Former McKesson CFO Acquitted

In a case largely overshadowed by recent high-profile trials, former McKesson Corp. chief financial officer Richard Hawkins was found not guilty of securities fraud After a one-month non-jury trial and 17 weeks of deliberation, U.S District Judge Martin Jenkins issued cleared Hawkins on all charg...

By Stephen Taub • July 12, 2005

IRS Audits Boost Corporate Tax Receipts

Collection of corporate taxes by the U.S. government climbed nearly 44 percent in 2004, to $189.4 billion, due in large part to increased aggressiveness by Internal Revenue Service auditors, reported Bloomberg.Those increased collections could help narrow this year’s budget deficit by as much as ...

By Stephen Taub • July 12, 2005

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

QSPEs, Derivatives, and FAS 140

As a summer project, the Financial Accounting Standards Board is preparing an exposure draft of its revision of Financial Accounting Standards No. 140, Accounting for Transfers and Servicing of Financial Assets and Extinguishment of Liabilities.The board’s FAS 140 project received extra impetus i...

By Ed Zwirn • July 11, 2005

Rising Dollar May Trim Repatriations

Plans to repatriate hundreds of billions of dollars in foreign earnings may be in jeopardy thanks to the rapidly strengthening U.S. dollar, according to the Financial Times.For 12 consecutive quarters, a weakening dollar had inflated year-on-year comparisons for multinational companies, the FT re...

By Craig Schneider • July 11, 2005

SEC Pursues Civil Case Against Scrushy

The Securities and Exchange Commission asked a federal judge for permission to pursue civil charges against Richard Scrushy — co-founder, former chairman, and former chief executive officer of HealthSouth Corp. — one week after a jury found him not guilty of criminal charges, according to publish...

By Stephen Taub • July 8, 2005

PCAOB Probing Deloitte Audit

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is investigating Deloitte & Touche LLP’s 2003 audit of Navistar International Corp., according to Bloomberg, citing a document it says authorizes the probe.This is the PCAOB’s first formal probe of a Big Four firm, the wire service pointed out. Bl...

By Stephen Taub • July 8, 2005

Two Ex-Partners of Andersen Cleared

The Securities and Exchange Commission has dismissed a case against two former Arthur Andersen partners who were accused of causing Spectrum Information Technologies Inc. to issue false financial statements in fiscal 1993, according to Dow Jones.The two Republicans on the commission, Cynthia Glas...

By Stephen Taub • July 7, 2005

FASB Wipes Clean a “Tainted” Provision

The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s discussion on revising certain aspects of FAS 115, the standard that governs much of the treatment of debt securities for profit-and-loss and balance-sheet purposes, set off a firestorm of concern in banking circles.Much of the controversy has centered o...

By Ed Zwirn • July 5, 2005

Delphi Files Promised Restatements

Delphi Corp. filed its previously announced restatement for 2001, 2002, and 2003 and announced that it is current in its periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.The auto-parts giant also announced that its audit committee has concluded its internal investigation of certain ac...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2005

3M to Repatriate $1.7 Billion

3M said it plans to reinvest roughly $1.7 billion of foreign earnings in the United States under the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, more than twice the $800 million the company had earlier announced.As a result, the company will record a one-time tax charge of about $75 million in the second...

By Stephen Taub • July 1, 2005

Out of Exile

Like other multinationals, Dell Inc. has amassed an impressive pile of overseas cash: $4.1 billion, to be exact. That hasn’t been returned to shareholders or reinvested. Instead, it sits in accounts in Europe and Asia, “permanently” reinvested to avoid the 35 percent tax the company would normall...

By Don Durfee • July 1, 2005

A GAAP of Their Own

Oh, to be a private company, with no need to file Securities and Exchange Commission reports and able to grow your business unfettered by the Financial Accounting Standards Board or interrogations from auditors.Think again. Private company CFOs say they are getting the short end of the stick when...

By Alix Stuart • July 1, 2005

New Woes for Kumar, Computer Associates

Two former top officials of embattled software maker Computer Associates International Inc. arranged to pay hush money to keep a bogus deal quiet, according to a revised indictment filed this week.Newsday, citing court papers, reported that in February 2003 then-CEO Sanjay Kumar was contacted by ...

