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Gilmore Jasion Mahler’s Wanderlust, a signature benefit event for Flag City Honor Flight (FCHF), returns this Fall! Wanderlust: A Stroll Through Paris is Friday, October 28, 2022, at the Marathon Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Findlay. Wanderlust tickets are on sale now!

The event will raise money for Flag City Honor Flight which, after halting flights for two years, resumed its flight schedule with an unprecedented three flights in 2022. All proceeds from Wanderlust: A Stroll Through Paris will go directly to FCHF. Part of the National Honor Flight Network, FCHF is funded solely by donations. The organization brings veterans to Washington, D.C. to visit the memorials built in their honor. Veterans don’t pay a penny to make the trip.

FCHF paused flights in 2020 and 2021 due to the pandemic. This year’s flights were June 7 and September 13, with a final flight scheduled for November 1.

“We are so thrilled to be able to take to the skies and bring these American heroes on this special journey once again. We’re very grateful to GJM for hosting Wanderlust. Thanks to this event, we’ve been able to bring hundreds more Veterans to Washington, D.C.,” says FCHF President Bob Weinberg. “Our November 1, 2022 flight, which will be an all-Vietnam Veteran flight, has a very generous corporate sponsor, Ohio Logistics, covering the cost of the trip. But GJM’s Wanderlust event is critical to our core mission to bring Veterans from all eras to Washington, DC. Wanderlust 2022 proceeds will help fund our 2023 flights.”

Since its founding over 26 years ago, GJM has had a strong commitment to community. The firm has supported countless philanthropic efforts through the years and many staff members serve on the boards of local nonprofits. In 2015, GJM aligned with Flag City Honor Flight and established the major fundraiser. The GJM events in 2016, 2017 and 2019 have together raised over $260,000 for Flag City Honor Flight.

“I cannot imagine anything more meaningful than helping these men and women get to our nation’s capital with Flag City Honor Flight. While we can’t ever repay them for the sacrifices they’ve made for our country, this is one way we can show them how grateful we are as a nation and help give them an experience they’ll never forget,” says GJM Managing Partner Kevin Gilmore.

A big part of Wanderlust’s success is corporate, individual, and in-kind sponsorships. Special thanks to all 2022 sponsors, including major Wanderlust sponsors Ohio Logistics and American Interiors. 

Event Details:

An inspiring and entertaining evening, as attendees are transported to the romantic streets, flower markets, gardens, and cafes of Paris, “The City of Lights”. Guests will enjoy an evening embracing all things French, sipping on champagne & other drinks, enjoying French-inspired cuisine, live performers, a live auction, raffle and more.

WTOL news anchor Dan Cummins, who himself is very active in supporting FCHF through his news coverage, will emcee the 2022 event with GJM’s Susan Ross Wells. Findlay auctioneer Trent Farthing has graciously agreed once again to donate his talents for the evening’s live auction.

Live auction packages will include something for the men and ladies in the room, as well as two signature trips: one for a private villa in St. Lucia, the other: a getaway for two to Paris.

Tickets to Wanderlust 2022: A Stroll Through Paris are $70 each. To buy your tickets now, or secure a sponsorship, visit the Wanderlust 2022 webpage. Questions about the event? Simply reach out to GJM’s Tracy Kennedy at tkennedy@gjmltd.com, Deanna Herr at dherr@gjmltd.com or Susan Ross Wells at srosswells@gjmltd.com.

Established in 1996, Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD (GJM) is the largest public accounting firm in Northwest Ohio, with offices in Maumee and Findlay. Locally owned, GJM offers cloud-based accounting and provides comprehensive services including assurance, business & transaction advisory, healthcare management advisory, outsourced accounting, and risk advisory. The firm’s professionals specialize in industries including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing & distribution, nonprofit, private equity and utilities.

A lot is going on with SECURE 2.0, a pending piece of legislation built on the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019. The goal of the bill is to substantially boost the retirement savings of Americans. SECURE 2.0 contains numerous provisions that, if enacted, would affect individuals, employers, and small business owners.

SECURE 2.0 has provisions that bring several important implications for small businesses and would impact their retirement benefits programs, once the pending legislation is passed. These include expanded worker eligibility, automatic plan enrollment, and others. Not to mention the increase in the number of employees your post-employment benefit plan covers.

Sounds like a lot of work, right?

You need not worry.

