What Is an Agent?

An agent, in legal terminology, is a person who has been legally empowered to act on behalf of another person or an entity. An agent may be employed to represent a client in negotiations and other dealings with third parties. The agent may be given decision-making authority.

Two common types of agents are attorneys, who represent their clients in legal matters, and stockbrokers, who are hired by investors to make investment decisions for them. The person represented by the agent in these scenarios is called the principal. In finance, it refers to a fiduciary relationship in which an agent is authorized to perform transactions on behalf of the client and in their best interest.

Understanding an Agent

An agent is someone that is given permission (either explicitly or assumed) to act on an individual’s behalf and may do so in a variety of capacities. This could include selling a home, executing a will, managing a sports career, managing an acting career, being a business representative, and so on.

Agents often have expertise in a specific industry and are more knowledgeable about that industry’s ins and outs than the average person. For example, if you started gaining attention as a musician, you would hire a music agent to help guide you through getting a record deal, signing record contracts, and arranging your touring schedule.

As you would not have any experience with the record industry, you would need an agent to look out for your best interests and take care of a lot of the work that you would otherwise most likely not be able to complete on your own. This would also free up your time so that you can concentrate on making music.

Types of Agents

Agents come in all types depending on their function and the industry in which they operate. In general, there are three types of agents: universal agents, general agents, and special agents.

Universal Agents

Universal agents have a broad mandate to act on behalf of their clients. Often these agents have been given power of attorney for a client, which gives them considerable authority to represent a client in legal proceedings. They may also be authorized to make financial transactions on behalf of their clients.

General Agents

General agents are contracted to represent their clients in specific types of transactions or proceedings over a set period. They have broad authority to act but in a limited sphere. A talent agent for an actor would fall under this category.

Special Agents

Special agents are authorized to make a single transaction or a series of transactions within a limited period. This is the type of agent most people use from time to time. A real estate agent, securities agent, insurance agent, and travel agent are all special agents.

Uses of Agents

People hire agents to perform tasks that they lack the time or expertise to do for themselves. Investors hire stockbrokers to act as middlemen between them and the stock market. Athletes and actors hire agents to negotiate contracts on their behalf because the agents are typically more familiar with industry norms and have a better idea of how to position their clients.

More commonly, prospective homeowners use agents as middlemen, relying on the professional’s greater skills at negotiation.

Businesses often hire agents to represent them in a particular venture or negotiation, relying on the agents’ superior skills, contacts, or background information to complete deals.

Loyalty Responsibilities of an Agent

Duty of Avoiding Material Benefit

During the course of business, an agent may benefit. This is especially true when an agent is paid to perform a task on behalf of the principal. For example, a real estate agent commonly receives a commission for their work in selling a house.

When acting on behalf of another, an agent must ensure they do not unjustly benefit from their agency position. This includes receiving large benefits from the relationship or taking advantage of their position to ensure they receive benefits that would not normally as part of a normal transaction.

Duty Not to Usurp

When an agent acts on behalf of a principal, the agent may receive information it would be able to personally capitalize on for personal benefit. For example, an agent may receive information relating to a potential investment opportunity. The agent owes the principal the duty to not steal or supplant the principal’s ability to transact. In this example, the principal retains the right to decide whether or not to invest; the agent must not take the place of the principal without the principal explicitly declining an opportunity to invest.

Duty to Not Compete

On a similar note, an agent may not enter into transactions or business that compete with a principal. This conflict of interest puts the principal at a disadvantage as the agent may obtain trade or business secrets during the course of the business relationship. For example, imagine if an agent was tasked with shipping specific goods to an agent’s manufacturing warehouse. The agent could obtain information related to the principal’s operations that the agent could then use for its personal benefit.

Duty of Transparency

Formalized agent-principal arrangements often include verbiage that the agent must disclose if it has any other principals in which it is acting as an agent for. This includes disclosing a sworn statement that the agent will act in good faith across all principals and will incur fair dealing with each principal.

