Econospeak dug into Accenture's financials and found some interesting effective tax rates and implies it is due to offshore outsourcing, as I suspect.
Truth be told, I too dug into Accenture's 10-k and other financials but I could not nail down their U.S. federal tax beyond they gained $243 million by settling U.S. federal tax audits from 2006 to 2009.
Very convoluted and no surprise from a multinational moving tax havens probably doing the double dutch and assuredly offshore outsourcing since this is 40% of their worth.
Glad to see someone pick up on their taxes, non-trivial on a multinational!
I'm sure they were not the only ones lobbying to wipe out small engineering consulting businesses.
As far as Enron goes, we're leaving it. You are referring to the public timeline the story broke. Internally all knew very close to the name change date that Aurthur Anderson was cooking the books for Enron and odds are they knew this long before and one of the reasons they ended up going to jail over it (a shocker rarity!). As far as this piece goes, the focus is not on 2001, but on 2014 and how right now, this is what Accenture is doing, right now and recently is still having overbillings, failed contracts. There is another huge one in Texas that cost the state millions to even get out of, not mentioned in this article.
You may want to double check this claim from other sources before you accept it (I'd do it, but I have to go run errands, but didn't want to leave you twisting in the wind). It makes perfect sense, they benefitted the most from it
Accenture's name change was 10 months before the Enron scandal broke. I knew someone pretty well who worked at Andersen Consulting during the name change - I do feel that it had nothing to do with Enron - but there is *plenty* of indisputable bad stuff they've done. I see that this story is getting some traction - good. It really is an outrage, it's an example of how profoundly disenfranchised the American tech worker is
You're right, but they changed the name when they had to of known Enron was happening. Enron really was known internally by 02/01 and they changed the name 01/01.
Also, they did not gain actual independence from Arthur Andersen until August 2000. Yes, the company split in 1989, but they were still recommending clients and making transfer payments up until that time. The timing has always been pretty interesting, they had 11 years to resolve and truly separate the two divisions, now companies, stop referrals, payments, yet magically at the stroke of Enron did the name change.
Folks, anyone reading 1706 IRS rule this is a host of independent contractor IRS requirements which effectively wiped out STEM small business independent contractors and gave rise to the wage slave organizations where large corporations will only contract with them and not the little guy directly.
I did not know they lobbied for this rule IRS 1706 and this is an outrage onto itself. As a result of this contract houses pocket profits which should be going to the actual engineers. They can take up to 80% of what they are charging a company for the contract "worker" instead of that contract worker being a small business and obtaining what they are really worth.
It really reduced the status of engineers, their value, their wages, their income and their influence and put the profits into the hands of these glorified slave traders. these contract houses do not add value, supervise, are involved in any engineering related decisions, they are simply body shop buffers to avoid IRS misclassification and penalties. A guy flew his airplane into an IRS building over this rule, not that such actions are condoned but it did wipe out many a technical small business owner.
There is an economist war going on with various claims on labor participation rates, accompanied by various data analysis, some where the flaws are already apparent, some with no explanation of calculations and some where currently the underlying data for statistics published cannot be found.
As a result of all of this, I'm on the hunt for this microdata claimed to be used and will eventually put together another LPR analysis piece but with moving averages and directly replying to the various analysis out there trying to claim it's all just retired etc. causing the labor participation rate implosion. Data don't lie, but statistics sure do, so i will crank them all from raw data and publish what is found with numbers, assumptions, sources,graphs and of course sarcasm. Stay tuned.
The name change from Andersen Consulting to Accenture occurred before the Enron meltdown, and was forced by Arthur Anderson, as Andersen Consulting had been spun off as a separate entity in around 1989. There's plenty one can blame on Andersen Consulting/Accenture, they were one of the lobbyists for the 1706 IRS rule to stamp out indeptendents, their H-1b abuse and outsourcing. I see that this story is getting picked up, you might want to investigate what I say and submit corrections to the media that is publishing this - rest assured the H-1b pushers will make a big deal out of it
To back up the premise of this piece is a nice essay by Sam Polk for the NYT called "For the Love of Money". Pretty much verifies Bud's point.
On another topic, off topic BTW, i just have to say how amusing I find it the Walmart calls their wage slaves "associates" as if they were partners in a law firm.
A lot of work, normally I just had a link to last month's overview, but on retail sales I don't do all of these graphs monthly.
That said, I hear ya and amplifying revisions is good juju. Wall Street and especially HFT just could care less about the real economy. They trade on headline numbers, do not care at all what they mean in terms of the real economy, just how they will impact their next few hours of trades.
You could make up anything and they will plug it into their algorithms, or worse, the HFT fetches the number in nanoseconds of it's release and trades on it.
I do show revisions on GDP and sometimes on employment figures.
