| A.
R. Kakhsaz Company
an accountancy corporation
Member
American Institute of
Certified Public Accountants
International associates:
Tavana & Co.
Chartered Accountants
Toronto, Canada
Tel.416-229-2221
|
•
Is the price of oil to remain high? Well,
Chevron has betted on it, as it purchased Unocal for $18.1 billion.
So high an amount that can be justified, only if the price of oil stays as
high as it has been in recent months. Purchase of Unocal has given
Chevron access to oil and gas fields across Asia and North America.
Chevron needs the new supplies as its production had fallen 14% since
2000. Unocal's proven reserves, now controlled by Chevron, come amid
an increasing intense debate over whether the world's oil supplies have
hit a peak and are about to start running out. If so, sky-high oil
price will ensue and Chevron will have made an ingenious investment of
buying Unocal. • The
price of oil has had an almost 55% increase so far,
this year.
• 12
million of income-tax returns filed in 2005,
reported a total of $327 billion in capital gains. 84% of those
capital gains were of taxpayers making $200,000 or more.
• Of the 2.5 million individual
income-tax returns with income of $200,000 or more for 2002, nearly 5,000
had no income-tax liability. Why? Because of large amounts of
tax-exempt bond interest, medical deductions, charitable donations,
investment losses and other items, says the IRS.
• Number of pages
of the federal tax law and regulations since 1974:
| 2005 |
62,000 |
310% |
| 2004 |
60,000 |
300 |
| 1995 |
41,000 |
205 |
| 1984 |
26,000 |
130 |
| 1974 |
20,000 |
100 |
• Online
retail sales in the U.S. are to climb 22% to $172 billion this year on
growth in such categories as cosmetics and jewelry.
• Many hospitals have
started to use heart scanners that provide higher quality 3-D images and
may reduce the need for angiograms.
•
For more of the Generalist, please visit our website
at ARKCPA•COM.
|
• theGeneralist,
a one-page monthly publication of the accounting firm of A. R.
Kakhsaz Company, is in its 11th year of providing information,
presented fairly and accurately, from sources we can depend upon and
trust.
• Medical doctors
across the U.S. have signed up as part-time lecturers for drug
companies. At small meetings often over lunch or dinner, these
physician-pitchmen tell other doctors, who have also been enticed to
attend, about diseases and the drugs to treat them, for a fee of
$750 or so from the drug company who has sponsored the
meeting. There were 237,000 such meetings in 2004.
• 6% commission on the
sale of a house is outrageous? The
surge in home prices has prompted more consumers to question the
real-estate brokers' fees. Naturally, during the past year,
discounters started looming and proliferating. And now the
realtors and their various trade-associations have begun to fight
back by, among other things, imposing rules that make it harder for
discounters to get their listings on national and regional
Websites.
• Humans
as loan collateral? Between 1834 and 1861, Citizens Bank of
Louisiana secured loans with mortgages on land as well as thousands
of slaves.
•
Aspirin works as well as warfarin blood
thinner in cutting stroke risks from artery clogging, finds a study
in the New England Journal of Medicine.
•
President Bush remains
"committed" to full repeal of the federal estate tax.
•
An income-tax preparer who
prepared 13,000 returns in 2001 and 2002, "was caught on tape
advising an undercover agent to include phony expenses" on his
tax return in order to qualify for a tax refund.
• We see more in numbers
than just numbers...
Ali R. Kakhsaz, CPA, MAcc
www.arkpca.com
|
