No Employee Left Behind

Companies are in business to make money. So why shouldn’t everyone working for a company understand how money is made?Armed with such knowledge, salespeople could sell in a way that better boosts the bottom line, while other employees could appreciate the importance of pitching in on cost-saving ...

By David McCann • April 15, 2012

Dow Chemical Appeals R&D Credit Ruling

Dow Chemical Co. is appealing a tax-court ruling that said the Internal Revenue Service correctly disallowed several research and experimentation (R&E) credits the company claimed for process improvements at its Union Carbide subsidiary. If Dow wins the appeal, the IRS says, the limits on wha...

By Marielle Segarra • April 12, 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

Integrated Corporate Reporting Comes One Step Closer

The International Integrated Reporting Council’s (IIRC) latest report says there has been overwhelmingly positive support for the idea of corporate reports that bring together the strategy, the financials, and the social and sustainability issues. But while the goodwill is there, more work needs ...

By Andrew Sawers • April 11, 2012

End of the Line for Share Buybacks? Don’t Count on It

Investors like them — but sometimes they don’t. Companies still use them, but at least one group of academics sees major flaws. But they appear to create value.Share buybacks may be a headline-grabbing way to return surplus cash to investors. They’re also a way of making a high-profile statement ...

By Andrew Sawers • April 11, 2012

Lax Treasury Practices Aided MF Global Fall, Experts Say

Poor accounting of the movement of funds between bank accounts and outdated treasury systems contributed to the chaos of the final days of securities dealer MF Global — and ultimately to the loss of $1.6 billion in customer funds.According to corporate treasury experts, the congressional testimon...

By Vincent Ryan • April 10, 2012

How Bean Counters Can Become Bean Growers

As many financial executives have sadly discovered, careers can be damaged or even lost when financial commitments are not met. Fortunately, at many companies a big change in the analysis of financial performance is offering their CFOs a brighter ray of hope for keeping their promises.Performance...

By Thomas E. Conine Jr. • April 9, 2012

IRS Holding Up Transfer-Pricing Deals For Years

Senior finance and tax executives may well be wondering whether their companies should work with the Internal Revenue Service on transfer-pricing agreements after learning about the agency’s latest progress report. Last week the IRS revealed that it processed fewer Advance Pricing Agreements (APA...

By Sarah Johnson • April 9, 2012

Hot Topic CFO Talks About The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games, the film based on the first of three wildly successful teen novels, has everything that fills theater seats: action, suspense, family, fashion, and a doomed loved triangle. It’s no wonder that the film has pulled in more than $251 million domestically since it opened at the end ...

By Marielle Segarra • April 5, 2012

Key-Person Insurance: a Cash-Flow Puzzle

With many companies sitting atop piles of cash and looking for productive ways to use it, buying life-insurance policies on key executives is an increasingly popular tactic.Although that can be financially effective, it requires companies to make a critical accounting decision for which there is ...

By David McCann • April 4, 2012

The Prescription for Pharma Is Revenue Growth

The pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry has lost much of its pizzazz over the past decade and finds itself at an inflection point. Patent protection is ending for many of the best-selling drugs and the future of health care is as uncertain as it has ever been. Many of these life-sciences co...

By Gregory V. Milano and John R. Cryan • April 4, 2012

MF Global’s Inscrutable Accounting Error

While securities dealer MF Global was melting down financially, the company’s finance and treasury departments — in conjunction with futures-market regulators — were on the hunt for the accounting error that wasn’t. MF Global’s general counsel and the CFO of its broker-dealer unit appear to never...

By Vincent Ryan • April 3, 2012

MF Global CFOs Confound Congressional Questioners

Despite 90 minutes of pointed questioning by U.S. House members on Wednesday, one current and one former CFO of MF Global failed to shed much light on how the broker-dealer lost $1.6 billion in customer funds on its way to the eighth-largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.At their third hearing on th...

By Vincent Ryan • March 29, 2012

The Final Week of MF Global

How does a 228-year-old company go, in the course of eight days, from assuring the credit rating agencies that its capital and liquidity are strong to filing for Chapter 11 and losing $1.6 billion of its customers’ money? The circumstances surrounding the futures dealer’s meltdown are slowly bein...

