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Accounting News Roundup: Sports Trades and Tax Reform; Whistleblowers and Retaliation | 03.20.18

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A Curveball From the New Tax Law: It Makes Baseball Trades Harder [NYT]
Like-kind exchanges have gotten a rude awakening under the new tax law. With the exception of real estate, assets exchanged for similar assets are no longer exempt from tax, including, for example, athletes’ contracts. Sports executives are anxious for Treasury to explain how, exactly, to determine the value of those contracts.

More Whistleblowing, But Also More Retaliation [CFO]
A survey from the Ethics and Compliance Initiative found that fewer workers have witnessed misconduct, 47 percent of those surveyed in 2017 versus 51 percent in 2013. However, more workers are feeling pressure to “compromise ethical standards: 16%, compared with 13% four years ago.”

Elsewhere: Whistleblowers Helped SEC Bring $415 Million Settlement Against Bank of America

KPMG celebrates 30 years in Luxembourg [Delano]
Given Luxembourg’s reputation as one of the tax avoidance meccas in the world, you’d think the celebrating would be more subdued. In any case, the managing partner’s quote, “The regulatory environment has become so complex that our clients have increasingly come to rely on us to help them navigate it,” was presumably made with a straight face.

U.S. Companies Poised for M&A Shopping Spree [WSJ]
An Ernst & Young survey of executives at companies with more than $500 million in revenue found that “73% plan to ‘accelerate’ deal making strategies.”

Previously, on Going Concern…

Jason Bramwell wrote about how controllers have kept up with SOX over the last 16 years.

In Open Items, someone who wants to get into public accounting wonders if an internship in industry is a bad idea

From the archives: Internal Controls Are of the Devil (Or: Why Stealing from the Catholic Church Is So Easy)

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