Duty to Protect Information

During the course of an agent’s relationship with the principal, the agent may not disclose confidential information to unrelated parties. This may defined through confidentiality agreements or may not be explicitly called out. In either case, the agent must take care to evaluate the sensitivity of information and the necessity for other parties to obtain that information. This includes not using confidential information for the personal benefit of the agent (i.e. exchanging the information for personal benefit to an independent third party).

Performance Responsibilities of an Agent

Duty of Contract

All terms of any written agreement between an agent and a principal define the relationship between the two. For many agent and principal relationships, the contract is not explicitly defined upfront. However, custom or deliberate agreements may call for very specific terms that define what is and isn’t allowed.

Duty of Care

An agent is always tasked with acting with care and competence when handling affairs of the principal. The standard is often held that the agent must act as the principal would, using discretion as if it would incurring the personal gain or loss. Though the level of care may not be explicitly defined, the level of care should be equal to what is reasonably expected by local standards.

The duty of care may be complicated when considering the agent’s personal benefit potential. For example, consider a broker that receives a commission for the sale of certain investment products. For some clients, it may not be in their best interest to buy those investments. Therefore, the broker has the duty of care to not sell such products to those individuals, sacrificing personal gain to uphold the sanctity of the relationship.

Duty of Obedience

An agent must comply with reasonable instruction. Though there may be situations where acting on one’s behalf and following their guidance is not reasonable or legal, the agent may have recourse to not follow instruction. Otherwise, the agent is bound to perform tasks as expected by the agreement. This includes situations where the principal may be disadvantaged but has instructed the agent to act in a specific manner.

Duty of Disclosure

As the agent gains sensitive information that may influence the decision-making process of a principal, the agent has the duty to disclose that information in an accurate, timely manner. Consider the example of Los Angeles Dodgers’ player Freddie Freeman. Freeman’s agent reportedly did not disclose to Freeman that his former team, the Atlanta Braves, wanted to re-sign him. By withholding such information, Freeman reluctantly signed with a different team.

Duty of Separation

An agent also has the responsibility to keep the agent’s and the principal’s affairs separately. This includes ensuring that any transactions entered into on behalf of the principal are still legal property of the principal. This also ensures that any resources or capital used to transact are maintained in separate bank accounts and that separate reporting ledgers are maintained.

Agent Liability

An agent is often liable to their principal if they violate their duty or deviate from a reasonable, expected action performed on behalf of the other party. This may be the result of exceeding the authority they’ve been given, acting in misconduct, being unreasonably negligent, or any other situation where the principal may incur a loss that could have potentially been avoided.

In some situations when the agent performs a task for another without disclosing they are an agent, they may be considered liable because the agent was presumed to be a principal. An agent is also commonly liable when the agent expressly incurs a personal liability by entering into an associated agreement.

Agency by Necessity

There is also “agency by necessity,” in which an agent is appointed to act on behalf of a client who is physically or mentally incapable of making a decision. This is not always a case of incapacitation. Business owners, for example, might designate agents to handle unexpected issues that occur in their absence. For example, if a CEO was on a flight and unreachable yet an emergency business decision needed to be made, agency by necessity could be used.

Agency by necessity is most often executed in times of emergency or urgency when the primary party is not available to make a decision. In these situations, courts would recognize a third party making the decision if that party was given power by the primary party to do so. The third party would be responsible for acting in the primary party’s best interest.

Estate planning often sees agency by necessity. Though an individual may have created a will outlining how an estate should be disbursed at their time of death, there could be situations where the person became incapacitated before needed adjustments to the will were made. Here, agency by necessity could be used by a trusted party.

The Bottom Line

An agent is anyone that has been entrusted to act on behalf of another individual. People usually call upon an agent when they need someone with more expertise or when they don’t have the time to complete a task.

Agents are commonly used in the finance, law, real estate, insurance, acting, and music industries, yet they can be found in almost any situation when advanced knowledge on a topic is needed. Agents can save people a lot of time, money, and headaches in getting important tasks done.

