Category: ANR

Proposal Would Create New Accounting Standard-Setter for Private Companies [NYT]
The parent organization of the Financial Accounting Standards Board will propose on Tuesday that a new body be set up to modify accounting rules for private companies, some of which have complained that existing rules are too complicated and costly. The new group, to be called the Small Company Standards Improvement Council, would be able to modify or allow exceptions to Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, known as GAAP, for nonpublic companies. The new group would be led by a member of FASB, ad include all seven members of the accounting standards board, said John J. Brennan, the chairman of the Financial Accounting Foundation, which appoints members of the accounting board. Decisions would be subject to ratification by FASB, which presumably would want to keep variations in standards to a minimum.

No big outflows since trade scandal: UBS CFO [Reuters]
“We saw no material change in net new money flows as a result of the trading incident,” CFO Tom Naratil told an investor conference in London. “We believe there is further upside to our overall performance,” he also said.

SEC Asks Apple CFO for Information on Nokia Patent Litigation Settlement [Bloomberg]
The two mobile-phone makers had been in litigation since October 2009, when Nokia filed a lawsuit accusing Cupertino, California-based Apple of infringing patents. Nokia also demanded royalties on the millions of Apple iPhones sold since the device’s introduction in 2007. Nokia said in March it had 46 patents asserted against Apple in civil lawsuits and complaints lodged with the U.S. International Trade Commission.

U.S.-Chinese Progress on Accounting Is Dealt Setback [WSJ]
U.S.-Chinese negotiations to allow American audit-firm inspectors into China suffered a setback Monday, as U.S. regulators indicated that a planned visit to Washington by their Chinese counterparts to continue the talks has been postponed. Regulators previously said the Chinese were slated to visit Washington this month for a second round of the talks, which began in Beijing in July. The two countries are negotiating on whether to allow inspectors from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the U.S.’s auditing regulator, into China to scrutinize the work of Chinese accounting firms which audit U.S.-traded companies.

Crowe to Merge in Perry-Smith [AT]
Puts CH in the San Francisco and Sacramento markets.

Giant Alien Snails Attack Miami, Though They’re Not in Much of a Rush [WSJ]
Floridians have grown accustomed to invasions of exotic creatures, like the Burmese pythons slithering throughout the Everglades. But residents here are especially grossed out by the latest arrivals: giant African land snails that grow as long as eight inches, chew through plants, plaster and stucco, and sometimes carry a parasite that can infect humans with a nonlethal strain of meningitis.

Fannie Mae Waited on Loan Abuse Action [Bloomberg]
The inspector general of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, released a report today on outside law firms hired by the government- sponsored firm to handle mortgage defaults. Among other things, the report said, Fannie Mae didn’t act on the December 2003 allegation from an unidentified shareholder until it hired a law firm two years later to look into the matter. In May 2006, the law firm reported to Fannie Mae that Florida-based foreclosure attorneys were “routinely filing false pleadings and affidavits.” Fannie Mae didn’t notify its regulator of the findings, according to the inspector general.

PwC reports record $29.2 billion revenue, regains lead [Reuters]
Growth in its consulting business helped PwC increase revenue 10 percent in fiscal 2011, allowing it to regain its position as the world’s largest accounting and consulting firm. PwC’s global network of firms reported record revenue of $29.2 billion for the year that ended June 30, up from $26.6 billion in 2010 and the strongest growth since 2008. PwC, formerly known as PricewaterhouseCoopers, also said on Monday that it plans to hire a record 20,000 graduates worldwide in fiscal 2012 and offer training internships to 10,000 students. Its staff now numbers about 169,000.

[WSJ]
The Republican presidential candidate wants to scrap the current system—with its income-tax rates as high as 35% for individuals and corporations—and replace it with a system that combines a 9% personal flat tax, a 9% corporate flat tax and a 9% national sales tax. The plan would eliminate the estate tax as well as current taxes on investment income, in an effort to boost investment and the economy. The Cain plan also would eliminate the payroll tax that hits many working-class Americans hard, and instead fund entitlement programs such as Social Security from the new revenue structure.

Financial services set to shed 8,000 jobs [FT]
The UK financial services sector is set to shed 8,000 jobs over the next three months as turmoil in global markets damps growth prospects, according to a survey by the CBI employers’ group and PwC, the professional services firm. The pace of business growth in the financial sector continued to slow in the three months to September and is expected to be slower still in the final quarter. For the first time in two years, companies expect there to be no improvement in profitability.

