Accounting Law Commons^™

Accounting In A Changing Landscape: A Collection Of Case Studies, Rachel K. Rowe

Honors Theses

This thesis comprises six independent yet interconnected case studies that reflect on a range of modern accounting and regulatory topics. These cases were written under the direction of Dr. Victoria Dickinson during two semesters of the Professional Research and Development Thesis Program at the University of Mississippi. The purpose of this class is to provide students with the opportunity to research cases that have real-world applications in the field of accounting.

The first case explores Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) issues, emphasizing the increased importance of reporting for them and the growing role of accountants in sustainability assurance. The second …

Should We Watch The Watcher Or The Watched? The Transparency Debate In Auditor Regulation, Sarah Williams

University of Cincinnati Law Review

No abstract provided.

Diverse Analyses Of Accounting: A Series Of Case Studies, Hannah Harris

Honors Theses

This thesis consists of a diverse variety of case studies surrounded accounting and accounting-related issues. The first five cases span a broad range of topics, such as 9/11 and COVID-19 and their effects on the accounting industry. The last five cases, which were completed as a team, provide an in-depth analysis of Goldman Sachs, mostly through the team’s study of their 2020 and 2021 financial statements. These cases provide an overview of the company and the team’s suggested improvements in each line of service—audit, tax, advisory, and risk advisory. Through these cases, I was provided a much deeper insight into …

Tax Reform Throughout U.S. History And The Economic Impact, Jacob Christopher Michel

Honors Thesis

The three largest tax reforms in recent years, The 1986 Tax Reform Act (TRA of 1986), The Bush Tax Cuts Act, and The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), differed in the treatment of taxable income through capital gains tax rate, depreciation treatment, limitation of losses, standard deduction, and the marginal rates in general. These provisions were studied to provide insight into how they affected various stakeholders. The TRA of 1986 and the Bush Tax Cuts Act have data determining whether they benefitted high-income taxpayers to the highest extent. The low-income taxpayers were also given tax breaks, however, not to …

Adverse Domination, Statutes Of Limitations And The In Pari Delicto Defense - Application In Cases Involving Claims Of Accounting Malpractice And Corporate Fraud, Laurence A. Steckman Esq., Adam J. Rader Esq.

Touro Law Review

No abstract provided.

Addressing The Auditor Independence Puzzle: Regulatory Models And Proposal For Reform, Martin Gelter, Aurelio Gurrea-Martinez

Research Collection Yong Pung How School Of Law

Auditors play a major role in corporate governance and capital markets. Ex ante, auditors facilitate firms’ access to finance by fostering trust among public investors. Ex post, auditors can prevent misbehavior and financial fraud by corporate insiders. In order to fulfill these goals, however, in addition to having the adequate knowledge and expertise, auditors must perform their functions in an independent manner. Unfortunately, auditors are subject to conflicts of interest by, for example, providing non-audit services or the mere fact of being hired and paid by the audited company. Therefore, even if auditors act independently, investors have reason to think …

The Auditor's Responsibilities For Fraud Detection And Disclosure: Do The Auditing Standards Provide A Safe Harbor?, James L. Costello

Maine Law Review

Eighty-seven percent of managers recently surveyed were willing to commit financial statement fraud. More than half were willing to overstate assets, forty-eight percent were willing to understate loss reserves and thirty-eight percent would "pad" a government contract. These disturbing results are underscored by the financial miseries still brewing in the savings and loan industry, as well as by other corporate and banking financial debacles of the past decade, including Lincoln Savings & Loan, Wedtech, and the Delorean sports car venture scandal. Amidst these financial ruins we find the chronic element of management fraud. Unfortunately for investors and depositors a troublesome …

Law School News: Throw Out The Old Thinking 9-30-2019, Michael M. Bowden

Life of the Law School (1993- )

No abstract provided.

The Professor Anthony J. Santoro Business Law Lecture Series Presents Becoming A Valued Business Lawyer, Roger Williams University School Of Law, Michael M. Bowden

School of Law Conferences, Lectures & Events

No abstract provided.

Reconsidering Realization-Based Accounting For Equity Compensation, David I. Walker

Faculty Scholarship

The U.S. equity compensation landscape continues to evolve. Recent innovations have improved the linkage between pay and firm-specific performance, but have added complexity. Against that backdrop, this Article urges reconsideration of the accounting rules for equity pay. Under current rules, most equity pay awards are expensed based on grant date valuation with no updating for changes in value post grant. This Article advocates the adoption of a mark-to-market or realization-based approach under which the expense recorded for all equity pay awards would ultimately be trued to the value received by employees. Increasingly, equity pay awards are more analogous to commissions …

Contingent Purchase Price, Contingent Liabilities And Indemnities In Taxable Acquisitions (Slides), William M. Richardson, Robert H. Wellen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

Contingent Consideration, Contingent Liabilities And Indemnities In Acquisitions (Outline), Robert H. Wellen

William & Mary Annual Tax Conference

No abstract provided.