Who Is Alan Greenspan?

Alan Greenspan is an American economist who was the chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve (Fed), the United States’ central bank, from 1987 until 2006. In that role, he also served as the chair of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), which is the Fed’s principal monetary policymaking committee that makes decisions on interest rates and managing the U.S. money supply.

Greenspan is best known for largely presiding over the Great Moderation, a period of relatively stable inflation and macroeconomic growth, that lasted from the mid-1980s to the financial crisis in 2007.

Early Life and Education

Alan Greenspan was born in New York City on March 6, 1926. He received his bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees in economics, all from New York University, as well as studying economics at Columbia University in the early 1950s under Arthur Burns, who would later serve two consecutive terms as chair of the Board of Governors of the Fed.

Greenspan’s first job, in 1948, was not in government but for a non-profit analyzing demand for steel, aluminum, and copper. After this, Greenspan ran an economic consulting firm in New York City, Townsend-Greenspan & Co., Inc., from 1954 to 1974 and 1977 to 1987. Greenspan began his career in the public sector in 1974 when he served as chair of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers (CEA) under President Gerald Ford.

In 1987, Greenspan became the 13th chair of the Fed, replacing Paul Volcker. President Ronald Reagan was the first to appoint Greenspan to the office, but three other presidents, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush, named him to four additional terms. His tenure as chair lasted for more than 18 years before he retired in 2006 to be replaced by Ben Bernanke. After leaving, he published his memoir, The Age of Turbulence, and began his own Washington DC-based consulting firm, Greenspan Associates LLC. 

Alan Greenspan was known as being adept at gaining consensus among Fed board members on policy issues and for serving during one of the most severe economic crises of the late 20th century, the aftermath of the stock market crash of 1987. After that crash, he advocated for sharply slashing interest rates to prevent the economy from sinking into a deep depression.

Alan Greenspan’s Policies and Actions

Greenspan presided over one of the most prosperous periods in American history—thanks in no small part, supporters feel, to his helming of the Fed. Still, some of his policies and actions were controversial, either at the time or in retrospect.

Views on Inflation

Early in his career, Greenspan developed a reputation for being hawkish on inflation, in part due to his advocacy for a return to the gold standard in monetary policy in the 1967 essay “Gold and Economic Freedom.” 

His allegedly “hawkish” stance was portrayed by early critics as a preference for sacrificing economic growth in exchange for preventing inflation. Greenspan eventually reversed those views as Fed chief; in a 1998 speech, he conceded that the new economy might not be as susceptible to inflation as he had first thought.

In practice, Greenspan’s supposedly hawkish approach was flexible, to say the least. He was clearly willing to risk inflation under conditions that could create a severe depression and certainly pursued a generally easy money policy relative to his predecessor, Paul Volcker. In particular, in the early 2000s, Greenspan presided over cutting interest rates to levels not seen in many decades.

Flip-Flop on Interest Rates

In 2000, Greenspan advocated reducing interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst. He did so again in 2001 after 9-11, the World Trade Center attack. Following 9-11, Greenspan led the FOMC to immediately reduce the Fed funds rate from 3.5% to 3%, and, in the following months, he worked toward lowering that rate to a record (at the time) low of 1.13% and holding it there for a full year.

Some criticized those rate cuts as having the potential to inflate asset price bubbles in the U.S. Greenspan’s pro-inflationary policies, particularly during this period, are today generally understood to have contributed to the U.S. housing bubble, subsequent subprime mortgage financial crisis, and the Great Recession, though this is of course disputed by Greenspan and his allies.

Encouraging Adjustable-Rate Mortgages

In a 2004 speech, Greenspan suggested more homeowners should consider taking out adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs) where the interest rate adjusts itself to prevailing market interest rates. Under Greenspan’s tenure, interest rates subsequently rose as inflation accelerated. This increase reset many of those mortgages to much higher payments, creating even more distress for many homeowners and exacerbating the impact of that crisis.

