10 Years After Implementation, NYT Cites Lawyer, Former SEC Official, PCAOB Oversight Member, and Editor Who See SOX as a Positive Development.  WSJ Sources Not So Sure.  IBD Claims SOX Has "Devastated" IPO Market.  The Times’ “Room for Debate” roundtable noted that last Sunday, July 24th, marked 10 years since the Sarbanes-Oxley accounting law was enacted, after the scandals at Enron, WorldCom and elsewher ...

Solid Background on Recent Court Decisions, Valuation in US Tax Court, Estate & Gift Tax, Pension Protection, More The Primus Valuation blog offers an in-depth summary of  the proceedings of last year's ASA IRS Symposium in Los Angeles.   Although a bit more than a year old, there's very solid detail here and extensive coverage of issues still very relevant to today's practitioners.  Here's an excerpt f ...

There’s Good Reason for Long-Term Concern, Uncertainty, and Fear. Here's What To Do. James Doulgeris at Physicians Practice explains:  "Everyone in the practice and allied health world should take the title of the legislation seriously — The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). It does not say physician protection nor does it say it will be affordable for you. Most practices will suffer serious ...

Next Year’s New Medicare Tax Provides Another Incentive to form an S Corporation  Investors often use S corporations to minimize self-employment and Medicare taxes. Next year's new 3.8% tax on net investment income provides another incentive to form an S corporation. Thomas Wechter, JD, discusses in this article at The Tax Insider the new rules that take effect in 2013. ...

Alternatives to Hospital Employment Include Solo 'Micropractices,' Patient-Centered Medical Homes, and Direct-to-Pay Practices Andy Robeznieks at Modern Physician reports that medical practice innovation—including the use of technology to increase efficiency and reduce overhead—is what "holds the key to private practice being a viable alternative to salaried employment," according to a new report from the P ...

Cost Approach is Best Used Simply to Allocate Value Under the Income Approach, Contends Mark Dietrich   Mark Dietrich is concerned that a recent presentation at the NACVA annual conference may have misrepresented the views he expressed with a number of other authors in a paper published in Hospitals and Health Systems RX that was titled Assessing Intangible Value in a Physician Practice Acquisition.  He cut ...

Fraud's History is Impressive: From Over-the-Counter Cure-Alls to Florida Real Estate and Musical Talent Fraud The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners has built up a choice collection of fraud souvenirs under founder and chairman Dr. Joseph T. Wells. Visit the Accounting Today site to see  some of the most notable pieces, which include Bernie Madoff’s cigar box, an Enron stock certificate, a Nigerian F ...

Five Limited Partnerships Owned Real Estate Complexes Built in Accordance with Federal Low Income Housing Guidelines  The Appraisal Institute Newsletter notes that Bankruptcy cases assigning value to apartment buildings owned by debtors are required to include the value of remaining low-income housing tax credits.  The news was originally reported by Bloomberg BNA on July 3. A valuation order setting market ...

GuruFocus Adds New Valuation Tab to Site; New Feature Automatically Calculates DCF Valuation.  What are Top 10 The Nasdaq Community site notes the appearance of a new Valuation tab at its GuruFocus web site.  Learn about how DCF analysis works, why it's considered a reliable method of analysis, and view some top current stock picks of an investor who uses the method:    ...

A County Buys a Strip Mall Under Eminent Domain Process; at Issue is Whether Chairs and Tables Require Additional Tax   A Bankrate Tax Talk column at Fox Business News Personal Finance site considers a rather unusual case of a strip mall's sale:    ...

73% of Tech IPOs Aren't Profitable When They Go Public, But Smaller Companies (e.g., Zillow, Bazaarvoice, Jive Software) Fare Better Post IPO Bigger isn’t always better, at least when it comes to initial public offerings, GeekWire reports. A new report out from Tableau Software’s Daniel Hom, editor of the IPO Dashboards blog, finds that smaller tech companies, described as having fewer than $100 million in ...

Shielding the Family Business The best part for valuators is that all of this requires a professional appraisal (detail below). The Wall Street Journal Tax Report's Laura Sanders reports  that: Small-business owners often complain of feeling caught in the cross hairs of the tax code. For a change, here's good news. The Tax Court has just blessed a new technique that owners of closely held businesses—and wea ...

Two New Taxes on Net Investment Income and Medicare Will Take Effect on January First At the Wall Street Journal's Tax Report, Laura Saunders explains.   The word is out: Two new taxes on the affluent and wealthy will take effect as scheduled next year as a result of the Supreme Court's decision upholding the health-care overhaul. One is a new 3.8% tax on net investment income, and the other is a 0.9% incre ...

The Supreme Court Has Long Distinguished the Taxing Power from the Regulatory Power  Paul Moreno, professor of history at Hillsdale College,  details the history on the Wall Street Journal opinion page:  The first enumerated power that the Constitution grants to Congress is the "power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts, and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welf ...

In 2009 Duff & Phelps and the Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) first published the results of their comprehensive Goodwill Impairment Study. The 2009 Study examined U.S. publicly-traded companies’ recognition of goodwill impairment at the height of the financial crisis (the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009), and featured a comparative analysis of the goodwill impairments for over 5,0 ...

When Do Too Many Active Shareholders Hurt Instead of Help? At Forbes, Lawrence Siff relates his conversations with CEOs of two family businesses, discusses the challenge of bringing in new leadership, and offers tips on how and when to go about it:  ...

J.P Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley Make New Hires.  Other Banks May Follow in Move to Increase Accounting Credibility    At the Wall Street Journal's Overheard On the Street blog David Reilly reports that JP Morgan Chase and Morgan Stanley have made new accounting hires.  Other banks may soon follow suit:    ...

Mandate Survives as a Tax.   Limits on How Widely Feds Can Control States Medicare.   No Other Limits. Brent Kendall, Louise Radnofsky, and Jess Bravin of the Wall Street Journal report the news: ...

Bankers Say M&A 'Good for Good Companies' Which Can Often be Sold for 9-10x Earnings  Luisa Beltran at PE Hub wonders:   "Is there an M&A slowdown?"    ...

Uncertainty Surrounding the Court's Pending Decision Causes Transaction Delay  Private Equity International's Graham Winfrey reports that whatever way the Supreme Court rules on healthcare may end up driving more industry activity.   ...