Jim Ulvog

A long time ago, accounting supervisors really were slave drivers.

You think you have a rough boss….

Jacob Soll explains in his book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, that in ancient Athens, around 500 years B.C. accounting and auditing was an integral part of the business and political world.

There were complex accounting systems that included public audits to create accountability. There were a number of staff working for the public treasurer to keep an eye on funds. Many people, including freemen and slaves were trained in accounting. However,

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Jim Ulvog

How much wealth was in the Roman treasury in 49 B.C.? How about annual tax revenue under Augustus?

Hadn’t thought about that question too much, but when Jacob Soll mentioned it in his book, The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations, it got me thinking.

He gives the following info:

In his Natural History, Pliny states that in 49 BCE , the year Caesar crossed the Rubicon, the Roman treasury contained 17,410 pounds of gold, 22,070 pounds of silver, and in coin, 6,135,400 sesterces.

Soll, Jacob (2014-04-29). The Reckoning: Financial Accountability and the Rise and Fall of Nations (Kindle Locations 276-277). Basic Books. Kindle Edition.

I don’t think in terms of pounds of gold or silver and I don’t know what a sesterce is or what it is worth. But I do know how to search the ‘net.

I share this on my Nonprofit Update here and cross-post it to Attestation Update , my other blog, because I enjoyed it and think it might be some fun trivia for accountants and people working in the faith-based community.

By the way, Prof Soll’s book is superb. Just got started reading it and think I will find lots of little tidbits to share. More on that idea in my next post.

How much is that worth?

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Jim Ulvog

A few minutes of tax reading

For a quick tax update, I recommend you frequently visit Corey Pfaffe’s blog, MinistryCPA. Better yet, set up an RSS feed so you get his articles as he posts them.

Here are three of his recent articles that would help your understanding:

 

Jim Ulvog

Beware an aggressive scam from callers claiming to be IRS agents demanding immediate payment

Scammers are amazingly creative. One of the new schemes is to spoof a phone number from the DC area as the caller claims to be from the IRS. The caller says you have back taxes due and must be paid right now or else you will be going to jail. This can be settled today for a fraction of the due amount if you just provide a credit card number to pay the smaller amount to take care of this today.

This is just another identity theft scam designed to steal your money.

William P. Barrett tells of a friend who received such a call. Mr. Barrett returned the call on behalf of the friend and tells of the conversation:  IRS scammer makes threatening call to Seattle.

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Jim Ulvog

Primer on fraud in local governments

If you work in a local government, are in leadership there, or provide audits in that sector, you really ought to check out Charles Hall’s book, The Little Book of Local Government Fraud Prevention.

I bought & read a copy a while back and really, really want to write a review of the book, but haven’t been able to pull together my thoughts.  (Sorry Charles!) It is a good read.

(cross-posted from my other blog, Attestation Update.)

Until I pull together my thoughts, just know that I believe you would benefit from reading the book.

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Jim Ulvog

More good stuff on overhead ratios and impact 8/5

Here are a few more articles in the ongoing conversation of overhead and the “worst charities.”

Good discussions are developing on the Alliance for Charitable Trust Linked-In group. That’s where I found two of the following articles.

3/24 – Skoll world forum – Reimagining the ‘overhead’ debate– Article provides an example of full costing instead of ‘overhead’ ratios. The organization calculated the grand total of cost for their program in Malawi is $885,767. They then provided three paragraphs explaining what that $886K accomplished. Great illustration of outputs with several outcomes included in the narrative instead of a supporting services ratio. Donors can make their own decision whether that program deserves their support. (more…)

Jim Ulvog

Arriving soon at an e-retailer near you: Tragedy of Fraud, Insider Trading Edition – The fall from Big 4 audit partner to prison inmate.

Debut appearance of the cover, hot off the digital press:

 

tragedy-cover

 

My newest book is in the last stages of editing. Hope to move into conversion to e-book format soon. Will be released in the next couple of weeks.

As you may know, I’ve been following the story of Scott London closely on my other blog, Attestation Update. Mr. London was the partner at international accounting firm KPMG in charge of the audit practice for the southwest region of the U.S.

He was caught passing inside information to his golf buddy. When confronted, he quickly confessed and plead guilty. He received a fourteen month jail sentence and is now a prison inmate at the Taft Correctional Institution.

You can now read of his journey from the lofty world of senior leadership to prison inmate in this book. The dozens of blog posts covering the story have been combined in chronological order instead of being spread all over the blog in reverse chronology. The posts have been edited slightly and the sequence changed a bit.

Available soon

The story of Mr. London’s fall will soon be available on your phone, e-reader, tablet, or other reading platform of choice. Will be available at the Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes stores.

Print copy will be available at Amazon soon after the electronic version is published.

 

Jim Ulvog

Should churches correct the incorrect withholding of FICA from Minister’s paycheck?

