Accounting News Roundup: Muddy Waters Sights in Another; How Many KPMG Employees Use Flextime?; EITC Problems | 05.14.14

Carson Block Followers Bet on 46% Collapse in NQ Mobile [Bloomberg]
Muddy Waters founder Carson Block says NQ Mobile is making up revenue. NQ Mobile says the investigation performed by Shearman & Sterling and Deloitte FAS hasn't turned up anything. Oh, did we mention that their annual report is 15 days late? "The delay makes clear that if NQ manages to receive an unqualified audit opinion, it will have been by the skin of its teeth,” Block said in an email to Bloomberg. “If that turns out to be the case, going forward, China management will be under a lot of pressure as it tries to up its fraud game. As we’ve seen with Sino-Forest, Enron and other companies that commit fraud, so-called independent board investigations are rarely worth the paper they’re printed on."

The US will cut taxes on race horses and NASCAR tracks with borrowed money [Quartz]
In addition to the R&D credit, bonus depreciation and the like, the Senate bill also benefits racehorse owners and motorsports entertainment complexes. There's something for everyone, really. Well, except regular people.

With Flextime, Bosses Prefer Early Birds to Night Owls [HBR]
I thought this seemed like an interesting article until this sentence stopped me cold: "At the 'Big Four' auditing firm KPMG, some 70 percent of employees work flexible hours."

Tower Group (TWGP) Dismisses PwC; Warns of Going Concern [StreetInsider]
BDO will take it from here.

Audit: IRS having trouble with improper tax payments [The Hill]
Especially the Earned Income Tax Credit: "Treasury’s inspector general for tax administration said that the IRS wrongly issued roughly a quarter — 22 percent-26 percent — of EITC payments in fiscal 2013, for a loss of between $13.3 billion and $15.6 billion."

The World's Heaviest-Drinking Nations, Ranked [Gizmodo]
Belarus wins it going away.

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