The Fuss over Budgets

Most of the challenges faced by the companies in your article “Freed from the Budget” (September) are not inherently budgeting issues. Inability to set hard targets, overuse of spreadsheets, and trying to use the budget for analytics are management, process, or technical issues. In our experience...

By CFO Readers • Oct. 8, 2012

Should Corporate Accountants Spill the Beans?

Proposed changes to a global ethics code for accountants would require auditors, management accountants, and CFOs to report suspected fraud or illegal acts by their employer, either internally or externally, depending on their role.As a matter of principle, corporate accountants have always maint...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Oct. 8, 2012

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

Accounting Differences Dampen Cross-Border Mergers

Dissimilar national accounting standards and the lack of adherence to international financial reporting rules seem to deter companies from doing mergers and acquisitions beyond their national borders, according to a recent study by researchers at the University of Arkansas and the University of M...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Oct. 8, 2012

Small Deals, Big Challenges

While investment banks and other capital-markets players like to see large public companies feed on one another, blockbuster acquisitions rarely produce giant returns for shareholders. Acquirers’ cumulative return for public-to-public company deals in 2011 was –1.6%, while the average return sinc...

By Vincent Ryan • Oct. 8, 2012

New Spin on Engagements

Almost a decade after the Government Accountability Office first studied mandatory audit-firm rotation, the idea still riles CFOs. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s (PCAOB) concept release on the subject last year provoked a flood of critical responses from finance executives. But n...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Oct. 8, 2012

Study Links Share Prices, Goodwill Impairments

Market price is a factor too often overlooked in deciding whether a company made a good acquisition or not, say the authors of a Duff & Phelps and Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) study released yesterday.While the price an acquirer pays for a target may not be the sole indicat...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Oct. 5, 2012

IRS Questions Captive Insurer’s $50M Premium

I recently got a phone call from one of the chief legal counsels at the Internal Revenue Service, who wanted to better understand a corporation’s ownership of a particular captive insurance company — or an entity created to insure its parent corporation ­— domiciled in Vermont. There are curren...

By Andrew Barile • Oct. 5, 2012

Case Finds CFOs Liable for Payroll Taxes

Failure to pay payroll taxes can trip up even the most conscientious CFOs, company officers, and owners. One notable case,  Jenkins v United States 2012-1 Tax Case (CCH) P50,394, puts the CFO squarely in the line of fire for collecting the funds.  The case demonstrates that even those CFOs who do...

By Dennis Brager • Oct. 4, 2012

Did U.K. Bungle a Cash-flow Calculation?

LONDON–The U.K. Department for Transport (DfT) was forced into an embarrassing climb-down today in the run-up to a court case that could have overturned a controversial decision to award a railway contract. At fault: government officials who miscalculated the value of the contract. Did they make ...

By Andrew Sawers • Oct. 3, 2012

General Mills CFO Recounts Layoffs, Growth

At the CFO Rising West conference in Las Vegas on Tuesday, General Mills CFO Donal Mulligan detailed his priorities for building a successful finance team as his company weathers tough economic times both globally and at home — even while it expands into new markets abroad.This summer, Mulligan s...

By David Rosenbaum • Oct. 2, 2012

Election Tax Preview: Small Biz’s Fiscal Cliff

When Michael Retzer, controller of Strohwig Industries, a Richfield, Wisconsin-based tooling and machining manufacturer mostly serving the auto industry, thinks about the upcoming election, he immediately goes on the defensive. “For us, our planning is to play it close to the vest instead of goin...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Oct. 2, 2012

How CFOs, Boards Can Regain Investor Confidence

A new report from the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), a public-policy organization affiliated with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, has some interesting information about investor confidence.In an e-mail announcing the publication of its annual Main Street Investor Survey, ...

By Norman Marks • Oct. 1, 2012

SEC Should Push for XBRL Convergence

When Securities and Exchange Commission staff issued the commission’s final report in July on its work plan to incorporate International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) into U.S. financial reporting, a key item was left out of the discussions— using the eXtensible Business Reporting Language...