Pastors and other ministers of the gospel are defined by federal law to be self-employed for purposes of FICA. That means they are required to make quarterly payment to the Treasury of self-employment taxes under SECA instead of FICA.

That also means churches should not be withholding FICA taxes from staff who are categorized as ministers of the gospel. Don’t blame me – that’s federal law.

What to do? Should churches correct the incorrect withholding?

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Jim Ulvog

Before you get too far in planning that short term mission trip….

….read Once more, from the top at AidSpeak. The author, “J”, wrote the article It’s a Crappy World, that I mentioned here.

The article discusses, then demolishes, a number of the arguments for volunteers going overseas to help.

Here’s just a few thoughts for your consideration:

Aid and development are professions, not hobbies. It takes specific knowledge, skill and experience to get this right.

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Jim Ulvog

It’s complicated. Evaluating charities and doing business in China version. Part 2

First post in this series looked at another illustration of the complexity of doing business or ministry in China.

This blog has looked several times at the issue of how complicated life is.

This post ponders complexity in terms of how to evaluate and compare charities that have vastly different operating circumstances.

Complexity of evaluating charities

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Jim Ulvog

It’s complicated. Evaluating charities and doing business in China version. Part 1

Several posts on this site have looked at the issue of how complicated life is. Some may look at my pondering and think ‘bout time you caught on. For the rest of us, journey with me as I ponder some more.

In the next post, I’ll come back to what got me thinking about this. Wednesday evening I read two articles from ChinaSource Blog that pointed out yet one more time how incredibly complex China is, especially coming from my background as an American.  Full disclosure: I am currently providing professional services to ChinaSource.

The first article, Some Common Mistakes, points to a longer article.

Consider just one common mistake made by people trying to do business in China:

Do not underestimate China’s up-front time commitment.

You cannot just make one or two trips to China and think you are ready to go. No. The attorneys say you will need to send several high level staff to the country for years before you can really get started.

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Jim Ulvog

More good stuff on overhead ratios and “worst charities.” 7/16

Here are a few more articles in the ongoing conversation of overhead and the “worst charities.”

“Overhead ratio”

7/11 – Chronicle of Philanthropy – Wounded Warrior CEO Rips Rating Systems as ‘Ineffective and Misinformed’ – CEO says Wounded Warrior could have modified their operations to manage the overhead ratio, but they choose instead to focus on long-term service to their community, which involved upfront costs and other efforts that affected ratios. They disagree with the attitude that overhead is bad and fundraising is either a sign of inefficiency or fraud. In the tell me how you really feel category, the CEO says this of the rating agencies:

“Essentially what these groups are doing is passing judgment on decisions that were made by charity boards and staff on how to best fulfill their missions, meet the needs of their constituencies, and sustain their organizations over the long term,” he said.

He also mentions what few others will discuss: not all charities are completely honest in their functional allocations.

7/15 – Huffington Post – Measuring Charity Effectiveness: Manage Your Mission, Not Your Rating – Steve Nardizzi, CEO of Wounded Warrior Project goes in-depth on why the overhead ratios and rating agency methodology is out of line. This is a must read if you have been following the overhead debate. Several quotes:

The two main issues with ratings agencies (sentence diagrammed by me for emphasis): (more…)

Jim Ulvog

1 fact and 2 stories explaining why you should set up a fraud hotline in your charity

What would you think is the most likely way that a fraud is detected?

Internal audit?

No.

External audit?

No.

One fact

Forty-two percent of frauds are discovered by a tip.

Internal audits are the means to catch 14% of frauds. External audits catch a mere 3% of frauds.

Frauds are ten times more likely to be discovered by a tip than by an external audit.

That single fact, 42% of frauds discovered by tips, is a strong argument to set up an anonymous fraud tip hotline.

That data is provided by The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners in their 2014 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse based on their survey of over 1,400 frauds reported to the organization.

First story

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Jim Ulvog

Before you get upset about who worked on a book you don’t like, check the family tree of the imprint

There is a brouhaha in the Christian community about a book published by one imprint with a focus on one segment of the faith community saying things that will definitely not pass muster with readers of a sibling imprint that has a focus on a different segment of the faith community. Underlying issue is that staff working for one imprint were doing some work on a title published by the other imprint.

Comments made in book from imprint 2 are doctrinally unacceptable to audience of imprint 1. Of course, the same can be said of books from imprint 1 if read by the audience of imprint 2.

I can’t get worked up about that issue.  Imprints are only labels on the book that provide a way to group books appealing to like-minded people.

Before you get upset with this issue, consider some of the family trees outlined by Christianity Today in their article Too Close for Comfort.

I’ll summarize one part of the family trees and then list the imprints, along with their focus. I’m doing this because it is interesting to me as a microscopically small writer and sub-microscopically small publisher.  It may be of interest to several readers of this blog.

A few of the pertinent imprints and their publishers are:

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Jim Ulvog