BDO - شبكة المحاسبين العرب

الأحد, 12 سبتمبر 2021 14:27

برايس ووترهاوس PwC تتصدر قائمة أفضل شركات المحاسبة Vault لعام 2022

أصدر موقع Vault.com الخاص بالوظائف عبر الإنترنت قائمته لعام 2022 المحاسبة 50، وهو تصنيف سنوي لأفضل شركات المحاسبة للعمل بناءً على ملاحظات محترفي المحاسبة، مع تصدر شركة PwC.

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المحتوى بالإنجليزية PwC tops Vault's 2022 'Accounting 50' list
By Sean McCabe
April 16, 2021, 3:35 p.m. EDT
1 Min Read
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Online career resource Vault.com released its 2022 Accounting 50 list, an annual ranking of the best accounting firms to work for based on accounting professionals' feedback, with Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers topping the list.

Rankings were based on feedback from some 11,400 accounting professionals, who were asked to rate the firms on categories such as compensation, culture, training, work-life balance and overall prestige. The Accounting 50 list was then compiled using a weighted formula based on the internal and external rankings.

Vault’s survey also took special note of last year's events to determine their rankings, asking professionals about their firms’ responses to the COVID-19 pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement.

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Big Four firms PwC, Deloitte and KPMG placed first through third, respectively. Their fellow Big Four firm Ernst & Young placed No. 29 out of 50.

The top 10 firms of the 2022 Vault Accounting 50 are:

1. PwC
2. Deloitte
3. KPMG
4. BDO USA
5. Plante Moran
6. RSM US
7. Baker Tilly US
8. Moss Adams
9. CohnReznick
10. CBIZ MHM

For the full list, head to Vault's site here.

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الأربعاء, 11 أغسطس 2021 15:00

الاتفاقيات الدولية تحفز الانتقال إلى الحد الأدنى العالمي من الضرائب

ما بدأ كإدراك للمشهد الضريبي المتغير الذي أحدثته الشركات الكبيرة التي تحقق إيرادات كبيرة في الأماكن التي لم يكن لها وجود فعلي -وبالتالي لا توجد فيها مسؤولية ضريبية -يتجه نحو حل على المسرح الدولي.

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المحتوى بالإنجليزية Int’l agreements spur move to global minimum tax
By Roger Russell
August 09, 2021, 12:10 p.m. EDT
7 Min Read
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What began as an awareness of the changing landscape in tax brought about by large companies earning significant revenue in places where they had no physical presence — and therefore no tax responsibility — is heading for a resolution on the international stage.

After years of discussions, position papers, proposals, negotiations, and re-proposals, both the G7 and G20 met in June 2021 and gave approval to the OECD’s proposals as outlined in its Pillars 1 and 2.

“Years ago, the OECD recognized that there were issues related to digitalization of the global economy, “ said Laurie Dicker, transfer pricing technical tax leader at Top Eight Firm BDO USA. “It was based on the fact that the global tax system is built on the premise of countries having taxing rights where companies have physical presence, and as the economy digitalizes there is the notion that companies are now earning income in places where they do not necessarily have a traditional taxing presence. For example, an entity that sells a digital service, whether entertainment or educational or anything else you can access digitally. Someone can buy that in a country in which they don’t have physical presence. The servers can be anywhere, so the companies generate income from someone buying the service but the county does not get taxing rights. That’s the backdrop.”

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A long time coming

The OECD has been discussing this for years, beginning in 2013 with its identifying “Base Erosion and Profit Shifting,” or BEPS, as an issue that needed to be addressed.

“They finally started introducing proposals on how to address this,” said Dicker. “The proposals have been refined over time.”

The BEPS project was initiated in 2013; BEPS final reports were issued in October 2015; BEPS 2.0 interim reports came out in 2019; blueprints for a new global tax framework came out in October 2020; and the G7 meeting in June 2021 agreed to the OECD framework.

“There’s been an enormous amount of activity this year,” said Dicker. “What caught everyone’s attention was the G7 meeting in early June this year, when they met in person and issued a statement in support of what the OECD proposed. That was a huge opening.”

