Where There is Tax, There Will Be Tax Havens. Big Four Firms Hope So Too

James Spencer, Big4.com

July 1, 2010

As the old saying goes, there’s nothing certain in the world except death and taxes.

Taxes can be avoided (to some degree) by going to tax havens, jurisdictions that shelter corporate and individual profits from onerous taxation.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

New Zealand Tax Budgets and PAYE Gets Deloitte and KPMG Support

June 14, 2010
By Pratish Prabhakan, Big4.com

The New Zealand government is seeking feedback from the public on the proposed changes in its tax system. The proposed changes are an attempt to simplify the existing tax system and make it easier for tax payers to manage their tax affairs. The proposals include simplifying the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) system. The government has released a discussion document “Making Tax Easier” and started an online forum. The proposed changes reduce the number of interactions taxpayers must have with the Inland Revenue. PAYE would be treated as the final tax for some people.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Big Four Tax Services May Thrive on European Government Loopholes

By James Spencer, Big4.com

June 10, 2010

It sounds too good to be true. The deficits that are looming over Europe could actually be cut by not only raising taxes, but actually lowering them. That’s exactly the situation that the governments of Europe find themselves today. But the chances are that they will not cut those taxes directly.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

KPMG 2009 Revenues of $20 B Drop 11%, Most Among Big Four Firms

KPMG just reported its 2009 combined revenues for the fiscal year ending 30 September 2009 of US$20.11 billion versus US$22.69 billion for the prior 2008 fiscal year. This was a 11.4% decline in U.S. dollars terms and a 2.6% decline in local currency terms...

We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

KPMG Europe Revenues Drop 0.4% As Expected, Audit Shines

KPMG Europe LLP, which covers the UK, German, Swiss, Spanish and Belgian practices just reported its 2009 revenues at €3.5 billion in the year ending 30 September 2009, a 0.4% drop from 2008 on a pro forma basis at constant exchange rates. Overall, KPMG said that top-line growth proved hard to come by as a result of difficult market conditions...

We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Checkout Our “The Best Of “Twitter Lists – Love Your DM or RT

Twitter just released its latest exciting functionality - Twitter Lists, and we think it’s awesome and very timely.

It allows us to curate who we think are the most appropriate Tweeters to follow in our niche space of The Big Four Firms, accounting, finance, tax, jobs and related topics...

We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Deloitte Revenues Grow 1% Local Currency, Now Just Behind PricewaterhouseCoopers

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, the global firm, just came out with its fiscal 2009 revenues for the year ending May 31, 2009. 2009 full year global revenue was US$26.1 billion, an actual increase in local currency terms of 1%, but a drop of 4.9% in US dollar terms from 2008. The tough economic climate and appreciating US dollar were the two main factors in 2009 which impacted Deloitte as much as it did other Big Four firms...

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

PwC FY 2009 Revenues Rise Modestly From FY 2008 Despite Tough Environment

PricewaterhouseCoopers just released its FY 2009 global revenues for the year ending June 30, 2009, which came in at US$26.2 billion, a 7.1% decline from the US$28.2 billion in FY 2008 in US dollar terms. However, on local currency terms FY 2009 revenues were actually higher than FY 2008 by a modest 0.2%. These results were clearly impacted by two large macro factors. The global economic crisis put a sudden halt to the multi-year annual growth in revenues as clients withheld spending on professional services. The other impact was FX, as the appreciating dollar over the reporting period resulted in lower US dollars for each unit of local currency leading to a reduction in revenue on US dollar terms from FY 2008 to FY 2009...

We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Ernst and Young UK Reports Excellent Results, Beating Rival Big Four Firms

The Times of London just came out yesterday with Ernst & Young’s UK results (surprisingly, we couldn’t find it on the E&Y UK website)...


We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Ernst & Young: External Challenges Drive Flat Revenue From FY 2008 To FY 2009

Ernst & Young just reported its combined worldwide results for the year ending 30 June 2009 (FY09), the first Big4 firm to report its global results.

Combined global firm revenues of US$21.4 billion for the fiscal year ended 30 June 2009 (FY09) decreased a modest 0.2% in local currency terms from the comparable period in FY 2008. In FY 2008, E&Y reported US$23.0 billion in global revenues, and in US dollar terms, the revenue actually declined 6.8% from 2008 to 2009. This shows the dramatic effect of the appreciation of the US dollar in this period against foreign currencies. In other words, one unit of foreign currency translated to much fewer US dollars in the FY 2009 fiscal year compared to the FY 2008 fiscal year. We have highlighted growth in both local currency and US$ terms in our analysis.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

KPMG: Tax Authorities, Looking For Cash, May Push Transfer Pricing To Front Burner

Transfer Pricing (TP), or the setting of intercompany prices of goods and services transported across country borders by the same company is typically an esoteric tax issue which garners little attention under normal conditions. But as KPMG recently points out in its recently released Global Transfer Pricing Review, the tough economic environment is leading many governments to seek out new sources of tax by extending and tightening controls over cross-border transactions between companies within the same group.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Deloitte, First To Report In 2008, But Apparent Delays in 2009

Last year on July 23, 2008, we blogged the below about Deloitte’s 2008 results for the year July 1, 2007 to June 30, 2008. We’re already in September 2009, and we scoured the Deloitte Global and Deloitte US sites for results for the year July 1, 2008 to June 30, 2009...




We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Successful Growth At True Partners Consulting In Just 3 Years

March 25, 2009

Three years ago, almost to the day (March 22, 2006), we blogged about True Partners, a a niche tax and advisory consulting firm in Chicago, with 25 Andersen alumni and CEO Cary McMillan, who was head of Andersen’s Chicago office and then CFO of Sara Lee. At that time, the start-up had 25 personnel and offered an alternative to SOX-restricted Big Four firms...



We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Big Four Firms Combined Revenues Top $100B, Employment Nearly 600,000!

With KPMG being the last firm to reports its 2008 performance, we can now complete the full financial picture for all the Big Four firms in 2008. The five years from 2004 to 2008 have been some of the best growth years for these firms. In a strong economic environment, with rapid development in the BRIC nations and solid growth in emerging markets, the Big Four firms capitalized on demand for global financial and accounting services to boost their top line and posting a string of back-to-back record performances. Their worldwide reach and ability to offer complex seamless and multi-country services, coupled with need for name-brand public accountants enabled them to grow all their service lines, especially Audit boosted by Sarbanes Oxley regulations in the United States. Growth in Brazil, Russia, India and China was reported at nearly 30+ % each year, as these economies expressed their latent need for professional services.

We’ve moved. Click here to go the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!

Deloitte and Touche: Revs up 16% to $23 Billion

Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (Deloitte) recently reported revenues were up by 15.5% to US$23.1 billion for the fiscal year ended 31 May 2007. This is the firm's fifth consecutive year of double-digit revenue growth with each service line and region increasing at double-digit rates...

We've moved. Click here to go to the full post at the new Big Four Blog at Big4.com!