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Footnotes: Did You Evade Taxes Today?; Madoff CFO Says It Was Obvious; BlackBerry LIIIIIVES | 12.02.13

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

The Supreme Court decided to stay out of the fight over online sales taxes [Bloomberg]

Longtime accountant of a Princeton musical-comedy troupe accused of embezzling $100k from said Princeton musical-comedy troupe [NYT Arts Beat]

The accountant who stole "lunch money" was considered untouchable by colleagues, which may be why she got away with stuffing cash into her bra for so long [San Bernardino Sun]

And headline of the day goes to… Punching bag IRS unscathed in Obamacare rollout, so far [POLITICO]

Cyber Monday is the best day of the year for tax evasion! [Taxgirl via Forbes]

Whelp, there goes my plot to marry my lesbian lover to put myself in a better tax position… [Salon]

Bernie Madoff's former CFO — who is attempting to jump out of the fire and back into the frying pan to save his own tail — says the sham was pretty obvious [Bloomberg]

A small town CPA took out an ad in his local paper to let people know Obamacare will, like, kill people and stuff [Daily Miner]

Unilever broke up with PwC after 27 years, is going to rebound with KPMG. Best of luck, you two! [The Independent]

BlackBerry assures me and the one other BlackBerry owner on the planet that it is still very much alive. STAY STRONG, BROTHER, WE WILL GET THROUGH THIS [CNET]

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Ironic Photo of the Day: Paperless Audit Edition

A friend of GC passed along the following photo:
paperless.jpg
Telling us: “This is our paperless audit training. An associate had to print out 46 copies. He stayed late on Friday and used three printers.”
Oh the humanity.

Do Recessions Cause Accounting Irregularities?

Thumbnail image for Cooking the Books.jpgSome people think so. Emily Chasan at Reuters discusses the perceived rise of accounting irregularities today:

“Corporate balance sheets may be showing signs of the wear and tear from the prolonged U.S. recession as accounting irregularities are starting to surface at growing numbers at U.S. companies.”
Okay but don’t accounting regularities happen all the time? If the economy is humming along nicely does that mean that less companies are engaging in accounting hocus-pocus? Hmmmmm.


But there’s more argument for “it’s the economy stupid”:

“Statistically you can show any time you have a recession or some type of tremendous decline in an economy you’re going to see financial pressures on companies,” said Bruce Dorris, program director at the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, noting that corporate employees can sometimes be motivated to be overly aggressive with accounting or commit outright fraud to meet targets, particularly in difficult economic times.

The article cites Apollo Group’s stock dropping 18% yesterday after announcing that the SEC was starting an “informal inquiry” into its revenue recognition policies. It also lists Overstock.com, Town Sport International Holdings (owns NYSC), Zale Corp and also Huron Consulting whose stock price is still down 40% since the announcement of the SEC investigation. All these companies have delayed earnings reports or had investigations into their accounting practices.

So feel free to discuss your clients and their creative nature in this economy. Are their hard-nosed GAAP puritan ways caving to earnings pressure or are your partners the ones caving in the name of client service? Nobody wants a to be working on a client that’s going through a restatement. Nobody.

Accounting irregularities may be on the rise in U.S. [Reuters]