Weeks later, the G20 met and also agreed to the proposals.

“What has been proposed is a two-pillar approach,” said Dicker.

Pillar 1 involves reallocation of profit and revised nexus rules, and is concerned with what portion of profits should be taxed in the jurisdictions where clients or users are located. Pillar Two contains an anti-base erosion mechanism in order to ensure that multinational enterprises pay a minimum level of tax.

“Pillar 2 will expand the taxable revenue collected globally from corporations by implementing a global minimum tax,” said Dicker. “They’re talking about a minimum rate of 15%. The exact rate has not been decided yet. If a country where the effective tax rate is below 15%, then the home country where the company is located can tax on the difference. For example, if a U.S. multinational is taxed in Ireland at 12%, then the U.S. can impose a tax to bring that company up to the global rate. For any country that has a rate below15 %, the choice is to raise their rate or forgo the tax revenue and hand it over to the parent to the parent country. Companies will be paying the same rate; it’s just a question of where they will pay it.”

“Prominent low-tax countries are against this and countries continue to negotiate,” said Dicker. Among the countries that have not yet agreed are Ireland, Hungary, Estonia, Kenya, Nigeria, Sri Lanka and Barbados. “They each have their own reasons for not agreeing,” said Dicker.

Pillar 1 is far more complicated, according to Dicker. “It redefines taxing rights and proposes a new allocation methodology. If you develop a product in one country, manufacture it in another country, market it in another country and have customer service and warehouses in other countries, it determines what part of revenue is allocated to each of those activities.”

Randy Buchanan, a partner at law firm Eversheds Sutherland, agreed.

“Pillar 1 is a much more difficult exercise — it’s a bigger departure from how international tax has been handled in the past, when you always needed some type of physical connection to a country to be taxed in that country. Pillar 1 is going in the direction of saying that if you sell goods or services into a country then you’re subject to tax in that country even if you have no physical presence there. It would shift the right to tax profits away from source countries and into destination countries, and that’s a lot easier said than done. To make it work you really need an agreed formulary apportionment mechanism to determine who ends up taxing how much of the profit. The details of how to accomplish that are pretty murky, and even assuming you could get everyone on the same page, actually implementing it is not going to be easy.”

It will be particularly difficult to implement in the U.S., Buchanan observed. “It will take some type of multilateral treaty among the various countries,” he said. “To get two-thirds of the Senate to ratify that kind of multilateral treaty seems like a steep uphill climb, given the lack of Republican support. You could try to implement some aspects of this through legislation, but it’s not clear to me how you would implement it without a treaty.”

”One way to think about it is that it’s taking the global tax system and trying to make outlook more like the state and local system here in the U.S., where states apply similar apportionment factors to determine which state has the right to tax income,” he explained. “It’s easier to do in a country where you have a unified central government, but it’s harder in the international stage where there’s no central government. The OECD in essence is trying to perform that kind of centralized function to get countries together, but it doesn’t have any real authority. Every country is doing it on a voluntary basis, with no external constraints around implementing it such as the U.S. Constitution.”

Pillar 1 generally would apply disproportionally to U.S.-based multinationals, Buchanan observed. “It goes beyond digital and high-tech entities,” he noted. “Most of the companies that would be impacted by Pillar 1 are large U.S. multinationals, which is another reason I don’t see bipartisan support developing in the U.S.”

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen during the G20 finance ministers and central bankers meeting in Venice.Andreas Solaro/AFP/Getty Images
Local opposition

Kevin Brady, R-Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee, stated on July 1, 2021, “In negotiations with the OECD, the Biden administration has a already given up significant U.S. ground by opening the door to not grandfathering GILTI and agreeing to a global minimum tax structure that favors foreign-headquartered companies and workers over American ones. This is a dangerous economic surrender that sends U.S. jobs overseas, undermines our economy, and strips away our U.S. tax base.”

