Questões para Concursos

Atenção : Considere o texto abaixo para responder às questões de números 69 e 70.

Why Audits Fail: A Story of Missteps and Lessons Learned

24 January 2025

Let's look at three common reasons why audits fall apart and see what we can learn from them.

1. ___[subtítulo]___

Picture an auditor walking into a company with a checklist and a laptop, ready to make sense of the chaos. But instead of finding clarity, they're handed a series of false assumptions. Maybe management paints an overly rosy picture of their processes. Or worse, the evidence provided is incomplete or outright fabricated. Imagine the frustration of trying to solve a puzzle when pieces are deliberately hidden or swapped out.
Sometimes it's not malicious - management might not even realize their statements are misleading. But the result is the same: the auditor can't do their job, and critical issues go unnoticed.

2 . A Lack of Skilled Resources

Now imagine the audit team itself. Maybe they're new, overwhelmed, or simply don't have the expertise needed to navigate the complexities of this organization. Instead of spotting red flags, they miss them - or worse, don't even know where to look.
Auditing isn't easy. It takes specialized knowledge to dig into systems, spot gaps in controls, and interpret what the data is really saying. Without skilled resources, even the most thorough audit plan can fall apart.

3 . No Support from the Organization

Finally, imagine the company itself. The audit team asks for access to critical systems but gets stuck waiting for approval. Employees avoid answering questions because they're either too busy or worried about saying the wrong thing. The systems in place are outdated, making it impossible to track down reliable data. At this point, it's like the auditor is running a race with their shoelaces tied together.
Auditors can't succeed without support. They need access to systems, cooperation from employees, and tools that make their job easier - not harder. When the organization doesn't provide this support, even the most well-intentioned audit is doomed.

How to Avoid a Failed Audit

So, how can we change the ending to this story? It comes down to preparation and collaboration. Here are a few things every organization can do:
- Be Transparent: Don't hide problems. Audits are there to help, not punish.
- Invest in Skills: Train your audit team and give them the tools they need to succeed.
- Foster a Supportive Culture: Make sure employees see audits as opportunities for growth, not something to fear.

(Adapted from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-audits-fail-story-missteps-lessons-learned-morfa-itil-cobit-5-1rghe/)

Atenção : Considere o texto abaixo para responder às questões de números 65 a 68.

Big Techs

When tax bills are in the millions or even billions, some individuals will go to any lengths to avoid paying up
RS, HMRC, FTS or CRA: whatever you like to call him, there's no hiding from the taxman. No individual or institution is immune from the annual tax deadline, although many aim to reduce what they pay as much as possible through regulatory loopholes and profit redistribution schemes.
When that tips over into illegal territory, though, it becomes a major problem. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that over $600bn is lost every year due to tax avoidance, with the US, China and Japan named as the greatest culprits.
Multinational technology companies including Google, Apple and Amazon have been slapped with multiple allegations in recent years regarding non-payment of taxes in Europe. In 2016, Apple was ordered to pay $15.4bn in back taxes to Ireland after it was revealed that the company paid just one percent tax on its European profits in 2003, down to 0.005 percent in 2014. That same year Google was accused of using two regulatory loopholes, nicknamed the 'double Irish', allowing it to pay just six percent corporation tax rather than the required 19.3 percent.
The Double Irish arrangement was a base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) corporate tax avoidance tool used mainly by United States multinationals since the late 1980s to avoid corporate taxation on non-US profits. (The US was one of a small number of countries that did not use a "territorial" tax system, and taxed corporations on all profits, no matter whether the profit was made outside the US or not, in contrast to "territorial" tax systems which tax only profits made within that country.) It was the largest tax avoidance tool in history. By 2010, it was shielding US$100 billion annually in US multinational foreign profits from taxation, and was the main tool by which US multinationals built up untaxed offshore reserves of US$1 trillion from 2004 to 2018.
Despite US knowledge of the Double Irish for a decade, it was the European Commission that in October 2014 forced Ireland to close the scheme, starting in January 2015. However, users of existing schemes, such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Pfizer, were given until January 2020 to close them.
At the announcement of the closure, it was known that multinationals had replacement BEPS tools in Ireland, the Single Malt (2014), and Capital Allowances for Intangible Assets (CAIA) (2009):
- Single malt is almost identical to the Double Irish, and was identified with Microsoft (LinkedIn), and Allergan in 2017;
- CAIA can provide up to twice the tax shield of Single Malt, or Double Irish, and was identified with Apple in the 2015 leprechaun economics affair, i.e., a huge statistical distortion in Ireland's GDP caused by Apple's tax restructuring. The company transferred intangible assets to its Irish subsidiary, which artificially inflated the country's GDP by more than 26.3% in a single year (later revised to 24.6%), an absurd leap for a relatively small economy. This growth did not reflect real production, but rather Apple's tax inversion of about US$ 300 billion of its intangible assets (mainly intellectual property) to Ireland.

(Adapted from https://www.worldfinance.com/wealth-management/top-5-tax-scandals)