.

This FREE online webinar is a continuation of CPA Practice Advisors mission to provide unbiased, independent information on technologies available to practicing public accountants and tax professionals.

Special thanks to our sponsor for supporting this educational session:

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting is a leading provider of software solutions and local expertise that helps tax, accounting, and audit professionals research and navigate complex regulations, comply with legislation, manage their businesses and advise clients with speed, accuracy, and efficiency so they maximize the impact they create for their clients. Our focus is giving tax and accounting professionals the ability to grow, manage and protect their business and their clients businesses in a fast-moving and ever-changing world. It means that firms can stay ahead of the pack, take advantage of new technologies, transform, and capitalize on new opportunities.

Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting is part of Wolters Kluwer (WKL), a global leader in professional information, software solutions, and services for the healthcare; tax and accounting; governance, risk and compliance; and legal and regulatory sectors. We help our customers make critical decisions every day by providing expert solutions that combine deep domain knowledge with advanced technology and services.

CPA Practice Advisor is registered with the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) as a sponsor of continuing professional education on the National Registry of CPE Sponsors. State boards of accountancy have final authority on the acceptance of individual courses for CPE credit. Complaints regarding registered sponsors may be submitted to the National Registry of CPE Sponsors through its website:https://www.nasbaregistry.org/. For more information regarding administrative policies please contact Isaac OBannon at iobannon@cpapracticeadvisor.com.

Originally posted here:
CPE Webinar November 2, 2022: The Nuts and Bolts of Building Your Small Firm's Ideal Tech Stack - CPAPracticeAdvisor.com

Researchers and other experts expect millions of new construction jobsin coming months due to the passage of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS Act and the Inflation Reduction Act.

That's in addition to the 407,000 unfilled jobs in the construction industry now.

But where will those workers come from?

Immigrants have played a critical role in the U.S. construction industry for generations, from the creation of the Transcontinental Railroad in the West to the skyscrapers that define New York City in the East.But unlike in these past generations, workers tasked to improve Americas infrastructure this time around likely won't hail from outside the country, unless there's a dramatic change to current immigration policy, industry officials said.

"Construction is one of many industries that historically relied much more than they've been able to in the last three years on foreign-born workers," said Ken Simonson, chief economist at the Associated General Contractors of America, during a recent webinar on finding more workers to help build America's infrastructure. "There have been a number of immigration programs that have been allowed to lapse."

The Biden administration recently temporarily extended the window for expired work permits by another 18 months, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The move had been in the works for months as officials looked for ways to combat the risk of workforce shortages, Politico reported.

USCIS is also seeking ways to address a backlog of roughly 1.5 million work permit applications. House and Senate Democrats have proposed bills to reduce the employment-based backlogs, but there does not seem to be enough Republican support to bring them across the finish line, said John Dorer, president of Immigration Office Solutions and CEO of eb3.work, a New York-based platform that connects employers with foreign nationals seeking to work legally in the U.S.

Things are stalled for the moment, this is typical in a pre-election environment, said Dorer. This may change after the midterm elections.

In some areas, the push for foreign-born workers is seen as a political hot button. For example, in Florida, migrant workers are leading clean-up efforts to repair the damage from Hurricane Ian, according to Time magazine, despite Governor Ron DeSantis' efforts to deport illegal migrants from the South to Northern states.

Industry sources told Construction Dive that immigration reform could help alleviate endemic labor shortages in the industry, but that lawmakers thus far have lacked the political gumption to put such measures in place.

While the ideas on how to fix our nations immigration system are not lacking, there is a lack of will to do the work required to find a compromise, said Kristen Swearingen, Associated Builders and Contractors vice president of legislative and political affairs. Immigration reform will likely go largely unaddressed while the arguments over partisan proposals get louder and employers continue to struggle under the current system.

For most contractors on the front lines, the need for immigration reform to help rebuild America is obvious.

"When you talk about immigration, it's my opinion that any type of reform would be better for the country, as well as the construction industry, compared to what we've had the last 25 years," said Stephen Sines, vice president of operations at the Danbury, Connecticut-based construction management firm Morganti Group, during the AGC webinar. "There has to be a starting point somewhere."

On the other side of the country, of all the challenges facing construction, one California construction pro pointed to immigration reform as the single most impactful issue for contractors.

"Our growth is going to be hampered without new labor sources," said Chris Bailey, senior vice president of integrated solutions at San Francisco Bay Area-based general contractor XL Construction. "Theyve got to come from somewhere."

And Frank Ciminelli, president and CEO of construction management firm Arc Building Partners, recently told Construction Dive the labor shortage remains the biggest challenge in the construction industry today.

Meanwhile, immigration reform is "far and away" the top national policy concern of business advocates at the state level, according to a report from law firm Littler.

