Revenue

It's strange how "scandal" gets defined these days in Washington. At the moment, everyone is screaming about the "scandal" of the Internal Revenue Service scrutinizing conservative nonprofits before granting them tax-exempt status. Here are the genuine scandals in this affair: Political organizations are being allowed to masquerade as charities to avoid taxes and keep their donors secret, and the IRS has allowed them to do this for years. The bottom line first: The IRS hasn't done nearly enough over the years to rein in the subversion of the tax law by political groups claiming a tax exemption that is not legally permitted for campaign activity.

SAN FRANCISCO - To punctuate his company's $1.1-billion purchase by Yahoo Inc., Tumblr co-founder and Chief Executive David Karp let loose in a blog post with a celebratory expletive. It was classic Karp, a 26-year-old high school dropout who built one of the Web's most popular outlets for personal expression. It was also a clever way to send a message to Tumblr users: It may have been bought out - earning Karp about $275 million - but Tumblr was going to stay irreverent.

WASHINGTON - President Obama forced out the head of the IRS on Wednesday, seeking to restore the public's faith in the tax agency while asserting a measure of control over a rapidly growing political problem. Making a hastily scheduled statement at the White House, Obama denounced the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service as "inexcusable" and pledged to "do everything in my power to make sure nothing like this ever happens again. " "Americans are right to be angry about it, and I am angry about it," he said.

SACRAMENTO - California's financial picture is much brighter than Gov. Jerry Brown suggested in his latest spending plan, according to the Legislature's top budget advisor, who said the state will have $3.2 billion more at its disposal than the governor estimated. Improvements on Wall Street and in the state's housing market will mean about $4.4 billion in extra cash through the next budget year, rather than the $1.2 billion the governor has projected, nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Mac Taylor said in a report Friday.

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

After years of devastating losses, the newspaper industry has a glimmer of good news. Circulation revenue for daily newspapers grew in 2012 for the first time in a decade as more people paid to subscribe to digital editions, according to data compiled by the Newspaper Assn. of America. The finding is noteworthy because it demonstrates that the newspaper industry, which has been hammered in recent years as consumers and advertisers migrated to the Internet, has begun to adapt its business model to a new era. Newspapers generated $10.4 billion in circulation revenue in 2012, a 5% increase over the previous year.

With only three new movies in theaters during the second quarter -- one a 3-D re-release and another released on behalf of a separate company -- Paramount Pictures revenue plunged 29% to $1 billion. Thanks to sharply lower expenses, however, the studio's operating income dropped only 6% to $29 million, according to financial results released by parent company Viacom Inc. on Friday. Among Paramount's releases in the three-month period ended June 30, "Titanic 3-D" was a huge hit, grossing $343.6 million worldwide, which was split between the L.A. studio and partner 20th Century Fox. "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted" has taken in a strong $501 million so far, though Paramount keeps just 8% of revenue from the DreamWorks Animation release.

Viacom Inc.'s profit fell short of Wall Street's expectations as the company continued to struggle with ratings declines at Nickelodeon and other cable networks while worldwide theatrical revenue took a nose dive. For the April-June period, the New York-based media company controlled by mogul Sumner Redstone generated net income of $534 million, or $1.01 a share, compared with $574 million, or 99 cents, for the year-earlier period.  Fiscal third-quarter revenue came in at $3.24 billion, a 14% decline from $3.77 billion in the prior year period.

Marissa Mayer has put an end to a prolonged slump in Yahoo revenue. Fourth-quarter revenue rose 2% to $1.35 billion, Yahoo's first full-year revenue increase in three years. It was the first full quarter under new Chief Executive Mayer, who joined the tech giant from Google in mid-July. Mayer has sparked hopes that she can turn around the beleaguered company. The company's fourth-quarter net income declined 8% to $272 million, or 23 cents a share. The earnings would have been higher if not for one-time accounting charges.

Time Warner Inc. wants more juice out of TMZ, the celebrity website that is the brainchild of former Los Angeles TV newsman Harvey Levin. The media giant hopes to wring more advertising revenue out of the property and use some of the money to expand the news operation, according to people close to the site who were not authorized to speak publicly. That's the plan once Time Warner takes full control of TMZ today, when the media giant spins off AOL to shareholders. Since its launch by former KCBS-TV Channel 2 reporter Levin in December 2005, TMZ has been run as a partnership of AOL and the Telepictures unit of Warner Bros.

