When accounting goes unaccounted for
If you want to know what the firm’s actual P&L is like, I suggest you read people who can perform basic addition and subtraction.
~ Barry Ritholtz, who was not impressed with the Associated Press story on Overstock.com’s 2009 profit. He suggests this.
The upper chamber is making yet another run at repealing the 1099 requirement that was part of the healthcare overhaul despite miserable failures in the past.
The Hill reports that the new bill has 52 co-sponsors which lead you to believe that this time, repeal will be a cinch:
Senators reintroduced bills that would eliminate the 1099 requirement for businesses to report annual purchases of at least $600 from each vendor. Most Democrats, including the Obama administration, support repealing the provision, but lawmakers have clashed over how to offset the $19 billion in lost revenue.
A bill introduced Tuesday by Sens. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.) and Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.) authorizes the Office of Management and Budget to identify unobligated federal funds to cover the cost of repeal.
“It’s a bad policy; it hurts businesses and it should be repealed, enough said,” Johanns said in a conference call with reporters.
The measure has 52 co-sponsors including 12 Democrats: Sens. Mark Begich (Alaska), Michael Bennet (Colo.), Maria Cantwell (Wash.), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Amy Klobuchar (Minn.), Manchin, Ben Nelson (Neb.), Mark Pryor (Ark.), Debbie Stabenow (Mich.), Jon Tester (Mont.), Mark Udall (Colo.), Mark Warner (Va.).
With such an overwhelming show of bipartisan support the only issue now is who will get the credit for saving small business as we know it?
Both parties have seized on the 1099 requirement to score political points. Republicans are posing repeal of 1099 as part of their promise to chip away at the reform law, while Democrats are touting it as a sign of their willingness to improve the current law.
Just for the sake of spiteful mischief, we’re hoping this goes nowhere (any and all theories on how they manage to do that are encouraged). Stay tuned!
Senators introduce bipartisan 1099 repeal bill [On the Money/The Hill]
The snatch and grab and burn technique isn’t the most sophisticated plan we’ve read about but we are talking about a man who is an accountant first (we’re guessing a very bad one) and an extremely dimwitted criminal second:
An accountant faces seven years in jail after a court convicted him yesterday of deliberately setting fire to Dh250,000 in cash and stealing a similar amount from the taxi company where he worked.
Why this particular accountant-cum-thief decided half the money wasn’t worth his trouble is unclear but what is CRYSTAL is that setting the remainder on fire was the equivalent of writing “I’M EMBEZZLING FUNDS” with a Sharpie™ across the cash ledger.
According to the arraignment sheet, prosecutors said [the accused] deliberately set fire to the money bag which contained Dh500,000. He burned Dh250,000 and stole the rest.
He was also charged with causing intentional damage and financial loss to the company. The company’s Indian manager testified that one of the employees informed him over the phone that the accounting office was on fire.
“I rushed to the company’s premises to check what happened. We had left nearly half a million dirhams in a money bag which we kept inside a wooden cupboard. The money was our drivers’ daily revenues. I discovered that half of the money got stolen and the remaining half was burned,” the manager told prosecutors.
But to be fair to our asshat accountant du jour, “a money bag which we kept inside a wooden cupboard” isn’t the most secure internal control procedure we’ve ever heard of. Let this be a lesson.
Joe Ucuzoglu, the former head of Deloitte US and current Deloitte Global CEO, has recorded […]