ＫＰＭＧ、罰金４億ドル強で和解・不正節税指南問題

ホットニュース〓〓マネー&マーケット

ＫＰＭＧが不正なタックスシェルターを顧客に提供していた問題で、米司法当局に総額4億5600万ドル（約500億円）の罰金を支払うことで和解したという記事。

関連記事

ＫＰＭＧに限らず、数年前まで、大手・中堅の会計事務所はどこもいかがわしいタックスシェルターの売り込みに励んでいたようです。

As the report of the Senate subcommittee noted in 2003, "dubious tax shelter sales are no longer the province of shady, fly-by-night companies with limited resources." It had become a big business. Nearly every big and midsize accounting firm created "tax products" that usually involved complex swap transactions to create losses on paper that their individual and corporate clients could use to secretly erase taxable income.

ＫＰＭＧがこの分野に参入したのは、比較的遅かったようです。Ｅ＆Ｙとの合併話があったときに、Ｅ＆Ｙが大きく儲けていたのをみたことが、きっかけだったようです。

"We came to the party late. We drank more, and we stayed longer," said a former member of KPMG's board.

KPMG went full-bore into creating and selling aggressive tax shelters only around 1997, after it held failed merger talks with Ernst & Young, according to a member of KPMG's board at that time.

The talks afforded KPMG the opportunity to analyze Ernst & Young's books in detail, and it was disturbed by what it saw: a major competitor growing at a rapid rate, and making lots of money, by aggressively selling tax shelters, sometimes to KPMG's own audit clients.