There is yet another battle on LPR so I'll once again crank the figures after the population controls. I swear, that argument is absurd for this is one easily verified by the data on why the labor participation rate is so low. It's very clearly so low due to working age people dropping out of the labor force and we have all sorts of economists trying to deny the truth of that with time window statistical spin.
when i do revisions like that i use a split screen and view both November advanced and November preliminary side by side as im writing it up...most people wont go through all that trouble to find the old data to compare it to the new...
the process starts with an interview, then those who fit the demographic mix they're looking for are called for 4 consecutive months, after which they're dropped...the details are here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#where
i dont know of anyone who's been counted either...
gasoline prices were 3.1% higher & fuel oil was up 2.4%...however, that category, energy commodities, was listed as up 3.4%...i dont see where they got that, unless they're saying kerosene and firewood drove the energy commodity index up
like the above, i've been including a paragraph on revisions with retail sales for the last six months, after i realized that the revisions were in fact greater than the advance monthly change...
i also always lead with the Census quote: "0.2 percent (±0.5%)* " and explain what that asterisk means..
Some of these monthly statistical releases I've debated about covering at all. Traders jump on these figures but no one can analyze intelligently fast enough for traders, they want 3 second numbers and then HFT just have the figures captured and entered automatically into their trading algorithm software.
But you bring up the problem because one can have headline buzz yet that changes next month and almost no one sees it because it's now "old data".
Any suggestions on how to deal with revisions in these overviews? Maybe stop overviewing monthly statistical releases entirely and just do topics periodically with older data? No real time economics here if we did that.
This is so common as a technique among so called liberals. They take an important issue, such as income inequality and then promote policies claiming to improve the situation when in fact they caused it or will make it much, much worse. Not to be left out, that's an upside down technique of conservatives too. (They will help people by cutting social security and food stamps).
That's a scathing call out on Reich by NC, but I read it and I'm pretty certain the facts are accurate.
If one is polite and asks questions you can call them and then will respond.
They don't rotate different households each survey and they are specific geographical and I believe demographic selected "samples", first time by in person interview that people agree to this.
That's my issue, how many people who really representing working America agree to the interviews in the first place?
Econospeak dug into Accenture's financials and found some interesting effective tax rates and implies it is due to offshore outsourcing, as I suspect.
Truth be told, I too dug into Accenture's 10-k and other financials but I could not nail down their U.S. federal tax beyond they gained $243 million by settling U.S. federal tax audits from 2006 to 2009.
Very convoluted and no surprise from a multinational moving tax havens probably doing the double dutch and assuredly offshore outsourcing since this is 40% of their worth.
Glad to see someone pick up on their taxes, non-trivial on a multinational!
I'm sure they were not the only ones lobbying to wipe out small engineering consulting businesses.
As far as Enron goes, we're leaving it. You are referring to the public timeline the story broke. Internally all knew very close to the name change date that Aurthur Anderson was cooking the books for Enron and odds are they knew this long before and one of the reasons they ended up going to jail over it (a shocker rarity!). As far as this piece goes, the focus is not on 2001, but on 2014 and how right now, this is what Accenture is doing, right now and recently is still having overbillings, failed contracts. There is another huge one in Texas that cost the state millions to even get out of, not mentioned in this article.
I was surprised that you had not heard of Andersen Consulting's (then stil Arthur Andersen) role in this, so I double checked where I heard it
The Texas Suicide flyer claimed it in his suicide note - that's where I heard it
http://www.alternet.org/story/145745/texas_suicide_flyer_had_real_populi...
You may want to double check this claim from other sources before you accept it (I'd do it, but I have to go run errands, but didn't want to leave you twisting in the wind). It makes perfect sense, they benefitted the most from it
just wanted to give you a cite
Accenture's name change was 10 months before the Enron scandal broke. I knew someone pretty well who worked at Andersen Consulting during the name change - I do feel that it had nothing to do with Enron - but there is *plenty* of indisputable bad stuff they've done. I see that this story is getting some traction - good. It really is an outrage, it's an example of how profoundly disenfranchised the American tech worker is
You're right, but they changed the name when they had to of known Enron was happening. Enron really was known internally by 02/01 and they changed the name 01/01.
Also, they did not gain actual independence from Arthur Andersen until August 2000. Yes, the company split in 1989, but they were still recommending clients and making transfer payments up until that time. The timing has always been pretty interesting, they had 11 years to resolve and truly separate the two divisions, now companies, stop referrals, payments, yet magically at the stroke of Enron did the name change.
Folks, anyone reading 1706 IRS rule this is a host of independent contractor IRS requirements which effectively wiped out STEM small business independent contractors and gave rise to the wage slave organizations where large corporations will only contract with them and not the little guy directly.
I did not know they lobbied for this rule IRS 1706 and this is an outrage onto itself. As a result of this contract houses pocket profits which should be going to the actual engineers. They can take up to 80% of what they are charging a company for the contract "worker" instead of that contract worker being a small business and obtaining what they are really worth.
It really reduced the status of engineers, their value, their wages, their income and their influence and put the profits into the hands of these glorified slave traders. these contract houses do not add value, supervise, are involved in any engineering related decisions, they are simply body shop buffers to avoid IRS misclassification and penalties. A guy flew his airplane into an IRS building over this rule, not that such actions are condoned but it did wipe out many a technical small business owner.
