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Accounting News Roundup: Happy Filing!; New Head Partner at Grant Thornton Chicago; H&R Block vs. TurboTax, Round 2 | 01.30.13

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

MF Global’s Bankruptcy Nears a Happy Conclusion [DealBook]
When Mahesh Desai checked his MF Global account 15 months ago, his $580,000 nest egg was gone. Like thousands of investors and farmers who had their savings with MF Global, Mr. Desai lost his money in the brokerage firm’s chaotic final days. Regulators discovered that $1.6 billion was trapped in a web of improper wire transfers, a stunning breach that sent federal investigators scrambling to build a case. On Thursday, a bankruptcy court will review a proposal that would return 93 percent of the missing money to customers like Mr. Desai. And the trustee who has submitted the proposal, James W. Giddens, has quietly identified a way that, if sent to the judge and approved, could plug the remaining shortfall for customers in the United States, according to people involved in the case.

IRS Opens For Business Today, Many Taxpayers Qualify To File For Free [Forbes]
Tax Girl: "The Internal Revenue Service has already delayed the filing season by a little over a week: the season was supposed to kick off on January 22, 2013, but due to the fiscal cliff deal, it was pushed out to January 30, 2013. That means, as of today, the IRS will begin accepting e-filed returns and processing the old fashioned paper ones."
 
Fed Pushes Internal Audit Toward CEO Suite [CFOJ (Subscription)] 
The U.S. Federal Reserve is getting behind a push to move internal auditors away from reporting to the chief financial officer or general counsel, in an effort to boost their ability to operate objectively.
 
Audit committees don't understand their annual reports [Accountancy Age]
Research has shown many audit committees don't understand their annual reports, fail to carry out an annual evaluation of their auditor and believe their company's risk programme needs substantial work, according to a KPMG survey. The research shows that just 62% believe their annual reports paints an understandable picture of the business with UK respondents even less confident with just 56% believing this to be the case.
 
Tomkinson Named Office Managing Partner of Grant Thornton’s Chicago Practice [GT]
Vince Tomkinson gets a bit of upgrade after being the OMP of Detroit.
 
Court Denies H&R Block's Effort to Pull Intuit Ad [Dow Jones]

Last week, three divisions of H&R Block filed a lawsuit against Intuit in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri alleging Intuit's ads infringed on H&R Block's trademarks. H&R Block claimed the commercials created a false impression that its tax preparers weren't well trained and are not "real tax experts." On Tuesday, the court denied H&R Block's motion for a temporary restraining order to restrain Intuit from broadcasting the two advertisements. The court said the plaintiffs didn't offer sufficient evidence that the advertisements' statements actually deceived or had a tendency to deceive their audience. "We are very pleased with today's decision and will continue to vigorously defend these truthful ads," said Dan Maurer, general manager and senior vice president of Intuit's consumer tax group. "These two TurboTax advertisements factually and accurately portray the tax expertise of TurboTax experts, who are all CPAs, IRS Enrolled Agents and tax attorneys. This stands in sharp contrast to the prior tax experience of some of those who major tax stores advertise for and hire."

Cats killing billions of animals in the US [BBC]
Cats are one of the top threats to US wildlife, killing billions of animals each year, a study suggests. The authors estimate they are responsible for the deaths of between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds and 6.9-20.7 billion mammals annually. Writing in Nature Communications, the scientists said stray and feral cats were the worst offenders. However, they added that pet cats also played a role and that owners should do more to reduce their impact. The authors concluded that more animals are dying at the claws of cats in the United States than in road accidents, collisions with buildings or poisonings.

 

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Accounting News Roundup: The Tanning Tax Isn’t Fair; Dubai World Gets Another Life; Guy Hands Won’t Have to Go to London | 03.25.10;

• Does New 10% Tanning Tax Discriminate Against Whites? [TaxProf Blog]
Are you being unfairly taxed just because you want some extra Vitamin D?!?


• Dubai World, Nakheel Get $9.5 Billion Injection [WSJ]
For now at least, it appears that Aidan Burkett, Deloitte’s rock star restructuring expert has saved the day at Dubai World. DW will get $9.5 billion from the Dubai Government and plans to pay $26 billion to its creditors that include HSBC, Lloyds, Standard Chartered and RBS.

