U.K. Fines RBS Over Accounting Failures [WSJ]
The FCA, one of the U.K.'s two newly minted financial regulators, said Wednesday that RBS failed to accurately report around 44.8 million transactions it executed between November 2007 and February 2013, and made no report at all of 804,000 transactions between November 2007 and February 2012. The FCA requires that companies submit records of market transactions, including details such as the product traded, the counterparty and the price. In the bulk of the breaches, RBS used internal identifiers to show who was on the other side of stock trades, rather than the FCA's official codes. Other errors included submitting incorrect prices or recording the wrong time of day on stock and bond trades.
Wealth Taxes to Cure Inequality? How About Tax Reform Instead. [Joe Thorndike/HP]
[T]oday's rising inequality might plausibly spark a populist attack on wealth, including some sort of national wealth tax. But the history of New Deal taxation suggests that more tepid reforms might be the more likely response.
Gov. Cuomo: Estate tax paid by surviving gay spouses to be refunded [NYDN]
Gov. Cuomo announced Tuesday that he’s ordered the state Tax Department to issue refund checks to the surviving spouses of gay marriages who had to pay estate taxes on money or property they inherited from partners who died as long ago as 2008.
Accountant admits to helping doctors bilk the University of Rocheser [ABC]
Debra Bulter, 53, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud and to a charge akin to a form of money laundering. When asked by outside court whether she wanted to say anything, her attorney replied for her. "No she doesn't," said Bill Easton. Yet inside court she admitted to plenty. "Six years into her career something changed in her brain where now she became a felon and was willing to steal from those who employed her," said [U.S. Attorney William] Hochul.
Majority of Americans Say U.S. Still in Recession [WSJ]
FYI.
Cape from PwC and Vimetco from Deloitte.
Canadian Man Sorry for Chugging Eight Beers and Swimming to Detroit [Gawker]
Via the WIndsor Star: "If I’m going to be in the paper, I’d at least like them to say I actually made it, even though I got in trouble and everything. I gotta pay fines and stuff. But I don’t want it to sound like I didn’t make it, because then my buddies are going to say 'ha, ha, you didn’t make it.' Because that was the whole thing, to show them I could do it."