What Does Your CFO Care About and Why Should you Care?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 22, 2012 in Finance, Leadership, Tax, Tax Planning | 0 comments

What Does Your CFO Care About and Why Should you Care?

Every year, I take an in-depth look at what the CFO’s are saying and predicting for the coming year.  Last year I shared my findings with you.  I thought I would do that again, as this is a pretty important thing to understand.  But, why should you care?  Well, in most cases the tax department must rely on approval from the CFO for tax department budgets, operational decisions, and other strategic initiatives.  Therefore, I believe it is critical to better understand what they are hoping for, struggling with and trying to overcome each year.  It can only help you when putting together a business case or trying to prioritize tax department projects, as you may be able to better align with overall CFO and other corporate initiatives.  Big fan of doing your homework!

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Which Side of the Tax War Are You On?

Posted by Traci Wheeler on Feb 21, 2012 in Events, February, Tax | 0 comments

Which Side of the Tax War Are You On?

With the November presidential election rapidly approaching, there are all kinds of issues creating heated debates on both sides of the aisle. However, the one that will be at the forefront of this next election is how to fuel the economy, create jobs and put people back to work, and with that discussion comes the issue of whether taxes should be raised or lowered.

A good visual of where the two sides stand and what job growth in correlation to top marginal income tax rates has looked like over the last forty years with seven different presidents is provided in the below infographic posted in late 2011 by Jane Hendrick on G+, a Gerson, Lehrman Group community.   

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Hot Tips to Negotiation for Tax Pros!

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 16, 2012 in Empowerment Series, Leadership, Tax | 0 comments

Hot Tips to Negotiation for Tax Pros!

A standard definition of Negotiation is “a conversation or dialogue between two or more people, attempting to reach an understanding or gain advantage of some sort, to resolve a point or competing perspectives, to produce an agreement upon courses of action, or to bargain for an individual or for your team. Negotiation is a process where each party involved in negotiating tries to gain an advantage by the end of the process”. Do any of these descriptions fit your day to day activities?  Or more fittingly perhaps, do you realize that on a regular basis  it is tough to get what you want?  Whether it be more money for the tax department to automate or add staff, to negotiate a tax position, or to argue for greater pay, bonus or benefits?  Perhaps to negotiate different tactics to reduce ETR, increase tax savings or free up cash flow? 

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Here is a Way to Stay Up-to-Date on Tax & Not Lose Time

Posted by Traci Wheeler on Feb 15, 2012 in Empowerment Series, February, Tax | 0 comments

Here is a Way to Stay Up-to-Date on Tax & Not Lose Time

Today’s tax professionals are extremely busy.  There is barely enough time in the day to get all of the work done much less read corporate tax articles and opinions and stay abreast of the latest tax law changes.  I understand how difficult that can be.  My own e-mail inbox is filled with articles, blogs and newsletters I always have good intentions of coming back to read when I have some “free time”.  Inevitably, most of those articles sit in my inbox for a couple of weeks and then finally get deleted as I try to keep the number of e-mails to a manageable level.

Because the articles I am deleting typically don’t impact my job, this kind of management of information is okay. 

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Is FATCA Keeping You Up at Night?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 14, 2012 in Compliance, Finance, Tax | 0 comments

Is FATCA Keeping You Up at Night?

Throughout the conferences I attended last year, I heard a lot of presentations and discussions tailored towards tax department challenges, financial reporting, tax reporting and compliance concerns.  Most talks were titled “Emerging Trends” in a particular area, or “Income Tax Challenges”, “Tax Accounting Concerns” and other such nomenclature.  There were also lots of questions to conference participants trying to illicit what folks’ biggest concerns were for 2011 and 2012.  As you can imagine, I definitely heard a lot of heated discussion.  Interestingly enough, quite a few folks were even savvy enough to answer the question with FATCA.  In fact, I heard several tax pros say that they have had plenty of time to plan for and implement changes to mitigate risks on the new Uncertain Tax Positions (UTP) compliance this past year, as well as on their other tax accounting challenges (good for them!).

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Which Dog are You?

Posted by Kelley Lear on Feb 9, 2012 in Humor, Tax | 0 comments

Which Dog are You?

OK, I just completed some research on the latest tax related material weaknesses and am getting ready to write up some best practices on remediation…and have been writing some pretty “heady” blog posts lately (at least in my mind).  So, I thought I would take a quick break and share something funny for a change.  I honestly don’t know what made me think of this theme other than the fact that sometimes my dog seemingly takes on the funniest “human characteristics”, and it got me thinking about certain folks in the business world and what I think they would look like if they were actually characterized by a dog.  OK, so maybe I have been working too hard lately and need a break.

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