Salary vs sleep: Which would you pick? [WaPo]
Which would you prefer: An $80,000 job with reasonable work hours and seven and a half hours of sleep each night, or a $140,000 job with long work hours and just six hours of sleep? A new study from researchers at Cornell, to be published in the American Economic Review, found that most people would pick the higher-paying job with more hours and less sleep.

In Debt Talks, Divide on What Tax Breaks Are Worth Keeping [NYT]
The 71,000-page tax code has become loaded with dozens of obscure but economically valuable tax breaks. Nascar racetrack operators can speed up their write-offs for improvements to their facilities; makers of toy wooden arrows pay no excise tax; and Eskimo whaling captains get a charitable deduction of up to $10,000 for hunting blubber. Multibillion-dollar operations like oil refineries, Hollywood productions and hedge funds have all profited. And there is little sign that the lawmakers who helped write the breaks into the tax code are willing to back away from them. Whether any of them are scrubbed from the books may ultimately prove how serious Congress is about reducing the debt, and how adept powerful lobbies are at guarding their benefits, political analysts and tax experts say.

Groupon’s Stumbles May Force a Smaller IPO [Bloomberg]
Groupon Inc., the largest online- coupon site, may have to settle for a smaller initial public offering as management gaffes, restated results and regulatory scrutiny leave investors leery of owning the stock. The valuation might need to drop to as low as $3 billion to $5 billion to entice shareholders, said Josef Schuster, founder of IPOX Schuster LLC, which invests in IPOs. That’s a fraction of $25 billion that was said to be discussed as a potential valuation when Groupon met with underwriters earlier this year. It’s also below the $6 billion Google Inc. (GOOG) offered last year. “Interest is diminishing by the week,” said Schuster, who manages $2.5 billion in assets for the Chicago-based fund. “All the news that’s coming out underlines some form of turmoil in the company. As an IPO investor, you don’t want that.”

KPMG LLP Names Steven Hill Vice Chair — Strategic Investments [KPMG]
Replacing Mark Goodburn.

Justice Department probing Chinese accounting [Reuters]
The Justice Department is investigating accounting irregularities at Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges, said an official with the Securities and Exchange Commission, suggesting criminal charges may be brought in addition to civil proceedings. “There are parts of the Justice Department that are actively engaged in this area,” Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the SEC, said in an interview conducted on Tuesday and published on Thursday. A number of federal prosecutors around the United States were taking part in the investigation, he told Reuters, them.

FBI Probing Solyndra for Possible Accounting Fraud [Bloomberg]
Solyndra LLC, the solar-panel maker that filed for bankruptcy protection two months after executives extolled its prospects, is being investigated by the FBI for accounting fraud, an agency official said. The FBI is examining possible misrepresentations in financial statements submitted to the Energy Department, according to the official, who requested anonymity because the investigation is continuing. Disclosure of the fraud probe is likely to heighten Republican criticism of the Obama administration for its approval of a $535 million U.S. loan guarantee, which the company used to build a $733 million factory in Fremont, California, that opened in January.

Banks to Make Customers Pay Fee for Using Debit Cards [NYT]
Bank of America, the nation’s biggest bank, said on Thursday that it planned to start charging customers a $5 monthly fee when they used their debit cards for purchases. It was just one of several new charges expected to hit consumers as new regulations crimp banks’ profits. Wells Fargo and Chase are testing $3 monthly debit card fees. Regions Financial, based in Birmingham, Ala., plans to start charging a $4 fee next month, while SunTrust, another regional powerhouse, is charging a $5 fee. The round of new charges stems from a rule, which takes effect on Saturday, that limits the fees that banks can levy on merchants every time a consumer uses a debit card to make a purchase. The rule, known as the Durbin amendment, after its sponsor Senator Richard J. Durbin, is a crucial part of the Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law.

Canceled Flights in U.S. at 10-Year High [Bloomberg]
United Continental Holdings Inc. (UAL), Delta Air Lines Inc. (DAL) and other large carriers have scrubbed almost 104,000 flights this year through Sept. 21, or 2.36 percent of the scheduled total. A full-year rate at that level would be the highest since 2001, according to the U.S. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The disruptions stem from a combination of foul weather in major markets such as New York and seating-capacity cutbacks to curb costs. When Hurricane Irene struck the East Coast in August, Cameron C. McCulloch faced a weeklong wait for a new ticket — so he drove the 3,000 miles from Seattle to Yale University to catch the start of classes. “There was too much uncertainty with the flights,” said McCulloch, 21, a Yale junior. “At least with driving I knew I’d be there on time and that I could control all the factors.”

