Accounting and Financial News Stories

Accounting News Roundup: Lousy Clients and The Non-GAAP Playground | 09.13.16
Going Concern
Life after Big 4 - Here's a Bloomberg article about Charles Chao, the CEO of Chinese internet company Sina Corp. Chao is a former PwC manager and his career has gotten pret-tay, pret-tay, pret-tay interesting in the last few weeks. The former audit manager at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP is sitting on gains of about $423 million after he made a personal bet worth $456 million on Sina shares last November -- paying for more than half the purchase with borrowed money, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

New Report Details CPA Profession’s Progress in Enhancing Audit Quality
Yahoo Finance
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has issued a report detailing the past year’s activities and accomplishments as part of its Enhancing Audit Quality (EAQ) initiative. The publication outlines the CPA profession’s work to enhance the quality of private company audits in the areas of Pre-licensure, Standards and Ethics, CPA Learning and Support, Peer Review, Practice Monitoring of the Future, and Enforcement.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Tom Walpole (Rochester)
Taxing Social Security
WROC Rochester First
CPA Tom Walpole discussed Social Security recipients and marriage Monday on News 8 at Sunrise. The topic was inspired by a viewer question which asked how much is taxed when it comes to Social Security recipients and marriage.  "The answer is, it depends," said Walpole.  "It's never easy with the government. You start out with a number called MAGI, which is an acronym for Modified Adjusted Gross Income. You take your adjusted gross income, and from that, you add any tax-exempt interest that you might have.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Hey Xero - New Chatbot For Accounting Users
CPA Practice Advisor
Xero has launched an innovative chatbot codenamed Hey Xero that will provide small businesses and their advisors with a completely new way to access the Xero ecosystem and their accounting data quickly, from their platform of choice. Available later this year, Hey Xero will have the capability to connect the more than 50 million small businesses who use Facebook Messenger every month into the wider Xero ecosystem, opening a new way for businesses to discover the cloud accounting platform and find the right advisor for them.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Elizabeth Warren: What Apple Teaches Us About Taxes
New York Times
Apple got a big surprise last week when the European Commission ordered Ireland to collect more than $14 billion in back taxes from the company. The global giant had been attributing billions of dollars in profits to a phantom head office, allowing it to pay a tax rate of 1 percent or lower. Both Apple and Ireland are appealing the decision, but the commission’s announcement was the latest sign that multinational corporations are running out of places to hide from paying taxes.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Best States for Accounting and Finance Careers
Accounting Today
The staffing company Accounting Principals analyzed the best states for accounting and finance professionals to live in by tracking the number of accounting and financial positions in each state from 2009 to 2016 to see how well each state’s job prospects are growing. Texas came out on top. The study looks at some of the employment trends in finance and accounting positions in each state during that same period to see how each state’s job prospects are growing.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Joanne S.  Barry – Executive Director and CEO
The Top People in Public Accounting – 2016
Accounting Today
Having Dionne Warwick at your annual dinner isn’t necessarily a sign of influence — but it doesn’t hurt either, and the fundraising opportunity it created is just one very conspicuous example of the ways Barry is rethinking things at the New York society. Others include a major new conference on sustainability accounting, a proposal to open membership to non-CPA professionals, and using IT and big data solutions to target prospective members.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Time to make a deal on 421-a
Crain’s New York Business
Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed amendments to the 421-a property-tax exemption have received a lot of attention for offering a subsidy to wages for workers on projects with 300 units or more. Other smaller residential projects with fewer units would move forward under the reforms to 421-a passed by the state legislature in 2015.

NYSSCPA Member in the News

Salvatore Collemi (Manhattan/Bronx)
The Decline in Global Audit Quality
Accounting Today
Ask any practicing CPA who cares about the profession, and they’ll tell you about the need for continuous improvements when it comes to a public accounting firm’s system of quality control policies and procedures.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Akshay Shirmanker (Queens/Brooklyn)
IRS Creates Dedicated Web Page With Resources For Sharing Economy
Wolters Kluwer - Standard Federal Tax Reports
As the sharing economy grows, the IRS has responded with new resources for taxpayers. The IRS launched a Sharing Economy Tax Center on its website, highlighting tax issues for individuals and companies performing services in the sharing economy.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Kenneth Hall (Rochester)
Back to school tax tips
WROC Rochester First
CPA Kenneth Hall discussed some back to school tax tips Monday on News 8 at Sunrise. "The main one is the Child Care Credit," said Hall. "If you have a child, in the I-R-S' eyes, that's less than age thirteen, you can deduct up to twenty percent of three thousand dollars of child care that you pay for one child, and double that for two or more children." He added the adjusted gross income has to be $43,000 or lower and you have to have a registered child care provider.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

