Rick Perry, Texas, and Taxes [TaxVox]
Texas Governor Rick Perry, the latest entrant in the GOP presidential sweepstakes, swaggers into the race as the very personification of a low-tax, small-government, Lone Star politician. But his record on taxes over more than two decades as a legislator and governor turns out to be much more complicated (dare I say nuanced) than that.

Corporate Treasurers Take Turn in Spotlight [WSJ]
Anthony Scaglione was sitting at his desk at his Midtown Manhattan office on Aug. 5 when the news about the downgraded U.S. credit rating flashed on his Bloomberg terminal. “It was an “Oh s*** moment,’ ” says Mr. Scaglione, corporate treasurer for ABM Industries Inc., a janitorial and facility services provider with 100,000 employees. In the ensuing days, Mr. Scaglione would be called on to ensure the company’s liquidity as the lending environment grew murky and the stock market see-sawed. The pressure is on for corporate treasurers like Mr. Scaglione, who typically work behind the scenes under a company’s chief financial officer and are responsible for managing cash flows, acting as a point person with credit agencies and assessing the credit worthiness of banking partners. In recent weeks, they have found themselves working longer hours, frequently meeting with higher-ups, maintaining constant dialogue with their banks and revisiting strategic plans.

Warren Buffett’s Tax Dodge [WSJ]
Barney Kilgore, the man who made the Wall Street Journal into a national publication, was once asked why so many rich people favored higher taxes. That’s easy, he replied. They already have their money. That insight is worth recalling amid the latest political duet from President Obama and Warren Buffett demanding higher taxes on “millionaires and billionaires.” Mr. Buffett is repeating his now familiar argument this week, coinciding with Mr. Obama’s Midwestern road trip on the economy. Since the media are treating Mr. Buffett as a tax oracle, let’s take a closer look at some of the billionaire’s intellectual tax dodges.

Consumption Tax Would Ease U.S. Deficit [Bloomberg]
Make no mistake: The VAT would be a new tax. It would raise the total burden on U.S. taxpayers and, once it takes effect, would almost certainly take a bite out of consumer spending. But done in concert with broader tax reform, it would go a long way toward solving the country’s fiscal crisis.

Kashoo Announces Availability of Accounting App for iPad [Kashoo]
Kashoo’s iPad accounting app gives small businesses and entrepreneurs the flexibility to manage all aspects of their finances on the go, including monitoring key business metrics, creating and delivering invoices, recording expenses, tracking payments, and generating financial reports.

“Big four” safari: Shoot to kill [The Hill]
[G]lobal corporations don’t need global accounting firms, i.e. the big four, anymore. Regional headquarters of Fortune companies have no problem choosing their accounting firm on a regional level. Due to standardized accounting methods and technical capabilities, nowadays a consolidation of regional auditing results at the headquarter level is no problem. The response to the EU’s green paper was huge. 700 companies, associations and auditors participated in the consultation, sending in 10,000 pages of paper — an all-time record, but understandable. Because Barnier’s final goal is not about just breaking the audit oligopoly. It is about the separation of audit and non-audit services eventually.

The dual-taxation meme [Felix Salmon/Reuters]
There appears to be a trend to criticism of O^3.

Company report pace frustrates accounting experts [Reuters]
Author and lawyer Michael Young jokes about the days when it took more time to get some companies’ financial statements than it did for Columbus to discover America. Alas, those days are still here.

Google May Reap $1 Billion Tax Benefit from Motorola Deal [CFOJ]
Robert Willens, an independent tax and accounting expert who is president of Robert Willens LLC in New York, told CFO Journal that the NOLs are “a really significant item.” The former Lehman Bsaid Motorola has about $3 billion in NOLs. While the IRS restricts the entire amount of NOLs that can be applied after a change in ownership, Google should still be able to use a portion of them over time. Willens estimates Motorola could reduce Google’s tax bills by about $1 billion over the next six years, on an undiscounted basis.

PwC faces fine over JPMorgan audit [FT]
After a year-long investigation into the audit firm, the Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board is taking disciplinary action against PwC for failing to meet the professional standards expected of it, and failing to report “with due skill, care and diligence”.

Memo to Staff: Don’t Panic [WSJ]
From company memos to “town hall” meetings, corporate leaders are looking at how they can jack up morale in the work place. At the same time, many are dealing with employees already skeptical of management—given the rounds of layoffs in recent years—and must choose their strategies carefully.

Interpublic sells half of its Facebook stake [FT]
Interpublic, the advertising group, sold half of its 0.4 per cent stake in Facebook for $133m to an undisclosed buyer. The sale is likely to put the spotlight back on to the secondary market for private company stock. The loosely regulated market attracted scrutiny from regulators earlier this year after shares in internet companies such as Facebook and Groupon began trading at multibillion-dollar valuations without public listings.

A war tax? It’s still not a bad idea [WaPo]
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney last Wednesday caught my eye when he talked about members of Congress, currently vocal about the deficit, who were on Capitol Hill over the past decade and voted for unpaid large tax cuts but “put two wars on the credit card without paying for them.” That last phrase reflected words used in 2007 by several House Democrats who wanted to institute a war surtax to pay for the then-increasing costs of U.S. activities in Iraq and Afghanistan. These days, one of them, Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), believes such a levy should be on the agenda of the debt-reduction “supercommittee.”

Corporations are people too! [Tax Update Blog]
Mitt Romney had a great time at the Iowa State Fair.

IRS: Woman claims 19 non-existent children [SVMN]
The IRS says Coronel claimed that all the children had been born to her at a Los Angeles hospital on Dec. 11, 2002, then obtained fraudulent Social Security numbers for them and claimed them as dependents. Hospital records show she gave birth to one child, a boy, on that date.

KPMG Foundation Awards $400,000 in Scholarships to 40 Minority Accounting Doctoral Scholars [KPMG]
The students include 10 new recipients and 30 students whose scholarships have been renewed. Each scholarship is valued at $10,000 and renewable annually for up to five years.