How much of the financial chicanery is a result of complicated tax laws and regulations? It seems that a lot of the incidents of mischief revolve around misreporting or misrepresenting basic economic facts. Booking a loan as revenue? That's just a flat out lie.
But there are all sorts of "standard" practices involving depreciation, carryover, etc. that are strictly inventions of the tax code. Seems to me that a company should be able to report out its income and expenditures pretty easily. Would that make cheating more difficult?
I'm not a lawyer or accountant. It just seems like corporate finance has turned into something it need not be.
Exactly. Much of the fraud stems of tax laws and codes that beg for interpretation and creativity. The tax law has created this problem.