The complex deal that has taken months to draw up involves Dubai World issuing two tranches of new debt and converting $8.9 billion, or 38%, of its existing obligations into equity, the company said.

The new debt won’t be guaranteed by Dubai government, which has previously been a thorny issue between creditors and the city-state’s advisors.

• Citi Loses Bid to Move EMI Trial [WSJ]
Remember Guy Hands, the founder of Terra Firma Capital, who hates taxes so much that he asks that his family come to visit him in Guernsey so that he doesn’t risk his non-resident status for England?

Well, you’ll be happy to know that Citi’s bid to get the trial moved to London was rejected by Judge Jed Rakoff so Hands won’t have to worry his pretty little head. Had the motion to move the trial been granted, Hands’ non-resident status could have been jeopardized and he may have had to pay taxes due to England. And, God forbid, do some of the traveling to see his family.

Footnotes: Nancy Pelosi Jumps to Harry Reid’s Defense and Other Questionable Moves | 08.06.12

Nancy Pelosi: 'It Is A Fact' That Somebody Told Harry Reid About Romney Not Paying […]

Accounting News Roundup: Big 4 Firms Looking to Cash in on Climate Change; GM Is Back from the Dead; The End of Fan and Fred? | 08.17.10

Barclays in Sanctions Bust [WSJ]
“Barclays PLC agreed to pay $298 million to settle charges by U.S. and New York prosecutors that the U.K. bank altered financial records for more than a decade to hide hundreds of millions of dollars into the U.S. from Cuba, Libya, Iran and other sanctioned countries.

Monday’s settlement agreement of criminal charges is an embarrassment for Barclays, which became a major player on Wall Street by snapping up the collapsed U.S. operations of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in 2008 and has been trying to burnish the U.K. bank’s reputation on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean as a good corporate citizen.”

Cashing in on cleantech [The Guardian]
“While E&Y claims to be the first to set up a practice specifically for cleantech, in recent years PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, KPMG and E&Y have all launched dedicated practices for sustainability and climate change.

Steven Lang, who leads the cleantech division in the UK and Ireland, recently explained the attraction to Business Green: ‘We’ve seen major amounts of capital flowing into clean energy and clean technology and governments increasingly want to use the sector as a driver for international competitiveness.

‘The drivers are there for this to be a major growth area over the next five years.’ “

GM IPO filing expected Tuesday [Reuters]
It’s like you never left, GM. “General Motors Co has completed the paperwork for an initial public offering, and timing of its filing with the U.S. securities regulators rests with the board of the top U.S. automaker, sources familiar with the process said on Monday.

The initial prospectus, expected to be for $100 million, is likely to be filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Tuesday, two people said, asking not to be named because the preparations for the IPO are private.”


IASB details recruitment process for Tweedie replacement [Accountancy Age]
“In a newly created section of the IASB website, the body has outlined the process it has followed since September 2009, as it searches to replace chairman Sir David Tweedie, who steps down in June 2011.

Among the documents is a letter sent to the European Commissioner’s office on 3 December, 2009, from Sir Bryan Nicholson, who has led the IASB’s recruitment process.”

Woman due in court for pie attack on US Sen. Levin [CT]
“A woman accused of hitting U.S. Sen. Carl Levin in the face with an apple pie during the Armed Services Committee chairman’s constituent meeting in northern Michigan is due in court.

Twenty-two-year-old Ahlam M. Mohsen of Coldwater will be arraigned Tuesday. She is being held without bond after being arrested Monday on a felony charge of stalking, and misdemeanor counts of assault and disorderly conduct”

Apple?

Facebook Partnership Is Proven by $3,000 Check, Lawyer Says [Bloomberg]
“The western New York man suing over claims he owns 84 percent of Facebook Inc. has a copy of a $3,000 cashier’s check his lawyer says is proof of a contract with Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg.

The purported 2003 check is made out to Zuckerberg and dated three days before Paul Ceglia claims the two men signed a contract, according to the attorney. That agreement, Ceglia said in court papers, entitles him to control of the world’s biggest social networking website.”

Conference To Debate Future Of Fannie, Freddie [NPR]
Euthanasia seems like a good option here.