Health-Care Fraud: Following the Paper Trail

With health-care fraud becoming a more widespread problem, checking the accounts-payable records of benefit plan care providers has become a necessity for auditors and fraud investigators, experts say.Earlier this year, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services said $4.1 billion was recove...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 15, 2012

Let the Games Begin

The Summer Olympic Games are synonymous with competition, glory, internationalism — and, lately, prodigality. The 2008 Olympics in Beijing cost $43 billion; today its facilities are rarely or never used. Athens reportedly spent $11 billion on the 2004 Summer Games, double the original budget, an...

By Edward Teach • June 15, 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

Tax Rules Roil Financial Sector

One might think the “foreign” in the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act relates to only a handful of firms. But proposed FATCA regulations have such a broad extraterritorial reach that they’re taking on renewed importance for many U.S. financial institutions.First enacted by Congress in 2010, FAT...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 15, 2012

Effective Tax Rate Rises for Industrials

The effective tax rate (ETR), or so-called real tax rate after expenses and tax offsets, was a volatile statistic during the financial crisis. The volatility has subsided for most firms amid the economic recovery, according to one study. At the same time, industrial companies have seen their ETRs...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 15, 2012

Do Your Internal Auditors Have the Right Skills?

Ten years after the Sarbanes-Oxley Act made financial controls job one for internal auditors, companies want auditors to shift some of their attention to operational risks.A recent survey by the Institute of Internal Auditors (IIA) found that just over one-quarter of corporate internal audit work...

By Sarah Johnson • June 15, 2012

Blank Check

Q: When I have no sales of a product in a particular region, Excel leaves those cells in the pivot table blank (Fig. 1). If my data has blanks instead of zeros, Excel assumes that a column is a text column. How do I get rid of the blanks so my calculations are not affected?A: When pivot tables fi...

By Bill Jelen • June 15, 2012

“Flush with Cash” Has New Meaning

For years, nonfinancial companies have put off spending and hoarded cash. Now, for the first time since the financial crisis, they are stepping up their capital expenditures even as they fill their coffers.The turn of events is good news to one analyst who tracks cash-flow data. “It’s the first t...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 15, 2012

Business Unit Focus Could Solve Bank Liquidity Woes

Bank CFOs, treasurers, and other senior managers are increasingly realizing that taking a closer look at the method of valuing their assets by jurisdiction — a process called funds transfer pricing (FTP) — can help solve liquidity problems within business units.FTP involves calculating the value ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 14, 2012

Standard Setters Agree on Two Ways to Report Leases

After months of heated debate, the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board today split their differences and decided to give corporate finance and accounting executives the ability to apply either of two methods to account for lease expenses on the ba...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 13, 2012

The Positives of Negative Working Capital

While most corporations have figured out how to start a business with other people’s money, some wireless communications and broadcasting companies have figured out how to actually run a business on other people’s money.How do they do it? By collecting as much money as possible in advance from cu...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 8, 2012

Media Business: Adapt or Face Nightmare of Change

No one could have dreamed up all the wonderful technological innovations and communications we are enjoying today from companies like Apple, Amazon, Twitter, and Google. But for some, the dream has turned into a nightmare. Media and publishing companies face the daily threat of newspapers, books,...

By Gregory V. Milano and John R. Cryan • June 7, 2012

CFOs: We’re Still Hiring

Contrary to the disappointing jobs report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics last week, CFOs say they still plan to hire at a relatively strong pace, according to the latest Duke University/CFO Magazine Global Business Outlook survey released Wednesday. U.S. finance chiefs say they will expand t...

By Kate O'Sullivan • June 6, 2012

Finding New Ways to Cash In on Renewables

As longstanding renewable-energy credits expire starting this year, companies that have taken advantage of those hefty tax breaks will have to consider new alternatives to fill the void.Wind-project developers or solar-facility owners typically have tax-equity partnerships with large-company inve...