By Stephen Taub • June 30, 2005

One Lawsuit, One Deloitte

Are affiliates of the Big Four accounting firms independent operations, or not? When Deloitte & Touche’s Italian arm served as the auditor for Parmalat Finanziaria SpA, it relied on work done by Deloitte affiliates in about 30 countries, according to The Wall Street Journal. But now that inve...

By Stephen Taub • June 30, 2005

When Is Insurance Not Insurance?

The Internal Revenue Code doesn’t define it; neither do tax regulations. To understand what constitutes an insurance arrangement for tax purposes, the best guidance remains the definition handed down by the Supreme Court in its 1941 decision Helvering v. LeGierse. The justices concluded that two ...

By Marie Leone • June 30, 2005

U.S. Attorney Won’t Charge Shell

The lesson of Arthur Andersen is apparently being applied to Royal Dutch/Shell.According to the Financial Times, U.S. regulators do not plan to bring charges against the global oil giant for overstating its oil and gas reserves, for 2002 and prior years, by about 23 percent. The concern was that ...

By Stephen Taub • June 30, 2005

Scrushy Acquitted on All Counts

Richard Scrushy — co-founder, former chairman, and former chief executive officer of HealthSouth Corp. — was acquitted by a federal jury on all 36 criminal counts against him, including conspiracy and securities fraud. The verdicts came on the 21st day of deliberations overall, and the 5th since ...

By Dave Cook and Helen Shaw • June 28, 2005

HealthSouth Reports $1 Billion Dive

HealthSouth Corp. yesterday restated earnings downward by more than $1 billion over the two-year period covering 2000 and 2001, according to a regulatory filing.The embattled health-care-services company reported a $364 million net loss for 2000 instead of a previously reported profit of more tha...

By Stephen Taub • June 28, 2005

How Temporary Is ‘Temporarily Impaired’?

When is an investment more-than-temporarily impaired, and how should a company measure and recognize that impairment? Emerging Issues Task Force Issue 03-1 provides guidance on the meaning of the phrase “other-than-temporary impairment” and its application to several types of investments, includi...

By Ed Zwirn • June 27, 2005

KPMG Looks to Safeguard Its Place

To safeguard its place as a member of accounting’s Big Four, KPMG has appealed to some prominent corporate executives to promote its case by writing letters to the Justice Department and submitting commentary to the media, according to The Wall Street Journal.“We continue to cooperate in the Depa...

By Stephen Taub • June 24, 2005

Morgan Stanley Settles with Parmalat

Morgan Stanley has agreed to pay $188.9 million to Parmalat Finanziaria SpA, becoming the first international financial-services company to settle legal problems stemming from the bankrupt dairy group’s accounting scandal, says Reuters.According to reports, the agreement in principle “settles all...

By Stephen Taub • June 24, 2005

HealthSouth Execs to Be Resentenced

When 10 former HealthSouth executives were sentenced last year after pleading guilty for their role in the health services company’s $2.7 billion accounting scandal, many observers were surprised that nine were able to avoid prison time.Apparently, so was the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.Th...

By Stephen Taub • June 23, 2005

Scrushy Jury Starts from Scratch

Richard Scrushy — co-founder, former chairman, and former chief executive officer of HealthSouth Corp. — will need to hold on a little longer to learn if he’ll follow in the footsteps of Bernard Ebbers, Dennis Kozlowski, and John Rigas.On Wednesday, at Scrushy’s trial in a Birmingham, Alabama cou...

By Dave Cook • June 22, 2005

Go Direct, Young Man

Generally speaking, office-supply retailer Staples is not known for selling its own merchandise. Instead, the company has built a nice business selling such well-known brands as 3M, Avery, and Panasonic. So what are managers at the $14.4 billion (in revenues) company doing overseeing a network of...

By Don Durfee • June 21, 2005

New Treatment for Passive Derivatives

An exposure draft to be issued in August by the Financial Accounting Standards Board would do away with the requirement under FAS 140 that many syndicated loans and collateralized mortgage-backed securities be treated as investments for accounting purposes.The revision would eliminate paragraph 4...

By Ed Zwirn • June 20, 2005