Cookie Jar Accounting
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Cookie Jar Accounting
Cookie jar accounting or cookie jar reserves is an accounting practice in which a company takes a quantity of large reserves from an economically successful year and incurs them against losses from less successful years. Through this process, companies can mislead investors into believing that their losses are less than the actual value. An example of a cookie jar reserve is a liability created when a company records an expense that is not directly linked to a specific accounting period—the expense may fall in one period or another. Companies may record such discretionary expense when profits are high because they can afford to take the hit to income. When profits are low, the company reduces the liability (the reserve) rather than recording an expense in the lean year. The United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) does not permit cookie jar accounting by public companies because it can mislead investors regarding a company's financial performance. Historic exa ...
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Liability (accounting)
In financial accounting, a liability is defined as the future sacrifices of economic benefits that the entity is ''obliged'' to make to other entities as a result of past transactions or other ''past'' events, the settlement of which may result in the transfer or use of assets, provision of services or other yielding of economic benefits in the future. Characteristics A liability is defined by the following characteristics: * Any type of borrowing from persons or banks for improving a business or personal income that is payable during short or long time; * A duty or responsibility to others that entails settlement by future transfer or use of assets, provision of services, or other transaction yielding an economic benefit, at a specified or determinable date, on occurrence of a specified event, or on demand; * A duty or responsibility that obligates the entity to another, leaving it little or no discretion to avoid settlement; and, * A transaction or event obligating the entity t ...
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Accounting Period
An accounting period, in bookkeeping, is the period with reference to which management accounts and financial statements are prepared. In management accounting the accounting period varies widely and is determined by management. Monthly accounting periods are common. In financial accounting the accounting period is determined by regulation and is usually 12 months. The beginning of the accounting period differs according to jurisdiction. For example, one entity may follow the calendar year, January to December, while another may follow April to March as the accounting period. The International Financial Reporting Standards allow a period of 52 weeks as an accounting period instead of 12 months. This method is known as the 4-4-5 calendar in British and Commonwealth usage and the 52–53-week fiscal year in the United States. In the United States the method is permitted by generally accepted accounting principles, as well as by US Internal Revenue Code Regulation 1.441-2 (IRS ...
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Profit (accounting)
Profit, in accounting, is an income distributed to the ownership , owner in a Profit (economics) , profitable market production process (business). Profit is a measure of profitability which is the owner's major interest in the income-formation process of market production. There are several profit measures in common use. Income formation in market production is always a balance between income generation and income distribution. The income generated is always distributed to the Stakeholder (corporate), stakeholders of production as economic value within the review period. The profit is the share of income formation the owner is able to keep to themselves in the income distribution process. Profit is one of the major sources of economics , economic well-being because it means incomes and opportunities to develop production. The words "income", "profit" and "earnings" are synonyms in this context. Measurement of profit There are several important profit measures in common use. ...
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United States Securities And Exchange Commission
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is an independent agency of the United States federal government, created in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash of 1929. The primary purpose of the SEC is to enforce the law against market manipulation. In addition to the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, which created it, the SEC enforces the Securities Act of 1933, the Trust Indenture Act of 1939, the Investment Company Act of 1940, the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, and other statutes. The SEC was created by Section 4 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 (now codified as and commonly referred to as the Exchange Act or the 1934 Act). Overview The SEC has a three-part mission: to protect investors; maintain fair, orderly, and efficient markets; and facilitate capital formation. To achieve its mandate, the SEC enforces the statutory requirement that public companies and other regulated companies submit quarterly and annual repo ...
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Public Company
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (listed company), which facilitates the trade of shares, or not (unlisted public company). In some jurisdictions, public companies over a certain size must be listed on an exchange. In most cases, public companies are ''private'' enterprises in the ''private'' sector, and "public" emphasizes their reporting and trading on the public markets. Public companies are formed within the legal systems of particular states, and therefore have associations and formal designations which are distinct and separate in the polity in which they reside. In the United States, for example, a public company is usually a type of corporation (though a corporation need not be a public company), in the United Kingdom it is usually a public limited company (plc), i ...
