Survey Finds Career Growth Opportunities Lacking in Accounting [AWeb] Despite knowing that most employees leave their companies because of a lack of opportunity for career growth, only 14 percent of hiring managers in accounting and finance said they are willing to negotiate employee development opportunities during the hiring process, according to a recent survey from staffing firm Accounting Principals.
The Damning Evidence That Apple Really Isn't Paying Taxes That Are Due [Forbes] Again, very roughly: Apple is collecting the tax from people who purchase iPads in France but it is not paying it over to the tax authorities. The reason being that Apple is contesting the method the tax collectors are using to calculate how much must be paid. Which, given the way the French system works seems sensible enough, for you’ll be able to get the authorities to give your case a hearing rather better if you owe them money rather than having paid the cash over and then asking for a review. What Apple is really doing is contesting the calculation method in a different court case (in a different court system) and hanging on to the money until that case is finally resolved.
China's accounting industry matures with challenges [Xinhua] China's certified public accounting industry has grown to be worth over 50 billion yuan since the sector was re-established in the 1980s. Significant regulatory developments have accompanied its rapid progress. One regulatory step China has taken ahead of Europe and the United States is mandatory rotation of auditing firms.
Greece’s Aggressive Pursuit of Tax Evaders Appears to Collect More Anger Than Money [NYT] The tax inspectors swept into this picturesque village in Crete during the middle of a saint’s day celebration recently, moving from restaurant to restaurant demanding receipts and financial records. Soon, customers annoyed by the holiday disruption confronted them. Pushing, shoving and angry words followed, and eventually the frightened inspectors were forced to flee. “People are so angry and so poor,” said Nikolis Geniatakis, who has run his restaurant here on the main square for the last 34 years and who watched the confrontation from across the street. “What were the tax inspectors doing here? Why aren’t they going after the big fish?”
JPMorgan settlement is justice, not a shakedown [WaPo] Is JPMorgan Chase, the imperious mega-bank, a hapless victim of what a Post editorial dubbed “political persecution”? Is it the innocent target of a Justice Department “shakedown,” as the Wall Street Journal’s editors charged, with Justice “confiscating” JPMorgan’s earnings “for no other reason than because they can and because they want to appease their left-wing populist allies”? The announcement that JPMorgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, personally negotiated the announced $13 billion settlement with the Justice Department has set off howls in the press. The Post suggested that JPMorgan only made the same errors about housing prices that everyone else made. The government was charged with acting in bad faith, holding JPMorgan accountable for misdeeds committed by Bear Stearns and Washington Mutual before Dimon agreed to acquire them at the behest of the government. All in all, we’re supposed to see this deal as a miscarriage of justice. Give me a break.
A black box in your car? Some see a source of tax revenue [LA Times] As America's road planners struggle to find the cash to mend a crumbling highway system, many are beginning to see a solution in a little black box that fits neatly by the dashboard of your car. The devices, which track every mile a motorist drives and transmit that information to bureaucrats, are at the center of a controversial attempt in Washington and state planning offices to overhaul the outdated system for funding America's major roads. The usually dull arena of highway planning has suddenly spawned intense debate and colorful alliances. Libertarians have joined environmental groups in lobbying to allow government to use the little boxes to keep track of the miles you drive, and possibly where you drive them — then use the information to draw up a tax bill.
Herbalife President Says Re-Audit Is On Track To Be Completed By Year End [Forbes] With only a little over two months left in 2013 and the clock ticking, Desmond Walsh, president of Herbalife, said in an interview on Monday that the company still expects that PricewaterhouseCoopers will finish re-auditing Herbalife’s books by the end of the year and that the board will then reassess whether to go forward with the kind of leveraged recapitalization that it abandoned six months ago. “Our expectation is that the re-audit will be complete by the end of the year,” Walsh said. “We believe our stock to be undervalued and therefore once we have audited accounts then we are going to reevaluate the situation in relation to any potential repurchase at that time.” Walsh added: “We will make whatever decision is in the best interests of our shareholders.”
Dutch Rabobank fined $1 billion over Libor scandal [Reuters] U.S. and European regulators ordered Dutch lender Rabobank to pay $1.07 billion to settle allegations it aided a six-year scheme to rig benchmark interest rates, imposing the fifth fine in a scandal that has helped to shred faith in the industry. Rabobank said on Tuesday it was fined 774 million euros by U.S., British and Dutch regulators after 30 staff were involved in "inappropriate conduct" linked to a scam to manipulate the London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) and its Euribor cousin – benchmarks for more than $300 trillion of financial products.
And this is totally old but I was in the weird part of YouTube last night and… [YT]