By Kristine Brands • Sept. 27, 2012

Private Company Rulemaker Targets Tax Uncertainty

CFOs of private companies should soon get clearer guidance concerning how to report their companies’ income taxes. The Private Company Council (PCC), created in May by the Financial Accounting Foundation (FAF), plans to make income-tax uncertainty one of the first items on its agenda by tackling ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Sept. 24, 2012

Corporate Tax Avoidance

In these fiscally strained times, those seen as not paying their fair share are obvious targets. Having already launched a crusade against wealthy individuals using Swiss banks and others to evade tax, are America’s tax police about to tighten the screws on the deep-pocketed of the corporate worl...

By Economist Staff • Sept. 21, 2012

Wanted: Tax Insight on Cloud Decisions

Rackspace, a cloud-hosting firm, is more familiar with tax liabilities than most of its peers. The San Antonio–based company has gone before the Texas House of Representative’s Ways and Means committee twice in the past two years, imploring it to stop charging its customers sales taxes whenever t...

By Taylor Provost • Sept. 20, 2012

Depreciation Can Distort Returns

Over the years, more and more companies have turned their attention to measures of rates of return and/or economic profit to figure out how effectively management is using shareholder capital. These can provide a more complete indication of success than profit, cash flow, and margin metrics that ...

By Gregory V. Milano • Sept. 20, 2012

When Is an Asset not an Asset?

When a corporation leases a building, is the adjoining parking lot automatically included? Or should the lot be accounted for separately? Does it make economic sense to count the lot as a separate asset from the building, since in a typical suburban office complex one generally doesn’t exist with...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Sept. 14, 2012

Under New Accounting Standard, CFOs Could Change Hedging Strategies

A new international financial reporting standard (IFRS) on hedge accounting could prompt finance chiefs to change their companies’ hedging strategies under a more accommodating, principles-based regime that requires less testing.The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) has been ponderi...

By Andrew Sawers • Sept. 12, 2012

Health-care Decisions on Hold

Finance executives waited anxiously this past summer for the Supreme Court’s ruling on the Affordable Care Act (ACA). But months after the law was ruled constitutional, uncertainty still reigns. Companies are still trying to figure what the costs of complying with the ACA will be. Some are studyi...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Sept. 12, 2012

The UBS Whistleblower: An Inside Story

The $104 million the Internal Revenue Service today awarded former UBS banker Bradley Birkenfeld just a little over a month after his release from federal prison, where he served 30 months of a 40-month sentence for conspiracy to assist in tax evasion, is reportedly the largest sum ever awarded a...

By David Rosenbaum • Sept. 11, 2012

Small Firms Present Big Barriers for Acquirers

While investment banks and other capital-markets players like to see large public companies feed on each other, blockbuster tie-ups rarely produce giant returns for shareholders. Acquirers’ cumulative returns for such deals were -1.6% in 2011 and the average return since 1990 is -0.8%, according ...

By Vincent Ryan • Sept. 7, 2012

When Should Accountants Spill the Beans?

Under proposed changes to a global ethics code for accountants, while auditors must report a suspected fraud to outside authorities, management accountants need only report their suspicions internally. At the same time, if corporate accountants spill the beans to CFOs, finance chiefs must report ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Sept. 6, 2012

Freed from the Budget

In his book Winning, General Electric’s Jack Welch famously griped: “It sucks the energy, time, fun, and big dreams out of an organization. It hides opportunity and stunts growth. It brings out the most unproductive behaviors in an organization, from sandbagging to settling for mediocrity.”“It” i...

By Russ Banham • Sept. 1, 2012

SEC Report Backs Away from Convergence

The final staff report from the Securities and Exchange Commission on global accounting-standard convergence could make that goal a little more remote.In its 137-page report released in July, the SEC considered all possible ways to align international financial reporting standards (IFRS), which a...

By Kathy Hoffelder • Sept. 1, 2012