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Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:09AM (#36930831)
Another thought: What if all corporate accountants were required to be government employees? We can start with transnational companies first. Then LLCs and Incs.

Disincentivize the massive fraud that we see today.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by prepend on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:17AM (#36930878)
I think this would result in really poor accounting since there’s a big disconnect between a government employer and a company being audited and its books kept.

In theory it works because the government auditor would be more interested in justice than corporate interests. In practice, an embedded external employee would not have the relationships to have viable information and would probably end up doing only the most perfunctory level of work to not be fired.

My org had this issue where our cyber group embedded an employee in each organization (we basically had a federation of different groups with separate funding streams and incentives) but their career ladders were disconnected from the local org. So the boss in the cyber org never really knew the work and just wanted safety. The org wanted to produce for their mission. So it led to this weird cycle where the embedded cyber person would stop stop every new project. The cyber boss was happy and promoted and gave raises. But it was bad for the org because no new projects.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:08AM (#36931921)
It depends on whether accountants’ concerns here are about auditing and fining (indirectly) for non-compliance, or if they’re allowed and expected to block projects.

For SEC compliance reporting, I’ve seen banks take it both very seriously and provide the absolute minimum to pass muster such that the COs could barely do their jobs.

What’s clear is that the “same old” and “reasonable” approaches aren’t working, and a disruption is needed.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by TacticalCoder on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:21AM (#36930909)
Yes komrade! Party members in every private companies, that sounds like a winning strategy for a free society.

Note that people who actually think that's a good idea can probably find a way to go live in China and enjoy their social credit score there.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:30AM (#36930986)
You think Soviet Union.

I think Boeing and 737 Max:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/how-the-faa-al...

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by cscurmudgeon on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:46AM (#36931095)
This is safety not financial auditing though. Huge difference. Also see FDA and how it allows companies to submit data and studies.
Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by bpm140 on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:12AM (#36931985)
I have no strong point of view and am interested in why you think safety is okay and financial auditing is not. Are both not about serving the interests of the public?
Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by cscurmudgeon on Sunday July 30, 2023 @12:09PM (#36932711)
> I have no strong point of view and am interested in why you think safety is okay and financial auditing is not

1. Real-world data. We all know how it went. Like a scientist, I go by with empirical data when dealing with complex systems that can't impact 100s of millions and not by ideology. The last time a govt audited private financial decisions (and other decisions) was when Soviet Union was alive. Let's do a 5-10 year A/B test and see before making a massive change. (This way we ensure dead sparrows don't cause famines.)

2. Also, why can't the govt clean up its massive fraud and wastage first? Isn't that serving the interests of the public more than political commissars micromanaging every nook and corner of the country? First, the govt should clean up massive fraud wasting tax payer money. Then, lets talk about govt auditing minutiae of businesses. In these kind of threads, there is an assumption that the govt. is 100% efficient. It is not. 2 seconds of digging:

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/biggest-...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...

3. Just because something is important, doesn't mean a bureaucrat should micromanage that by default.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by cscurmudgeon on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:47AM (#36931107)
Doesn’t the govt lose large amounts of money to various fraud schemes?

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1279664

May be the govt should have private sector auditors to help with that?

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:18AM (#36932053)
Yes, by underfunding auditers and accountability. Or throwing out money without any sense of accounting.

Yes, fraudsters will take full advantage of it.

Your example shows why we need more auditers and more frequent auditing, not less.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by cscurmudgeon on Sunday July 30, 2023 @12:04PM (#36932641)
> Your example shows why we need more auditers and more frequent auditing, not less.

Yes more auditors for govt. Not more govt. auditors for business.

More auditing != govt auditing of private business

There is a jump of logic there to go from left to right of the equation.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @12:25PM (#36932882)
> Yes more auditors for govt. Not more govt. auditors for business.

It was your example.

Explain then the point of your example, beyond “see, government must be incompetent.”

Because I see a leap of logic in saying “government (org) +government (audit)” incompetence implies “private (org) + goverment (audit)” incompetence.

Nevermind that all nuance was stripped away in making a one-liner.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by JacobAldridge on Sunday July 30, 2023 @09:51AM (#36931139)
> What if all corporate accountants were required to be government employees?

So then what if a company is seeking to expand internationally, and looking at options for various reasons (including costs, which includes the tax burden). Isn’t it a conflict of interest to have a US government employee weighing in on how to improve a company at the loss of IRS revenue?

And that’s an extreme example. Any company accountant or CFO is going to be involved in regular decisions where “paying less tax” is an important outcome to consider.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:23AM (#36932131)
Isn’t that the task of tax attorneys? Different line of work, though same domain of concern.
Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by JacobAldridge on Sunday July 30, 2023 @04:52PM (#36935835)
Depending on the size of the company, you’d probably need a team; but there aren’t too many companies with a tax attorney on the staff so the accounting team would be doing the heavy lifting.
Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @06:16PM (#36936567)
Large and multinational companies (your extreme example) don’t suffer from this problem; nor do medium sized ones.

Many of the smaller businesses rely on dodge—by-cash or function just fine.

In fact, the audit problems caused by tiny, front/fake LLCs and paper companies lead to a real, criminal-level audit trail problem.

Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by gorwell on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:05AM (#36931887)
"In November 2022, DOD failed its fifth consecutive audit, unable to account for sixty-one percent of its $3.5 trillion in assets."
Re:How the Rich Reap Huge Tax Breaks From Private Nonprofits by nobodyandproud on Sunday July 30, 2023 @11:15AM (#36932019)
“The sheer size and scope of the department — which makes up for more than half of the U.S. discretionary spending and has assets that range from personnel and supplies to bases and weapons — makes it difficult to audit. “

“The agency had never expected to pass, however, due to accounting issues officials said could take years to fix. Because accounting records needed to complete the assessment were not available, all five audits received a “disclaimer of opinion,” though there have been improvements each time. ”

https://thehill.com/policy/defense/3740921-defense-departmen...

The objection you’ve raised, if anything, highlights the need for a neutral outside party to annually audit and create thorough paper trails for very large organizations.

Do you want to pursue this line of argument further?