You’re tax-exempt? That doesn’t always mean you’re tax-exempt [Tax Update]
Joe Kristan explains the riddle.

Obama’s Buffett Rule Backed by 63% of Investors [Bloomberg]
By a margin of 63 percent to 32 percent, respondents in a Bloomberg Global Poll approved of the president’s proposal, known as the “Buffett rule” in a nod to Warren Buffett, the chairman of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., who has said it is wrong that he pays a smaller share of his income in taxes than does his secretary.

Long Island Rail Road Expects ‘Near-Normal’ Morning Service [City Room/NYT]
Aka “typically awful.”

Pa. man frustrated with IRS sentenced for threat [HC]
64-year-old Leonard Mackey pleaded guilty on Thursday to threatening to use a weapon of mass destruction. Mackey says his frustration stemmed from a one-digit error in another person’s Social Security number. That led to a mistaken claim that his wife owed $80,000 to the IRS. On Feb. 28, Mackey told an agency worker in Bethlehem that he wanted to build a monument to the man who flew a plane into an IRS building in Texas last year.

FASB weighs ‘going concern’ self-test for US firms [Reuters]
U.S. accounting rulemakers are expected to revisit soon a 2008 proposal that would address the knotty issue of “going concern” warnings, seeking to better assure that alarms are sounded before companies fail. At issue are the standard warnings that auditors are required to include in annual reports when they have substantial doubt that a company will survive. With lucrative audit fees on the line, auditors have been accused of failing to flag going concern doubts, though some proposed changes could create new frictions between auditors and managers, some experts have said.

The best way to tackle the Big Four [FT]
Michel Barnier has shocked the Big Four accounting firms. The European Union internal market commissioner wants to ban them from operating as consultants as well as auditors, force them to work jointly with others, and set time limits on how long they can audit each company. It could be the biggest shake-up of accounting since the collapse of Enron laid low Arthur Andersen and led to the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Yet it will not amount to much unless the industry’s looming disaster – the failure of another audit firm and contraction to a Big Three – can be avoided.

E&Y Says Greek Defau [Bloomberg]
“The euro zone sovereign-debt crisis shows no sign of abating,” E&Y said in an e-mailed report in London [Wednesday]. “A default on Greek government debt now seems unavoidable. The key question is when this default will occur and how it will be managed.”

To Ease the Crisis, Tax Financial Transactions [NYT]
Governments, both rich and poor, urgently need a way to calm speculation in the financial markets and to raise revenue. On Wednesday, the European Commission president, José Manuel Barroso, proposed a tax on financial transactions. Such a measure, already supported by the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, and the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, is long overdue. Indeed, a tax of just 0.05 percent levied on each stock, bond, derivative or currency transaction would be aimed at financial institutions’ casino-style trading, which helped precipitate the economic crisis. Because these markets are so vast, the tax could raise hundreds of billions of dollars a year globally for cash-strapped governments and could increase development aid.

D.C. tax employee’s arrest followed years of warnings [WaPo]
[F]ederal prosecutors charged a D.C. tax office employee with stealing about $414,000 from the city coffers. Mary Ayers-Zander did it, charging papers state, by making fraudulent manual adjustments to legitimate taxpayers’ income tax withholding, resulting in payments to personal accounts she had set up. In other words, Ayers-Zander found a weakness in the system and exploited it, finding a way to enrich herself because the internal controls within the Office of Tax and Revenue were not up to par, according to court records.

Snoop Dogg tax debt goes up in smoke [TW]
Robert Snell’s celeb tax scoop du jour.

Mr. Buffett’s Tax Secrets [WSJ]
[T]he opportunity to educate the public would be even greater if Mr. Buffett would let everyone else in on his secrets of tax avoidance by releasing his tax returns. Going only by Mr. Buffett’s unverified claims, his federal taxes in 2010 amounted to 17.4% of his taxable income, probably because much of his income was from capital gains and dividends. It’s also likely that he took significant deductions for charitable donations. No doubt the millions of Americans who could end up paying more because of this claim would love to see the details.