The “Greenspan Put”

The “Greenspan put” was a monetary policy strategy popular during the 1990s and 2000s under Greenspan. Throughout his reign, he attempted to help support the U.S. economy by actively using the federal funds rate to aggressively lower interest rates to fight the deflation of asset price bubbles.

The Greenspan put created a substantial moral hazard in financial markets. Informed investors could expect the Fed to take predictable actions that would bailout investor’s losses, which distort the incentives of market participants. This created an environment where investors were encouraged to take excessive risk because Fed monetary policy tended to inherently limit their potential losses in the event of a market downturn in an analogous way to buying put options on the open market.

The Bottom Line

Like many other government officials, the success of Alan Greenspan’s five terms as Chair of the Fed will depend on who you ask. However, it is certainly true that Greenspan faced some massive challenges during his tenure, such as the 1987 stock market crash and the attacks on the World Trade Center.

Overall, Greenspan helped usher in a strong U.S. economy in the 1990s. Opinion on how much his actions caused the economic recession that began shortly after his term ended varies.

What Is an Allowance for Doubtful Accounts?

An allowance for doubtful accounts is a contra account that nets against the total receivables presented on the balance sheet to reflect only the amounts expected to be paid. The allowance for doubtful accounts estimates the percentage of accounts receivable that are expected to be uncollectible. However, the actual payment behavior of customers may differ substantially from the estimate.

Understanding the Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

Regardless of company policies and procedures for credit collections, the risk of the failure to receive payment is always present in a transaction utilizing credit. Thus, a company is required to realize this risk through the establishment of the allowance for doubtful accounts and offsetting bad debt expense. In accordance with the matching principle of accounting, this ensures that expenses related to the sale are recorded in the same accounting period as the revenue is earned. The allowance for doubtful accounts also helps companies more accurately estimate the actual value of their account receivables.

Because the allowance for doubtful accounts is established in the same accounting period as the original sale, an entity does not know for certain which exact receivables will be paid and which will default. Therefore, generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) dictate that the allowance must be established in the same accounting period as the sale, but can be based on an anticipated or estimated figure. The allowance can accumulate across accounting periods and may be adjusted based on the balance in the account.

How to Estimate the Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

Two primary methods exist for estimating the dollar amount of accounts receivables not expected to be collected.

Percentage of Sales Method

The sales method applies a flat percentage to the total dollar amount of sales for the period. For example, based on previous experience, a company may expect that 3% of net sales are not collectible. If the total net sales for the period is $100,000, the company establishes an allowance for doubtful accounts for $3,000 while simultaneously reporting $3,000 in bad debt expense.

If the following accounting period results in net sales of $80,000, an additional $2,400 is reported in the allowance for doubtful accounts, and $2,400 is recorded in the second period in bad debt expense. The aggregate balance in the allowance for doubtful accounts after these two periods is $5,400.

Accounts Receivable Aging Method

The second method of estimating the allowance for doubtful accounts is the aging method. All outstanding accounts receivable are grouped by age, and specific percentages are applied to each group. The aggregate of all group results is the estimated uncollectible amount.

For example, a company has $70,000 of accounts receivable less than 30 days outstanding and $30,000 of accounts receivable more than 30 days outstanding. Based on previous experience, 1% of accounts receivable less than 30 days old will be uncollectible, and 4% of those accounts receivable at least 30 days old will be uncollectible.

Therefore, the company will report an allowance of $1,900 (($70,000 * 1%) + ($30,000 * 4%)). If the next accounting period results in an estimated allowance of $2,500 based on outstanding accounts receivable, only $600 ($2,500 – $1,900) will be the adjusting entry amount.

Risk Classification Method

Some companies may classify different types of debt or different types of vendors using risk classifications. For example, a start-up customer may be considered a high risk, while an established, long-tenured customer may be a low risk. In this example, the company often assigns a percentage to each classification of debt. Then, it aggregates all receivables in each grouping, calculates each group by the percentage, and records an allowance equal to the aggregate of all products.

