Best paper awards;

              As it has since 1955, the Firm con­tinued
in 1967 awards for the best tech­nical
papers written by principals and
members of the staff during the year
ended September 30. The winners this
year were:
Thomas S. Oehring, principal, Exec­utive
Office, won First Award of $750
for his paper Multiple Corporations—A
Second Chance.
During 1967, Mr. Oehring points
out, there was opportunity to reverse
tax choices made in earlier years. Tax
elections of corporate groups and their
benefits and disadvantages — prorated
surtax exemption, 100% dividends re­ceived
deduction, multiple surtax ex­emptions,
consolidated returns—are
analyzed and the circumstances for
valid re-election indicated. If recon­sideration
of an election to file con­solidated
returns is missed in 1967, an
extended time may elapse before a con­solidated-
return election may again be
terminated without permission of the
Commissioner of Internal Revenue. If
elections to take multiple surtax exemp­tions
for 1964 through 1966, for ex­ample,
are undone in 1967, this action
counts as a termination resulting in at
least a five-year waiting period before
the election may once more be made.
This paper was published in the Journal
of Taxation, July 1967 issue .
Samuel B. Lowell, senior accountant,
Los Angeles, won Second Award of
$500 for his paper Pricing Policies and
Methods.
Among the main categories of all
competitive activities engaging the at­tention
of a manufacturing company's
management, are product improvement
and innovation, sales promotion, and
pricing. Of this trilogy, the problem of
determining selling prices is the least
understood. With this prelude, Mr.
Lowell then supplies generalized guide­lines
for use by a hypothetical manu­facturer
of machinery and illustrates
the major methods for determining
price, the basic consideration, of course,
being the relation of cost to price. The
judgment is reached that the return-on-investment
method holds a built-in ad­vantage
over the return-on-sales meth­od,
the former taking into consideration
the main elements of financial manage­ment—
sales, profits, and investment—
and the latter emphasizing action to in­crease
profits by either increased sales
or decreased cost without regard to
change in investment. A well-developed
understanding of pricing methods is
important to the management account­ant.
Published in Management Ac­counting
magazine, March 1967 issue.
Harold G. Levell, principal, Mem­phis,
won Third Award of $300 for his
paper Purposes for Holding Real
Estate.
Mr. Levell reviews, analyzes, and
condenses court opinions bearing \m
the problem of determining the pur­pose
of holding real estate from the
standpoint of categorizing gains as
capital gains or ordinary income under
income tax rules. Despite court de­cisions
favorable to the taxpayer—one
decision holding that "the taxpayer
must, to defeat his claim to a capital
gains rate, have been in the business of
selling his lands . . . " — the issue of
whether real estate has been held pri­marily
as an investment or for sale to
» A. A A .a „
customers in the ordinary course of a
trade or business is difficult, somewhat
nebulous, and far from settled. Except
in a clear-cut case, Mr. Levell believes
the best initial answer the tax consult­ant
can give his client confronted with
the problem would be to say, "I don't
know, and no one else in town can tell
you." Published in The Louisiana Cer­tified
Public Accountant, May 1967
issue.
Edward L. Condron, principal,
Miami, won Fourth Award of $200 for
his paper on Single Audit for Mortgage
Bankers—Positive Action.
The case for the single-audit con­cept,
aptly stated by Mr. Condron, en­compasses
acceptance, by the investor,
of a certified public accountant's annual
audit of a mortgage banker's financial
statements in lieu of special examina­tions
made by or for the investor. Main
benefits claimed by advocates of the
program are savings in time and
money; others are: relief of investor
personnel from field audit tasks; avail­ability
of CPA's single audit for some
reliance by the investor's own auditor.
Published in The Florida Certified Ac­countant,
November 1966 issue.
There is a feature of the Firm's new
Professional Education and Develop­ment
Program that may have an indi­rect
bearing on future Best Paper
Awards. This is the Research Study
Project, which calls for in-depth inves­tigation
of a particular accounting or
business subject and preparation of a
paper that may be published. Although
it is not an objective of the course,
eligibility of a published paper for a
Best Paper Award is a "fringe benefit."
BEST
PAPER
AWARDS S
28