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USA Today
''USA Today'' (stylized in all uppercase) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth on September 15, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headquarters in Tysons, Virginia. Its newspaper is printed at 37 sites across the United States and at five additional sites internationally. The paper's dynamic design influenced the style of local, regional, and national newspapers worldwide through its use of concise reports, colorized images, Infographic, informational graphics, and inclusion of popular culture stories, among other distinct features. With an average print circulation of 159,233 as of 2022, a digital-only subscriber base of 504,000 as of 2019, and an approximate daily readership of 2.6 million, ''USA Today'' is ranked as the first by circulation on the list of newspapers in the United States. It has been shown to maintain a generally center-left audience, in regards to political persuasion. ''US ...
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Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washington, United States. Its best-known software products are the Windows line of operating systems, the Microsoft Office suite, and the Internet Explorer and Edge web browsers. Its flagship hardware products are the Xbox video game consoles and the Microsoft Surface lineup of touchscreen personal computers. Microsoft ranked No. 21 in the 2020 Fortune 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue; it was the world's largest software maker by revenue as of 2019. It is one of the Big Five American information technology companies, alongside Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, and Meta. Microsoft was founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen on April 4, 1975, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800. It rose to do ...
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WorldCom
MCI, Inc. (subsequently Worldcom and MCI WorldCom) was a telecommunications company. For a time, it was the second largest long-distance telephone company in the United States, after AT&T. Worldcom grew largely by acquiring other telecommunications companies, including MCI Communications in 1998, and filed bankruptcy in 2002 after an accounting scandal, in which several executives, including CEO Bernard Ebbers, were convicted of a scheme to WorldCom scandal, inflate the company's assets. In January 2006, the company, by then renamed MCI, was acquired by Verizon Communications and was later integrated into Verizon Business. Worldcom was originally headquartered in Clinton, Mississippi before relocating to Ashburn, Virginia when it changed its name to MCI. History Foundation In 1983, in a coffee shop in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, Bernard Ebbers and three other investors formed Long Distance Discount Services, Inc. based in Jackson, Mississippi and in 1985, Ebbers was named chief ...
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Fannie Mae
The Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA), commonly known as Fannie Mae, is a United States government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) and, since 1968, a publicly traded company. Founded in 1938 during the Great Depression as part of the New Deal, the corporation's purpose is to expand the secondary mortgage market by securitizing mortgage loans in the form of mortgage-backed securities (MBS), allowing lenders to reinvest their assets into more lending and in effect increasing the number of lenders in the mortgage market by reducing the reliance on locally based savings and loan associations (or "thrifts"). Its brother organization is the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC), better known as Freddie Mac. In 2022, Fannie Mae was ranked number 33 on the ''Fortune'' 500 rankings of the largest United States corporations by total revenue. __TOC__ History Background and early decades Historically, most housing loans in the early 1900s in the United States were s ...
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Bristol-Myers Squibb
The Bristol Myers Squibb Company (BMS) is an American multinational pharmaceutical company. Headquartered in New York City, BMS is one of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies and consistently ranks on the ''Fortune'' 500 list of the largest U.S. corporations. For fiscal 2021, it had a total revenue of $46.4 billion. Bristol Myers Squibb manufactures prescription pharmaceuticals and biologics in several therapeutic areas, including cancer, HIV/AIDS, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, hepatitis, rheumatoid arthritis, and psychiatric disorders. BMS's primary research and development (R&D) sites are located in Lawrence, New Jersey (formerly Squibb, near Princeton), Summit, New Jersey, formerly HQ of Celgene, New Brunswick, New Jersey, Redwood City, California, and Seville in Spain, with other sites in Devens and Cambridge, Massachusetts, East Syracuse, New York, Braine-l'Alleud, Belgium, Tokyo, Japan, Bangalore, India, and Wirral, United Kingdom. BMS previously had ...
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Dell
Dell is an American based technology company. It develops, sells, repairs, and supports computers and related products and services. Dell is owned by its parent company, Dell Technologies. Dell sells personal computers (PCs), servers, data storage devices, network switches, software, computer peripherals, HDTVs, cameras, printers, and electronics built by other manufacturers. The company is known for how it manages its supply chain and electronic commerce. This includes Dell selling directly to customers and delivering PCs that the customer wants. Dell was a pure hardware vendor until 2009 when it acquired Perot Systems. Dell then entered the market for IT services. The company has expanded storage and networking systems. It is now expanding from offering computers only to delivering a range of technology for enterprise customers. Dell is a publicly-traded company (), as well as a component of the NASDAQ-100 and S&P 500. It is the 3rd largest personal computer vendor as ...
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