SECURE 2.0 is designed with small businesses in mind. It will create new tax credits that are specifically designed to help employers.

This blog, the second in our two-part series on SECURE 2.0, post will explore two important and relevant points:

Increased Retirement Plan Start-Up Credit

One of the most significant changes in the retirement law is expanded tax benefits. SECURE 2.0 will double the tax credit for companies starting a retirement plan. Currently, the three-year credit is available for 50% of the qualified startup costs. This is for businesses employing no more than 100 employees.

100% Qualified Start-Up Costs

Eligible small businesses with 100 or fewer workers can claim a credit for 50% of their qualified start-up costs. Effective for tax years starting after 2022, Secure 2.0 would increase it to 100% for employers with 50 or fewer employees.

New Tax Credit

Businesses would also receive a new tax credit. This is a percentage of the employer contribution on behalf of employees, with a per-employer cap of $1,000. This is, however, limited to businesses with 50 employees or less. It will gradually phase out for companies with employees between 51 and 100.

From Less Than 100 to Only 50 Employees

While SECURE 2.0 contains provisions aimed at helping small businesses, it would also bring them some changes that will have negative impacts. In particular, these would be small businesses with 51 to 100 employees.

Because of the stated provisions in the bill, small businesses employing more than 50 individuals cannot take advantage of the total tax credit. Rather, the percentage will gradually phase out as the number of employees increases, as mentioned above.

On the whole, the aim of SECURE 2.0 is to help employers in the U.S. to encourage workers to plan for their retirement. If you are a business owner, the provisions in the bill will definitely impact your business once it’s enacted. This is regardless of whether you’re considering starting a new retirement plan or if you’re already offering one.  

If you’re interested in learning more about whether your small business qualifies for the retirement plan startup Tax Credit, you can learn more here.

An Important Note for the Remainder of 2022

If a plan wants to adopt a new safe harbor 401(k) plan in 2022, the employer needs to adopt that new plan by October 1, 2022 (if the business has a calendar year-end). For a traditional 401 (k) plan, the deadline is based on the employer’s tax status, as shown in the list below:

• S-Corporation (or LLC taxed as S-Corp): March 15 with extension Sept 15, 2023
• Partnership (or LLC taxed as a partnership): March 15 with extension Sept 15, 2023
• C-Corporation (or LLC taxed as C-Corp): April 15 with extension Oct 15, 2023
• Sole Proprietorship (or LLC taxed as sole proprietorship): April 15 with extension Oct 15, 2023

Part one of this 2-part GJM blog series on SECURE 2.0 outlines the changes that may be coming for individuals and how we save for retirement.

GJM’s Molly Wolf contributed this article. Molly has over 15 years of experience specializing in employee benefit plans and is an affiliate member of the American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA). She consults with clients on benefit plan design, compliance testing, payroll integration and reconciliation. She also serves as a third-party plan administrator.

Established in 1996, Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD (GJM) is the largest public accounting firm in Northwest Ohio, with offices in Maumee and Findlay. Locally owned, GJM offers cloud-based accounting and provides comprehensive services including assurance, business & transaction advisory, healthcare management advisory, outsourced accounting, and risk advisory. The firm’s professionals specialize in industries including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing & distribution, nonprofit, private equity and utilities.

"We don't have data others would want." 

I hear that statement quite often from executives and business owners regardless of size or industry. It typically prompts several questions from me.

• How do you know?  
• What steps have you taken to understand your data? 
• What information is important to you or your competitors? 
• What information would be most damaging to your business if it became public? 
• How do you plan to stop someone from stealing your data?

While many of the reported stories of data breaches involve large, well-known companies such as Target, Barnes & Noble, Nortel, Nissan, and others, in the world of cyber-crime size doesn’t matter – only information does. Just because a breach isn’t splashed in the headlines doesn’t mean it isn’t happening. Companies large and small across the country and our region deal with this every day and the reality is that your business could be next. One company’s Internet footprint looks the same as another to anyone interested in finding something of value, whether it’s credit information, personnel information, intellectual property such as engineering drawings or processes, technology or other industrial assets.

Cybersecurity has moved to a business imperative that is enabled by IT. No longer is this just an IT issue keeping your CIO up at night. Many boards are finely tuned in to what is going on around the world related to cybersecurity. Executive leadership is increasingly being held accountable for protecting the company’s information assets. Regulators have continued to up their cyber game and pay closer attention to how a company’s information security program could impact the going concern of a business.

