At Hall & Associates, we take pride in working with our clients to "get it right"!
We stand by every report we prepare and respond to any inquiries by state representatives concerning those reports on behalf of our clients. In stark contrast to many other service providers who tack on additional fees, Hall & Associates believes that you should expect value for retaining our careful analysis of your information. As a client, you can rest assured that only transactions truly believed to represent abandoned & unclaimed property (AUP) will be reported.
General Consulting & Restructuring
Even a company with a long legacy of reporting experience can find itself out of touch with changing trends in AUP, and could benefit from an "annual physical" or what is often termed a "diagnostic." Hall & Associates provides AUP diagnostic reviews to identify opportunities to effectively improve the overall compliance process, including, but not limited to, updating policies & procedures, eliminating redundancies and non-value added practices, and identifying situations of potential over/under-reporting.
The issuance of stored-value cards (gift cards, customer credits, affinity point programs and other affiliated instruments) can also be perplexing in terms of AUP reporting requirements. Hall & Associates provides restructuring and consultation services to assist companies that, as part of their normal business practices, issue stored-value cards. Over his career, Mr. Hall has assisted nearly a hundred companies in stored-value card planning and restructuring alone.
With regard to mergers & acquisitions, organizations often overlook the area of AUP as a potential undisclosed liability as part of the transaction due diligence process. If you are the acquiring company, Hall & Associates can act as your advocate in protecting your interests in an impending transaction by identifying any potential unrecorded AUP liability. If you are the selling company, Hall & Associates can ensure that any potential liability associated with AUP is not over-inflated by the potential acquiring company or its advocates. Suffice to say, whatever interests or concerns you have regarding AUP, you can be confident that Hall & Associates will find a practical, efficient and cost-effective solution.
Annual Compliance
There are many reasons for the lack of compliance in this most obscure area of governmental reporting. The most common is that AUP is not a tax, although it often looks and acts like a tax. Consequently, corporate tax departments may not feel it is their duty to undertake this responsibility. On the other hand, accounting departments often perceive any type of governmental reporting as a role of their tax departments and, as a result, do not assume the responsibility for the reporting of AUP. Many states offer either statutory or administrative exemptions from reporting certain types of transactions that are often unknown to companies.
Hall & Associates provides a comprehensive suite of compliance services tailored to your company’s specific needs and situation. We do not take a “cookie-cutter” approach, but instead recognize the distinct and subtle differences in a company’s accounting processes, thus tailoring our services to meet our client’s specific needs.
Audit Defense
Mastering the facts is a critical step during the pre-audit period. The more facts that can collectively be learned about your organization’s prior compliance process, acquisitions and divestitures, system purges, records retention policy, and accounting/ERP system updates will help identify areas of potential exposure and concern.
Companies that attempt to “go it alone” do not typically fare as well and, accordingly, securing competent representation is one of the first steps in achieving successful results. With over three decades of diverse accounting, financial, tax, audit and forensic experience, Hall & Associates is prepared to provide your team with seamless representation throughout the entire audit process.
Risk Exposure
Faced with the reality of not yet being identified for an examination, companies often struggle with developing a process to efficiently and cost-effectively identify, quantify and remit potential AUP exposure from prior periods. More importantly, a company may not even fully comprehend what falls under the category of AUP.
Having navigated hundreds of clients through this very process, Hall & Associates will serve as the architect of the plan to take your company from a state of non-compliance to full compliance in an effective and cost-efficient manner.