Historical Percentage Method

If a company has a history of recording or tracking bad debt, it can use the historical percentage of bad debt if it feels that historical measurement relates to its current debt. For example, a company may know that its 10-year average of bad debt is 2.4%. Therefore, it can assign this fixed percentage to its total accounts receivable balance since more often than not, it will approximately be close to this amount. The company must be aware of outliers or special circumstances that may have unfairly impacted that 2.4% calculation.

Pareto Analysis Method

A Pareto analysis is a risk measurement approach that states that a majority of activity is often concentrated among a small amount of accounts. In many different aspects of business, a rough estimation is that 80% of account receivable balances are made up of a small concentration (i.e. 20%) of vendors. This 80%/20% ratio is used throughout business.

Though the Pareto Analysis can not be used on its own, it can be used to weigh accounts receivable estimates differently. For example, a company may assign a heavier weight to the clients that make up a larger balance of accounts receivable due to conservatism.

Specific Identification Method

Assume a company has 100 clients and believes there are 11 accounts that may go uncollected. Instead of applying percentages or weights, it may simply aggregate the account balance for all 11 customers and use that figure as the allowance amount. Companies often have a specific method of identifying the companies that it wants to include and the companies it wants to exclude.

How to Account for the Allowance for Doubtful Accounts

Establishing the Allowance

The first step in accounting for the allowance for doubtful accounts is to establish the allowance. This is done by using one of the estimation methods above to predict what proportion of accounts receivable will go uncollected. For this example, let’s say a company predicts it will incur $500,000 of uncollected accounts receivable.

To create the allowance, the company must debit a loss. Most often, companies use an account called ‘Bad Debt Expense’. Then, the company establishes the allowance by crediting an allowance account often called ‘Allowance for Doubtful Accounts’. Though this allowance for doubtful accounts is presented on the balance sheet with other assets, it is a contra asset that reduces the balance of total assets.

• DR Bad Debt Expense $500,000
• CR Allowance for Doubtful Accounts $500,000

Adjusting the Allowance

Let’s say six months passes. The company now has a better idea of which account receivables will be collected and which will be lost. For example, say the company now thinks that a total of $600,000 of receivables will be lost. This means its allowance of $500,000 is $100,000 short. The company must record an additional expense for this amount to also increase the allowance’s credit balance.

• DR Bad Debt Expense $100,000
• CR Allowance for Doubtful Accounts $100,000

Writing Off Account

Now, let’s say a specific customer that owes a company $50,000 officially files for bankruptcy. This client’s account had previously been included in the estimate for the allowance. Because the company has a very low priority claim without collateral to the debt, the company decides it is unlikely it will every receive any of this $50,000. To properly reflect this change, the company must reduce its accounts receivable balance by this amount. On the other hand, once the receivable is removed from the books, there is no need to record an associated allowance for this account.

• DR Allowance for Doubtful Accounts $50,000
• CR Accounts Receivable $50,000

Note that the debit to the allowance for doubtful accounts reduces the balance in this account because contra assets have a natural credit balance. Also, note that when writing off the specific account, no income statement accounts are used. This is because the expense was already taken when creating or adjusting the allowance.

Recovering an Account

By miracle, it turns out the company ended up being rewarded a portion of their outstanding receivable balance they’d written off as part of the bankruptcy proceedings. Of the $50,000 balance that was written off, the company is notified that they will receive $35,000.

The company can recover the account by reversing the entry above to reinstate the accounts receivable balance and the corresponding allowance for doubtful account balance. Then, the company will record a debit to cash and credit to accounts receivable when the payment is collected. You’ll notice that because of this, the allowance for doubtful accounts increases. A company can further adjust the balance by following the entry under the “Adjusting the Allowance” section above.

