Question 2 - 10 marks (1,500 words) The Senior Partner of the firm you work for has appointed you to a new role. It is now your responsibility to review upcoming accounting standards and provide a report to the partners on the proposed standard and the opinions of other industry players on the changes. Firstly, you are required to find a current exposure draft or proposal for a new accounting standard which has been opened for public comments. (These can be found on the websites of most standard-setting organisations, such as the IASB, AASB and FASB. Hint: These websites can be quite difficult to navigate, so as a first step try typing “IASB exposure draft and comment letters”/”FASB exposure draft and comment letters” into Google or other search engine of your choice). Read a sample of the comments from a range of respondents. Select four respondents, ideally from different types of organisations for example, from accounting bodies, industry, companies or corporate bodies. If you are having a problem finding suitable comments letters then contact your subject coordinator. In your own words, supporting your evaluation with appropriate citations, appropriately referenced in APA 6 style, you are required to include the following information in the report. An outline of what the exposure draft is introducing or changing. An assessment as to whether the exposure draft is being introduced in the ‘public interest’. An outline of the views presented in the comments letters which highlights the areas of agreement and disagreement with the exposure draft and/or other comments letters. An assessment (with relevant examples) as to whether the comments letters utilise any of the arguments 'for' or 'against' regulation. An application of each of the theories of regulation (public interest, private interest and capture) to the comments letters and a justification as to which theory(ies) is most effective at explaining the comments and which theory(ies) is least effective at explaining the comments. Please note: you need to attach the comment letters you selected for your report (there is no need to attach the exposure draft) Academic Writing and Referencing - 6 marks Content assessed: Accounting regulation, current financial reporting issues and topics(s) that your research is related to. Key generic skills: Research, critical thinking and written communication.

Betty Vinson was the director of management reporting at WorldCom. She had worked there for five years when the fraud was uncovered and received two promotions during that time. Vinson’s salary increased from $50,000 when she started to $80,000 in 2002. Vinson reported to Buford Yates, director of general accounting, who reported to David Myers, senior vice president, and controller, who then reported to CFO Scott Sullivan. (See Figure 1 for an organizational chart.) A hard worker who often stayed late or brought work home, Vinson considered herself lucky to land the job at WorldCom, as it was located in her hometown of Clinton, Miss. Vinson graduated from Mississippi College in 1978 and married her college sweetheart, Tom Vinson, a printing-equipment salesman who earned $40,000 a year. The couple had one daughter and lived a typical suburban lifestyle. Prior to working at WorldCom, Vinson worked as an accountant for various banking enterprises in Louisiana and Kansas City from 1978 to 1996. She also earned the Certified Public Accountant (CPA) credential during that time.

Problems began to emerge in the telecommunications industry in the late 1990s. The industry had over expanded, and every company was beginning to feel the effects, including WorldCom. By 2000, WorldCom’s expenses were increasing faster than revenues. In September 2000, WorldCom had to find $828 million to meet earnings targets expected by Wall Street. Vinson and her accounting colleagues found $50 million, but it wasn’t nearly enough. Senior management instructed her and her accounting coworkers to reduce reserve accounts for line costs to cover this shortfall. Reserves had been set aside based on estimates of potential losses, but they needed to have enough reason to reduce the reserve. Meeting earnings targets wasn’t a valid reason. Sullivan pressed Myers and Vinson’s boss, Yates, to make this adjustment. Yates told his accounting team that he had reservations, too, but that Sullivan promised this was a one-time adjustment. They all agreed to go along with the accounting adjustment. Vinson felt uncomfortable with this and considered resigning. The corporate accounting department’s discomfort with the entries prompted Sullivan to call the accountants into his office. He used an analogy that WorldCom was an aircraft carrier, and they needed to land the planes that were in the air. He urged them to wait until the planes had landed, and then they could leave the company if they still wanted to. Sullivan assured them that nothing they would do was illegal and that it wouldn’t be repeated. After talking to her husband, Vinson decided against resigning because of her family’s dependence on her salary and health insurance. In April 2001, the gap in meeting earnings targets was $771 million. The reserve pools weren’t large enough to cover this gap. Sullivan’s new strategy was to shift line costs, recorded as expenses, to capital expenditure accounts. Yates objected. Sullivan insisted it was the only way to cover this gap. Vinson and her coworker both felt cornered; this was clearly fraudulent accounting. The only choices now were to resign or make the entries. The three-person accounting team identified the capital accounts to use, and Vinson made the entries to transfer the $771 million. She backdated entries to February in the computer system and then indicated to colleagues at WorldCom that she was going to look for another job. These entries continued quarterly through April 2002. The Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) was informed of the problem in June 2002 as a result of the efforts of the WorldCom internal audit team. The SEC would ultimately charge CFO Scott Sullivan, Controller David Myers, and accountants Buford Yates, Troy Normand, and Betty Vinson. According to the SEC complaint: “At the direction of WorldCom senior management, Vinson and other WorldCom employees caused WorldCom to overstate materially its earnings in contravention of generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) for at least seven successive fiscal quarters, from as early as October 2000 through April 2002. Vinson knew or was reckless in not knowing, that these entries were made without supporting documentation, were not in conformity with GAAP, were not disclosed to the investing public, and were designed to allow WorldCom to appear to meet Wall Street analysts’ quarterly earnings estimates