Medicis, its auditor will pay $18 mil to settle suit [Arizona Republic]
Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp. and its auditing firm, Ernst & Young, have agreed to pay $18 million to settle a shareholder class-action lawsuit stemming from the pharmaceutical company’s financial statements. Scottsdale-based Medicis would pay $11 million and Ernst & Young would pay $7 million under terms of a settlement agreement filed last week in U.S. District Court in Phoenix.

The iPad Decision [JofA]
Ask one CPA, the managing partner of a 160-employee firm, what he thinks of using the iPad in his work, and he tells you “there’s no other way to practice right now.” Ask another, the IT head of a 400-employee firm, and he tells you that his iPad is no more useful than a paperweight.

Gov. Christie vs. ‘Jersey Shore’ [NYT]
Mr. Christie ventured beyond amateur TV criticism on Monday when he blocked a $420,000 tax credit that had been approved for the show’s production company by the state’s E��������������������Authority. With that move, he crossed a basic constitutional line, namely the First Amendment.

Accounting Firms Face ‘Big Impact’ From Draft EU Restrictions [Bloomberg]
Companies that are publicly traded “shall appoint at least two statutory auditors” under the measures, which are designed to improve trust in “the veracity of the financial statement,” according to a draft version of the proposals from the European Union’s executive arm obtained by Bloomberg News. “Many of these ideas aren’t new but we’ve never seen proposals that include all of these ideas at the same time,” Michael Izza, the chief executive of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of England and Wales, said in a telephone interview today. “They’ve been aggregated in one place and that’s where you get the big impact.”

Don’t Count On Europe To Reform Auditors And Accounting [Forbes]
Francine McKenna: “If coalminers operated with as little foresight and acknowledgment of mistakes as the auditors, more would be trapped below ground as a result of “accidents” that could have been averted. If you trusted a doctor with the kind of reasonable assurance approach the auditors claim is sufficient to protect the financial system and the level tolerance for mistakes and being “duped” they believe we should accept, you’d be dead.”

Barnier vows to break the big four [Independent]
“This isn’t about the Big Four versus Brussels. We know from our contacts and discussions with BIS [the Department for Business] and the CBI that they don’t support many of these more radical proposals because they don’t think they will increase quality or competition… [Mr Barnier] has set out his stall and that is the world of politics.”

As InterOil tumbles, actor Shia LaBeouf and John Thomas Financial CEO Thomas Belesis have egg on their faces [WCF]
Those Transformer residuals will come in handy.

Benefits Tax Hits Businesses Twice [WSJ]
State and federal taxes are rising for employers across the U.S. as states struggle to repay federal loans for unemployment benefits, including more than $1 billion in interest due Friday. The increases in state and federal unemployment-insurance taxes—paid primarily by businesses—are hitting as the recovery appears close to stalling, consumer confidence is low and unemployment remains high at 9.1%. These tax increases come on top of measures intended to tame government budgets, including other state tax increases and spending reductions as well as federal cuts.

Tax wars: the accidental billion-dollar break [FT]
The rule is known as “check-the-box.” It allows US companies to shift profits from operations in high-tax countries simply by marking an Internal Revenue Service form that transforms subsidiaries into what the agency calls a “disregarded entity”. Others have labelled them “tax nothings”. Check-the-box allows companies to avoid the normal 35 per cent US corporate tax on certain types of income. The Treasury Department estimates that annual revenue losses from check-the-box have hit almost $10bn. Other countries are also said to lose billions as income is shifted from other high tax jurisdictions to places with low or no taxes, although there is no official estimate.

Chaoda’s Chairman and CFO, Fidelity Manager Accused of Insider Trading [Bloomberg]
Chaoda Modern Agriculture Holdings Ltd. (682)’s Chairman Kwok Ho, Chief Financial Officer Andy Chan and Fidelity Management’s George Stairs were accused of insider trading by Hong Kong’s financial secretary. The government alleges Kwok and Chan told Stairs about a June 2009 share placement three days before it was publicly announced, according to a notice released by Hong Kong’s Market Misconduct Tribunal today. The portfolio manager at Fidelity Management & Research Company allegedly netted HK$1.98 million ($254,000) on behalf of the funds that he managed by selling 374,000 shares prior to the placement and then buying 630,000 shares at a lower price as part of the stock sale.

Auditor defense may have holes in Deloitte case [Reuters]
“It’s always difficult to believe that an auditor that’s been auditing for seven years or more during an alleged ongoing fraud had no red flags,” said Andrea Kim, a partner at Diamond McCarthy LLP in Houston.

