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STRATEGIC
ISSUES...ONLINE
For week of July 11, 2005,
Issue #220
Featured Articles:
1. Using the Summer Months to
Update Your Estate Plan
2. Fraud Footnotes: How it
Could Happen to You; Protect Your Business
3. Tech tip Weekly: Melissa's
Long Gone, but, final thoughts
1. Using the Summer Months to
Update Your Estate Plan
The summer months are a time for family get-togethers - weddings,
graduations, family reunions. These events remind us of the changes in
our lives due to marriages, births, deaths, and divorces. That's why
summer is a great time to review your estate plan and bring it up to date.
Estate tax planning. Start by updating the approximate
value of your estate and noting any big changes. Unless Congress passes
legislation to change the current law, you can exclude up to $1.5 million
from federal estate tax this year, unchanged form 2004. That will
increase to $2 million next year. Lifetime taxable gifts you make are
included in your estate and they have a $1 million exclusion limit.
Your will. Generally, your will determines how you want
your assets to be distributed. However, assets placed in trust and
investments with beneficiary designations will follow those designations.
Review your will and other designations to make sure they still accurately
reflect your wishes.
Living trust. If you've set up a living trust, remember
that you need to keep the ownership of your major assets in the name of
the trust. Make sure you're up to date with that task as you acquire and
sell assets.
Other estate planning documents. You should have a
standby power-of-attorney allowing someone to act for you if you become
disabled. A health care power-of-attorney and a living will provide
direction if you become seriously ill or incapacitated. Make sure you're
still comfortable with the people you've nominated to make decisions for
you. Also review the documents to make sure they accurately reflect your
wishes.
If you have questions, or want to learn more about how estate taxes might
affect you, please contact our office.
2. Fraud Footnotes: How it
Could Happen to You; Protect Your Business
To protect yourself and your business from embezzlement, a working
internal control system must be in place, business activities and
employees must be closely monitored.
In implementing an effective internal control system, management can take
basic steps such as:
Determine and assure that there is proper segregation of duties and
responsibilities, like the employee responsible for invoicing customers
should not also be opening the mail and making daily deposits.
Shifting of job responsibilities among various employees may be needed
to adequately segregate responsibilities.
Significant CO or owner involvement is critical in a small business
where the proper segregation of duties is more difficult to achieve due to
the limited staff.
When working in the close environment of a small business, owners
often develop a relationship of trust with their staff, assigning duties
such as bank reconciliations to employees. The appeal of an intimate,
family-like environment is one of the incentives of working for a small
business; however, that trust can easily be taken advantage of if proper
controls for fraud detection aren't in place.
Implementation of internal control procedures does not guarantee that
you or your organization will never become the victim of embezzlement.
Even so, putting a strong internal control system in place will
greatly reduce the risk of employee theft by making it more difficult for
the thief to avoid detection.
3. Tech Tip Weekly: Melissa's
Long Gone, but, Final Thoughts
Many people feel that the successful prosecution is responsible for
stopping a lot of virus writing activity in the United States, since
Americans tend to think twice about writing viruses with legal reaction
likely.
Even with that positive action, it is the exception, not the rule for such
investigations. While the high profile cases, such as the arrest of
MafiaBoy and the author of the Sasser worm could be held up as warnings,
most cybercrimes still go unpunished. And Microsoft's bounty program on
larger incidents, and the success of that for drawing out the Sasser
author and subsequent arrest, overall arrest rates are low.
In so many ways, Melissa may represent an age of innocence for viruses,
when criminals were a lot easier to catch and the viruses were somewhat
easier to stop. But, as virus writers continue to target new areas, and
even as organized crime is becoming involved, the future starts to look
even worse.
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