Accounting News Roundup: GOP Targeting IRS Funding to Stall Healthcare; Grant Thornton, BDO Merge in South Africa; What Your Recruiter Isn’t Telling You | 10.26.10
IRS Funding A Target In Health-Care Implementation Battle [Dow Jones]
Funding for the Internal Revenue Service could become a battleground in the next Congress as Republicans seek to halt implementation of the new health-care law.
GOP candidates are running on a pledge to repeal that law. But some repeal advocates say a strategy of choking off funding to the IRS and federal health agencies is more politically viable.
“Repeal is not within the set of possible outcomes while President Obama holds his veto pen. However, a defunding strategy could throw sand in the gear bring it to a near standstill,” said Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the libertarian Cato Institute.
Stephen Lukens Named Grant Thornton LLP Advisory Services Leader [Business Wire]
Another Stephen! Mr Lukens came on board from IBM Global Business Services and was with PwC Consulting prior to Big Blue’s purchase of the practice.
Accountant describes ‘totally’ different transaction between GM and Delphi [Crain’s]
A forensic accountant testifying at former Delphi Corp. CEO J.T. Battenberg’s civil fraud trial in a federal courtroom in Detroit today said that the auto supplier recorded on its books a payment to its largest customer, General Motors, “totally differently from” the actual transaction conducted by the supplier and its former parent company.
Merger will create new accounting giant [Business Day]
THE merger between Grant Thornton and BDO Cape, which will become effective next Monday, will create the biggest accounting firm in SA’s mid-tier market , followed by Mazars.
The deal positions the merged firm to obtain more work, particularly from privately held businesses and listed companies. Previously the two firms obtained most of their work from privately held businesses.
The firm, which will be led by Grant Thornton national chairman Leonard Brehm, will have a staff compliment of 900 and 97 partners and directors, with combined revenue of R400m.
In Finance Team Building, Xerox Copied No One [CFO]
[M]ajor groundwork was laid through a finance reorganization and team-building effort that Lawrence Zimmerman began eight years ago after ending his retirement from IBM to become Xerox vice chairman and CFO.
“The big change Larry brought was to make the accounting unit independent of all other organizations,” says Gary Kabureck, who stayed on as chief accounting officer after Zimmerman joined Xerox. “That was a huge, very positive change.” The independent model, says Kabureck, replaced a Xerox structure that had tied accounting to business units. Now, accounting is used for “measuring operational results, which may which may [sic] not be what the local operation manager wants them to be, but it’s what the CFO wants them to be.”
Grassley: Three years before unemployment’s back to normal [The Hill]
2013 doesn’t sound that bad.
PayPal Names Patrick Dupuis as Chief Financial Officer [Business Wire]
Pat got his chops at the likes of Sitel, BJC Healthcare and GE Healthcare.
Should you upgrade QuickBooks? [AccMan]
SaaS/cloud upgrade issues are NOT the customer’s problem. They lie with the developers. Contrast this with the advice being given for a QuickBooks upgrade. There is plenty to think about. The same broad principles will apply to any on-premise solution. That’s a fundamental difference SaaS/cloud vendors should emphasize a lot more than they do. SaaS/cloud upgrades are usually seamless to the end customer while bug fixes are often more or less invisible to the user.
10 Things Employment Recruiters Won’t Say [SmartMoney]
You mean this person may not be completely honest with you? GET OUT.
Accounting News Roundup: GM Still Lacks Effective Internal Control System; The Ten Highest State Income Tax Rates; How to Know When Your Boss Is Lying | 08.20.10
GM filing warns on reporting [Detroit Free Press]
This may come as a shock but General Motors, despite filing paperwork for its IPO, admits that they still don’t have effective internal controls.
“[I]n regulatory filings about its upcoming initial public offering, GM warned potential investors that ‘our internal controls of financial reporting are currently not effective.’
Experts are divided on whether the warning — one of about 30 risk factors identified by GM in a document describing a planned sale of shares — is just an obscure accounting matter or a red flag that taints GM’s financial reporting
The 10 Highest State Income Tax Rates For 2010 [Forbes]
If you’re single and make $200k or $400k and married in Hawaii, you get dinged for 11%, the highest ranking state on the list. Dark horse Iowa comes in at #5 gets 8.98% of taxable income over $64,261. That’s above New Jersey and New York tied at #6.
Transocean accuses BP of withholding data on Deepwater Horizon and oil spill [WaPo]
Just when you thought the ugliness was slowing down (at least in the media coverage), ” Even as they work together to kill the Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, the oil giant BP and the deep-water drilling rig company Transocean are in an increasingly bitter battle over what went wrong on April 20 to trigger America’s worst oil spill.
The conflict flared Thursday when Transocean fired off a scathing letter accusing BP of hoarding information and test results related to the Deepwater Horizon blowout that killed 11 people, including nine Transocean employees. Signed by Transocean’s acting co-general counsel, Steven L. Roberts, the letter says that Transocean’s internal investigation of what went wrong has been hampered by BP’s refusal to deliver ‘even the most basic information’ about the event.
‘[I]t appears that BP is withholding evidence in an attempt to prevent any entity other than BP from investigating the cause of the April 20th incident and the resulting spill,’ the letter states, and it demands a long list of technical documents and lab tests.”
How to tell when your boss is lying [The Economist]
Apparently cursing is a good sign.
Koss reports smaller quarterly loss on 14% sales decline [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
The company lost $423,450 for the six months ended June 30th. They spent $1.12 million on legal fees related to Suzy Sachdeva.
Accounting News Roundup: EisnerAmper Partner: GM Balance Sheet ‘Stronger’ Ahead of IPO; KPMG Moves on From New Century, Countrywide; No Bookie Needed for Betting on Grades | 08.19.10
GM’s balance sheet draws praise ahead of IPO [MarketWatch]
“Peter Bible, partner-in-charge at accounting firm EisnerAmper LLP, said General Motors is now carrying a much stronger balance sheet than its predecessor, based on the company’s initial public offering filed late Wednesday. ‘Their debt-to-equity ratio looks handsome,’ Bible said in an interview. ‘This thing has gotten restructured quite a bit. GM’s health care liabilities have fallen significantly. As I look at the balance sheet, it is much healthier.’ ”