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Accounting News Roundup: PwC’s New Envelope Safeguards and Changes to State Tax Rates | 01.23.18

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

Accounting firm adds 6 new rules to prevent Oscars envelope gaffe [AP]
The Academy Award nominations were announced this morning, but PwC’s Tim Ryan had a little reveal of his own, sharing the new rules the firm put in place to avoid a SALY #EnvelopeGate. Naturally, the new rules center around “envelope rituals” that should prevent a simple human error which, the Academy CEO gently reminds everyone, can have MASSIVE consequences:

Film academy chief Dawn Hudson said that after reviewing the relationship between the two organizations, and given that the voting and secrecy around the Academy Awards were never compromised, the academy chalked up the envelope mistake to simple human error.

“Still, it was a big human error, and it was a very public human error,” Hudson said.

Ultimately, academy officials and board members decided not to “throw out 83 years of flawless partnership over this, while huge, one human error,” she said

Try to work “while huge” into your interactions today.

Researchers find quarterly reporting leads to corporate myopia [AT]
Rahul Vashishtha and Mohan Venkatachalam of Duke University and Arthur G. Kraft of the Cass Business School of City University London found that “when new regulatory mandates forced companies to increase the frequency of their financial reporting, they reduced their annual capital investments by around 1.5 to 1.9 percent of their total assets.”

Changes to 2018 Rates for Corporations and Pass-Through Entities [BNA]
At least a dozen states (and counting) have made changes to their corporate income, franchise, and other business taxes in the wake of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.

Ex-accountant repays restaurant group $81,000 after embezzlement plea [MLive]
File to Accountants Behaving Badly: I can help you with that. Jane Clark of Portage, Mich. pleaded guilty to stealing between $50k and $100k from her employer, EMA Enterprises, a restaurant group. The funny thing is, prosecutors weren’t exactly sure at first: “Kenneth Barnard, Kalamazoo County assistant prosecutor, said the actual amount of the embezzlement was less than $100,000, and said that some items were double counted when Clark was first charged. Barnard said he, EMA Enterprises owners and Clark’s defense attorney, Gary Mouw, went through the documentation, which showed the amount embezzled was legitimately under $100,000.”

Previously, on Going Concern…

I wrote a couple of posts about the indictment and civil charges (well, mostly the indictment) against six accountants, including five former KPMG employees. The first one is the “what you need to know” version; the second effort has all the gory details.

From the archives: Use Excel to Keep an Eye on Your BMI This Busy Season

In other news:

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“At a recent panel discussion and networking event at the agency, Commissioner Luis Aguilar spoke about the need to hire ‘the best and brightest,’ while acknowledging that in the past it hasn’t done a good job of recruiting women and minorities.

In his speech, Aguilar said that as of FY 2009, 89% of the SEC’s senior officers were white, 4% African-American, 3% Hispanic and 2% Asian. Along gender lines, 67% of the officers were male and 33% were female.

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PCAOB Fires Shot on Audit Issues, Calls for Enforcement [Compliance Week]
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Viacom Names New CFO [WSJ]
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Accounting niches [AccMan]
Are accountants doing enough to leverage their professional expertise?

Investors unhappy with lack of competition in audit market [Accountancy Age]
“The Association Of British Insurers (ABI), whose members account for almost 15 per cent of investments in the London stock market, is worried about the audit structure and said it has made its views known in a submission to a House of Lords inquiry into audit competition.”


H&R Block sees 5-cent hit from IRS policy change [AP]
Fewer rapid refunds doesn’t seem like a bad thing.

KPMG’s Fuzzy Math on Atlantic Yards [NYO]
The completion of the Atlantic Yards project remains on a timetable that runs parallel to the adoption of IFRS in the United States.

Tax the rich, whoever they are [Don’t Mess with Taxes]
Come out with your hands up!

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