Current efforts

The Biden administration is currently considering whether changes to immigration policy should be one of its major pushes following the November midterm election, especially as migrant workers are generally a turnkey solution for labor shortage issues.

But specifics on what those changes might entail remain vague. Biden did propose the U.S. Citizenship Act of 2021 on his first day in office, but there have been no updates on that bill after nearly two years. That bill provided pathways to citzenship for undocumented workers, reinforcements to border control, increased assistance to Central American countries and improvements to immigration court processes, according to a White House release.

Brain Turmail, vice president of public affairs and strategic initiatives at the Associated General Contractors of America, said immigration reform could help shorten the gap between labor demand and labor supply.

The short answer would be yes, said Turmail. Allowing more people with construction skills to lawfully enter the country to meet workforce shortages would be a good short-term solution while we rebuild the domestic pipeline for preparing American workers.

However, other Biden administration policies could render any immigration reform plan unworkable for the construction industry, Turmail said.

The Inflation Reduction Act includes, for the first time ever, minimum apprenticeship quotas for projects receiving the higher level of tax credits available from the act, said Turmail. This will severely limit the pool of workers from which firms can draw on to hire for these projects, and all but eliminate lawful immigration as a short-term option.

Apprenticeship quotas could limit the number of immigrants working on these projects because those coming into the country legally would presumably already have the construction skills necessary to qualify for a temporary worker visa. In other words, they would have the experience and knowledge needed for those jobs, but not the apprenticeship pedigree that's stipulated in the act.

Straightforward immigration reform could solve that problem, Turmail said.

It could be something as relatively simple as putting in place a temporary work visa program specifically for construction, said Turmail. Or it could be broader, and include a path to legal status for undocumented workers, tighter border security and a construction-specific temporary visa program.

Nevertheless, Congress is not expected to tackle this issue anytime soon.

Legislation such as the Essential Workers for Economic Advancement Act, a bill that establishes a new nonimmigrant visa for temporary nonagricultural workers to fill jobs that have remained open for a certain amount of time and are located in areas where the unemployment rate sits below 7.9%, is not currently being debated, according to ABC.

We have been pushing for any and all immigration reform possible, said Turmail. Unfortunately, it remains an issue most politicians like to talk about, but too few are willing to act on.

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program earlier this month. That decision blocks new applications but allows current DACA enrollees to renew their status.ABC recently called to move forward on DACA and other immigration reform legislation.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanens ruling on DACA comes after nine states filed a lawsuit last year claiming they are harmed financially due to healthcare, education and other costs when immigrants are allowed to remain in the country illegally.

Some construction companies advocate for the Office of Foreign Labor Certification to start charging fees for Foreign Labor Certification applications. This would allow the OFLC to improve current slow processing times by having the ability to increase staffing, said Dorer. The department currently relies on funding from Congress.

Any immigration reform will likely have to wait until after the midterm elections, said Turmail.

There is some talk of attaching some amount of immigration reform to the end-of-year funding bill, he said. Besides that, a lot of talk.

Read the original here:
Construction pros call for immigration reform to fill surge of open jobs - Construction Dive

October 18, 2022

PRESS RELEASE

Apple introduces the powerful next-generation AppleTV 4K

The strongest Apple TV yet features the A15 Bionic chip, adds HDR10+, and brings the best of Apple to the biggest screen in the home all at a new starting price

CUPERTINO, CALIFORNIAApple today announced the next generation of Apple TV 4K more powerful, entertaining, and affordable than ever, and offering impressive cinematic quality. Driven by the A15 Bionic chip that delivers faster performance and more fluid gameplay, the new Apple TV 4K features endless entertainment options for everyone to enjoy on the biggest screen in the home. HDR10+ support joins Dolby Vision on Apple TV 4K, so users can watch their favorite movies and TV shows in the best quality possible across more TVs.1 Running tvOS, the powerful and intuitive OS for the living room, and featuring the popular Siri Remote, Apple TV 4K simplifies the way users discover and enjoy their favorite content. Its seamless integration with other Apple devices and services magically transforms the living room in different ways for the entire family, while also adding convenience as a smart home hub.

The new Apple TV 4K is available in two configurations: Apple TV 4K (Wi-Fi), which offers 64GB of storage; and Apple TV 4K (Wi-Fi + Ethernet), which offers support for Gigabit Ethernet for fast networking and streaming, Thread mesh networking protocol to connect even more smart home accessories, and twice the storage for apps and games (128GB). Customers can order the new Apple TV 4K with Siri Remote today at a new starting price of $129, with availability beginning Friday, November 4.

Apple TV 4K is the ultimate way for Apple users to enjoy their favorite entertainment on the biggest screen in the home, and now it is more powerful than ever, said Bob Borchers, Apples vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. The new Apple TV 4K is unlike anything else out there, given its seamless connection to other Apple devices, ease of use, and access to amazing Apple content. It offers something for everyone in the family to love.