A strong information security program can facilitate business growth, create market advantages, and build brand trust. Data privacy and trust have become critical business requirements as exponentially more consumer and business information is generated and shared with your partners. 

What can your company do now?

Your IT team may not have the cybersecurity expertise or the time it takes to monitor cybersecurity threats 24/7. Day to day, the IT team is often focused on supporting the business and projects that drive revenue.

Cybersecurity is everyone's business—including C-level executives, managers, administrative assistants, and even part-time office staff.  Unfortunately, any employee can be a potential cybersecurity attack vector, and cyber breaches don't always come from the outside. You can put all the right traditional cybersecurity measures in place, but all it takes is one employee clicking on a phishing email.

Understanding your organization's cybersecurity maturity, knowing where there may be gaps, and addressing those issues is imperative. Taking proactive steps to mitigate cybersecurity risk can mean the difference between a data breach or business as usual.

GJM’s customized cybersecurity assessment provides you with a high-level view of your organization’s cybersecurity maturity, determines your risk exposure, provides advice on potential process gaps, and helps guide you to realistic action plans.

Rapid Assessment includes:

• Best practices for cybersecurity controls, based on successful strategies from well-known security and compliance frameworks
• Identification of potentially critical security issues
• Actionable, quick-fix opportunities to improve security
• Outline of recommendations and roadmap for remediation
• Guidance for ongoing improvement of the organization’s security 

When it comes to your data, there is no single magic bullet that can protect you from every scenario. But you can improve your overall security posture by taking a closer look at your internal practices. Cybersecurity rapid assessments do more than analyze threats – they help you neutralize threats before they compromise your business. Today, it’s vital that every small to medium-sized business conduct a cybersecurity rapid assessment to ensure that its security is keeping its business, network, and data safe, preventing cyber threats, and meeting regulatory guidelines. If you are interested in learning more about GJM’s cyber risk services, please contact Matt Hoverman at mhoverman@gjmltd.com. 

Matt Hoverman, CISA contributed this article. Matt is a partner with Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD and leads the firm’s Risk Advisory practice. He has spent his entire career helping companies of all sizes understand the impact of technology on their business.

Established in 1996, Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD (GJM) is the largest public accounting firm in Northwest Ohio, with offices in Maumee and Findlay. Locally owned, GJM offers cloud-based accounting and provides comprehensive services including assurance, business & transaction advisory, healthcare management advisory, outsourced accounting, and risk advisory. The firm’s professionals specialize in industries including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing & distribution, nonprofit, private equity and utilities.

As you start to learn more about the recently passed Inflation Reduction Act, we’re helping you understand how it will affect your business and your family. Called the Inflation Reduction Act because of its goal of reducing the deficit by taxing our country’s biggest corporations and lowering healthcare costs, experts say we can expect to see little impact on high prices in the short term.

Here’s a look at some of the changes the law will bring:

Taxes

The Inflation Reduction Act includes several tax provisions, including a 15% minimum tax on our country’s largest corporations: those with over a billion dollars in revenue. It also brings an $80 billion investment in the IRS, and a 1% excise tax on corporate share buybacks.

About half of the $80 billion will give the IRS funds to increase enforcement primarily through pursuing big corporations. The other half is expected to go toward improved customer service and modernizing some systems and operations.

Healthcare

The Inflation Reduction Act will bring down some healthcare costs for Americans, though you may not see the impact right away. It will give Medicare the power to negotiate the cost of drugs, but not until 2026. It will also extend Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies through 2025 and starting in 2025 will cap out-of-pocket drug costs at $2,000 a year for those receiving Medicare.

Climate

The climate elements of the Inflation Reduction Act could bring some new opportunities for businesses. They include almost $370 billion in incentives for renewable energy, tax credits for buying new or used electric vehicles (up to $7,500), and tax credits up to $40,000 for commercial electric vehicles that are over 14-thousand pounds. Homeowners will see tax credits for installing solar panels or buying other energy efficient products.

Watch for further information from GJM regarding the details of the Inflation Reduction Act in the upcoming weeks. 

Established in 1996, Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD (GJM) is the largest public accounting firm in Northwest Ohio, with offices in Maumee and Findlay. Locally owned, GJM offers cloud-based accounting and provides comprehensive services including assurance, business & transaction advisory, healthcare management advisory, outsourced accounting, and risk advisory. The firm’s professionals specialize in industries including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing & distribution, nonprofit, private equity and utilities.

