Tax reform is roaring, and this isn’t the only thing that needs to be considered for calendar-year-end companies. Just in time for the holidays, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has delivered the gift of a new standard for revenue recognition in the form of ACS Topic 606, Revenue from Contracts with Customers, which supplants all previous guidance on accounting for revenue from contracts to provide goods or services to customers.

Current trends in international taxation are focused on the taxation of business income in general, and not on the treatment of gain or loss from acquisitions.

For an organisation to remain competitive in today’s challenging business environment, an optimal balance must be achieved between risk retention, mitigation, and transfer.

As anticipated, on Friday evening the ongoing Conference Committee between the House and Senate came to a close, and their final version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act was released to the public. Though the Conference adhered heavily to the Senate version of the act because of the Senate’s narrower majority of Republicans, the Conference made significant compromises in a number of key areas in the bill.

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M) has announced that Neil Tyler and Elmar Hiltner have joined as Senior Directors, within the Global Transaction Advisory Group, based in London and Frankfurt respectively.

With tax reform becoming very likely at the close of the year, taxpayers are at risk for unseen pitfalls. In particular, consider the toll charge on offshore earnings. Many taxpayers have kept the toll charge in the back of their minds, perhaps believing that the calculation would not apply or would be simple to compute. However, the toll-charge rules may surprise many taxpayers.

If your organization currently has a Dutch Cooperative (or “Coop”) in its corporate structure and you haven’t considered the looming changes related to dividend withholding taxes in the Netherlands, now may be a critical time to evaluate how pending tax legislation may impact tax leakage on dividends payments.

On December 3, 2017, CVS announced an intention to acquire Aetna for $69 billion. Its press release promoted the “combination to provide consumers with a better experience, reduced costs and improved access to health care.”

When engaged in M&A activity, companies and their counsel must be well prepared to address working capital disputes (post-acquisition disputes that arise due to working capital adjustments).

With tax reform potentially effective in 2018, companies may wish to accelerate their deductions for compensation-related liabilities into the current year.

Stepping away from Tax Reform for a moment, we’d like to briefly shift our focus to an important topic that has repeatedly surfaced with our friends in the tech industry: the taxability of Software as a Service (“SaaS”).

GE's share price has underperformed for years, and CEO John Flannery, who took over from Jeff Immelt in August, has acted fast and made a number of hard choices, in part no doubt because activist investor Trian has a seat on its board.

Alvarez & Marsal (A&M), has bolstered its Bay Area presence with the appointment of transfer pricing expert Margaret Critzer who joins as a Senior Advisor in the San Jose office.

With much publicity, the Senate passed an amended version of its Finance Committee’s version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act over the weekend. Corporations now face a challenge: where to find the resources to react. Expect a scramble around year-end planning and preparing for provisions.

Electric Vehicles (EV), autonomous cars and telematics are part of the daily buzz, and it’s clear that the Automotive landscape continues to evolve.