Firms See Minimal Impact From ACA Mandate

A new survey suggests that concerns about the economic impact of the Affordable Care Act on U.S. businesses may have been overblown.The ACA’s “employer mandate” requires that all businesses with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees provide health insurance to at least 95% of their full-time ...

By Matthew Heller • April 29, 2015

NFL Ending Tax-Exempt Status

The National Football League’s central office is ending its tax-exempt status, a move that will hardly impact its bottom line, will give it a public relations boost, and will shield it from certain public disclosures, according to a Bloomberg story on Tuesday.Commissioner Roger Goodell wrote a le...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 28, 2015

Explore the Trendline➔

Tax policy shifts: What CFOs need to know to stay ahead

Discover how evolving tax policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for CFOs.

By CFO.com staff

Amazon Stock Surges on First-Ever Cloud Results

Amazon.com has for the first time opened up its cloud services division to public scrutiny, reporting that Amazon Web Services’ net sales increased 49% in the first quarter of 2015 while margins remained steady at 16.9%.Amazon’s first breakout of AWS results fueled hopes that the company is heade...

By Matthew Heller • April 27, 2015

AMD’s First-Quarter Earnings Fuel Bankruptcy Fears

The latest earnings report from Advanced Micro Devices has fueled concerns that the chip maker is headed eventually for bankruptcy.For the first quarter, AMD reported a loss of nine cents per share on revenues of $1.03 billion. Analysts polled by Yahoo Finance had expected a loss of five cents pe...

By Matthew Heller • April 27, 2015

IRS Hands Companies $3 Billion in Tax Credits They Didn’t Deserve

The Internal Revenue Service gave $3 billion of erroneous business tax credits to companies that did not qualify for them, according to a report by The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, posted by Forbes Friday.The tax credits were claimed on more than 3,000 electronically filed c...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 24, 2015

Ex-American Apparel CFO Accused of Cover-Up

A former American Apparel finance department employee has alleged the struggling clothing company wrongfully fired him for complaining about the performance of former CFO John Luttrell.Dov Charney, American Apparel’s ex-CEO In another in a series of lawsuits involving American Apparel, David Nise...

By Matthew Heller • April 23, 2015

Deutsche Bank to Pay $2.5B in LIBOR-Rigging Case

Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $2.5 billion in penalties to settle allegations by U.S. and U.K. authorities that it manipulated the LIBOR interest rate benchmark to benefit its trading positions.The sanctions against Germany’s largest financial institution announced Thursday are the largest to a...

By Matthew Heller • April 23, 2015

Firm Settles with SEC for Missing Eight Filings

The Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday announced that real estate investment firm W2007 Grace Acquisition I has agreed to pay $640,000 to settle charges relating to eight missed filings. The firm is indirectly owned by one or more private equity funds affiliated with Goldman Sachs.The S...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 23, 2015

House OKs Bill to Promote Sharing of Hacking Data

The House of Representatives on Wednesday passed the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, aiming to shield companies sharing hacking data with each other from liability — to the chagrin of privacy advocates.Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said he wrote H.R. 1560 because the threat of cyber attacks has beco...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 23, 2015

State-Owned Chinese Company Defaults

Easy access to cheap sources of debt funding no matter how a business is faring may be coming to an end for China’s state-owned companies, now that one has defaulted in that country’s bond market.Power equipment manufacturer Baoding Tianwei, which is controlled by one of China’s biggest military ...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 22, 2015

U.K. Futures Trader Accused of Helping Spark ‘Flash Crash’

U.S. authorities have charged a British futures trader with making about $40 million in illicit profits and contributing to the May 2010 “flash crash” by manipulating the market for futures contracts based on the S&P 500.Navinder Singh Sarao, 36, was arrested Tuesday in the United Kingdom on ...

By Matthew Heller • April 22, 2015

Blackberry Adds WatchDox to Mobile Security Services

Smartphone manufacturer Blackberry is acquiring WatchDox Ltd., a file-sync-and-share (EFSS) platform that is popular among banks, government agencies, and Hollywood studios, in a move to strengthen its growing portfolio of mobile security services.Terms of the deal were not disclosed but Israel’s...

