The purpose of this article is to analyze purchased goodwill with a view to seeing whether it ought to be amortized by charges to income, and in general to present a case for amortization. Goodwill refers to favorable attitudes toward an enterprise. Thus, it includes the favorable attitudes of customers, employees, credit grantors, investors, suppliers, governmental regulators, politicians and the general public. Other descriptive terms for goodwill are reputation and customer habit. Usually goodwill is transferred only on the sale of the entire concern. However, there are cases where the goodwill involved in a patent, copyright, secret process, or trademark is transferred with the patent or other item without selling the entire business. Goodwill may fade from memory unless the reputation is fed or replenished by new feats or reminders. Reputations fade from memory unless the reputation is fed or replenished by new feats or reminders. Goodwill is hard to build up, so the buyer of a concern will often pay a large sum of money for the goodwill.

Reviews the book "Cost Accounting," 4th ed., by John J.W. Neuner.

To dealer antiques, coins, stamps and other collectors' items have two special problems in inventory tasking and control. One is associated with identification of units and the other with determining cost. The problem of identification arises because the dealer seldom has two items alike. Consider, for example, stamps. To the untrained person two stamps may appear alike if they are of the same color, denomination, and design. To the more informed person, however, watermark in the paper, size of perforations, and minute details of design will distinguish one stamp from another. Moreover, if two stamps should be identical as to issue, they will still differ as to potential resale price and hence inventory value because of condition factors. Similar problems appear in other collectors' items. As a result the dealer in these items must identify each item carefully and probably will have but one of each. The problem of determining cost is a combination of the problems of retail method and of joint products. The usual way of acquiring antiques and other collectors' items is to buy a number of items at a time for a lump sum, as when a collection is bought from someone no longer interested in it or when a bunch of stuff comes from someone's attic.

Reviews the book "Effects of Taxation--Corporate Financial Policy," by Dan Throop Smith.

This article focuses on the professional accounting school and the natural school year and proposes some changes which can make these two more accessible to students. The article suggests a three-year professional school with an entrance prerequisite of two or more years of liberal arts work. As little prescribed work in the pre-professional preparation should be required as is feasible in order to make admittance to the professional school as easy and as flexible as possible. It is suggested to develop a more or less standard curriculum which would include the more important accounting courses designed to provide well-rounded training, considering the needs of both the executive and public accountants. Room should be left for elective work. Some room should be left for electives from the standpoint of individual choice of the student. The natural school year would be a natural part of the professional school. It would have its summer vacation during the first three months of the calendar year. The two semesters or three quarters would start after the "busy season" and end just before the Christmas vacation period. There would be breaks between these periods, of course. The idea would be to have a sort of built-in internship program.

For the operation of law and economics in connection with income is often joint rather than several. Statute law, Common law, legal decisions and economics are the ultimate authorities on income. They lay down the requirements. This article discusses the

The article discusses modifications made to a family tree introduced by scholar Lewis A. Carman in 1932. He used the tree to analyze the use of equity ratios in distributing the combined capital stock and surplus on the balance sheets of companies affiliated by both unilateral and bilateral common stockholdings. The family tree is adapted very slightly to have it obey some modem principles of family tree construction like arrows point with the force of authority, percentages of ownership and separate family trees are made for each class of stock. In 1948, the use of equity ratios was extended to the preparation of income and surplus statements involving both common and preferred stockholdings, and a mechanical method of calculating the equity ratios was introduced for use after the ratios of the bilateral groups have been computed. In 1949, a new formula for computing the equity ratios for bilateral stockholdings was developed in an advanced course in consolidations at The University of Texas by Myles Joseph Aaronson. The new formula is very simple to use because the determinant aspects cancel out leaving an equation, which enables anyone to handle the most difficult cases of mutual stockholdings, by using only simple arithmetic processes.

Reviews the book "Accounting Trends and Techniques in Published Corporate Annual Reports," 6th ed.

Reviews the book "Financial Statements: Form, Analysis and Interpretation," edited by Ralph Dale Kennedy and Stewart Yarwood McMullen.

Accounting lectures can be made more understandable and more interesting to the students by the use of suitable "props" illustrating practical accounting situations. Students often have difficulty understanding the operation of a petty cash fund and visualizing the petty cash count. After the subject has been studied in the text and discussed in class, it creates immediate interest among the students for the instructor to produce a petty cash box and ask one of them to audit the fund in the presence of its custodian. The student should be instructed to behave exactly as if he were in a client's office. The audience should be cautioned not to offer suggestions during the course of the count. All should be given a chance to view and examine the contents of the box so that they may comment on the auditor's findings after he has finished. This experience will impress the petty cash count on the minds of the students as no amount of talking about it can do. Other "props" can frequently be obtained to enliven the presentation of ace counting procedures. Worthless securities may be used by students in making a securities count. The handling of actual stocks and bonds gives the student a sense of seriousness and will command his attention much more fully than a textbook problem can do.