There is an economist war going on with various claims on labor participation rates, accompanied by various data analysis, some where the flaws are already apparent, some with no explanation of calculations and some where currently the underlying data for statistics published cannot be found.
As a result of all of this, I'm on the hunt for this microdata claimed to be used and will eventually put together another LPR analysis piece but with moving averages and directly replying to the various analysis out there trying to claim it's all just retired etc. causing the labor participation rate implosion. Data don't lie, but statistics sure do, so i will crank them all from raw data and publish what is found with numbers, assumptions, sources,graphs and of course sarcasm. Stay tuned.
The name change from Andersen Consulting to Accenture occurred before the Enron meltdown, and was forced by Arthur Anderson, as Andersen Consulting had been spun off as a separate entity in around 1989. There's plenty one can blame on Andersen Consulting/Accenture, they were one of the lobbyists for the 1706 IRS rule to stamp out indeptendents, their H-1b abuse and outsourcing. I see that this story is getting picked up, you might want to investigate what I say and submit corrections to the media that is publishing this - rest assured the H-1b pushers will make a big deal out of it
To back up the premise of this piece is a nice essay by Sam Polk for the NYT called "For the Love of Money". Pretty much verifies Bud's point.
On another topic, off topic BTW, i just have to say how amusing I find it the Walmart calls their wage slaves "associates" as if they were partners in a law firm.
Perhaps it is more sad than amusing
A lot of work, normally I just had a link to last month's overview, but on retail sales I don't do all of these graphs monthly.
That said, I hear ya and amplifying revisions is good juju. Wall Street and especially HFT just could care less about the real economy. They trade on headline numbers, do not care at all what they mean in terms of the real economy, just how they will impact their next few hours of trades.
You could make up anything and they will plug it into their algorithms, or worse, the HFT fetches the number in nanoseconds of it's release and trades on it.
I do show revisions on GDP and sometimes on employment figures.
There is yet another battle on LPR so I'll once again crank the figures after the population controls. I swear, that argument is absurd for this is one easily verified by the data on why the labor participation rate is so low. It's very clearly so low due to working age people dropping out of the labor force and we have all sorts of economists trying to deny the truth of that with time window statistical spin.
when i do revisions like that i use a split screen and view both November advanced and November preliminary side by side as im writing it up...most people wont go through all that trouble to find the old data to compare it to the new...
i figure real retail sales to be up 1.4% in the 4th quarter, 5.75% annualized, and estimate they'll add 1.32% to 4th quarter GDP
Commodities are finished goods ready for sale. Indexes are what was actually purchased.
So, in other words, energy commodities being higher means we're going to see higher energy purchase prices soon.
It's the stage of production, so commodities are the very final stage being priced for sale, but not actually purchased by consumers.
I believe this is the difference you can correct if you find out otherwise.
The problem with that is if people wanted to see just a string of numbers they would download the pdf from the Census. They want revisions in context.
Also, error margins are at the bottom of this post. Even financial people do not necessarily read easily margins of error in overviews.
You are right on November revisions still overall retail sales clearly did not implode as many in the press were claiming it would.
the process starts with an interview, then those who fit the demographic mix they're looking for are called for 4 consecutive months, after which they're dropped...the details are here: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#where
i dont know of anyone who's been counted either...
gasoline prices were 3.1% higher & fuel oil was up 2.4%...however, that category, energy commodities, was listed as up 3.4%...i dont see where they got that, unless they're saying kerosene and firewood drove the energy commodity index up
like the above, i've been including a paragraph on revisions with retail sales for the last six months, after i realized that the revisions were in fact greater than the advance monthly change...
i also always lead with the Census quote: "0.2 percent (±0.5%)* " and explain what that asterisk means..
Some of these monthly statistical releases I've debated about covering at all. Traders jump on these figures but no one can analyze intelligently fast enough for traders, they want 3 second numbers and then HFT just have the figures captured and entered automatically into their trading algorithm software.
But you bring up the problem because one can have headline buzz yet that changes next month and almost no one sees it because it's now "old data".
Any suggestions on how to deal with revisions in these overviews? Maybe stop overviewing monthly statistical releases entirely and just do topics periodically with older data? No real time economics here if we did that.
This is so common as a technique among so called liberals. They take an important issue, such as income inequality and then promote policies claiming to improve the situation when in fact they caused it or will make it much, much worse. Not to be left out, that's an upside down technique of conservatives too. (They will help people by cutting social security and food stamps).
That's a scathing call out on Reich by NC, but I read it and I'm pretty certain the facts are accurate.
If one is polite and asks questions you can call them and then will respond.
They don't rotate different households each survey and they are specific geographical and I believe demographic selected "samples", first time by in person interview that people agree to this.
That's my issue, how many people who really representing working America agree to the interviews in the first place?
sure get it from his writing and interviews.
Pages