New CFO’S Hand Seen in Google Restructuring

Google has announced a major restructuring of its sprawling operations, a surprise move to improve transparency that media observers credited to new CFO Ruth Porat.As part of the reconfiguration, a new parent company named Alphabet Inc. will replace Google as the publicly traded entity, with Goog...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 11, 2015

China’s Central Bank Devalues Yuan

The People’s Bank of China Monday cut its daily reference rate by 1.9% and said devaluing the yen would help the currency become more aligned with supply and demand in an effort to boost exports, Bloomberg reported.“The announcement suggests policy makers are now placing a greater emphasis on eff...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Aug. 11, 2015

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

Budget Deficit May Be Heading to 7-Year Low

The Congressional Budget Office is projecting a U.S. budget deficit of roughly $425 billion for fiscal 2015, 12.5% lower than the $486 billion it forecast in March.If the CBO’s revised estimate for the fiscal year ending Sept. 30 is correct, it would be a seven-year low for the government’s annua...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 11, 2015

OSG Investors Settle Tax Debt Case for $16.2M

Overseas Shipbuilding Group investors have agreed to $16.25 million in settlements of their class-action claims alleging executives, underwriters and an auditor of the tanker company hid a $435 million tax debt that forced it into bankruptcy.The plaintiffs had previously announced in February tha...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 10, 2015

Bitcoin Exchanges to Halt Services in New York

Two of the largest bitcoin exchanges have decided to halt services in New York rather than comply with the state’s new licensing requirements.Kraken and Bitfinex joined a chorus of opposition to the controversial regulation, which requires bitcoin businesses to pay $5,000 for a “Bitlicense.” Stat...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Aug. 10, 2015

Metric of the Month: Close-to-Disclose Cycle Time

When a large public company produces a quarterly financial report, anything less than 100% accuracy can spell disaster. As Gabe Zubizarreta, chief executive of Silicon Valley Accountants, an accounting and consulting firm, says, “Getting your close 96% right is not an ‘A’ or an ‘A+.’ Rather, 96% ...

By Mary Driscoll • Aug. 10, 2015

Scrapping Your ERP Maintenance Contract

Many ERP customers, with their installations getting long in the tooth, are considering canceling their vendor maintenance agreements, some of which can run into the millions or tens of millions of dollars. According to a report from Gartner, although the number of customers that have cancelled t...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 10, 2015

Groupon Posts Lower-Than-Expected Earnings

Under pressure from  e-commerce competitors Amazon and eBay, Groupon on Friday posted lower-than-expected second-quarter results and forecast numbers for the third quarter below Wall Street estimates.The Chicago company’s revenue rose 3.1%, to $738.4 million, but analysts were expecting $740.2 mi...

By Katie Kuehner-Hebert • Aug. 7, 2015

Buying and Optimizing ERP Software

Enterprise resource planning systems have been labeled the hearts and brains of a company. Translation: when implementing an ERP system, the margin for error is tiny, because mistakes can be costly. The following stories provide advice on how to select an ERP system and manage the migration. For ...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 6, 2015

Tesla Reports Lower-Than-Expected Q2 Loss

Tesla Motors on Wednesday released better-than-expected earnings for the second quarter but its shares fell as the auto maker cut its forecast for 2015 deliveries.Tesla’s second-quarter adjusted loss of $61 million, or 48 cents a share, on sales of $1.2 billion beat analysts’ estimates of an adju...

By Matthew Heller • Aug. 5, 2015

Free Cash Margins Show Steady, Not Spectacular, Growth

Nonfinancial U.S. companies continue to generate a lot of cash, but other accounting numbers suggest they remain reasonably cautious about the economy and are not preparing for a large acceleration in sales growth.The median free cash flow of a sample of U.S. companies rose 8.50% to $23.22 millio...

By Vincent Ryan • Aug. 4, 2015

Excel Tip: How Does It Look?

User Problem: How do I used Cell Styles in Excel?Solution: Gurus of Microsoft Word have known about using styles for a decade. In Excel 2010, Microsoft promotes styles in Excel, adding a drop-down right on the Home tab offering 42 built-in styles as shown in Figure 1 (below).You can choose which ...

