Going Concern

Uncategorized

WORST. DAY. EVER.

Caleb Newquist
September 8, 2009

The first post-holiday workday is tough. We’re pretty sure most of you are to the point of seriously considering packing it up because the melancholy is too much for you. For those of you that aren’t using a cocktail of illegal prescriptions to get you through this day, get caught up on some stuff you may have missed last week. It will help you make it to lunch at least.
• Deloitte Tops Business Week’s “Top Place to Launch a Career”. E&Y, PwC, KPMG round out the top four. GT landed at 51. Highest three year retention rate for these five was 56%.
• E&Y bans Pandora, seemingly to save on bandwidth. It’s still worth bitching about.
• Nearly half of you didn’t work this holiday weekend which means half of you did work (12% worked all weekend). Of course, lots of you probably didn’t get asked to take mandatory PTO.
• Surprisingly, bitterness is rampant.
• RSM McGladrey seems to have a good understanding of why men are interested in golf.
Feel better people, it’s a short week (for some).

Preliminary Analytics

Preliminary Analytics | 09.08.09

Caleb Newquist
September 8, 2009

Great Depression Unemployment Line.jpg • Study: 2 out of 5 working-age Californians jobless – That sorta seems not good. [AP via SF Chronicle]
• Volunteer 5-0: Civilian Patrols Grow As Recession Puts Citizens on Guard – “After parking her truck in this beachside town in July, local resident Pamela Miller says she was confronted by a man wearing a neon-lemon “Parking Enforcement” T-shirt. He accused her of parking illegally, called her “retarded,” and, after she refused to move her truck, bumped her legs with his Ford Crown Victoria, she later told town officials.” [WSJ]
• Closely Watched Buffett Recalculating His Bets – Not that you’re going to do anything about it. [NYT]
• Deadline for $24m Leibovitz loan – Due today. If this somehow gets pulled off, can any of you help this woman? [BBC]
• Cadbury vows to fight Kraft offer – Because chocolate eggs and manufactured cheese don’t belong together. [FT]
• France to oppose Google book scheme – Your back-up career plan to scan the likes of Atlas Shrugged and the Harry Potter series may be put on hold. [FT]
• Swiss topple U.S. as most competitive economy: WEF – Obviously not taking the whole ‘End of Swiss Banking as we know it’ very well. [Reuters]

Review Comments

Review Comments | 09.04.09

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

• H&R Block will convert 500 company offices to franchises – Sort of a Tax Prep McDonalds? [DBJ]
• IFRS Adoption in the US: One Year Later – No rush. [JDA]
• #48 Free Wi-Fi [Stuff Accountants Like]
• Lamest Accountant Video “Winners” – Shout out from Paul Caron on his blog. Thanks Paul! [TaxProf Blog]
That’s it for us today and we’re off on Monday. Have a great holiday weekend and try not to spend it working.

Uncategorized

E&Y is Not One for Music Appreciation

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

We just received word that Pandora is blocked for Uncle Ernie’s troops. We’re thinking if BW had got ahold of this news, E&Y would have dropped out of at least the top five.
We thinks this is a strange way to wish everyone a nice holiday weekend but we understand that everyone shows love differently. Anyone else out there now working in eerie 2001-esque silence? Confirm for us or discuss in the comments.

Uncategorized

Charlie Rangel Needs Your Help

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

For those of you that don’t concern yourselves with civics nonetoomuch, Chuck is the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Ways and Means writes the tax laws for this fair land of ours. Get it?
Anyhoo, Rangs has a bit of a problem. People are shouting from the rooftops that this guy has to go. Why? A small matter of forgetting to list some assets on his disclosure forms.
Minor omissions, after the jump

Web CPA:

…in the Washington Post today decrying some of the newest revelations from last week, including a Merrill Lynch account valued between $250,000 and $500,000, tens of thousands in municipal bonds, and between $30,000 and $100,000 in rent from a Harlem brownstone that he owns, all of which he failed to list on his congressional disclosure forms from 2002 to 2006.

And if you remember:

This comes on top of the news last year about the four rent-stabilized apartments he rented at below-market rents, his use of government stationery to raise money for a pet project, his failure to report income from his sale of a Florida condo, and his failure to pay taxes on rental income from another home in the Dominican Republic.