Retirement security is a fundamental part of the American Dream. For generations, workers have contributed to different types of retirement accounts with the expectation that these programs will be there for them when they retire. They're excellent tools for building retirement income, and you've probably been watching yours closely. But what does SECURE 2.0 - Congress' most discussed retirement agenda - have in store for you? And what are the potential reforms and other effects of it that you must prepare for?

Let us answer all your questions and draw up the best retirement for you.

What is Secure 2.0?

The Securing a Strong Retirement Act of 2022 (affectionately referred to as SECURE 2.0 due to the fact that it builds upon the SECURE Act of 2019) is a set of legislative proposals to improve retirement security in the United States. Such improvements would be reflected in 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and retirement savings accounts.

However, there are two versions of SECURE 2.0 – the House version and the Senate version. The House version passed with overwhelming bipartisan support on March 29th of this year. In June, the Senate effectively did the same by voting unanimously to move related legislation forward in two of its committees. This is significant because if the SECURE Act 2.0 is to ever get the OK from Congress and be made law, the Senate and the House will be forced to iron out the differences between their two into one cohesive set of legislation.

What Are the SECURE Act 2.0 Retirement Reforms?

The related legislation the Senate Finance Committee has approved, thereby effectively floating SECURE 2.0 along with it, is a set of proposed reforms to the US retirement system. Here are the possible reforms you should know about:

• Increased credits for small businesses
• Automatic enrollment in plans
• Expanded saver's credit
• Generous catch-up limit
• Access to retirement plans for part-time workers
• Increased required minimum distribution age
• Enhanced 403(b)
• Student loan payments as elective deferrals

The highlight of these changes is raising catch-up contribution limits. The catch-up contribution provisions would increase from $6,500 to $10,000 for savers ages 62-64. The proposals also call for treating the catch-ups as post-tax. This means your catch-ups will no longer be pre-tax contributions.

How Will the Retirement Reforms Affect You?

The retirement reforms might have a significant impact on your retirement savings. Here’s some of what you need to know about the potential changes coming down the pipeline:

The proposed changes will make it easier for you to save for retirement by getting automatically enrolled in your employer's retirement plan. The automatic enrollment will help more workers save for retirement, especially those who are just starting their careers.

The retirement reforms will also expand the saver's credit, which is a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers who contribute to retirement accounts.

The proposed changes will raise the required minimum distribution (RMD) age even further. The original SECURE Act in 2019 increased the age from 70.5 to 72 for RMDs. Due to changes made by the original SECURE Act in 2019, if your 70th birthday was July 1, 2019, or later, you do not have to take withdrawals until you reach age 72. The SECURE Act 2.0 proposes increasing the threshold to age 73 next year, and eventually to age 75. This means you can delay taking distributions from your retirement accounts and let your money grow for longer.

The retirement reforms will make it easier for part-time workers to save for retirement by allowing them to participate in their employer's retirement plan.

Knowing what to expect once the SECURE 2.0 retirement reforms become law is vital. These changes will significantly impact your retirement savings, and your retirement planning should account for these changes.

Now that you have a preview of what's coming, you can start preparing for the SECURE 2.0 retirement reforms. After all, retirement is something you're planning for your entire life. Your years of hard work deserve a secure and comfortable retirement, and SECURE 2.0 is designed to help get you there.

Watch for part two of this 2-part GJM blog series on SECURE 2.0, when we’ll take a closer look at the impact on businesses and their retirement plans.

GJM’s Molly Wolf contributed this article. Molly has over 15 years of experience specializing in employee benefit plans and is an affiliate member of the American Society of Pension professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA). She consults with clients on benefit plan design, compliance testing, payroll integration and reconciliation. She also serves as a third-party plan administrator.

Established in 1996, Gilmore Jasion Mahler, LTD (GJM) is the largest public accounting firm in Northwest Ohio, with offices in Maumee and Findlay. Locally owned, GJM offers cloud-based accounting and provides comprehensive services including assurance, business & transaction advisory, healthcare management advisory, outsourced accounting, and risk advisory. The firm’s professionals specialize in industries including construction & real estate, healthcare, manufacturing & distribution, nonprofit, private equity and utilities.