• DR Accounts Receivable $35,000
• CR Allowance for Doubtful Accounts $35,000
• DR Cash $35,000
• CR Accounts Receivable $35,000

The Bottom Line

The allowance for doubtful accounts is a general ledger account that is used to estimate the amount of accounts receivable that will not be collected. A company uses this account to record how many accounts receivable it thinks will be lost. The balance may be estimated using several different methods, and management should periodically evaluate the balance of the allowance account to ensure the appropriate bad debt expense and net accounts receivables are being recorded.

What Is the Alternative Minimum Tax?

An alternative minimum tax (AMT) places a floor on the percentage of taxes that a filer must pay to the government, no matter how many deductions or credits the filer may claim.

The United States currently has an alternative minimum tax for taxpayers who earn above certain income thresholds.

The AMT recalculates income tax after adding certain tax preference items back into adjusted gross income. It uses a separate set of rules to calculate taxable income after allowed deductions. Preferential deductions are added back into the taxpayer’s income to calculate their alternative minimum taxable income (AMTI), and then the AMT exemption is subtracted to determine the final taxable figure.

How the Alternative Minimum Tax Works

The difference between a taxpayer’s alternative minimum taxable income and his AMT exemption is taxed using the relevant rate schedule. This yields the tentative minimum tax (TMT).

If the tentative minimum tax is higher than the taxpayer’s regular tax liability for the year, then they pay the regular tax and the amount by which the tentative minimum tax exceeds the regular tax. In other words, the taxpayer pays the full tentative minimum tax.

There are two alternative minimum tax rates, 26% and 28%. For 2022, the 28% rate applies to excess alternative minimum taxable income of $206,100 or more for all taxpayers ($103,050 for married couples filing separate returns). For 2023, the 28% rate applies to excess alternative minimum taxable income of $220,700 or more for all taxpayers ($110,350 for married couples filing separate returns). The 26% rate applies to incomes up to those levels.

A taxpayer who has a high income and uses large tax breaks may owe a smaller percentage under the standard rules. If so, the taxpayer is obliged to recalculate the taxes owed under the alternative minimum tax system, which eliminates some of those tax breaks.

The taxpayer will owe whichever amount is higher.

AMT Exemption Amounts

For tax year 2022, the AMT exemption for single filers is $75,900. For married joint filers, the figure is $118,100. For tax year 2023, the figures are $81,300 for single filers and $126,500 for married joint filers.

Taxpayers have to complete Form 6251 to see whether they might owe AMT. First, they subtract the exemption amount from their income. If their AMT is less than the exemption, they do not have to pay AMT.

It’s important to note, though, that taxpayers with AMTI over a certain threshold do not qualify for the AMT exemption. For tax year 2022, the phase-out begins at $539,900 for single filers and $1,079,800 for couples filing jointly. For tax year 2023, the phase-out begins at $578,150 for single filers and $1,156,300.

Purpose of AMT

AMT is designed to prevent taxpayers from escaping their fair share of tax liability through tax breaks. However, in the past, the structure was not indexed to inflation or tax cuts. This can cause bracket creep, a condition in which middle-income taxpayers could be subject to this tax instead of just the wealthy taxpayers for whom AMT was invented. In 2012, however, Congress passed a law indexing the AMT exemption amount to inflation.

Calculating AMT

To determine if they owe AMT, individuals can use tax software that automatically does the calculation, or they can fill out IRS Form 6251. This form takes medical expenses, home mortgage interest, and several other miscellaneous deductions into account to help tax filers determine if their deductions are beyond an overall limit set by the IRS.

The form also requests information on certain types of income such as tax refunds, investment interest, and interest from private activity bonds, as well as numbers corresponding with capital gains or losses related to the disposition of property.

The IRS has specific formulas in place to determine which portion of this income and deductions the tax filers need to note on Form 6251. It uses another set of formulas to determine how these numbers lead to AMTI.

The Bottom Line

The Alternative Minimum Tax is an additional or parallel tax system in the U.S. that is designed to ensure that high-income individuals pay their fair share of taxes. Prior to the AMT, certain taxpayers paid little in the way of taxes, due to preferential treatment of certain income and expenses, or tax breaks.