A Cinematic Home Theater Experience

The next generation of Apple TV 4K is an entertainment powerhouse, bringing the best video and audio capabilities to the biggest screen in the home. At the heart of the new Apple TV 4K is A15 Bionic, making the device even more powerful and energy efficient. CPU performance is now up to 50 percent faster than the previous generation, delivering greater responsiveness, faster navigation, and snappier UI animations. GPU performance is now up to 30 percent faster than the previous generation for even smoother gameplay.

Apple TV 4K now supports HDR10+, in addition to Dolby Vision, expanding rich visual quality across more TVs, producing the eye-popping details and vibrant colors intended by content creators. Users can also enjoy a home theater experience with Dolby Atmos, Dolby Digital 7.1, or Dolby Digital 5.1 surround sound for immersive audio.2

With the Siri Remote, users enjoy a touch-enabled clickpad that provides speed, fluidity, and precise control to easily navigate the simple, elegant user interface of Apple TV.3 On the Apple TV app, customers can access award-winning series and films on Apple TV+, as well as over 100,000 movies and series to buy or rent, and direct premium subscriptions to popular streaming services.

Seamless Integration with the Apple Ecosystem

Apple TV 4K works seamlessly with other Apple devices, starting with a magical setup process with iPhone and effortless control at any time with the Apple TV Remote in Control Center. The deep integration of Apple hardware, software, and services with Apple TV 4K unlocks an unparalleled experience that brings the best of the Apple ecosystem to the living room.4

tvOS

This fall, new features coming to the Apple TV experience with tvOS 16 include updates to Siri that will make it even easier for customers to use their voice to control Apple TV and interact with the results.5 Siri on Apple TV features a complete redesign, and will be able to recognize each users voice, so they can easily access their movies, shows, music, games, and apps, and pick up where they left off. By using the Siri Remote and asking What should I watch? users can get tailored recommendations.

When wearing AirPods, users can say Hey Siri to search and enjoy a hands-free way to control Apple TV. Siri support on Apple TV has expanded to Chile, Finland, and South Africa, and will launch in Denmark, Luxembourg, and Singapore later this year, bringing Siri on Apple TV to 30 countries and regions.

With iCloud Shared Photo Library on Apple TV, everyone in the family will be able to enjoy everyones photos together on the big screen. Cross-device connectivity on Apple TV 4K will enable developers to integrate personalized experiences between their iPhone and Apple Watch apps with Apple TV.

Users can continue to enjoy SharePlay by starting a FaceTime session on iPhone or iPad and watching a TV show or movie on Apple TV to stay completely in sync ensuring everyone catches a movies dramatic reveal or a shows punchline at the same moment. With shared playback controls, including using the Siri Remote, anyone in the SharePlay session can play, pause, or jump ahead.

Apple TV 4K as a Smart Home Hub

As a home hub, Apple TV 4K securely connects to compatible smart home accessories, including HomeKit cameras, lights, shades, and more; allows the user to set scenes and control their smart home while away; and ensures that accessories can run automatically. Apple TV 4K is also an essential building block for Matter, the new smart home connectivity standard that enables a wide variety of accessories to work together seamlessly across platforms, helping to fulfill the true vision of a smart home.

When viewing a HomeKit camera, Apple TV users can control nearby accessories such as turning on the outdoor lights or display multiple cameras at the same time on the TV screen for a more complete view. In addition, HomeKit Secure Video uses the on-device intelligence of Apple TV 4K to privately analyze the video to detect people, animals, cars, and package deliveries.6

With Thread networking support, Apple TV 4K (Wi-Fi + Ethernet) connects compatible Thread-based smart home accessories reliably and securely.

Apple TV 4K and the Environment

The new Apple TV 4K is designed to minimize its impact on the environment, using nearly 30 percent less power than the previous generation while achieving more powerful performance.7 The efficiency gains of A15 Bionic eliminate the need for an internal fan, resulting in a more compact design and contributing to a 25 percent reduction in carbon footprint over the previous generation.

In a first for Apple TV, Apple TV 4K features 100 percent recycled gold in the plating of multiple printed circuit boards, which also include100 percent recycled tin in the solder. The thermal module is made with 80 percent recycled aluminum, whiletheenclosure ofthe Siri Remote includes100 percent recycled aluminum. Redesigned packaging removes the outer plastic wrap, andover 90 percent of packaging is fiber based, bringing Apple closer to its goal of completely removing plastic from all packaging by 2025. The Apple TV 4K lineup is free of mercury, BFRs, PVC, and beryllium.

Today, Apple is carbon neutral for global corporate operations, and by 2030, plans to be 100 percent carbon neutral across the entire manufacturing supply chains and all product life cycles. This means that every Apple device sold, from component manufacturing, assembly, transport, customer use, charging, all the way through recycling and material recovery, will have net-zero climate impact.

