A few weeks back, I noted that states’ attempts to pull more revenue from that traditional sin-tax target, the alcohol industry, were running into stiff opposition around the country. That didn’t stop the U.S. Senate Finance Committee from proposing an increase in the federal excise tax on alcohol, along with a new tax on “sugar-sweetened beverages,” last month (as I reported here). But both of those proposals now seem headed for the ever-growing discard pile of ideas for funding the Obama administration’s health-care reform program. more

Content I found value in this week that did not make it into my other posts:

• Another Major PCAOB Change;

• E-mail intrigue at the SEC;

• Video of SEC v. Countrywide;

• IASB Chairman on IFRS;

• Real XBRL Advice from Virtual Experts; and

• Real Basic (and Useful) XBRL Explanation ###

When President Obama signed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) into law in February, a collective sigh of relief went up from the ranks of unemployed individuals who depend on COBRA for continued medical coverage — or, at least, from those lucky enough to benefit from the law’s 65 percent subsidy of the COBRA premium (which certainly wasn’t everyone — for example, people who lost their jobs before September 1, 2008, were out of luck, as Business Finance readers pointed out in a flurry of responses to Laurie Brannen’s blog on the topic back in February).

As any HR pro or benefits attorney will tell you, the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act is just about the most mind-numbingly complex of all federal laws governing the workplace. The tax ramifications of ARRA’s COBRA tweaks are multitude, and the IRS has been playing catch-up ever since Mr. Obama inked the bill. more

So, what does that mean for the U.S.?

In April, the European Union approved several new regulations

governing the activities of credit rating agencies there. Among other changes, the agencies can no longer provide advisory services, must disclose the models and methodologies they use, and must have at least two directors on their boards whose compensation isn’t tied to the agency’s business performance.

That prompts the question, Should the U.S. adopt similar rules?

The regulation prohibiting the agencies from also providing advisory services to their clients makes sense, given the clear conflict of interest it presents. “Agencies advising their clients and then providing ratings is one of the most egregious manifestations of the conflict of interest” in the business model of rating agencies like Standard & Poors and Moody’s, says James Gellert, president and chief executive officer with Rapid Ratings International, Inc. , a subscriber-paid rating firm. Gellert discussed the state of the U.S. rating system for a February blog post, “Assessing the Rating Agencies”.

Requiring agencies to disclose their models could backfire. For starters, simply disclosing the models does nothing to ensure that the assumptions and methodologies are sound. And, users of the ratings still need to conduct their own analysis of both the ratings and the assets they cover. Moreover, requiring firms to disclose their models is, in essence, forcing them to give up their intellectual property.

The most effective way to boost the quality of ratings is by fostering greater competition within the ratings business. Currently, three firms – Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch — produce about 98 percent of all ratings, Gellert says. Often, investors have no option but to use them. That’s the case even though the quality of their work is debatable, to say the least. Earlier this year, SEC commissioner Kathleen Casey called their ratings work “catastrophically misleading” and noted the “virtual absence of any accountability to investors, markets, and regulators.”

Boosting competition and prohibiting conflicts of interest would put the onus on all ratings agencies to take steps to ensure that their ratings are sound and robust, appropriately consider risk, and are as free of bias as possible. ###

How often do people in Finance swear at their PCs? And with good reason. PCs are precariously tuned beasts; the slightest thing or seemingly nothing at all can cause them to crash, which leads to considerable cursing.

The cost of supporting desktops across the organization can also lead to swearing. PCs may be cheap to acquire but maintaining them over their working life is costly. That’s why organizations are starting to consider desktop virtualization, referred to as desktop virtual infrastructure (VDI).

VDI is only slowly catching on. Partner’s North Shore Medical Center tried VDI and was pleased with the results, but its VDI success hasn’t quite led to a groundswell. VMware, the leading virtualization vendor, teamed with IDC, a top IT industry researcher, to introduce virtual client computing (VCC), essentially VDI in a somewhat different form. more