Lease-Accounting Rules: Tinker, Don’t Trash

The current proposal to overhaul lease-accounting rules is off base, because for most lease transactions, the existing rules work well.The Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board should not throw away decades of experience and force lessors to spend milli...

By David K. Burton • May 22, 2013

Priority Report

Austerity may be weighing on America’s economy, but it has its consolations. On May 14, the Congressional Budget Office sharply revised down its estimate of the budget deficit this fiscal year, to $642 billion or just 4% of GDP, from 5.3% in February. That would put it at less than half its recen...

By Economist Staff • May 21, 2013

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

Property Ins. Rates Flat Following Sandy

The effects of SuperStorm Sandy, which struck the Northeast with destructive power in October, were unprecedented in many ways. One way, however, has been as beneficial for corporations as it has been unexpected. Up until now, Sandy has had almost no effect on the rates CFOs and risk managers hav...

By David Katz • May 20, 2013

Long-Term Incentives Spur Owner-Like Thinking

With the recent uproar among many large shareholders over executive pay, one would expect incentive programs to now be designed to motivate executives to create tremendous value for shareholders.  Quite to the contrary, however, many of the features that have been added to “improve” executive pay...

By Gregory V. Milano • May 17, 2013

Standards-Setters Near Leasing Finish Line

Corporations that lease equipment or real estate will have until September 13 to make their voices heard about the revised exposure draft, Leases (Topic 842), released today by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Today’s move, i...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 16, 2013

IRS Shares Data to Nab Evaders

An Internal Revenue Service agreement last week to share tax data with the tax authorities of Australia and the United Kingdom could have wide implications for corporations that do business abroad.  The shared data pool consists of tax information on entities in jurisdictions such as Singapore, t...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 14, 2013

Clarity on Revenue Recognition Coming

A final global standard on what kinds of goods and services can be recognized as revenue in corporate financial statements is due this summer. The move should provide added clarity to CFOs and their staffs struggling with the existing accounting rules for recording sales. But for some industries ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 9, 2013

Where Are Your Travel Dollars Going?

As companies scour the reviving economy for growth opportunities, employees can’t help but grow enthusiastic over the prospect that they are finally going somewhere—literally. Increased business-travel activity, after all, serves as an informal barometer of economic growth. Employees are likely b...

By Matt Surka and Josh Hyatt • May 8, 2013

Special Report: Accounting for Accounting Skills

“If people are frustrated with the controller, it’s not that the controller isn’t working until 8 p.m. or attending to details, it’s because he perhaps doesn’t communicate well,” says Ware Grove, CFO of CBIZ, a finance and accounting advisory affiliated with its public accounting arm Mayer Hoffma...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 7, 2013

Harrisburg: The City that Couldn’t Shoot Straight?

If mayors of small cities and other municipal officials want to issue mountains of debt in the public markets, they had better be able to disclose their financials in a way the financial markets expect.That was the broader message that the Securities and Exchange Commission felt called upon to de...

By David Katz • May 7, 2013

Accountants Need to Show Their Softer Side

This is the first of three articles in a special report looking at accounting and finance skills. Also included are New Hires: A Skills-and-Demand Balancing Act, which explores U.S. staffing needs, and Non-U.S. CFOs Donning Green Eyeshades, which looks at the qualities most needed among accountin...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 7, 2013

A Blissful Five-Day Close

One of my college audit professors used to drill into us that we could never check the numbers enough. “You can’t be too conservative with financials,” he would say. That belief is common in our accounting world, where we tend to protect sacred cows and never fix anything that isn’t obviously bro...

By Blane Peery • May 6, 2013

How Taxes Can Drive Sustainability

Although the corporate tax director doesn’t normally pow-wow each week with the head of sustainability, a new green-tax index just might encourage more talking between the two–and maybe with the CFO in on the conversation.  The inaugural KPMG Green Tax Index measures how countries are using taxes...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 30, 2013

Social Media and Disclosure: Promises and Pitfalls

Given that Facebook and Twitter have been in wide usage for almost a decade, the Securities and Exchange Commission’s April 2 announcement that public companies may now use social media outlets to announce key information to investors felt “better late than never” to many public company executive...

By David P. Hooper • April 26, 2013

Companies Grabbing Cash from Captives

Driven by a hunger for liquidity that’s persisted since the financial crisis, companies are borrowing more than half of the investment funds of their captive insurance companies, according to a captive benchmarking report released by Marsh, the insurance broker, earlier this week.The “intercompan...

By David Katz • April 25, 2013

How Much Risk Can Your Company Bear?

LOS ANGELES – Most senior corporate executives, including CFOs, say their companies don’t use a common metric called risk-bearing capacity (RBC) to gauge their appetite for risky, financially threatening activities. But a large number of risk professionals – including some at the same companies –...

By David Katz • April 23, 2013

“Profit Shifters” Face Global Crackdown

U.S. multinational companies that routinely allocate their profits to other countries to benefit from low-tax jurisdictions may soon need to change their tactics.The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) is developing a global tax action plan, scheduled to be released in J...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 22, 2013

Are Bonuses an Obstacle to Shareholder Value?

Why do companies pay annual bonuses to executives?  It is presumably because they believe the bonuses will encourage executives to be more successful.  And investors as a group view executives as successful if they maximize the long-term appreciation in the value of the company.  But do executive...

By Gregory V. Milano • April 19, 2013

House Approves Cybersecurity Overhaul

The U.S. House of Representatives took a step toward lowering the threat of cyber attacks on private and government entities Thursday afternoon by approving a bill that outlines how companies and the government can share information about such attacks. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protectio...

By Taylor Provost • April 18, 2013

Tax Rates: the Haves and Have Nots

While all U.S.-based corporations are subject to a federal tax rate of 35 percent (the highest federal corporate tax rate in the industrialized world), the rate each one actually pays based on taxable income–the so-called “effective tax rate”–can be decidedly unique, a new study shows. Why the di...

By Kathy Hoffelder • April 17, 2013

Dunham’s Sports CFO Manages Growth

Dunham’s Sports is in growth mode. The sporting goods retailer has racked up double-digit sales growth over the last several years, at a time when the sports-apparel sector saw more modest sales increases. The company is also expanding its physical presence. When Al Blazek became CFO in 2009, Dun...

By Marielle Segarra • April 17, 2013

Keeping Revenue and Budget on Target

Setting plans and budgets is only half the battle; the other half is keeping them top of mind all year. As we approach mid-year, teams run the risk of losing their focus on annual plans set “way back” in December 2012. As new opportunities and distractions crop up, teams may focus on the immediat...

By Robert Sher • April 12, 2013

Dell’s Biggest Shareholder Balks at Deal

Charging that Dell Inc. is overly driven by founder Michael Dell’s desire to take the company private, the computer maker’s largest outside shareholder contends that the proposed $24.4 billion transaction would be a bad deal.Southeastern Asset Management, which owns 8.4 percent of Dell, on Tuesda...

By David Katz • April 10, 2013

Why Company Leaders Should See the World

When the entire senior leadership team of Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide relocated to China for a month in the summer of 2011, the move was partly a nod to the country’s strategic importance to the hotel company. And it was partly an experiment. One lesson learned: more preplanning was nee...

By David McCann • April 9, 2013

How ADP Turns Payroll into Cash

If cash is king, then Automatic Data Processing, the seemingly ubiquitous provider of human-resources systems and services, has a plausible claim to the throne.ADP processes paychecks for about one in six American workers. At any moment, the company is holding $20 billion to $25 billion worth of ...

By David McCann • April 5, 2013