If you’re a business taxpayer with assets over $10 million and you file under FIN 48, the IRS has a new tax return schedule in the works for you.

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman announced yesterday that the agency wants public and private companies that meet those criteria to provide “concise descriptions” of their uncertain tax positions and to disclose the maximum amount of income tax they’d be liable for if the positions were not sustained.

What, so FIN 48 itself wasn’t enough? more

A recent discussion on LinkedIn titled “Social Media for Business Is Crap” drew over 1,000 responses very quickly. Clearly, it touched a nerve. The discussion finally got pulled from the site when some people went ballistic. You can see what’s left of it here.

The same group started a second discussion along similar lines: Why Social Media Networking, such as Facebook and Twitter, live or DON’T live up to their hype. Find that here. When last checked, it had about 50 calmer responses.

“Wasn’t the big allure of Social Media supposed to be that for very little expenditure in money, time, and resources, a business could get their information to a massive audience? Now, it would seem that social media requires hard work and lots of it, plenty of planning, a good degree of talent, and a lot of luck. Not to mention money …,” one respondent wrote. Well, yes and no. Let’s clarify a few things about social media and business. more

Here are several quick-hit GRC topics that did not make it into my posts during the past two weeks:

How to Maximize Internal Audit’s Value: PwC guidance in a nifty eight-slide presentation;

Survey on IFRS Conversion Pace: 60 percent agree with current pace or say “not fast enough”;

SEC Considers Climate Disclosures: Possible guidance coming on disclosure requirements related to climate change. ###

If your firm has been waiting to launch an initiative to globalize its finance department, management probably won’t want to hold off much longer. At least that’s the conclusion of several surveys taken over the past year or so.

According to a 2009 survey by the Hackett Group, 22 percent of companies will move to globally based transactional finance positions this year, up from 11 percent in 2008. It doesn’t stop there, however. Leading organizations are moving beyond simply shifting transactions-based positions to lower-cost areas of the world, and also are shifting more sophisticated functions, such as planning and forecasting, to lower-cost areas, says Steven Ehrenhalt, principal with Deloitte Consulting LLP. “We’re seeing the sophisticated end of the market really accelerating.” more

For the past week, I have been chatting via e-mail exchanges about the nature of GRC with Norman Marks, vice president, GRC, for SAP BusinessObjects. Marks, a former vice president of internal audit with Business Objects before SAP’s acquisition of the firm, has a lot to say on the topic, as you will see below, and also in his own blog.

Our conversations examine the difficulty of defining GRC, the confusion currently roiling the GRC marketplace, and the importance of bringing greater clarity to the realm of organizational GRC.

Norman Marks: To begin, I suggest we try to reach a common understanding of what a “GRC practitioner” is as a first step in our discussion.

I summarize GRC in my own words as how an organization:

• Understands the needs and objectives of its stakeholders (owners, for the most part);

• Directs and manages the organization to achieve those needs and objectives (bringing in my favorite, strategy management);

• Considers and manages risks to success; and

• Stays in compliance with applicable laws and regulations

Eric, what is your view of what “GRC” means, and how wide or narrow is the group of “GRC practitioners”? more