By Matthew Heller • April 21, 2015

Coke Expanding in China With $400M Deal

In a bid to inject some fizz into its China sales, Coca-Cola has agreed to buy the beverage business of China Culiangwang Beverages Holdings for $400.5 million including debt.The companies confirmed the deal Friday. It marks Coke’s first acquisition in China since the country’s antitrust regulato...

By Matthew Heller • April 17, 2015

Ten Accused of Elaborate ‘Blank Check’ Company Fraud

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has accused 10 people of taking part in an elaborate scheme to pass off “blank check” companies as legitimate business enterprises when they actually had no other purpose than to be sold as public vehicles.According to a civil complaint filed by the SEC...

By Matthew Heller • April 17, 2015

CFO Manages Around Commodities Price Volatility

Fifteen months after becoming CFO of the company that’s been his employer for 31 years, Jack Fortnum is well settled into a role that synthesizes his long experience in both finance and operations.The company, Ingredion, is hardly a household name, despite its 2014 revenue of almost $6 billion, p...

By David McCann • April 17, 2015

Answers Needed for Flaws in M&A Accounting Standard

In the second half of 2014, an enigmatic notice appeared on the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) website. It called for tenders to place a value on IFRS’s intellectual property — that is, on the brand. But what’s most interesting is not the reasons behind the effort, but rather ...

By Roger Sinclair and Michael L. Moore • April 17, 2015

EY Sees Barriers to Use of Big Data for Audits

“Big data” and analytics promise to transform auditing, but there are still a number of barriers to successfully integrating them into the audit, according to the latest issue of E&Y’s Reporting magazine.The ultimate goal, E&Y says, is to have intelligent audit applications that function ...

By Matthew Heller • April 17, 2015

EY Agrees to Settlement of Lehman Auditing Suit

After more than four years of litigation, Ernst & Young has agreed to pay $10 million to settle New York State allegations that its auditors helped Lehman Brothers Holdings mislead investors before the investment bank collapsed in 2008.The case was the only one brought by a law enforcement ag...

By Matthew Heller • April 16, 2015

If E-tailers Must Charge Taxes, Their Shares Could Drop

Will out-of-state online retailers lose scads of business if states get the power to force them to collect sales taxes?Jeffrey Hoopes Jeffrey Hoopes, AuditorsWhile it’s not spoken about much in the currently re-energized debate about whether states should be able to gobble up sales taxes from onl...

By David Katz • April 16, 2015

Let’s Give Smaller Banks a Break: FDIC Chair

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Vice Chairman Thomas Hoenig outlined a proposal for most of the country’s banks to get “regulatory relief,” but the country’s largest banks would not meet the criteria.In prepared remarks to the 24th Annual Hyman P. Minsky Conference in Washington, D.C., Hoen...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 15, 2015

Brewers Getting Frothy About Beer Tax Cut Proposals

A storm is brewing over competing proposals to reform the beer excise tax that pit small craft producers against “big beer.”According to the Beer Institute, 40% of what consumers pay for beer goes to various federal, state, and local taxes. Congress originally approved the federal tax in the 1860...

By Matthew Heller • April 14, 2015

Avon Weighing Sale of North America Unit?

Avon Products may be considering a sale of its ailing North American business as part of a strategic review of its operations.Citing people familiar with the matter, The Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday that no deal involving the North American unit is imminent, but the strategic review “indi...

By Matthew Heller • April 14, 2015

Small Businesses Crave Tax Reform Too

The vast majority of small businesses want tax reform, according to the 2015 Small Business Attitudes on Taxes survey released on Monday by Endurance International Group.The survey of 827 U.S. small business firms (all customers of Endurance, a provider of cloud-based platforms) found that 90% be...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • April 14, 2015

An Auditor Independence State of Mind

One of my favorite Billy Joel songs is “New York State of Mind.” It’s a staple at every concert he performs.  It popped into my head the other day as I was giving a talk about auditor independence to a group of CFOs and one attendee asked, somewhat rhetorically, “What is independence, anyway?”Bil...

By Jay Bornstein • April 14, 2015

National Sales Tax Wouldn’t Depress Consumer Spending: Study

In a study that may have implications for the debate over a possible national sales tax, researchers have found that close to one-third of consumers pay little or no attention to sales taxes expressed as a percentage in making spending decisions.Critics of a national sales tax are concerned that ...

By Matthew Heller • April 13, 2015