Mr. Sullivan said:
Paraphrase    one    of    Sullivan’s    arguments?
This argument best describes the ____________________________________ “reason and rationalization” of GVV because
In response to Mr. Sullivan’s argument, Betty or Troy could have countered with something like:
Paraphrase another (a second) of Sullivan’s arguments, and follow the format above, etc. . . .

The Benjamin family had wage earnings of $192,000 in 2015. They received interest of $4,500 on corporate bonds and $1,500 on bonds issued by the state. Their dividend income was $500, and they had a $1,000 long-term capital gain on the sale of securities. They paid real estate taxes of $1,450 and state income tax of $3,000, and they donated $550 to their church. They paid interest of $8,000 on their home mortgage. They have one dependent child. The exemption rate is $4,000 per person. Capital gains tax rate is 15%.

What was their tax liability for 2015 assuming they file jointly as a married couple? Use the Personal Tax Schedules given above. Round the answer to the nearest cent.

Sondra and Jason, a wealthy married couple, won $96 million in a 2017 Powerball drawing. They decided to share some of this new wealth immediately with some of their friends and family. They paid $1,800,000 on a new home for Sondra’s parents, titling the home jointly in the parents’ names; bought a condominium on Captiva Island for Jason’s widowed mother for $950,000; gave $1 million to a local charity that provides homes and job training for homeless families; sent $150,000 to Stanford University to be used for their nephew’s college tuition for his next 4 years in school; gave $500,000 each to Sondra’s sister and Jason’s brother for new homes; gave $750,000 to the best man at their wedding last year to defray the costs of a needed kidney transplant; and finally donated $250,000 to their church to build a wedding chapel. The only taxable gift previously made by either Sondra or Jason was a $200,000 gift in 2014 by Jason to the widow of an employee who had been killed in an auto accident. This gift was made prior to their marriage. Sondra and Jason elected gift splitting. Determine their separate taxable gifts and the gift taxes they will owe applying each of their unified credits.

There are 2 data sets below, choose which statistic to use and conduct your analysis . This is
completely up to you but note that your data will dictate what test you will run (see the book for examples and then compare to the examples below). Be creative and thorough in your analysis. I will expect 2 write-ups for both data sets.

Note: You will again need to use the tables in the back of the book to determine significance. Which table will be determined by which statistic you choose to use.

Project A: Assess the differences between Southerners and Non-Southerners on Church Attendance per Month. Below are number of days per month attended by South and non-South residents.

South             NonSouth
16                    8
13                    5
12                    4
15                    8
11                    1

Project B: Assess attitudes toward same-sex marriages of non-politician republicans and democrats
Note: 0=disagree with same-sex marriages and 10 = Agree with same-sex marriages

Republicans        Democrats      Independent
6                               8 6
5                             6                             7
3                                 9 5
7                                 8                             6
4                                 7                             5

What other marketing lessons do you think the In & Out Burger example suggests?  Offer additional strategic recommendations that might be helpful?  What types of changes could occur in the marketplace that would affect I & Out Burgers s success?  How could they prepare for these changes?   

A frame shift mutation

a. can lead to a longer protein

b. can lead to a shorter protein

c. does not change the resulting protein

d. changes the way codons are read by the ribosomes

e. changes the way codons are read by the ribosomes and can lead to a longer or shorter protein

Describe the effects the parameters of a normal curve have on the central location and shape of the curve.

1. If the standard deviation of a normal curve remains constant, what effect changes in the mean will have on the curve?

2. If the mean of a normal curve remains constant, what effect changes in the standard deviation will have on the curve?

Describe an oligopolist market of your choosing. What potential non-legislative changes might take place in that market which would convert it to a monopolistic competitive market? If replying to someone else's scenario, what changes might convert the oligopoly structure to more of a monopolistic-competitive structure?