Pricing and Availability

Press Contacts

Bernadette Simpao

Apple

bsimpao@apple.com

(669) 227-9273

Apple Media Helpline

media.help@apple.com

(408) 974-2042

See more here:
Apple introduces the powerful next-generation Apple TV 4K - Apple

Microsoft last week extended its Azure Hybrid Benefit to some on-prem workloads.

As the software colossus explains in the Azure Hybrid Benefit FAQ, the scheme "lets you bring your existing on-premises Windows Server and SQL Server licences with active Software Assurance or subscriptions to Azure." Once you get to Azure, Microsoft offers better pricing for software licenses.

Last week Microsoft announced an "extension" of the Azure Hybrid Benefit so that "customers with Windows Server Software Assurance or a Cloud Solution Provider subscription will be able to use Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI in their own datacenters or edge infrastructure at no additional cost."

That reveals two shifts: the extension of the Azure Hybrid Benefit into on-prem and edge operations; and the giveaway of Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) on Windows Server and Azure Stack HCI. These are major changes.

Microsoft's rationale for the first shift is that AKS and Azure Stack HCI are hybrid cloud workloads, so the logic of the Azure Hybrid Benefit kind of mostly applies.

The reasoning behind the second is that adopting AKS or Azure Stack HCI will almost certainly be done in the context of modernizing applications and/or infrastructure. Discounting the platforms Microsoft wants you to migrate to is a transparent means of making alternatives more expensive.

Which is pricing-led marketing business as usual.

But Microsoft's announcement snuck in a mention of one other recent licensing change: the virtual core licensing option Windows Server, which made it far easier to acquire the OS to run in clouds.

Microsoft spun this "Flexible Virtualization Benefit" as delivering on customers' desires, but the reality was that the European Union was set to punish Microsoft for charging less for Windows Server in Azure than was possible when using the OS in rival clouds. Microsoft therefore added flexibility to licensing, but also dodged a likely lawsuit.

The company has now again shown how it can use licensing to advantage its own prospects, which was what got it into trouble with Europe in the first place.

Another element of last week's announcement also bears examination: namely the change that allows customers to redistribute Windows Container base images beyond their organization in a way that allows distribution of a complete containerized application.

As Microsoft explains, container images bundle files needed for an application into "a stack of layers that reside on the user's local machine or in a remote container registry." The architecture of Windows containers requires that the first layer of Windows container images must, by design, be a layer of Windows container base image. However, licenses prevented customers from distributing that Windows container base image outside their own organization.

The change means a Windows container base image can now be distributed to third parties.

This matters because it means Windows apps can be packaged as containers and shared with others. That gives Microsoft customers more reasons to consider refactoring their apps for containers perhaps even by using AKS, now that it's free to use under the Azure Hybrid Benefit.

Follow this link:
Microsoft extends Azure Hybrid benefit to some on-prem software - The Register

WASHINGTON - Observing how recent responses to migrants demonstrate the troubling convergence of our broken immigration system and the political divisions of our time, Bishop Mario E. Dorsonville, auxiliary bishop of Washington and chairman of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) Committee on Migration, issued a reflection on the Catholic Churchs enduring commitment to comprehensive immigration reform and welcoming the stranger as part of its unwavering defense of human life in all its forms. This coincides with the ongoing celebration of Respect Life Month, during which the Catholic Church in the United States invites the faithful to consider more deeply why every human life is valuable and to reflect on how to build a culture that protects life from conception to natural death.

We simply cannot allow partisan division to continue to impede the needed interventions of government, Bishop Dorsonville stated. And while there are no easy solutions to the challenges we face, there is a just path forward that is waiting to be paved by those who are committed to the future of our country, he added, alluding to this years theme for the World Day of Migrants and Refugees, Building the Future with Migrants and Refugees.

Bishop Dorsonville expressed the need for a just immigration reform that provides for the full integration of long-time residents, promotes family unity, honors due process, respects the rule of law, expands legal pathways, preserves and strengthens humanitarian protections, prioritizes dignified alternatives to detention, recognizes the contributions of foreign-born workers, protects the vulnerable, and addresses the root causes of migration.

Before concluding his reflection, the bishop affirmed: Whether Afghan, Ukrainian, or Venezuelan, Dreamer or undocumented farmworker, asylum seeker, migrant, or refugee, all are imbued by God with an inviolable dignity.

Bishop Dorsonvilles full reflection, Migration and the Judgement of the Nations, is available here.

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Media Contact:Chieko Noguchi202-541-3200

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U.S. Bishops' Migration Chairman Calls for Immigration Reform that Recognizes the 'Inviolable Dignity' of All Newcomers - USCCB