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Accounting News Roundup: Lecturing Auditors; Accounting for Celebrity Taste; C Corp Fever | 02.23.18

MPs turn fire on KPMG and Deloitte partners over Carillion [FT]
There was an auditor flogging in the U.K. with the usual theatrics: “I would not hire you to do an audit of the contents of my fridge, because when I read it, I would not know what was actually in my fridge or not,” one MP said to a KPMG partner.

Kardashian slap shows hole in Snap’s accounting [Reuters]
It was a Jenner, actually.

Reality-star-model-cosmetic-maker Kylie Jenner wiped more than $1.5 billion from Snap’s wobbly market capitalization on Thursday after she questioned the usefulness of its main product, disappearing-message app Snapchat. Influential fans can attract users, and repel them if they publicly flee. Balance sheets don’t capture that kind of asset, but maybe they should.

“Kylie Jenner is no accountant – but she could teach the bean counters a thing or two,” the column goes on. Sure, sure. I mean, if your company’s value is highly dependent on the whims of superficial, vapid pseudo-celebrities, then figuring out how to account for that might be worthwhile. I think that might also be a sign that you don’t have much of a business, but maybe I don’t appreciate a celebrity opinion like I used to.

Pass-Through Businesses Are Rethinking Their Status in Wake of Tax Law [WSJ]
With the top corporate tax rate at 35 percent for so long, organizing as a C corp was not a real option for the vast majority of businesses. Now that that rate has plunged to 21 percent, the choice becomes trickier. “We are telling people that it makes sense to reconsider doors that have historically been closed,” an EY partner said.

Nothing Dull in the Taxation of the Boring Company’s Planned Hyperloop [BNA]
If pods are going to zoom from DC to New York at the speed of sound, there will be some interesting tax quirks to resolve since some states exempt rail equipment and “rolling stock” from sales tax while others do not. But, there is a matter of “many engineering and financial hurdles still to overcome, [so] it is probably a bit premature to be worrying about use tax on hyperloop pods.”

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Previously, on Going Concern…

Why Does (and Why Should!) Data Analytics Matter to Accountants? (This post is brought to by the University of North Carolina Master of Accounting Program)

I mentioned that the IRS doesn’t appreciate it when tax pros tell their clients to call the preparer hotline.

From the archives: Even More Tax-Related Violence: Wife Shoots at Refund Hogging Husband

In other news:

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Image: Wikimedia Commons