Companies’ biggest tax worry for 2010?

The burden on their international operations.

According to a survey published this week by Washington, D.C.-based law firm Miller & Chevalier, close to 40 percent of corporate executives and managers say that taxation of their company’s global activities is their top business tax concern. (About 47 percent of the respondents were directors or managers of tax.) more

As this month rushes by, I’ve been thinking about everything – including the kitchen sink.

In part, that’s because of an enlightening conversation I enjoyed with John Hrudicka, who leads the finance efforts for cabinetry and plumbing products maker Elkay Manufacturing Co. The 90-year-old manufacturer makes and sells faucets, cabinetry, countertops, water coolers, food service equipment, and sinks. If my wife walked into their showroom, I would need a second job.

Despite the company’s rich heritage, I learned that the manufacturer is not content to look back.

As Hrudicka explains in this interview, Elkay Manufacturing has developed innovative ways to look ahead with greater clarity. This includes replacing the traditional budgeting process with a rolling forecast (without a pilot, no less!).

Clarity is something I intend to gain while speaking to audiences in conjunction with the U.S. release of Future Ready: How to Master Business Forecasting (Wiley, 2010), a book I co-authored with my friend and longtime research partner Steve Morlidge.

Starting tonight in Dallas, I’ll be talking to folks about the book and signing copies. In the process of these discussions, I will be looking to identify finance transformation stories and practices, like those at Elkay Manufacturing. Their stories illustrate for us all that there are better ways of doing things. As I do, I’ll share those insights right here …

If you are in Dallas tonight, come see me. ###

Good news from the Ethics Resource Center’s late-2009 update to its ongoing National Business Ethics Survey:

• Misconduct is decreasing: Fewer employees said they had witnessed misconduct on the job (the measure fell from 56 percent in 2007 to 49 percent in 2009);

• Whistle-blowing is increasing: More employees said they had reported misconduct when they observed it (63 percent in 2009, up from 58 percent in 2007);

• Ethical cultures are becoming stronger: ERC’s measures of the strength of ethical culture in the workplace increased from 53 percent in 2007 to 62 percent in 2009; and

• Pressure to cut corners is dropping: Perceived pressure to commit an ethics violation – to cut corners, or worse – declined from 10 percent 2 years ago to 8 percent last year.

(The ERC updates the survey every 2 years.)

Here’s the bad news: The good news may soon evaporate.

“We are experiencing an ethics bubble,” according to the report’s executive summary. “The positive results of this study are likely to be temporary. We are beginning to see an important connection between workplace ethics and the larger economic and business cycle: When times are tough, ethics improve.” ###

To be sure, the recession clearly has hurt cross-border business, with the dollar value of global trade falling by nearly one-third between August 2008 and March 2009, although it has since rebounded some, The World Bank reports in “Global Economic Prospects 2010.”

However, globalization marches on, and companies still are expanding abroad. In fact, earnings from the foreign affiliates of U.S.-based companies grew from $63 to $80 billion between the first and third quarters of 2009, reports the U.S. Department of Commerce. The report acknowledges that the increase partly reflects the depreciation of the U.S. dollar, which makes earnings of foreign affiliates relatively higher when compared to domestic earnings. Even so, the report adds that the pickup in activity in some foreign countries also contributed to the uptick in earnings. more

Have you figured out what your next PC will be? I’m willing to bet it won’t be a desktop machine. You probably won’t even get another laptop when you retire your current one. Then what, a netbook? Possibly. The smart money, however, is betting your next computing device will be a mobile phone, specifically a new smartphone.

A year ago, Gartner predicted that corporate America will be supporting more mobile phones than desktop phones by 2011. “The adoption and standardization of corporate-liable mobile phones in the enterprise has been driven by the use of smartphones, wireless e-mail, and the integration of these phones into IP telephony systems,” according to Phil Redman, research vice president at Gartner. The telcos and phone makers are further fueling the trend with each new product release.

If business executives are getting new smartphones, they also won’t be needing their old desktop and laptop PCs. For the kind of work most executives do, a smartphone with access to the wealth of SaaS applications may be enough. more