Accounting firm Deloitte & Touche sued for $7.6 billion in massive mortgage fraud case [AP]
“They certainly did not do therney Steven Thomas, who represents those suing Deloitte. “This is one of those cases where the red flags are staring you in the face, and you’ve got to do a lot, and they did not.” Deloitte spokesman Jonathan Gandal responded that the company rejects the claims, calling them “utterly without merit.” The lawsuits were filed in Miami-Dade Circuit Court on behalf of the bankruptcy trustee for the fraudulent mortgage firm, Taylor Bean & Whitaker, and by Ocala Funding LLC, a company that purchased hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of mortgages from Taylor Bean. The bankruptcy trustee is attempting to recover money for Taylor Bean creditors.

Big Four: cut down to size? [FT]
“Accountancy was my life,” ran the old advert. “Until I discovered Smirnoff.” Plenty of auditors could turn to the bottle after they see the reforms Brussels is considering. The changes, according to a draft circulating the European Commission, have caught the industry off guard. Most stunning is the suggestion that the Big Four – PwC, Deloitte, KPMG, and Ernst & Young – should spin off all their non-audit operations. Michel Barnier, internal market commissioner, also plans to mandate joint audits of large companies and make them rotate auditors far more frequently.

Groupon IPO Watch: Groupon Versus the Accounting Blogs [312]
Maybe the deal isn’t on.

Social Security Is a Ponzi Scheme [Grumpy Old Accountants]
From the Grumpies: “The essential feature of the Ponzi scheme, indeed the defining feature, is the payoff of a promised return to an investor class using funds acquired from a later class of investors. This is exactly how social security works. Retirees are paid benefits not from the actual funds that they put into the system (which were “misappropriated” for other government purposes), but rather from funds supplied by current workers. In turn, these current workers presumably will receive social security benefits when social security taxes are contributed by later workers. This works only as long as the government can con future workers (“new investors”) into funding the social security promise. So, yes, social security is a Ponzi scheme.

Obama gets a feel-good moment on jobs package [WaPo]
“My question is would you please raise my taxes?” the man deadpanned, to immediate laughter and applause. “I would like very much to have the country to continue to invest in things like Pell Grants and infrastructure and job-training programs that made it possible for me to get to where I am. And it kills me to see Congress not supporting the expiration of the tax cuts that have been benefiting so many of us for so long. I think that needs to change, and I hope that you will stay strong in doing that.”

Christie Blocks Tax Credit for ‘Jersey Shore’ [NYT]
Mr. Christie said he was “duty-bound” to see that taxpayers were “not footing a $420,000 bill for a project which does nothing more than perpetuate misconceptions about the state and its citizens.”

A Short History of the Income Tax [WSJ]
Whether the “millionaires and billionaires” are actually paying their fair share of taxes is a matter for the electorate to decide. After all, fairness is hardly an objective standard. Before the modern era, however, the federal tax system was manifestly unfair by any reasonable standard, grossly biased in favor of the well off. Ironically, attempting to fix that unfairness is what has brought us to the present moment, with a federal tax system that is grotesquely complex, often arbitrary, and corrupted by mutual back-scratching between members of Congress and influential lobbyists.

SEC Eyes Ratings From S&P [WSJ]
U.S. securities regulators are zeroing in on the use by Standard & Poor’s of fictitious “dummy” assets when it assigned a triple-A credit rating to a $1.6 billion mortgage-bond deal that imploded during the financial crisis, according to a person familiar with the matter. S&P’s parent company, McGraw-Hill Cos., said Monday that it had received a so-called Wells notice from the Securities and Exchange Commission. A Wells notice is the agency’s warning to financial institutions that they could face civil charges. McGraw-Hill said the SEC is weighing civil enforcement action against the firm for its ratings on a collateralized debt obligation called Delphinus CDO 2007-1 issued in July 2007 as the housing market was taking a turn for the worse.

Groupon IPO: Revenue Corrected for ‘Error’ [WSJ]
Now, what Groupon counts as “revenue” is the amount of money it takes in from the daily-deal offers, MINUS the money Groupon shares with merchants. Before, the revenue number included the merchant’s share ony’s revenue figure. “We consistently have stated that the amount we retain—rather than bill or collect—from the sale of Groupons is the key measure of the value we create,” Groupon said in its amended IPO filing. “This change in presentation is consistent with that belief.”

