The workplace-culture reviews of the United States Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) illustrate why "tone at the top" is not merely a leadership concept; it is part of the control environment . Formal values, training and complaint channels can lose credibility when employees fear retaliation, senior leaders are perceived to receive different treatment, or management cannot produce reliable information about complaints and disciplinary outcomes. The case also demonstrates that culture reform requires more than a new policy. Reporting arrangements must be trusted, investigations must be independent, consequences must be consistent, and boards or equivalent oversight bodies must receive enough information to identify patterns that individual cases may conceal. Scope of the case brief This brief examines official reviews published between 2020 and 2025, remediation measures subsequently reported by the FDIC, and the status of relevant Office of Inspector Genera...

Case in brief In 2021, Mazars LLP (now Forvis Mazars LLP) served as the statutory auditor for Studio Retail Group (SRG), a London-listed digital catalogue retailer. The audit engagement partner signed off on the financial statements for the year ending 26 March 2021, issuing an unmodified opinion. The auditor concluded that the directors’ use of the going-concern basis was appropriate and reported that no material uncertainty relating to going concern had been identified. In February 2022, just eight months after the audit report was signed, Studio Retail Group entered administration. The insolvency wiped out shareholder equity and exposed creditors to substantial losses before the business was acquired in a pre-packaged administration sale. Following a regulatory investigation, the UK Financial Reporting Council (FRC) issued a Final Settlement Decision Notice in July 2026. The FRC fined the firm £577,125 (discounted for exceptional cooperation) and the engagement partner £33,412....

An enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is technically "live" when users can successfully log in and process transactions. However, for finance, audit, and governance professionals, an ERP is only successfully implemented if the organisation can reliably reconcile its cash, close its ledgers, preserve access controls, and produce an auditable set of financial statements. Case in brief In 2018, Birmingham City Council approved plans to replace its legacy SAP systems with Oracle for finance, human resources, and procurement. During the design and build phases, the programme departed from its original "Adopt not Adapt" principle, opting instead for extensive software customisations to fit existing legacy workflows. The system went live in April 2022. Post-implementation, core accounting functions were severely impaired. The Council lost the ability to execute timely, accurate bank reconciliations or rely on its management information. This heavily delayed th...

Jurisdiction: Uganda · Decision: Tax Appeals Tribunal · Neutral citation: [2017] UGTAT 121 · Decision date: 4 August 2017 · FGL review: September 2026 A royalty or licence fee can look like an ordinary commercial expense in the accounts. For customs purposes, however, the question is different: must that payment be added to the value of imported goods and therefore increase the customs duties and import taxes calculated on those goods? Bata Shoe Co. Ltd v Uganda Revenue Authority is an important Ugandan decision on that question. The Tribunal accepted that the trademark royalties were connected to the Bata-branded footwear, but it still vacated the assessment because URA had not established the separate requirement that payment of the royalties was a condition of sale of the imported goods. What triggered the dispute Bata Shoe Company Uganda sold and distributed footwear imported from countries including Kenya, Singapore and China under the Bata...

Scope: Uganda · Topic: Revenue reconciliation across ERP, EFRIS, VAT and income tax · FGL review: September 2026 Sales should be explainable across every system a business uses, but they will not always be numerically identical. An ERP may record invoices and journals, EFRIS records fiscal documents, VAT follows statutory supply rules, financial statements apply accounting standards, and the income-tax return applies tax rules to annual business income. The control objective is therefore not to force all four numbers to match. It is to build a documented bridge that explains why they differ, whether each difference is valid, and what evidence supports it. Why the numbers can legitimately differ A difference can arise from timing, classification, system configuration or tax treatment. Common examples include advance billings, deferred income, unbilled revenue, credit notes, exempt or zero-rated supplies, manual journals, foreign-currency treatment, customer-contra...

Jurisdiction: Uganda · Decision: Tax Appeals Tribunal, Applications Nos. 51 & 72 of 2023 · Ruling date: 4 August 2026 · FGL review: September 2026 Medisell Uganda Limited v Uganda Revenue Authority is a useful finance case because it shows the difference between an accounting or reconciliation variance and a legally taxable transaction. The dispute covered corporate income tax, VAT and PAYE for periods between 2017 and 2020 and arose from URA audit work that compared accounting records with customs, stock and payroll information. The Tribunal set aside a corporate income tax assessment of UGX 996,746,527 and VAT of UGX 9,630,468 that had been derived from cost-of-sales variances. It nevertheless upheld VAT of UGX 1,465,020 on a disposal to Medisell Rwanda where the taxpayer did not provide sufficient evidence that the goods had actually been exported. The PAYE findings were also mixed, depending on the evidence supporting the relevant payments and motor...

Jurisdiction: Uganda · Topic: EFRIS and VAT withholding · Effective date: 1 July 2026 · FGL review: September 2026 Uganda's VAT withholding rules changed from 1 July 2026. A person designated to withhold VAT is not required to withhold VAT on a payment for taxable supplies where the supplier issues the designated person with an e-invoice or e-receipt in accordance with the Tax Procedures Code framework. The practical effect is important for both buyers and suppliers: a valid EFRIS document can now affect whether VAT withholding applies to a payment. But this is not the same as saying that VAT withholding has disappeared, or that every document described as an EFRIS invoice automatically produces the same result. What changed from 1 July 2026? The Value Added Tax (Amendment) Act, 2026 changed the VAT withholding framework to exclude a designated person from withholding VAT where that person pays for taxable supplies and is issued with an e-invoice or e-rec...

Jurisdiction: Uganda · Topic: Taxpayer identification · FGL review: September 2026 Uganda's taxpayer-identification framework changed in 2025. For tax-law purposes, an individual's National Identification Number (NIN) and a non-individual's Uganda Registration Services Bureau registration number are now used as tax identification numbers. At the same time, URA is still operating legacy TIN services while it integrates NIN, BRN and TIN records. That distinction matters. The legal identifier has changed, but taxpayers should not assume that every existing URA process, account reference or historic TIN has disappeared overnight. What the law changed The Tax Procedures Code (Amendment) Act, 2025 substituted section 4 of the Tax Procedures Code Act. For tax purposes, it provides that: an individual's NIN issued under Uganda's national identification system is used as the tax identification number; a registration number issued by URSB is used for a non-indivi...