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Friday Footnotes: KPMG Pulls Out; Taxpayers Lose an Advocate; a Deloitte Let Down | 8.9.19

CannTrust says KPMG withdraws audit report [Reuters] Cannabis producer CannTrust Holdings Inc said on Friday its auditor KPMG LLP has withdrawn its report on the company’s financial statements for full-year 2018 and its interim report for the three month period ended March 31. KPMG’s decision was prompted after CannTrust cautioned against relying on its financial statements and as new information from an investigation by a special committee was shared with the auditor.

CPAs Target License Redesign to Meet Tech Needs [Bloomberg Tax] Hmm where have we heard this story before?

Ineos replaces PwC with rival Deloitte [FT] Ineos has replaced longstanding auditor PwC with Big Four rival Deloitte following a tax avoidance row that sparked tensions between the accountancy group and the UK’s largest private company. Ineos, which has been audited by PwC since the energy and petrochemicals group’s creation in 1998, started a process to replace the firm this summer, months after a “breakdown” in their relationship.

KPMG faces legal threat over Carillion [economia] US law firm Quinn Emanuel has been hired to launch a lawsuit against KPMG, over allegations that its audit of Carillion was negligent

‘My Role Is Not to Be a Shill for the IRS’ [WSJ] Internal Revenue Service commissioners have for years told Nina Olson she’s not a team player. She doesn’t care. That isn’t her job. Since 2001, Ms. Olson has been the National Taxpayer Advocate, the person charged with representing Americans’ interests with the IRS. The advocate reports to Congress on systemic problems affecting the tax system and also manages the Taxpayer Advocate Service—an independent group within the agency with more than 1,600 employees who assist taxpayers experiencing economic harm from IRS problems. “My role is not to be a shill for the IRS,” she says.

Trump Passed the Tax Cuts. Now He’s Undermining Them. [The Atlantic] Grover Norquist has some opinions.

Deloitte fails to deliver government IT project, loses contract [DutchNews.nl] Deloitte, which has already spent most of the €6m earmarked for the project, had been warned earlier for not making enough progress by the government monitoring agency BIT which keeps an eye on large ICT projects. At the time the agency cited insufficiently defined project costs and confusion over management and roles, and the lack of a clear approach to the implementation of the new system. DigInhuur, the agency said, would not be active at the end of 2019 as planned even if the problems could be solved at a stroke.

Justice Department Backs Trump’s Suit Over Accountant Records [Bloomberg] The government’s lawyers told a federal appeals court largely the same things Trump’s attorneys had argued at a hearing last month: a subpoena served on Mazars by the House Oversight and Reform Committee earlier this year wasn’t properly authorized and lacked a legitimate legislative purpose.