The Timing And Source Of Regulation, Frank Partnoy

Seattle University Law Review

The distinction between specific concrete rules and general abstract principles has engaged legal theorists for decades. This rules–principles distinction has also become increasingly important in corporate and securities law, as well as financial market regulation. This Article adds two important variables to the rules–principles debate: timing and source. Although these two variables are relevant to legal theory generally, the specific goal here is not to address and engage the rules versus principles literature directly. Rather, the goal here is to ask whether the debate about financial market regulation might benefit from a more transparent analysis of temporal and legal source …

Translations In Regulatory Space: The Arenas Of Regulatory Innovation In Accounting Standard Setting, Yasmine Chahed

Indiana Journal of Global Legal Studies

This paper investigates the conditions of possibility for innovation in regulatory space. The first-time inclusion of narrative reporting on the agenda of the British Accounting Standards Board (ASB) is studied in terms of a complex web of discursive schemes, which co-constituted the regulatory issue and the context in which it emerged. By exploring the discursive level of accounting reform, the approach shows how the emergence of narrative reporting on the agenda of the ASB was mediated in a historically specific constellation of formal institutional structures, professional trajectories, and changing conceptions of the roles and purposes of accounting in business management …

Risky Returns: Accounting For Risk In The Federal Budget, David Kamin

Indiana Law Journal

There has been a growing consensus among academics, analysts, and policymakers that the official federal budget estimates should reflect the “cost of risk”—the amount that the private market would demand to bear risk. The result would be to add tens, if not hundreds, of billions of dollars in annual costs to the federal budget and, in combination with the budget enforcement laws now in place, make it much more difficult for the federal government to create or expand programs that involve risk—ranging from student lending to home mortgage guarantees to, potentially, broad social insurance programs like unemployment insurance. This Article …

Building The House On A Weak Foundation: Edenfield V. Fane And The Current State Of The Commercial Speech Doctrine, Dennis William Bishop

Pepperdine Law Review

No abstract provided.

Punctuated Equilibrium: A Model For Administrative Evolution, Mark Niles

Scholarly Articles in Law Reviews & Journals

No abstract provided.

Backdated Stock Options Ownership Impact On The Corporation, Management, & Shareholders, Karen Cascini, Alan Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

In the post-Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOx) world, there has been an unprecedented crackdown on fraudulent activity occurring within corporate America. During recent years, many companies have granted stock options to their executives and employees as part of compensation packages. While the issuance of stock options as a component of compensation is considered to be a legal practice, corruption has taken this corporate resource to unlawful heights. Recently, numerous corporations have been in the news for potentially backdating stock options. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to distinguish between legal and illegal aspects of backdating stock options, and to examine the …

An Examination Of The Government Accounting Standards Board, Christopher D. Jones

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis examines the Government Accounting Standards Board by considering its history, current structure, and treatment of a current accounting standards debate. It then uses this examination to make recommendations as to reforms of the GASB and government accounting.

Gatekeeper Incentive Compensation, Sharon Hannes

Faculty Working Papers

A massive wave of corporate fraud at the beginning of the twenty first century exposed the failure of corporate gatekeepers. The Sarbanes-Oxley legislation accordingly targeted gatekeepers, primarily auditors, by imposing strict regulation and enhanced independence guidelines. This legislative remedy is of disputable benefit while its costs have been huge. This paper maintains that a certain type of auditor incentive compensation could work better than regulation. Under such an alternative scheme, auditors would defer a portion of the payment they receive from the client firm, which would be used to purchase shares in the client after their tenure as auditor has …

An Assessment Of The Impact Of The Sarbanes-Oxley Act On The Investigation Violations Of The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, Karen Cascini, Alan L. Delfavero

WCBT Faculty Publications

During the late 1990s and early 2000s, a plethora of corporate scandals occurred. Due to these corporate debacles, corporate executives have been placed under fire. In response to such unethical conduct with regard to internal practices and financial reporting, legislation has been passed in order to ensure that corporations conduct their business in an ethical manner. The purpose of this paper is to assess the connection between the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 (FCPA) and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOx), to determine whether SOx has influenced the FCPA’s investigative violation activities by examining the number of such investigations …

The Screening Effect Of The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act, Stephen Choi, Karen K. Nelson, Adam C. Pritchard

