News

Facing an unprecedented global crisis, it’s natural to turn to taxes for comfort. As strange or unwanted a claim as this seems, our tax system reflects our societal wants and needs, and the behaviours we wish to encourage or discourage.

We investigate how board expertise affects chief executive officer (CEO) incentives and firm value. The CEO engages in a sequence of tasks: first acquiring information to evaluate a potential project, then reporting his or her assessment of the project to the board, and finally implementing the project if it is adopted.

SAF Grads Continue to Achieve!

We are happy to advise that the CBV Institute’s 2019 Membership Qualification Exam (MQE) went off without a hitch this past September and its results were recently announced.   It gives us great pleasure to share the list of SAF grads below who represent over 9% of this year’s successful candidates.

BEYOND TRANSFORMATIONAL
Setting the benchmark early in thought leadership

BEYOND RELEVANT

Uber’s data breach, Facebook’s Cambridge Analytica leak, and Amazon Alexa’s spying scandal — these are just some of the crises from the past year that illustrate how important ethical decision-making remains as we fall headlong into the digital revolution. The uproar that has engulfed these industry giants are a testament to the foresight of the Centre for Accounting Ethics’ 2019 Symposium, “The Impact of Technology on Ethics, Professionalism Judgment in Accounting." This is especially true, as planning for the event began in 2017. Symposium organizers Linda Robinson and Krista Fiolleau tell us what it takes to make Accounting Ethics smarter in an age of smart technology.

Related party transactions (hereafter RPTs) involve a transfer of resources, services, or obligations between a reporting entity and a related party (SFAS 57; IAS 24). Although not all RPTs are “bad," prior research documents that some RPTs reflect insider opportunism and are harmful to shareholders.

Policy makers and regulators generally believe firms should enlist directors with more expertise. For example, the U.S.

When a firm suffers from a credit downgrade, will it be possible for the firm to record a large unrealized gain in its income? The answer is yes under the accounting standard SFAS No. 159 of the U.S. GAAP.

In a recent study published in The Accounting Review, Assistant Professor Kaishu Wu, School of Accounting and Finance and his colleagues David Guenther and Ryan Wilson (both at the University of Oregon) examine whether high levels of corporate income tax avoidance are achieved with additional risk-taking. In other words, do firms first exhaust relatively “safe” tax planning strategies before turning to “risky” strategies, as they pursue more tax savings?