Were Groupon’s and Overstock’s Management and Auditors Stupid or Did They Condone Improper Accounting Practices? [WCF]
Sam Antar: “I believe that the managements of both companies simply chose to avoid following applicable accounting rules and their auditors condoned those practices. Seriously, can they be so stupid? If so, their audits are nothing but window dressing.”

Groupon: Restated Numbers Reveal Failure of Business [Fraud Files Blog]
And Tracy Coenen: “By reporting revenue properly (much smaller revenue numbers!), Groupon’s precarious financial position and operating strategy are exposed. Simply put: The business of Groupon does not work. And I suspect that merchants and consumers are losing interest in the Groupon type of gimmick, which puts even more financial strain on the company.”

EU to propose audit-only firms and mandatory rotation [Accountancy Age]
New European regulation looks set to turn auditing upside down, potentially forcing the biggest firms to choose between audit and non-audit services and ushering in mandatory rotation. A draft of the European Commission’s green paper on audit seen by Accountancy Age indicates a tough line is being pursued by internal markets commissioner Michel Barnier.

Facebook ‘Likes’ Small Business [WSJ]
In a push to gain more small-business users, Facebook Inc. is expected on Monday to reveal plans to launch a new program that includes giving away $10 million of advertising credits. The initiative is being launched in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and National Federation of Independent Business, a small-business group. It is intended to educate small businesses on how to promote themselves on the social-networking site, like buying display ads targeted to specific markets, but also through cost-free measures to engage more with customers.

Shutdown looms: Spotlight now on Senate after Boehner wrangled House GOP votes [WaPo]
With time running out, Congress returns Monday to try to pass a short-term funding measure to avert a government shutdown and avoid yet another market-rattling showdown over the federal budget. The Democratic-led Senate, which on Friday blocked a GOP House measure to fund the government through Nov. 18, will vote late Monday on its own version of the bill.

US tax authorities target bank deals [FT]
US tax authorities are targeting cross-border finance deals worth billions of dollars between leading US and UK banks as they step up efforts to clamp down on abusive tax avoidance, a joint investigation by the Financial Times and ProPublica, a non-profit news organisation, has found. Four US banks – BB&T, Bank of New York Mellon, Sovereign (now part of Santander of Spain), and Wells Fargo – are in turn suing the US government over more than $1bn in tax credits that the Internal Revenue Service has disallowed over the past decade. Washington Mutual has settled a similar dispute and Wachovia is pursuing an administrative complaint over a deal. The UK’s Barclays emerges as a pivotal promoter of the complex cross-border deals, which the IRS claims were designed to generate artificial foreign tax credits.

Crocs to Counter Slowdown With New Styles [Bloomberg]
Crocs Inc. (CROX) plans to counter any global slowdown by pushing consumers to shift to new, higher- priced shoe styles from the plastic clogs for which it’s better known, Chief Executive Officer John McCarvel said. “Our whole desire is to go upscale,” McCarvel said in an interview at the World Retail Congress in Berlin today. “This is many years in the making. It has evolved constantly, upgrading the line, trying to stretch the consumer up to 40, 45 euros, pounds or dollars.”

KPMG LLP Names Lynne M. Doughtie Vice Chair – Advisory [KPMG]
Replacing Mark Goodburn who’s now the global head of advisory.

Deloitte reports record 2011 revenue of $28.8 billion [Reuters]
Deloitte’s member firms worldwide reported a record $28.8 billion in revenue, up 8.4 percent from 2010. In local currency terms, not accounting for fluctuations in the value of the dollar, revenue grew 7.7 percent for the fiscal year that ended May 31, 2011. Deloitte will likely post similar growth in fiscal 2012, despite a challenging economic picture, the firm’s global chief executive, Barry Salzberg, said on Thursday. “Our first quarter (fiscal 2012) results are very much in line with what we’ve achieved in the prior year,” Salzberg said in an interview.

[AT]
On Thursday, the AICPA released a sampling of comments in support of creating a separate standard-setting board for privately held companies, and said that 99 percent of the 2,800 comments received so far support the establishment of an independent standard-setter. The Institute has organized a letter-writing campaign urging the Financial Accounting Foundation, which oversees FASB and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, to create a separate board for private company standards […]. The FAF has set up a trustee working group to review the recommendations of a report released in January by a Blue-Ribbon Panel on Standard Setting for Private Companies, which backed the creation of a separate board under the oversight of the FAF. The working group is expected to release its proposals by early October[…].