Law & Economics Working Papers Archive: 2003-2009

Prior research shows that the PSLRA increased the significance of merit-related factors, such as the presence of an accounting restatement or insider selling, in determining the incidence and outcomes of securities fraud class actions. (Johnson, Nelson, and Pritchard, 2007). This result, however, is consistent with two possible hypotheses. First, the PSLRA may have reduced solely the incidence of non-meritorious litigation. Second, the PSLRA may have changed the definition of merit, effectively precluding claims that would have survived and produced a settlement pre-PSLRA. This paper tests these alternative hypotheses. We find that pre-PSLRA claims that settled for nuisance value would be …

A Complete Property Right Amendment, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

The trend of the eminent domain reform and "Kelo plus" initiatives is toward a comprehensive Constitutional property right incorporating the elements of level of review, nature of government action, and extent of compensation. This article contains a draft amendment which reflects these concerns.

Corporations And Social Costs: The Wal-Mart Case Study, Benedict Sheehy

ExpressO

This article examines the role of the corporate vehicle in the creation of social costs. The article identifies some of the political commitments and philosophies behind the differing notions of corporations. Social costs are those activities which result from business activity and cause uncompensated harm to society. The founding contribution to the law and economics discussion by Ronald Coase is given a thorough treatment. The paper next, turns to the dominant explanation of corporate structure, namely the law and economics model developed expounded by Easterbrook and Fischel. It then applies the theoretical discussion in a case study of the world’s …

Predatory Structured Finance, Christopher L. Peterson

ExpressO

Predatory lending is a real, pervasive, and destructive problem as demonstrated by record settlements, jury awards, media exposes, and a large body of empirical scholarship. Currently the national debate over predatory mortgage lending is shifting to the controversial question of who should bear liability for predatory lending practices. In today’s subprime mortgage market, originators and brokers quickly assign home loans through a complex and opaque series of transactions involving as many as a dozen different strategically organized companies. Loans are typically transferred into large pools, and then income from those loans is “structured” to appeal to different types of investors. …

Financial Accounting And Corporate Behavior, David I. Walker

ExpressO

The power of financial accounting to shape corporate behavior is underappreciated. Positive accounting theory teaches that even cosmetic changes in reported earnings can affect share value, not because market participants are unable to see through such changes to the underlying fundamentals, but because of implicit or explicit contracts that are based on reported earnings and transaction costs. However, agency theory suggests that accounting choices and corporate responses to accounting standard changes will not necessarily be those that maximize share value. For a number of reasons, including the fact that executive compensation often is tied to reported earnings, managerial preferences for …

The Equivalence Approach To Securities Regulation, Tzung-Bor Wei

ExpressO

Abstract

In the past, academics and regulators debated two competing approaches to international securities regulation, namely “harmonization” and “regulatory competition.” More recently, a third approach to securities regulation has emerged – the “equivalence” approach. Under this model, a host country exempts foreign firms from certain host country rules when the firms’ home country rules are sufficiently similar, or “equivalent.” Many regulators have come to embrace equivalence, which is rapidly becoming a key principle in international finance.

This paper studies the concept of equivalence. It begins by defining “equivalence,” highlighting that different regulators manipulate the term to give it contrasting meanings. …

Bond Repudiation, Tax Codes, The Appropriations Process And Restitution Post-Eminent Domain Reform, John H. Ryskamp

ExpressO

This brief comment suggests where the anti-eminent domain movement might be heading next.

The Partnership: Preserving Capital Gains On Real Estate Investments, Charles E. Mcwilliams

ExpressO

This paper considers the use of partnerships as an effective tool for preserving capital gains on real estate investments. For tax purposes, the Internal Revenue Service generally treats a limited liability company as a partnership. This form of organization is widely used for real estate investments, and by taking a few simple precautions an LLC may ensure that any gain on its investments in undeveloped real property will be treated as capital gains. Such treatment may reduce the LLC’s tax costs substantially.

The Fifth Circuit developed a framework that has proven invaluable for analyzing the activity of the LLC to …

Priority As Pathology: The Pari Passu Myth, Riz Mokal

ExpressO

This paper aims to analyse the pari passu principle of insolvency law (which provides that the creditors of a company in liquidation are to be paid rateably), and to ask how it relates to other principles available for the treatment of claims in corporate liquidation. The discussion reveals that the principle has rather limited effect in governing distributions of the insolvent's estate. Not only do various types of secured claim fall beyond its ambit, even unsecured claims are often exempt from its application. Nevertheless, the principle thrives both in judicial rhetoric and in academic arguments. For example, many a challenge …