By Bill Jelen • Aug. 3, 2015

Planning in the Face of Tax-Credit Uncertainty

Congress is awhirl in the all-too-familiar cycle for a number of tax provisions: enactment, expiration, and extension.Kathleen King More than 50 corporate and individual tax provisions, including the popular research credit, are not a permanent part of the Internal Revenue Code. Instead, these te...

By Kathleen King • July 31, 2015

Don’t Miss Your Next CFO Job Opportunity

I often get inquiries from senior finance executives that go something like this:“I was speaking with John Smith the other day, and he suggested I contact you. I am looking to potentially make a job change and want to choose a search firm to work with me.”John Touey John ToueyI have a few reactio...

By John Touey • July 30, 2015

Don’t Overlook Data Security Issues In M&A Deals

Deloitte’s 2014 M&A Trends Report says that low interest rates and high cash reserves in addition to a desire for new markets, new products, and cost-saving consolidations have U.S. CEOs frothing to find the right partners quickly. Merger and acquisition deals always involve a balance of spee...

By Mary A. Chaput • July 29, 2015

A Guide to Cutting Health-Care Costs

The cost of employee health insurance seems to surge ever upward. So finance chiefs that want to rein in the cost of health care benefits need to do a lot more than just cross their fingers and wait for next year’s insurance premium quote. New models that upend the traditional provider-payer dyna...

By CFO Editorial Staff • July 24, 2015

Asset Capitalization Thresholds Should Be Disclosed

Every well-controlled company has an asset capitalization threshold (ACT) that should be consistently applied. The ACT is the dollar value at which an acquired asset is capitalized rather than expensed. Pretty basic, right?Jonathan Schiff However, there is no FASB or IFRS guidance or disclosure r...

By Jonathan Schiff • July 22, 2015

Sales Tax Bills Need to Curb Collection Burdens

The states’ frustration with out-of-state sellers not collecting and remitting sales and use taxes on sales made to those states’ residents is nothing new. There were major cases litigated as far back as the 1930s involving mail order sellers such as Sears and Montgomery Ward. Attempts to address...

By Arthur R. Rosen • July 22, 2015

Chaffetz Internet Sales Tax Bill Is Too Costly and Complex

Congress is looking for a sensible solution to the dilemma over how to collect Internet Sales Tax in a fair and reasonable way.  But the fatally flawed Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA) introduced in June by Rep. Jason Chaffetz, a Utah Republican, is exactly the wrong way to do it.Steve DelBi...

By Steve DelBianco • July 22, 2015

Should Online Retailers Be Required to Collect State Taxes?

A recent favorable opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy plus increased action in Congress have made it more likely than it has been in 50 years that out-of-state retailers will be forced to collect sales taxes in states where they don’t have a physical presence. Half a century ag...

By David Katz • July 21, 2015

Let States Mandate Tax Collection by Out-of-state Retailers

In my opinion the answer is yes. I believe the current determination of nexus is flawed in an internet world. The idea that a physical presence is a determining factor in sales transactions today is unrealistic and unfair. If a company produces a website offering products for sale on the internet...

By Thomas E. Secor • July 21, 2015

Don’t Let States Make Outside Retailers Collect Sales Taxes

No, states should not be allowed to require tax collection by out-of-state retailers. The  Marketplace Fairness Act (MFA) or the new and dramatically worse Remote Transactions Parity Act (RTPA) are not acceptable solutions to collecting use taxes owed to the states on remote purchases. States alr...

By Rick Smith • July 21, 2015

Metric of the Month: Finance Function Costs

Ever wonder why some CFOs constantly push staff to do more with less? The short answer is that there are still a lot of finance people doing “back-office” administrative tasks. The hint of snobbery in that statement intentionally underlines how some clout-wielding operating managers view finance:...

By Mary Driscoll • July 20, 2015

Sales Drop at IBM for 13th Straight Quarter

IBM reported mixed results for the second quarter on Monday, as declines in software and systems hardware revenue offset growth in cloud computing.The company posted second-quarter adjusted profit of $3.84 per share on $20.81 billion in sales. Both numbers were down 13% from the prior-year period...

By Matthew Heller • July 20, 2015

Auditor Rotation May Actually Inhibit Skepticism

An intricate experiment reported in a leading accounting journal has cast new light on a contentious issue regarding the auditing of financial statements — namely, whether companies should be required to periodically change their auditors.A paper in the new issue of The Accounting Review, an Amer...

By David McCann • July 20, 2015