DaleWilliams.net

Level 1: You are burning the midnight oil, sacrificing your friendships, social life, and most of all sleep in achieving your goal, but you press on with caffeine to stay ahead.

Level 2: You are trying to succeed, the ulcers have started to form, but you push on like a dedicated student, working through the pain to reach your goal of becoming a cpa.

Level 3: Your head begins throbbing, you can’t think straight, at this point you can’t tell an operating from a capital lease if it hit you on the head. You need to dull the pain of cramming as the test date looms.

Level 4: It’s Friday night, your friends are playing flip cup and you have turned off your phone to avoid knowing just how much fun everyone you know is having right at this moment. This Bud’s for you.

Level 5: Beer just couldn’t cut it this time, you are done thinking. You are done trying. You don’t want to remember the next 8 hours. Remember to drink water, you have to start your final lecture in the morning.

Level 6: Maybe you just found out you didn’t pass your last test, and the hours you spend and hundreds of dollars invested were for naught. You want to burn it all, but that little voice in the back of your head reminds you that you will just have to buy all the study materials over again. You can’t burn it all, but the symbolism of sending the CD case back to the depths of hell from which it came should suffice.

Level 7: Let’s step back for a second. You don’t want to be here. A day off will do you good. Keep telling yourself that by the time you get out of prison from going postal, (which will be a long time from now because you are broke from exam fees and are stuck with a public defender who really just didn’t ‘get’ law school) all your tests will have lapsed and you will be starting from square one. Save yourself the legal or hospital bills, if you are at this level, take your anger out on something productive (like a dangerous carnivorous watermelon- just be sure to yell “it’s coming right for us” before shooting, it may be a protected species…)

Obama’s new corporate tax policy claims to “close the tax loopholes for companies that ship jobs overseas”. While this may instill a nice populist fire in the hearts of the American people, the repercussions of this move will likely be very harmful to our economy.

The loophole that is being thrown around is the combination of tax credits to mitigate the effects of the United States’ unique tax system. Nearly all countries tax commerce within their borders, the US however taxes based on both residency and citizenship. This means that a US corporation pays taxes based on both US income, and is also responsible for paying US taxes on foreign income as well. The ‘loophole’ that may be closed, is the way through the tax code in which US corporations can compete on a similar footing to their foreign competitors. Under the current system, the income earned abroad is only taxed when it comes back to the US. If the income stays permanently invested overseas, the current us tax code does not penalize the foreign subsidiary for being part of a US concern and does not impose an additional incremental tax on the foreign sub (difference between the US and foreign tax). US corporations in this way will be placed at an economic disadvantage in the global marketplace, as all their earnings, around the world, will be taxed at one of the highest rates worldwide.

Then you have to ask yourself: “I were a CEO, why would I want to remain incorporated in the US with its high tax rates and unfavorable domestic business environment, when I can re-incorporate in a lower tax country and pay the same taxes on US and foreign sales that all my competitors are?” I can tell you, CEO’s, boards, and shareholders will seriously look at answers to these questions. While it may be hard to see now, traditionally companies in a capitalist society were supposed to be wholly focused on earning the highest possible returns for their owners.

–Begin Rant–
Oh, and by the way, I wrote owners; I did not write ‘stakeholders’ which is an MBA buzz word that pisses me off. It’s right up there with using the term ‘Black Swan’ without ever reading Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book first. If you are a publically traded company, worry about making money: I don’t give a damn about your green initiatives (If I want to feel warm and fuzzy, I’ll buy some brown organic toilet paper that scratches my asshole), cushy retirement plans, and employee benefits in your MD&A, or how you ‘give back to the community’. If I invest money with you, I expect to get more money back, reflective of the risk of the investment, plus a nice fat alpha because I’m that f-ing good. I have no problem with charity, but I want 100% of my money earning a return on investment. My donations to charity I prefer to make on my own, with my own time, with my own money (which is not entrusted to me by others to earn a return), to my own causes.
–End Rant–

It is simple, in today’s world, capital flows freely. If it becomes clear that the US, with some of the world’s highest corporate tax rates, unfavorable business climate, and punitive regulations, is no longer suitable for conducting business; business will leave. I hope that the talk coming out of Washington remains just talk. If words become actions, I fear it will be another step in a direction our country should not be heading.

Google has a new program called “Latitude” was playing with that can broadcast your location based on your cell phone. Most new cell phones have built in GPS that can pinpoint your location to a few meters anywhere on earth. My phone is older, so as best as I can tell, it either determines my location based on triangulating cell phone signals, or more than likely based on what network I’m on. Whether you think it’s cool or creepy is up to you, but I like playing with it.

When I got this website, it came with about $100 worth of advertising credit. Now, I don’t really have any real need to advertise my website, as it is mostly for friends, coworkers, and others to learn a little more about me. But since the advertising credits expire, I might as well use them and see how they work; so that if I ever need to provide this kind of service and the future I can at least have a little firsthand experience in internet advertising.
Google AdWords is an interesting service. The basic idea is to bid for space on Google’s home page and other web sites which manage their advertising through Google. I can see out it could become very pricey to use Google AdWords if the keywords you select are in common usage. I have found that using less commonly searched terms will allow for more focused advertisements at a lower cost. Using this method I have simplified when the advertisement for my website will appear in Google search results so that it will only appear when searching for Dale Williams or just Dale. I could have included other terms such as Wittenberg or Ohio State but that would add to the costs significantly. My main goals through this advertisement are to get more page views to my website and easily allow people to Google my name and locate information about me.

The other advertising service that I got credit for was Facebook’s advertising service. This service seems to be a little less expensive and also got twice as much advertising credit. I could see this being very useful for a school or employer looking for particular undergrads or recent college graduates. I set up this account with a bid for 5¢ per 1000 page impressions in specific networks in which I’m associated with. The result of this effort will be that a large majority of people I’m in contact with we’ll see my website and have an opportunity to look further.

I don’t see much practical use of this knowledge in the public accounting field however I have always been interested in learning about different aspects of the operation of the business and this new form of advertising and may prove to be useful in some form which I can’t identify yet. I don’t see myself earning much in the area of gainful employment over the summer, so if anyone reading this would be interested in putting together an advertising package for a product or service, I would be happy to help –just send me a message.

- Dale

Thanks for visiting!

You may already know me from school or work, or you may have no idea who I am. In either case, I hope you will find something interesting here!

To navigate this site, there should be a bar on the bottom of the page that looks like the windows start bar.  From here, you can log in, view recent posts, and get to know a little about me personally and professionally.

Enjoy!

 

-Dale