Are you going to just let this happen?
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Dear FASB, I’m Breaking Up With You
Editor’s note: Adrienne Gonzalez is founder and managing editor of Jr Deputy Accountant as well as regular contributor to leading financial/investment sites like Seeking Alpha and GoldmanSachs666. By day, she teaches unlicensed accountants to pass the CPA exam, though what she does in her copious amounts of freetime in the evening is really none of your business. Follow her adventures in Fedbashing and CPA-wrangling on Twitter @adrigonzo but please don’t show up unannounced at her San Francisco office as she’s got a mean streak. Her favorite FASB is 166.
I can’t take it anymore. I’m serious, this is BS. It has been nothing but up and down, agony and ecstasy for as far back as I can remember on fair value and I want off this ride.
More agony, after the jump
The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s updated fair-value rules will require companies to fully understand fair-value and mark-to-market concepts and extensively document their analysis of illiquid assets, as this article notes. The FASB gave companies some new latitude in applying fair-value principles but stood firmly behind the importance of fair value in preparing meaningful financial statements.
Stop, please. This is getting to be abusive.
Remember when you whispered in our ear, “Certainly, to those who say that accounting should better reflect true economic substance, fair value, rather than historical cost, would generally seem to be the better measure” in 2003, Bob Herz? We totally fell for it. Who wouldn’t? Swept off of our feet and still hurting from Enron, we needed a rebound and fair value totally worked.
Now what?
I truly wish you and IASB the best of luck in whatever you two decide to do with your miserable little lives.
WebCPA:
While FASB may be pushing back in the other direction and mulling the use of fair value and mark-to-mark with bank loans in addition to assets like mortgage-backed securities, the IASB seems to be tacking in an alternative direction. That could be leading them on the road to divergence, not convergence.
And I’m defriending you on Facebook, Bob. At least you know your new girlfriend does fair value.
Love,
AG
$500k Will Not Satisfy One CPA’s Quest for Vindication
A CPA in Redmond, Washington is receiving $500,000 from the state’s board of accountancy after battling with them for nearly five years over a disciplinary action that probably should have been NBD.
D. Edson Clark had claimed that the state Board of Accountancy was improperly pursuing unwarranted charges against him in retaliation for complaints he had made about the handling of another case. He requested tens of thousands of pages of public records and launched seven lawsuits against board employees over the past two years.
Clark was very determined to clear his good name. So much so that the Board of Accountancy claimed, “it has been disrupted by Clark’s requests, and that his demands for public records are burning up its budget and limiting its ability to function.” Apparently, the Board was so overwhelmed that it threatened Clark with an anti-harassment complaint because the volume of emails he was sending was disruptive.
This brings up some questions: A) How many emails does it take to disrupt an office? B) Did they try hiring a temp? C) Was Clark spending his entire day copying and pasting the same email over and over or was he drafting individually scathing rants? D) At what point does a person cross the line of crazy-ass obsession?
Despite the metric asston of emails received by the Board, a judge in one of Clark’s lawsuits was not impressed with the Board’s handling of the situation:
In an oral hearing in June, Judge Thomas McPhee, a judge in Thurston County Superior Court, said that the board had “developed a pattern of incompetence in answering these discovery requests that is just difficult to believe for a state agency.”
We’re all familiar with governments’ inability to do much of anything but for a judge to put the situation in this context might be a new low for bureaucratic inefficiency.
Don’t worry though, the saga isn’t over as Mr. Clark has indicated that he plans further litigation in order to FULLY EXONERATE himself. Nevermind that the $500,000 is over a third of the Board’s budget. This is obviously personal. We admire the gusto.
Redmond CPA to get $500K settlement from state board [Puget Sound Business Journal]
Redmond accountant, Washington regulator at odds [Puget Sound Business Journal]
UBS Closer to Getting the McCarthy Treatment
If you’ve got a Swiss bank account, here’s hoping you opened it because it was convenient for your monthly skiing/Toblerone getaway.
The U.S. and Swiss governments have agreed to share more tax information in order to crack down on all the tax dodgers out there that send their money offshore. The timing of this agreement is is especially diabolical because the IRS is currently trying to get Swiss bank behemoth UBS to name names of over 50,000 American clients.
Hearings in Miami are scheduled for next month to see if the names can be released, however, the Swiss have stated that this may violate Swiss law of double-secret-no-tattling-on-clients.
Ultimately, the Swiss Federal Council and Parliament will decide if the new agreement is kosh but judging by the Obama Administration’s hard-on for closing tax loopholes, they’ll probably play ball.
U.S. and Switzerland to Share More Tax Data [DealBook/NYT]