A Blueprint for Succession Failure
AccountingWEB
When it comes to facing succession and ownership transition within CPA firms, experience has taught me there are two types of practitioners – those who are proactive with regard to securing their next generation of leaders and those who continue to procrastinate despite repeated efforts to convince them otherwise.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Michael Goodman (Nassau)
How to widen your tax-cut window
MSN Money
The first few years of retirement are a perfect time to explore your passions, travel the world, and bond with your family. Something else they can be great for: cutting your lifetime tax bill—and leaving you more money to spend on yourself. The reason? Once you stop collecting a paycheck and start living off other funds—say, investments, part-time work, and maybe a pension—chances are good that, as for most retirees, your income will drop, putting you in a lower bracket.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Court Denies U.S. Request to Reconsider Tossing Bank of America Fine
Wall Street Journal
An appellate court on Monday declined to reconsider its decision to throw out a mortgage-fraud case against Bank of America Corp., a blow to the Justice Department as it tried to rescue one of its highest-profile cases tied to the financial crisis. Judges for the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York said in a filing that they had considered the Justice Department’s request and would deny it.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Lou Grassi (Nassau)
Accounting firms grow staff and services
Buffalo Business First
Growth-minded CPA firms are taking advantage of baby boomer retirements in their ranks to merge, acquire, specialize and hire their way into a greater share of the market. The strategy coincides with changes in the industry that favor value-added services such as niche consulting. The result is firms that hardly resemble those of the not-so-old days that relied on the traditional staple of tax and audit work.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

Cos. Don’t Meld Accounting for Internal Transactions: Poll
CFO
Under 10% of nearly 4,000 mostly accounting and finance professionals say their organizations coordinate how their internal transactions are accounted for, according to to a recent Deloitte poll, indicating a lack of holistic, efficient, and well-communicated intercompany accounting frameworks at many multinationals.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Tammy Straus (Nassau)
Hain Celestial shares plunge after financial reporting news
amNewYork
Shares of Lake Success-based Hain Celestial Group Inc. plunged more than 20 percent Monday after the close of regular trading, following the company’s disclosure that it was evaluating its internal control over financial reporting and that it doesn’t expect to reach its previously announced revenue forecast for fiscal 2016. The organic and natural products company, with brands including Celestial Seasonings, Earth’s Best, Terra and Spectrum, also announced in a statement it was delaying the release of its financial results for its fourth quarter and fiscal 2016, ended June 30.

Accounting and Financial News Stories

The Corporate Income Tax is Most Harmful for Growth and Wages
Tax Foundation
One of the biggest debates in economics has been the question of who bears the real economic burden of corporate taxes: shareholders through lower returns, consumers through higher prices, or workers through lower wages. In an essay (here) in today’s Wall Street Journal, economist Kevin A. Hassett and Aparna Mathur review the growing empirical evidence showing that workers bear the true economic burden of the corporate income tax through reduced wages.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Joanne S. Barry – Executive Director and CEO
People News – Aug. 12, 2016
Accounting Today
NEW YORK - Joanne S. Barry, executive director and CEO of the New York State Society of CPAs, received the City and State’s 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility Award.

NYSSCPA Members in the News

Joanne S. Barry – Executive Director & CEO
NY CPA Leader Honored for Corporate Social Responsibility
INSIDE Public Accounting
New York State Society of CPAs (NYSSCPA) Executive Director and CEO Joanne Barry was honored with City and State’s 2016 Corporate Social Responsibility Award for her Sustainability. “It’s an honor to be recognized for the consensus-building work the NYSSCPA has done this year in the effort to establish an integrated accounting framework in the United States as we strive for global financial stability and sustainable development,” Barry says. The CSR Awards in Sustainability recognize outstanding corporate citizens for their work in sustainability – from the construction, energy, transportation and food industries and beyond.