SinoTech Says Ernst & Young China Arm Resigns As Auditor [Dow Jones]
-Nasdaq-listed SinoTech Energy Ltd. […] said Friday that Ernst & Young’s China unit has resigned as the company’s auditor, citing concerns over a SinoTech financial transaction with SinoTech’s chairman. The Chinese oil-field service provider said in a statement that Chief Financial Officer BoXun Zhang has resigned. It added that Jing Liu has resigned as chairwoman of the company’s audit committee.

Candor by SEC Cheered in House [WSJ]
Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Mary Schapiro said Thursday she had apologized to the other members of the commission for not informing them that the agency’s former top attorney had a potential conflict in the agency’s investigation of the Bernard Madoff Ponzi scheme. Her remarks, at a joint hearing hosted by the House Financial Services and House Oversight subcommittees, came as some Democratic lawmakers dismissed the idea that the SEC’s former general counsel, David Becker, committed criminal acts.

House approves spending measure opposed by Senate; shutdown possible [WaPo]
Washington lurched toward another potential government shutdown crisis Friday, as the House approved a Republican-authored short-term funding measure designed to keep government running through Nov. 18 that Democrats in the Senate immediately vowed to reject. In an after-midnight roll call, House Republican leaders persuaded conservatives early Friday morning to support a stop-gap bill nearly identical to one they had rejected just 30 hours earlier.

Obama Takes Aim at Tax ‘Targets,’ Fires Blanks [Bloomberg]
Two weeks ago, President Barack Obama unveiled his $447 billion plan to put Americans back to work. Eleven days later, he told us how he’d pay for it: $1.5 trillion in tax increases over 10 years and $3 trillion in spending cuts — on top of the $1 trillion already agreed to in last month’s Budget Control Act. He outlined the principles of a comprehensive tax reform that would lower rates, broaden the base, cut “inefficient and unfair” tax breaks, encourage job creation and reduce the deficit. In other words, every economist’s dream.

Meg Whitman Is Named Hewlett-Packard Chief [NYT]
Hewlett-Packard replaced its embattled chief executive on Thursday with the former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman, saying that the company’s strategy to transform its business was sound, but that it needed new leadership to carry out the plan. The upheaval at H.P. came after several weeks of mounting concerns among board members, senior executives and investors about how the former chief, Léo Apotheker, had handled a major strategy shift at the company announced last month, according to interviews with several people briefed on the board’s discussions.

14 indicted in massive tax refund scam [KCS]
A three-year scheme that allegedly tried to defraud the Internal Revenue Service out of millions in inflated tax refunds unraveled Thursday in Kansas City as authorities announced charges against 14 defendants from around the country. U.S. Attorney Beth Phillips described it as the largest false tax claims case ever prosecuted in Missouri. “Kansas City was the hub of a nationwide conspiracy that attempted to receive nearly $100 million in fraudulent tax refunds,” Phillips said.

Obama’s Buffett Rule: Keep Your Eye on Capital Gains [TaxVox]
President Obama didn’t quite get around to saying so when he rolled out his latest deficit reduction plan on Monday, but his Buffett Rule—that no one making more than $1 million should pay a lower tax rate than those in the middle-class—is mostly about investment income.

Taxes, the Deficit and the Economy [NYT]
Republicans want to close the entire budget gap by slashing government spending. The president’s balanced approach protects vital services and growth. It includes $245 billion in payroll tax cuts next year for workers and businesses to encourage hiring, investment and spending. It also includes money to invest in infrastructure and to aid struggling states. It only starts reducing the budget deficit in 2013, when the economy should be stronger. As is his wont, the president is still leaving too many details for Congress to decide.

The Spend Now, Tax Later Jobs Bi=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904194604576583151431651920.html?grcc=88888&mod=WSJ_hps_sections_opinion” target=”_blank”>WSJ]
According to the Sept. 19 White House fact sheet, “The President calls on [the super committee] to undertake comprehensive tax reform, and lays out five principles for it to follow: 1) lower tax rates; 2) cut wasteful loopholes and tax breaks; 3) reduce the deficit by $1.5 trillion; 4) boost job creation and growth; and 5) comport with the “Buffett Rule” that people making more than $1 million a year should not pay a smaller share of their income in taxes than middle-class families pay.” But the administration’s tax plan violates these principles.