By Vincent Ryan • March 29, 2012

Auditor Rotation: an Example of “Mission Creep”?

Pressed by members of Congress to jettison a plan to require companies to rotate auditors, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board chairman James Doty stressed today that the proposal is in a very early stage and may not become a rule.Members of the House Subcommittee on Capital Markets and Gov...

By Sarah Johnson • March 28, 2012

Handle Growing Lookup Tables with a Two-Key Combo

Editor’s Note: March 25-31, 2012 is VLOOKUP Week across the web. CFO is participating by offering a VLOOKUP Webcast on March 29, a VLOOKUP “Spicy Scale” formula edition of the CFO Learning Pro newsletter, and this VLOOKUP-themed article.The VLOOKUP function is ubiquitous across spreadsheets in fi...

By Bill Jelen • March 25, 2012

AIG’s Tax Break: a “Stealth Bailout”?

After amassing losses during the financial crisis, many companies that couldn’t make it through the downturn on their own found themselves bought by companies with stronger balance sheets.Further, under Section 382 of the Internal Revenue Code, those acquiring companies face major restrictions on...

By Beth Braverman • March 23, 2012

I’ll Take Any New Regulation, Just Not This One

If you don’t like one regulation, ask for another. That’s the tactic tried by critics of a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) proposal that would require companies to switch audit firms every few years.Those opposed to the PCAOB’s plans, which are in the very early stages and may n...

By Sarah Johnson • March 22, 2012

House Bill Would Cut Taxes on Businesses With Fewer than 500 Employees

A new House proposal to cut taxes on small business might give a boost to manufacturing. The bill would allow companies with fewer than 500 employees to take a 20% tax deduction.Bill sponsor and House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) contends the plan would stimulate growth by giving small com...

By Marielle Segarra • March 22, 2012

Costs for Data Breaches Take a Tumble

The Ponemon Institute, an independent research center that examines privacy, data protection, and information-security policies, yesterday reported the first decline in at least seven years of both the organizational cost of data breaches and the cost per lost or stolen record.In the institute’s ...

By David Rosenbaum • March 21, 2012

FASB Insists on Tax Rule Hated by CFOs

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has stifled any lingering hope that it will rethink one of its more controversial rules. In an announcement made this morning, the standard-setter said it will not review FIN 48 (also known as Topic 740), its rule for accounting for uncertainty in tax posi...

By Sarah Johnson • March 20, 2012

Apple to Make Minor Dent in Cash Cushion

Apple Inc. plans to tap $45 billion of its domestic cash over the next three years for dividends and stock buybacks.The consumer tech giant, which famously keeps information about its moves close to the vest, made the announcement on Monday morning after months of speculation and pressure over it...

By Sarah Johnson • March 19, 2012

Can Operating Leases Be Strategic?

Some CFOs and treasurers shun operating leases. They claim that such leases dilute earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA). Such finance executives claim they merely represent expensive financing that other companies employ to artificially push assets off their ba...

By Gregory V. Milano • March 15, 2012

Pension Legislation Could Cut Contributions, Hike Taxes

The U.S. Senate approved a bill Wednesday that will allow many companies to lower their contributions to their employee defined-benefit pension plans this year. But the proposal may increase companies’ tax liabilities, and some say it could also lead to a drop in plan funding. The provision in th...

By Marielle Segarra • March 15, 2012

Tax and the Telecommuter

Employing someone to create computer code out of state is the same thing as hiring someone to manufacture parts in a state for a product that will be put together elsewhere: both corporate activities are taxable.In the latest ruling of a state court on the issue of nexus — taxation based on locat...

By Robert Willens • March 14, 2012

Will Auditors Influence How Executives Are Paid?

Accounting treatment under GAAP has long been a factor in the design of executive-compensation programs. Until the release of FAS 123-R in the mid-2000s, public companies were loath to use performance goals as a vesting condition for equity-based compensation due to unfavorable accounting results...

By Andrew Liazos • March 12, 2012