Accounting and Financial News Stories
AICPA and CIMA Add New Competencies to Personalized Learning Site
CPA Practice Advisor
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) have expanded their professional learning and development website to support all major practice areas in management accounting and public accounting with learning, resources and competency development tools. The AICPA-CIMA Competency and Learning website, a joint project of the AICPA and CIMA, allows users to take a personalized approach to lifelong learning and career development.
IRS Advises Tax Pros to Monitor Their PTINs
Accounting Today
The Internal Revenue Service is recommending tax professionals monitor their Preparer Tax Identification Numbers for signs of suspicious activity. The IRS has been stepping up its efforts to curb identity theft and tax fraud, in part by focusing on ways to make tax preparers more aware of cybersecurity threats.
Does the Earnings Stripping Regulation Remove Too Much?
CFO
Multinational corporations have long used earnings stripping as a way to reduce their corporate taxes by making interest deductions to a foreign headquarters in a friendly tax regime. Now, this longstanding practice is in the crosshairs of the U.S. Treasury Department, which has proposed rules giving the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) wide latitude to button up earnings stripping, possibly by the end of the year.
IRS Rolls Out New Changes to ITIN Renewal Process
AccountingWEB
Taxpayers who have not used their Individual Taxpayer Identification Numbers (ITINs) in the last three years or who have expiring numbers will have to renew them before filing a federal tax return in 2017. The IRS recently announced the changes in Notice 2016-48 in keeping with requirements under the Protecting Americans from Tax Hikes Act enacted by Congress late last year.
IRS Proposes Regulations That Would Eliminate Most Valuation Discounts for Transfers of Interests in Family Entities
The National Law Review
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) released regulations on August 2, 2016 that would limit the use of discounts when valuing interests in family entities for estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer tax purposes. If enacted in their current form, the regulations will curb the use of “minority,” “lack of marketability” and “lack of control” discounts, thereby increasing the value of any interests transferred or owned at death.
PwC Fights $5.6 Billion Fraud Trial over Taylor Bean's Collapse
Accounting Today
PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP failed to spot for seven years a multibillion-dollar fraud that led to the demise of Taylor Bean & Whitaker Mortgage Corp., a lawyer for the lender’s bankruptcy trustee told a Miami jury on Tuesday. At issue is PwC’s work for Colonial Bank, which bought mortgages that Taylor Bean originated. Had PwC adequately vetted documents that Taylor Bean gave to the bank, it would have spotted a multiyear fraud by executives at both firms far earlier and put an end to it, the trustee claims.
Property Surcharges Aim to Keep Outsiders Away
Wall Street Journal
With its new residential-property tax on outsiders, Vancouver, British Columbia, is the latest locality trying to keep foreign buyers at bay. Tommy Li of Beijing is one of them. Last year, he said, his wife quit her job to accompany their now-12-year-old son to study in Vancouver. Mr. Li, who works for a U.S. technology company, stayed behind to support them.
U.S. Job Openings Rose in June
New York Times
Employers in the United States advertised more openings and hired more people in June, increasing evidence that the job market has rebounded from a brief soft patch in the spring. The number of job openings rose a modest 2 percent to 5.6 million in June from 5.5 million in May, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Still, that figure remains below the 5.8 million openings advertised in April, the highest in 16 years.