“Politics makes strange bedfellows,” Buchanan observed, noting that the large companies in the crosshairs of Pillars 1 and 2 are primarily supporters of Democrats. “Not all Democrats think it’s a great idea, but the administration is supporting it so at least they have a higher comfort level,” he said.

Loren Ponds, a member at law firm Miller & Chevalier, agreed. “Certainly this administration has been active in the negotiation process,” she said. “The Treasury Department was able to work with the Inclusive Framework members [the group of countries working to solve BEPS issues] so now there is a proposed 15% rate, which is lower than the proposed rate for GILTI.”

The fact that individual countries were going ahead and enacting their own Digital Services Tax spurred the push to move the OECD agreement ahead, Ponds indicated: “They knew they were working against the clock.”

Things will start moving quickly now, predicted BDO’s Dicker. “Nothing was going to happen unless the U.S. came on board. Then Treasury Secretary Yellen came out in support, but with a simplified method of what would be in scope. There will be a meeting of G20 principals in October, and the OECD will release its final blueprint of Pillars 1 and 2. It’s possible that changes will need to be implemented at three levels — regulatory, legislative, and by treaty. Each country will have a different process, but the OECD is hoping that it can be implemented globally and take effect in 2023, but experts view this as overly optimistic. To the extent it happens, it will be the largest change to the global tax landscape in 100 years.”

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الأحد, 17 يناير 2021 13:40

توقعات الرؤساء الماليين في السوق المتوسطة لعام 2021

يتوقع غالبية الرؤساء الماليين في السوق المتوسطة حدوث انتعاش اقتصادي وزيادة الإيرادات لشركاتهم في عام 2021

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المحتوى بالإنجليزية Midmarket CFOs expect revenue growth in 2021
By Michael Cohn

A majority of middle-market CFOs are predicting an economic recovery and revenue increases for their companies in 2021, according to a new survey by BDO USA.

The 2021 BDO Middle Market CFO Outlook Survey, found that 60 percent of the 600 CFOs polled at midsized companies anticipate economic recovery, while 56 percent expect revenue increases, in 2021. In addition, 62 percent of the survey respondents anticipate their company will be thriving a year from now.

Nearly three-fourths of the middle-market CFOs said their companies received government assistance as a result of the crisis. Cost cutting and reorganization for resilience are the top priorities for many CFOs.

The pandemic made an impact on nearly every company, and 39 percent of the CFOs polled indicate that the pandemic accelerated digital transformation at their companies, while 38 percent said it opened new expansion opportunities for products or services and 31 percent for new geographies.

“Unprecedented was the buzzword in 2020 for good reason,” said BDO USA CEO Wayne Berson in a statement. “Many middle-market companies persevered through levels of transformation and disruption in one year akin to what some companies experience in a full lifecycle. But rather than hunker down and endure, middle market leaders endeavor to move forward to refresh strategy and enhance agility. While we’re not out of the woods, the middle market is poised to pivot to new levels of potential.”

Deal flow was unsteady last year as CFOs assessed and reassessed the possible outcomes of the pandemic’s impact on their business. However, CFOs appear to be more optimistic this year, with 29 percent planning to seek private equity investment, 24 percent want a merger or acquisition and 20 percent hope to pursue an IPO.

While returning to the office or floor is critical for many CFOs, 43 percent of the respondents said they would increase or establish permanent remote work options. Office space is likely to be downsized, with 28 percent of the CFOs polled planning to eliminate or consolidate their current real estate footprint. CFOs also intend to build a more flexible workforce through automation (38 percent) and outsourcing (32 percent).

The main threats cited by the CFOs include a prolonged economic downturn, competitive pressure, supply chain disruption and falling behind on technology or innovation.

Coming out of an election year, tax challenges are also going to be important, with understanding total tax liability (19 percent) and navigating shifting trade and tariff policies (17 percent) among the top challenges cited by the CFOs. Managing disclosures and risk factors is also a top financial reporting challenge as the CFOs try to assess how to communicate impact of COVID-19 on matters that may be material to stakeholders.