By Kathy Hoffelder • June 5, 2012

Flood of Hedge-Fund Money Could Keep Insurance Cheap

In a move that could keep corporate property-casualty insurance prices manageable even when catastrophe strikes, hedge-fund investors are taking a cue from Warren Buffett. They are forming their own reinsurance companies or investing in reinsurers as special-purpose insurers, mostly in Bermuda, a...

By Caroline McDonald • June 1, 2012

Spreadsheets Still a Crutch in the Financial Reporting Process

Despite all the sophisticated tools at their disposal, CFOs and other finance executives still rely on spreadsheets when it matters— at financial-reporting time. More than 70% of the 1,100 global executives interviewed in a survey by Oracle and Accenture said they used spreadsheets to track and m...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 31, 2012

Transfer Pricing: Tax Risk or Measuring Rod?

Multinational CFOs are increasingly looking to avoid the double taxation that can occur from selling a product in one jurisdiction when it is manufactured in another. Transfer pricing, or the movement of goods and services in order to allocate profits, has become a high-ranking concern for CFOs, ...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 30, 2012

Companies Brace for Disruption in Europe

Whatever the future holds in store for the euro zone, it’s clear that the disruption caused by any kind of breakup is completely undesirable from the point of view of any corporate. While there may be politicians or political commentators whose reputation rests on doom and disaster, this isn’t a ...

By Andrew Sawers • May 23, 2012

Chinese Reverse Mergers Spawned U.S. Class Actions, Report Says

Driven in part by abundant reverse-merger filings by firms in China resulting in listings on U.S. exchanges, the number of securities class-action filings involving accounting allegations rose in 2011 over 2010, according to a new report by Cornerstone Research.Of the 188 securities class-action ...

By David Katz • May 22, 2012

U.S. Foreign Tax Proposal Would Roil Financial Sector

One might think the “foreign” in Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) relates only to a handful of companies. But proposed FATCA regulations have such a broad extraterritorial reach for U.S. financial institutions that they’re taking on renewed importance at all levels of a firm.   At an In...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 21, 2012

Effective Tax Rate Rises for Industrials

The effective tax rate, or so-called real tax rate after expenses and tax offsets are applied, was a volatile statistic during the financial crisis. To be sure, volatility has subsided for most firms amid the economic recovery, according to one study. At the same time, however, industrial compani...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 17, 2012

Why Isn’t the Stock Market Higher?

It may seem an odd question to ask, what with Facebook’s initial public offering expected to be valued at over $100 billion this week. But why isn’t the stock market trading higher?Equity analysts expect the companies in the S&P 500 index to collectively deliver 42% more net income before ext...

By Gregory V. Milano • May 17, 2012

JP Morgan Hedge Exposed the Bank to More Risk

JP Morgan Chase’s $2 billion mark-to-market trading loss stemmed from some fundamental mistakes by risk managers: particularly the notion that a hedge on credit exposures could reduce the bank’s risk but at the same time earn billions of dollars.That’s what experts are saying about a trading loss...

By Vincent Ryan • May 16, 2012

How to Prevent Workplace Fraud

Even fraudsters need a break sometimes. The ones that are good at pulling off a long-lasting scheme, however, are unlikely to take time off. After all, the concealment of an ongoing fraud needs constant tending and protection from prying eyes.In fact, fraud can lie undetected for as long as two y...

By Sarah Johnson • May 16, 2012

Backdating Stock Options Still a Risky Play

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit agreed with a district court on Tuesday that the former CFO of semiconductor concern Maxim Integrated Products, Carl Jasper, would be on the hook for backdating stock options without expensing them.The case is notable for two reasons: it has been on...

By Kathy Hoffelder • May 16, 2012

Will These Investments Catch On?

In February, the Department of Labor and the Department of the Treasury issued proposed new rules aimed at giving 401(k) plan participants more options to invest in annuities that guarantee a lifetime income stream. But the proposals don’t go nearly far enough to persuade plan sponsors to offer s...

By David McCann • May 15, 2012