SACRAMENTO - California may finally be free of deficits, but Gov. Jerry Brown unveiled a cautious budget Tuesday, saying the state's financial condition remains treacherously unstable. Brown put lawmakers on notice that he had no desire to ratchet up spending despite a multibillion-dollar windfall of tax receipts in recent months. Saying there is no evidence that the surge will last, he reduced his revenue estimates for the budget year that begins July 1. Only schools would get a substantial boost beyond what the governor proposed in January, before state income spiked.

SAN FRANCISCO - LinkedIn Corp. has consistently beat Wall Street expectations since its initial public stock offering two years ago. The professional networking service did it again Thursday, reporting first-quarter revenue and net income that surpassed forecasts. But its outlook for the rest of the year fell below analyst expectations, disappointing investors and causing the stock to plunge in extended trading. The company also showed signs of slowing growth. LinkedIn shares, which closed up $6.85, or 3.5%, at $201.67, fell 10% to $181.30 in after-hours trading after the Mountain View, Calif., company released its first-quarter results.

SACRAMENTO - California has been flooded with revenue this tax season and is on track to finish the fiscal year with a surplus of billions of dollars, according to officials. State coffers contain about $4.5 billion more than expected in personal income tax payments. Nearly $2.8 billion of it arrived April 17, the third-highest single-day collection in California history, according to government figures. Business taxes have also rebounded and are likely to be $200 million ahead of projections.

The Rose Bowl's new premium seating pavilion has yet to open, but stadium officials say seats are already selling fast. Construction of pavilion and press box levels on the stadium's west side has been the most significant - and expensive - aspect of ongoing stadium renovations now priced at $181 million. The renovation was originally billed as a $152-million effort in 2010, but projected costs climbed to nearly $195 million before city officials down-scaled some planned improvements earlier this year.

SACRAMENTO - Arnold Schwarzenegger persuaded voters nine years ago that if they let him borrow money to cover the budget deficit, California's financial woes would end for good. A key part of his plan was a new rainy-day fund to insulate the state from further crisis. "It will be a whole new ball game," Schwarzenegger said. "Trust me. " But California was roiled by financial turmoil for years afterward, and today the reserve is empty. With more than $5 billion in bonds left to repay, Gov. Jerry Brown apparently plans to leave it that way. The reserve was created without a firm requirement to fill it, and Brown's proposed budget contains no allocation for the fund.

Insurance giant WellPoint Inc. reported a 3% increase in first-quarter profit and raised its full-year outlook as the company prepares for major changes under the federal healthcare overhaul. WellPoint, which runs Anthem Blue Cross in California and health plans in 13 other states, said its results were lifted by a recent acquisition that helped boost enrollment of the nation's second-largest health insurer to nearly 36 million people. Investors cheered the results, bidding up WellPoint's shares $4, or 5.8%, to $73.33 in trading Wednesday.

A weak film slate drove Lionsgate Entertainment Corp. revenue down in the quarter ended Sept. 30, causing its stock to fall 5% despite a previous warning by the independent studio. The Santa Monica company told investors in late September that the box-office underperformance of movies "Conan the Barbarian," "Warrior" and "Abduction" would cause it to lose more money than expected in its fiscal second quarter. But investors still seemed mildly disappointed Wednesday as Lionsgate reported that its revenue dropped 22% from the same period a year earlier, to $358.1 million.

Home goods seller Williams-Sonoma Inc.said its fiscal fourth-quarter net income rose 8% on strong performances from its Pottery Barn and West Elm brands. The results released Thursday beat Wall Street estimates, but the company offered fiscal 2012 earnings guidance that was slightly below what analysts expect. Its revenue forecast for the year, however, was above analysts' estimates. The company also announced that Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer Sharon McCollam has retired.

Re "A tax everyone can love," Opinion, April 21 If folks are leery of paying taxes to cover the actual costs of burning oil, there are two things they can do to mitigate the effects of the carbon tax that Doyle McManus discusses in his column. To start, our national fleet of vehicles is grossly inefficient. In 2012, the average fuel economy for new cars sold in the U.S. was about 24 miles per gallon. This problem is compounded by inefficient driving - hard accelerations, speeding and accelerating toward a stop rather than coasting.

Shares of biotech giant Amgen Inc. slumped as investors reacted to weaker-than-expected first-quarter sales. Shares of the Thousand Oaks company dropped $7.83, or 7%, to $104.93 in trading Wednesday. The company's stock had posted impressive gains until this week, up 65% in the last year. Amgen reported first-quarter results after the markets closed Tuesday. Its net income rose 21% to $1.4 billion, or $1.88 a share, from $1.2 billion, or $1.48, a year earlier. But analysts and investors focused much of their attention on Amgen's revenue growth, which came in lower than Wall Street's expectations.