According to the WaPo piece, Rangs’s net worth doubled-ish, “from between $516,015 and $1,316,000 to between $1,028,024 and $2,495,000”.
Yeah, so, that’s kind of a big change. We’re thinking that Chuck is way too busy being a tax wonk to track all this stuff. Or maybe he’s just too tired. Either way, it’s way easier to forget about four rent-controlled apartments than you think.
Rangel Under Pressure to Step Down [Web CPA Debits & Credits]

Deloitte is Handing Out Giant Foam Fingers Today

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

green#1.jpg BusinessWeek’s “Best Places to Launch a Career” hits the newsstands today and Deloitte stuffed the ballot box best.

E&Y is the first loser, PwC gets the bronze and KPMG jumped one spot to #4, up from #5 last year. Grant Thornton dropped in at #51.

A few stats that probably help Deloitte land on top include:

• Average pay range being $5k higher than all the other firms

• Highest average signing bonus and 90% of new hires received them

• Highest three year retention rate of 56%

• Lowest drop in entry level hiring

Regardless of who comes out on top in this list, all the firms will be hyping their inclusion while on campus this fall.

We’ll revisit this next week when more of you are actually at work, not hungover, or haven’t already left.
For the rest of you, feel free to discuss the list in the comments, as we’re sure there are opinions out there on this.

Best Places to Launch a Career [BusinessWeek]

Preliminary Analytics

Preliminary Analytics | 09.04.09

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

• Stanford’s Money-Losers, Unlike Madoff’s, Get No Help From SIPC – Sucks. [Bloomberg]
• Ex-SEC Lawyer: Madoff Report Misses Point – “Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday the SEC inspector general should have focused more of his attention on how supervisors, rather than the staff examiners and investigators, handled the agency’s many stillborn probes of Mr. Madoff.” Supervisors? Responsibility? Get out. [WSJ]
• Zimbabwe to get $500m IMF loans – Seems silly that these are called loans. [BBC]
• U.S. Job Losses Increased in August, Unemployment Rose to 9.7% – And the spin is that this good news. [Bloomberg]
• Congress to probe SEC’s lapse on Madoff – Because this is a perfect opportunity for members of Congress to talk about how smart they are and how stupid the SEC is. We haven’t had enough of these anyway. [Reuters]

Review Comments

Review Comments | 09.03.09

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

Bernie Madoff4.jpg • Madoff ‘Astonished’ SEC Failed to Act After Interview – And the guy must tell a helluva yarn. [Bloomberg]
• Yahoo accounting chief searching for a new job – This could be you. [Accountancy Age]
• Retailers Show Best Results in a Year – “Still, a quick recovery isn’t expected; half of retailers missed projections.” Dead? Alive? WTFK? [WSJ]
• Triumph of Consumerism – Naming children after your favorite brands. Who needs a drink? [Floyd Norris/NYT]

Video

Labor Day Weekend Poll Results

Caleb Newquist
September 4, 2009

We’re happy to report that over half of you are not working at all over the next four days. Congratulations, so get out there and make some bad choices. As for the rest of you, sorry but we’ll be here tomorrow at least. If you haven’t voted yet, what the hell have you been doing all day?
On a side-note, when we created today’s poll, we were surprised to have learned that for our last poll, we prematurely declared E&Y the winner of the lamest video contest. After likely ballot stuffing by KPMGers, the Radio Station/Backstreet Boy video ended up being the W. to E&Y’s Gore. We suspect Tim Flynn played the part of Karl Rove in this caper. Nevertheless, after the jump, we’ve presented the newly crowned winner because we’re solid like that.

Uncategorized

On a Completely Unrelated Note

Caleb Newquist
September 3, 2009

Apparently this happened:

One of a national series of rallies for health-care reform took a violent turn Wednesday night when, according to authorities in Thousand Oaks, Calif., an unidentified man bit off the tip of another man’s pinky finger.

That is all.

You Guys! Corporations Actually Pay Taxes!

Caleb Newquist
September 3, 2009

tax man.jpg At least Schering-Plough appears to be on the hook for some. A tax court ruled that the drug ~~dealer~~ maker doesn’t get a refund of $473 million after it tried to avoid taxes altogether on $690 million it made through offshore subsidiaries.
We could get into the specifics but then we’d have mass suicides to explain.
What is interesting that Schering’s auditor, Deloitte, even called shenanigans, “stating that the transactions were used as a means of repatriating money from Europe without having it taxed as a dividend.”
Not sure when Deloitte first brought that up but Schering obviously wears the pants because these transactions took place in 1991 and 1992 and the ruling came down this week. So at least the law firm representing Schering made out okay on this one.
Court Rejects Schering-Plough $473M Tax Refund [Web CPA]