We have had discussions about the Buffet tax. Now comes the Zuckerberg tax! With the Facebook IPO looming large and the quantifying of Mark Zuckerberg’s wealth there has been a lot of discussions on his tax liability. What is sure is that he will pay taxes of about $2 billion on only the portion of stock that he exercises which is around $5 billion. This seems like a large tax bill at 30% of income! However, it may be the only tax that he every pays on possibly $50 or $100 billion of wealth – not bad tax planning with an effective rate of about 1-2%! This is because of our tax system which taxes Individuals only when they actually sell property and realize their gains! So if Zuckerberg never sells his shares but only borrows against it, he will never pay any additional taxes.

This seems unfair to many folks but is perfectly legitimate under the current tax system. Also legitimate is the fact that investors pay lower taxes which is what prompted Obama to suggest the “Buffet tax”! Will we see the request for a Zuckerberg tax – one that requires individuals to pay taxes on market value of assets? Probably never because of the Pandora’s box that could be opened up with the challenges of deciding what is the market value of an asset!

While the Buffet tax or the Zuckerberg tax may never get passed into law, the accounting tutoring team will be happy to help you understand these tax rule recommendations if you desire so.

Have we learnt our lessons from the economic crisis? Or do we still need more financial risk tutoring? What can MBA programs do to promote an understanding of financial risk in MBA students who will lead in the future ?

The economic crisis over the last two years has seen plenty of paper, ink and blog space being used to point fingers at almost everyone! Governments, political parties, organizations ( both private and public), individuals, leaders, society, habits, et al have been accused of contributing to the crisis. Economist.com has an interesting take on financial risk. In a special report on financial risk Matthew Valencia talk about various views. Read it in detail.

Much has been written and talked about. Have we learnt our lessons? Or do we still need more financial risk tutoring? I believe we still need more financial risk tutoring. Creative financial accounting, fancy economic models and financial modeling, etc are not the solution. Business schools must make financial risk management an integral part of their MBA programs.

The MBA program is a challenge for most of us! Juggling work, studies, family duties, extra curricular activities and other demands on your time is never easy. If you are from a non- business background you can add to that list subjects like accounting, finance, statistics and operations research which require great tutors and sufficient time to master. We hear this often and want to highlight this great quote from Roosevelt.

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

- Teddy Roosevelt, April 23rd 1910

Hang on and persevere. This MBA program will be over soon and you will enjoy the benefits of being an MBA graduate! In the meantime, if our MBA tutors including accounting tutors, finance tutors, statistics tutors, economic tutors, operations management tutors, etc can assist you in any way, please do not hesitate to get in touch with us. Private tutoring does make learning a lot easier and faster.

We truly believe that MBA programs (good ones) are worth every dollar you spend on them and are easily one of the best masters’ programs out there (for most people).  One of the reasons is that an MBA program is very versatile.  If you list out all the sectors or functions that students join after their MBA, you will  probably list out everything under the sun.  An MBA adds value in almost all industries, sectors and roles.

Here is additional evidence why we believe that an MBA is a versatile program. An Economist article on the economics of cows mentions  that Dr Galligan, got an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania after originally studying veterinary sciences. He is now teaching veterinary economics. He has also spent time helping Amish farmers in the past! How much more interesting can life get!?

Here is the kicker! Whichever industry or function you are in one of our MBA tutors can tutor you on a subject that is of interest to you!  The range of concepts we tutor students in is so wide that between our pool of MBA tutors (finance tutors, economics tutors, statistics tutors, accounting tutors and financial modeling tutor) we will have something that is of interest to you! It may be understanding the economics of a cow, calculating the net present value of an asset, figuring out the return on investment of a new project, building a business plan or a financial model for a business plan, or figuring out the marketing strategy for a new market but one of our MBA tutors can help you learn something interesting. Challenge us on this. Give us a call.

As part of GraduateTutor’s vision to make learning easier, we are officially beginning to provide homework help and tutoring for a range of Open Courseware (OCW) programs. We will begin by provide homework help and tutoring for MIT’s Sloan School of Business’ 15.501 / 15.516 Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting (Spring 2004).

Graduate Tutor’s accounting tutor group consists of MBAs and CPAs who currently tutor students from a number of top business schools and are well placed to tutor students learning from MIT’s Open courseware (OCW).

The Introduction to Financial and Managerial Accounting course is only the start and we hope to provide tutoring support to many more Financial Accounting and Managerial Accounting courses soon.  We have a very strong pool of Financial Accounting tutors and Managerial Accounting tutors and hope that you will be able to enjoy learning with our Accounting tutor group.

We have always been a supporter of open education and open courseware.  GraduateTutor is glad to now announce that we will formally begin offering tutoring services to MBA/business open courseware programs as well.  Students learning on their own might find that they are stuck on a specific point or need help with a specific topic.  Since open courseware students often do not have access to the faculty of these universities and associate resources, they can access GraduateTutor’s expert faculty for assistance. 

While MIT’s Open courseware and Open Yale Courses are the most famous there are a lot of other universities that participate in the Open course ware movement.  The following is sample list of participating universities in the US.

• Arizona State University
• College of Eastern Utah
• Dixie State College of Utah
• Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
• Kaplan Higher Education
• Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Michigan State University
• Open Institute of law, Int.
• Tufts University
• UC Berkeley
• University of Alaska Fairbanks
• University of California, Irvine
• University of Massachusetts Boston
• University of Michigan
• University of Notre Dame
• University of Utah
• University of Wisconsin- Eau Claire
• Utah State University
• Utah Valley State College
• Weber State University
• Western Governors University
• Wheelock College

We congratulate the above universities for making available their valuable knowledge and resources to students worldwide.  We have also reached out to the Open Courseware Consortium to see how we can do our bit to spread open education.

PS:  Note that we do not have the resources to support the wide range of subjects the above universities offer, we will start with accounting homework and tutoring, finance homework and tutoring, economics homework and tutoring and statistics homework and tutoring before expanding onto other topics.

Senith Mathews is the founder of GraduateTutor.com.  Having seen many MBA classmates struggle with their quantitative subjects and having tutored some of them, Senith saw first-hand the need for high quality tutoring services.  About two years ago, he felt technology developments had made it feasible to provide tutoring services online and so began Graduatetutor.com to provide high quality MBA tutoring services.  He was pleasantly surprised to see that GraduateTutor.com’s services are being availed of by not just MBA students but also by working professionals, other graduate students and universities.  Senith is currently very active in tutor recruitment and student services as he feels that these two functions are the most critical aspect of the GraduateTutor.com experience.  He also oversees the marketing and operations team at GraduateTutor.com.

Prior to founding GraduateTutor.com, Senith worked as a management consultant at Mercer Management Consulting (now Oliver Wyman) out of their Dallas office, consulting on strategy, operational, private equity, M&A and valuation projects.  Senith has over 10 years of professional management experience including leading a non profit performing arts organization and advising multinationals investing in India as part of Arthur Andersen’s Tax and Business advisory division in India.

Senith Mathews is a qualified Chartered Accountant (~CPA) and has a MBA from the Cox School of Business at SMU in Dallas, TX.