Task 13 Say whether these sentences are true or false and explain why.
1. Foreign citizens entering and leaving the RF don’t need any documents shall be proving their identity.
2. There is only one document that can be a RF citizen’s proof of identity: a passport.
3. European citizens entering the Russian Federation are not required to have RF entry visas.
4. RF citizens entering the Russian Federation are required to have RF entry visas.
5. Only the citizens of Georgia and Turkmenistan are allowed to enter the RF without the otherwise mandatory entry visas.
6. RF entry visas can be obtained only in Russia.
7. To obtain a visa one must have a formal Letter of Invitation from the RF Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
8. Minor RF citizens can leave the RF only being accompanied by their parents.
9. Minor RF citizens cannot leave the RF unaccompanied.
10. Passengers holding tourist visas must also have confirmed hotel reservations on hand.
11. All the foreign citizens remaining in the RF for a period less than three daysshall have to register by submitting their migration cards at an appropriate Interior Ministry agency or at the hotel of their stay.
Task 14 Prepare a PP presentation on one of the topics below.
• A Short History of the Customs in the USA
• Russian Customs Regulations
• Preflight Controls
• A Simple and Paperless Environment for Customs and Trade
• Duty-Free Shops – any future?
UNIT 4
ACCOUNTING
LEAD IN
Task 1 Read the jokes about the accounting profession of and say what implications they make about the trade.
Joke 1
An accountant is having a hard time sleeping and goes to see his doctor. "Doctor, I just can’t get to sleep at night."
"Have you tried counting sheep?"
"That's the problem - I make a mistake and then spend three hours trying to find it."
Joke 2
Two accountants happen to be in a bank, when armed robbers burst in. While the robbers are collecting the money from the tellers and valuable things from the customers, accountant one puts something in accountant two's hand. "What is this?" "It’s that $50 I owe you."
Joke 3
An intern asks a partner to explain ethics in accountancy. The partner thinks for a moment and says. “Mr. Brown, one of our customers, came to see me last week and paid me £1,000 in cash. As he left I counted the notes and they came to £1,100.” The student said. “I see. The ethical dilemma is whether to give the extra money back?” “Sure, not! The dilemma is whether to tell my partner?”
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Task 13 Below you see some problematic issues concerning the accounting profession. Answer the questions.
1. There are some companies, which are involved in sustainable accounting. What is sustainable accounting? Can you come up with example of a company doing their books in this way? How different are they from the rest of business world? Does it boost their brand reputation? Are there any other reasons for sustainable accounting practices?
2. Do you think ethics plays a role in today’s business practices? If yes, will the trend continue into the future? What negative aspects of doing business does ethical corporate behavior help to eliminate?
3. Automatization and robotics are the future trends in finance. Do you agree with the statement? Do you think the trends may diminish or boost ethical aspects of business practices?
Task 3 What do you know about the history of accounting and the present state of affairs in the industry? Answer the questions below:
1. How long is the history of accounting?
2. How vital are accounting services for today’s business world?
3. These are some major trends in the future of accounting. Expand on the points. Would you like to add anything else to the list?
· Increased focus on stakeholder engagement
· Greater use of technology
· Identification and nurturing of talent
· Further qualifications
· More social media
4. What are the fields within the accounting profession? How many areas of accounting can you name? How different are the areas?
READING
Task 4 Read the text below and say if your background knowledge about the history of accounting (see the previous task) is from what the text says.
The History of Accounting
Accounting is a system of recording and summarizing business transactions. Methods of accounting have been developing with trade practices since ancient times. The earliest known writings on clay tablets from Egypt and Mesopotamia dated 2000 to 3300 B.C. were records of tax accounting. The oldest system of accounting used single entry accounting as the most intuitive form. Prior to rise of European commerce in the Medieval Ages, India was the primary center for commercial activity. Indian merchants had a very advanced for those times accounting system, called the BahiKhata system. Then the Medieval Venice merchants Benedetto Cotrugli or Luca Pacioli made a compilation of the ancient works on accounting originating from India, Greece and Rome, and designed the double entry accounting system. The Edinburgh Society of Accountants and the Glasgow Institute of Accountants and Actuaries was the first professional organization for accountants, founded in Scotland in 1854. Members of first accounting organizations called themselves chartered accountants.
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The rising public status of accountants helped to transform accounting into a profession. The first standardized test for accountants was issued in 1896 in the USA. In the USA, the end of the Civil War brought a railroad boom. The increase in railroad mileage required a clear system of accounting for participating companies. Andrew Carnegie brought cost accounting to the business world in the late 1860s when he worked with the Keystone Bridge Company. Carnegie decided to track costs daily, accounted for wasted money within each department and changed employee evaluation. This cost accounting system was emulated elsewhere then. Alfred Sloan and General Motors in the 1920s used even more advanced cost accounting techniques. In order to determine if car labels like Chevrolet and Cadillac were successful, GM measured return on investment and return on equity as part of their standard accounting practices. It helped to determine if they were earning profits off investments and created a more flexible budget and a quicker response to market changes.
The accounting profession has been revolutionized several times in the past 150 years by technological advancements. The advent of the tabulating machine in 1890 allowed quicker processing of receipts and reconciliation of books. During the 1950s, researchers at the Stanford Research Institute invented "ERMA", the Electronic Recording Method of Accounting computer processing system. ERMA began as a project for the Bank of America. ERMA computerized the manual processing of checks and account management and automatically updated and posted checking accounts. They also designed MICR (magnetic ink character recognition), which allowed computers to read special numbers at the bottom of checks that allowed computerized tracking and accounting of check transactions. The automated teller machine (ATM) is the natural descendant of this work. In recent years, accounting software like PeachTree and QuickBooks have brought features unthinkable to accountants only a generation ago.
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Accounting can be divided into several areas of activity. These can certainly overlap and they are often closely intertwined. Financial accounting is the periodic reporting of a company's financial position through financial statements (the balance sheet, income statement, and statement of cash flows). Management accounting emphasizes the preparation and analysis of accounting information within the organization, being mainly concerned with the allocation of costs. Management accounting or cost accounting has developed new approaches like activity-based costing (ABC) and target costing, but they continue to debate how to provide and use cost information for management decision-making. Tax accounting helps entities minimize their tax payments. Fund accounting is used for nonprofit entities as unlike other companies they do not seek to make a profit. Forensic accounting is the use of accounting in legal matters, including litigation support, investigation and dispute resolution. Bookkeeping is an unglamorous but essential part of accounting. It is the recording of all the economic activity of an organization - sales made, bills paid, capital received - and summarizing them periodically. The accountants design the accounting systems the bookkeepers use.
Auditing is the examination and verification of company accounts and the firm's system of internal control. There is both external and internal auditing. External auditors are independent firms such as the Big Four -PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte ToucheTomatsu, Ernst & Young, and KPMG.
Comprehension
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