| 3. Business Enhancement and Promotion Websites Some federal government departments and agencies have as part, or all, of their mission the enhancement and promotion of American businesses. In achieving this mission, these departments and agencies usually put on their websites much information that is intended for productive use by businesses. The following are the departments and agencies that I have found that have on their websites potentially useful information for management accountants: a. Small Business Administration (SBA). Going to the SBA site www.sba.gov is a good way to access SBA information that can be useful. From this page, you can access over 200 SBA publications on business principles, frequently asked questions, and useful links. b. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). EPA has programs to help businesses meet environmental standards. Two of these programs are directly related to management accounting. The EPA site, www.epa.gov/ebtpages/econenvironmentalaccounting.html, exists to develop and document information on environmental accounting concepts and principles. The EPA site www.epa.gov/fullcost discusses the full costs of a maintaining solid waste management programs. c. US Postal Service (USPS). The USPS maintains a site, www.usps.com/grow/welcome.htm, from which you can get information on postage rates, online solutions for such activities as paying bills, and reducing postage costs. d. Department of Commerce (DOC). DOC maintains a website, www.export.gov, that serves to help companies increase exports. Useful information accessed from this home page includes foreign tariff and tax information, financing and insurance programs existing to help exporters, and a basic guide that includes much information often needed by accountants related to exports. Another site maintained by DOC, and closely aligned with export.gov, is www.trade.gov/td/tic, the Trade Information Center (TIC) site. Although maintained by DOC, this TIC site represents 20 federal agencies involved in promoting exports. Useful links include Country Information, which leads to information about a country that might be needed by accountants. e. Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank). You can find information at the Ex-Im Bank's website, www.exim.gov, on insurance protection programs against non-payments by foreign buyers and on borrowing opportunities for exporters. 4. Taxation Websites An area where management accountants are often seeking federal government information is taxation. Most tax information sought will be found through the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) homepage www.irs.ustreas.gov. From the homepage, the site's search system can be used to bring up publications and forms. The Businesses link from the homepage leads you to many other choices for finding taxation related to business information. From the home page, a very useful link to a lot of information is Site Map. From the Site Map page you can find dozens of topics and a link to Frequently Asked Questions. The IRS has a program of compiling statistics from tax returns. Statistical information from corporate returns can be found at www.irs.ustreas.gov/taxstats/index.html by clicking Tax Stats at a Glance, then corporation income tax. 5. Searching and Finding Websites The previous four sections above are intended to direct you quickly to federal government websites that exactly provide the information you need. However, finding information that you need sometimes requires that you search more than just clicking to a particular website. Searching for the information you need can often take a lot of time, but can be worth the time if the value of the found information is high enough. Many other federal government sites, besides the ones identified in Sections 1 to 4 above, certainly must contain useful and needed information to one or more management accountants in the performance of their duties. This Section 5 is intended to identify for you several on-line searching tools or systems at government websites that are very useful and powerful and should, hopefully, greatly decrease your search time and improve your chances of finding useful and needed information. a. FEDSTATS. This site, www.fedstats.gov, is very useful in finding statistics and data information on federal government websites. From the home page, a search for the statistics and data you are seeking can be initiated by clicking on Search. The FEDSTATS site searches the databases at the individual departments and agencies against the term (or terms) you are searching against. You can also select and search topics (click on Topic links - A to Z), search by agencies (click on Agencies listed alphabetically), and you can use other approaches provided on the home page to find the statistics and data you are looking for. b. FIRSTGOV. The site, www.firstgov.gov, maintained by the General Services Administration, is designed to allow the user to quickly search most federal and many state government websites. The Advanced Search feature on the home page has good features that should allow you to quickly find on-line information on your topic. For example, searching on the term “activity based costing” found greater than 1,000 hits; modifying the search to required agriculture in the text yielded 191 hits; further modifying to also require farms in the text reduced the hits to 20; and, finally, requiring profits in the text, along with “activity based costing”, agriculture and farms reduced the documents found to 3. Clicking Online Services for Business will take you to a list of government links and the business that you can conduct at the linked site. Clicking on Business (just above Online Services for Business) will bring you to another list of many links covering a lot of business topics and federal government links associated with the topic. c. GPOAccess/Federal Government Websites. Use this site, www.gpoaccess.gov/agencies.html, if you know the name of the government department, agency, or office that has a website and want to link to it, but you do not know the URL. From this site, you will be taken to a site maintained by Louisiana State University, for the federal government, where you will find links to hundreds of (probably most all of them) federal government websites. You can find the sites listed by federal departments, in alphabetical order, or you can research for a site by agency title. d. GPOAccess/Browse Topics. This site, www.gpoaccess.gov/topics/index.html, will take you to dozens of general topics, many business-related. Click on Browse Topical Pathfinders and you will be taken to the page with dozens of topics. Click on one of the topics and you will be provided federal government links to websites with information on the topic. This Browse Topic system is maintained by Oklahoma State University for the federal government. e. National Technical Information Service (NTIS). From the homepage, www.ntis.gov, of the National Technical Information Service (a part of the Department of Commerce), you can search a database of federal government scientific, technical, engineering, and business-related publications. Using the advanced search feature from the front page and the search terms “management accounting” and costs yielded five hits. Abstracts for the publications are available, but, unfortunately, the full publication, many of which can be downloaded, usually cost a small fee, usually less than $10. End. If you would like to comment on this article or suggest a topic for an article, plese click here. Please click here to return to the Management Accounting Information Center’s homepage. |
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| Useful Information at Federal Government Websites for Management Accountants |