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Accounting News Roundup: PwC Gives Herbalife the ‘All Clear’; Feedback for FASAB, Anyone?; NFL’s Tax-exempt Status | 12.17.13

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Herbalife Says 'No Material Changes' Found in Reaudit [WSJ]
PwC has wrapped up its reaudits of Herbalife and all's good in the hood. Hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who's long claimed that HLF is a pyramid scheme, is not impressed: "In a statement Monday afternoon, Pershing Square [Ackman's firm] said it is 'not the role of Herbalife's auditor to determine if the company is a pyramid scheme,' and maintained that the company 'will be shut down by regulators.' "

KPMG recruits Olympics diversity expert [Accountancy Age]
For once, an article that discusses diversity is lauding numbers achieved by a so-called expert, "KPMG has recruited Stephen Frost, the mastermind behind diversifying the Olympics, to lead its own inclusion efforts. Head of diversity and inclusion at the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG), Frost achieved high levels of inclusion across the 200,000 staff members involved in the Olympics. This diversity included, 9% disabled, 46% female, 5% LGBT staff and 40% minority group staff. The Paralympic games also saw large numbers of diverse groups participate."

Georgia Tea Party Takes on Republicans Over Stadium Taxes [Bloomberg]
Oh, a taxpayer-funded baseball stadium doesn't have people excited?! GO ON: "In the days after the Atlanta Braves announced their intention to make a 13-mile, taxpayer-assisted relocation to suburban Cobb County, residents there flooded Cobb officials with 142 pages of angry e-mails, almost seven times as many as the county received in support. Tea Party supporters clogged county telephone lines with calls complaining about at least $368 million in tax-supported bonds Cobb has pledged to back a $672 million new Braves stadium. Opponents last week filed a lawsuit in county court challenging the legality of the funding plan." 

Should the NFL Lose Its Tax-Exempt Status? [MoJo]
Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn thinks so and an anti-corruption group called Rootstrikers has his back. "Over the weekend, Rootstrikers blasted out an email urging people to sign a petition in support of Sen. Tom Coburn's (R-Okla.) PRO Sports Act, which would ban big sports leagues from receiving tax-exempt status. 'You know the NFL as the National Football League,' says the Rootstrikers email. 'But the IRS knows them better as the Nonprofit Football League—that's because the NFL has not paid any taxes since 1966 and average Americans are left paying higher taxes to make up for that lost revenue. Senator [Tom] Coburn is trying to change that, and we support his endeavor.' Coburn's bill would ban pro sports leagues with more than $10 million in revenue from receiving tax-exempt status."

FASAB seeks feedback on annual report [JofA]
Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.Chirp.

Budget Deal Heads for Senate Approval as More Republicans Give Support [NYT]
Don't be fooled! There's plenty of dysfunction to go around!

Japan Man Stole $185,000 To Feed 120 Cats A Gourmet Diet [AFP]
Sounds like someone I know. "Mamoru Demizu, 48, is suspected of breaking into houses to steal cash and jewels on 32 separate occasions. He told police that he stole things to come up with the money to feed scores of his feline friends, spending up to 25,000 yen ($250) a day, an officer said. 'He said he felt happiest when he rubbed his cheek against cats,' the officer said."
 
Posted in ANR

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Accounting News Roundup: Bank America Lands a CFO; FASB, IASB Can’t Guarantee Convergence; Maine to Tax Medical Marijuana | 04.14.10

Bank of America Names an Outsider as CFO [WSJ]
Charles Noski will be the new Bank of America CFO, effective May 11th. He most recently was the CFO at Northrup Grumman, which he left in 2005 and prior to that held the same position at AT&T. He has also served as a advisor to Blackstone Group and is currently a director at Morgan Stanley and Microsoft. It is reported that he will give up his director seat at competitor Morgan Stanley. Noski began his career at Haskins & Sells (now Deloitte) for seventeen years and was a partner.

This ends BofA’s quest to land a CFO after former finance bigwig Joe Price moved into a new role under new CEO Brain Moynihan back in January.


IASB says “no guarantee” of full US accounting convergence [Accountancy Age]
The FASB and IASB, try as they might, have announced that they simply cannot guarantee that they will pull off 100% unadulterated convergence. The two boards have struggled to get their cerebral minds together on a number of “important technical issues” and are holding out for the possibility that they may not resolve any of their remaining differences.

The two boards issued a statement which warned, “Although our recent experiences with joint meetings show that we have been able to resolve differences on several projects, there is no guarantee we will be able to resolve all, or any, of our differences on this project.” The two cite “different imperatives that pushed our development timetables out of alignment,” in the struggle for converging the two sets of rules. While the FASB and IASB are warning that accounting rule convergence may be impossible, the statement indicates that the two still aim to finalize their work by the mid-2011 deadline.

Medical pot users to pay sales tax [Bangor Daily News via Tax Policy Blog]
The Pine Tree State will taxing its medical green that is sold at state-sanctioned dispensaries. The Maine Revenue Service had argued that since marijuana is currently issued for medicinal purposes, that the it should be treated as a prescription drug and thus, not taxed. However, since a prescription isn’t necessary to obtain medical marijuana, Maine lawmakers disagreed and ultimately decided to administer a levy on the sale of state-issued grass.

Accounting News Roundup: SEC Close on IFRS Decision; Yelp’s S-1; The Tax Rule of 72? | 11.18.11

SEC Nearing Decision on Accounting Standards [WSJ]
The Securities and Exchange Commission this week cleared the way for a long-awaited decision on whether U.S. companies should switch to using global accounting rules. The SEC chief accountant’s office issued two fact-finding papers Wednesday about the use of the global rules, known as International Financial Reporting Standards. Those papers lay the groundwork for a recommendation from the SEC’s staff to the commissioners, expected by the end of the year, on whether they should move to IFRS and away from U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. The staff’s work “gives me the confidence that lets me know they are moving toward a decision,” said Joel Osnoss, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.’s global leader for IFRS.

Tax Spat Stymies Debt Panel [WSJ]
Days away from a deadline, Congress’s deficit-reduction supercommittee is stymied, stumped in large part by one of Washington’s seemingly unsolvable problems: What to do with the Bush-era tax cuts? Republicans are digging in against any agreement that does not extend current income-tax rates, which are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.

Yelp Files for I.P.O. [DealBook, S-1]
Yelp, which makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising contracts with local businesses, is not yet profitable. Though revenue rose 79.9 percent, to $58.4 million for the first nine months of this year, the company recorded a loss of $7.4 million.

Fund Transfers Are Focus of MF Global Probe [WSJ]
Regulators have unearthed new details indicating MF Global Holdings Ltd. shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds to its own brokerage accounts in the days before its bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. Such moves could violate regulations stipulating that commodities brokers can’t mix customer funds with brokerage funds. Brokerage funds often are used to back proprietary trading positions. According to MF Global’s internal records, the transactions were as large as hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, these people said.

Rule of 72? [Tax Update]
Please keep filing tax returns after your 72nd birthday.


Barnier’s audit reforms ‘might be delayed’ [Accountancy Age]
You know how things are.