Friday Footnotes: DEI Comes Back to Bite Deloitte; No Tax On Tips Does Not Include OnlyFans, Illegal Activity (Boo) | 9.19.25

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk
cat trying to kick off an OF career
Footnotes is a collection of stories from around the accounting profession curated by actual humans and published every Friday at 5pm Eastern. While you’re here, subscribe to our newsletter to get the week’s top stories in your inbox every Tuesday and Friday.

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Consulting

AI engineers are being deployed as consultants and getting paid $900 per hour [Fortune]
AI engineers are being paid a premium to work as consultants to help large companies troubleshoot, adopt, and integrate AI with enterprise data—something traditional consultants may not be able to do.

Big 4

KPMG Ignored Flaws at Regional Banks Before 2023 Crisis, Senate Report Finds [Wall Street Journal]
KPMG ignored several flaws at Silicon Valley Bank and two other banks before their collapse in 2023, signs of shortcomings in their auditing oversight, according to a report from Senate Democrats. A KPMG spokesman said the report is a “misguided and erroneous opinion” and omits critical context, adding that the firm stands by its audit opinions. KPMG previously told the subcommittee that it isn’t responsible for assessing a client’s “risky or even reckless business strategy.”

Deloitte under investigation in Tennessee for ‘unlawful discrimination’ over DEI, hiring [The Tennessean]
“The State has reason to believe that Deloitte LLP … is engaging in or has engaged in unlawful discrimination with respect to its contractual obligations with the State and in violation of Tennessee law,” the letter sent to Deloitte July 2 by the Tennessee Attorney General’s Office and received through a public records request shows.

Private Equity

CFOs adjust to private equity’s growing influence [CFO Magazine]
Karen Livingston, a longtime CFO who has served under both private equity and venture capital, says finance chiefs need to strike a balance between serving as a “fiduciary backbone” and maintaining good sponsor relationships.

EY’s former UK chair heads to Warburg Pincus [Private Equity News]
EY’s former chair and managing partner for the UK and Ireland Steve Varley has joined private equity giant Warburg Pincus as a senior adviser. Varley stepped down from his leadership role at the Big Four consultant in 2020.

People

Most employees would accept lower salary to work with close friends, KPMG finds [HR Dive]
As Americans report surging levels of loneliness, 57% of workers would work at a job 10% below market rate — even over a job at 10% above market rate compensation — in exchange for working with close friends, according to a Sept. 9 report from KPMG, an audit, tax and advisory firm.

We interrupt this broadcast Footnotes to urge you to check out Accountingfly’s top remote accounting candidates of the week if your firm is looking for fresh meat. These are hand-picked, pre-screened, eager-to-get-to-work professionals whose credentials and experience you know right up front, no long recruiting process required.

Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 18, 2025

Fun Clients

Daryl Heller hiring accounting firm to counter claims his ATM network operated as Ponzi scheme [WITF]
A court-appointed examiner in Heller’s New Jersey bankruptcy case reported in mid-August that most of the payments sent to ATM investors were derived from new investors and not from revenue from the cash machines. Those findings were echoed in a Sept. 3 federal Securities and Exchange Commission complaint and a federal criminal indictment charging Heller with fraud. On Thursday, a judge in the bankruptcy case approved the Lancaster businessman’s request to hire New Jersey-based accounting firm Withum, Smith & Brown to, among other things, prepare a response to the examiner’s report.

M&A

BDO USA Expands Professional Services Capabilities Through HORNE [Business Wire]
BDO USA intends to add more than 1,300 employees, including 30 principals, from HORNE LLP, a top professional services firm serving clients across the country with presence in seven South and Southeastern states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico. The expansion strengthens and grows BDO USA’s geographic footprint while substantially enhancing its government services capabilities, focusing on state and local government support. The transaction is expected to close on November 1, 2025, subject to customary regulatory approval and closing conditions.

Aprio Expands Midwest, Strengthens QSR Outsourcing with Mize CPAs Inc. and Prism Financial Group, L.L.C. Acquisition [PR Newswire]
With this addition, Aprio is accelerating its Midwest expansion, and growing its regional team to more than 450 professionals, less than a year after entering the market. The firm plans to scale to 1,000 professionals over the next three years, reinforcing its commitment to growth and leadership in the Midwest.

IRS

IRS claims first rights to foreclosure surplus in Bank of America case [Mortgage Professional]
Richard Nelson died owing substantial tax debts – $175,431.51 to the IRS and $115,975.33 to the Wisconsin Department of Revenue. Bank of America, which held the mortgage on Nelson’s property, foreclosed and sold the property at a sheriff’s sale. After paying off the mortgage and related fees, $54,421.96 remained as surplus. The court ordered the clerk to hold onto this surplus until it could be determined who was entitled to the funds.

I.R.S. Official Sues the Agency, Saying It Leaked Private Data to News Sites [New York Times]
Holly Paz, until recently the top I.R.S. official overseeing the country’s biggest companies, sued the agency in Federal District Court in Washington. She asked the court to establish that the I.R.S. and its parent agency, the Treasury Department, violated the law and asked them to pay damages. “Ms. Paz is the subject of an intentional vindictive, retaliatory undertaking by officials employed by the Defendants who are unlawfully leaking information” about her employment status to the media, her lawyers wrote in the suit.

OnlyFans creators excluded from ‘no tax on tips’ in new IRS rules [Washington Examiner]
The official IRS guidance says “Any amount received for illegal activity, prostitution services, or pornographic activity is not a qualified tip.”
The IRS issued guidance on Friday that indicated the new “no tax on tips” law enacted by Republicans does not include tips received for prostitution or the creation of pornography.

Related Posts

Accounting News Roundup: Tapping the Poor’s Backdoor; IRS Targets Questionable Preparers; Raj’s Record Fine | 11.09.11

Accounting rules hurt public pension reform [SF Examiner]
The answer lies with the professionals who oversee public pension accounting, an unelected class of rule makers and contractors holding tremendous power. Pension number-crunching by the state funds has long been thought by financial economists to be illegitimate.
This begins with the fact that they are allowed to value their liabilities using projected investment returns rather than an interest rate derived from the real-world risk characteristics of the debt.
This policy, set by the Government Accounting Standards Board, makes pension deficits appear dramatically smaller than they really are.

Shulman Says IRS Will Focus on ‘High Risk’ Return Preparers [Business Week]
Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Douglas Shulman said the agency will place greater focus on return preparers it identifies as “high risk” in the upcoming tax filing system. “Beginning soon, the IRS will send letters to tax-return preparers who have been identified as high risk,” Shulman said today at a conference in Washington sponsored by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants. “The letters are intended to bring to these return preparers’ attention that we’ve noticed some questionable traits” on some of their returns.

A backdoor tax on the poor [The Hill]
The IRS wants poor people to pay higher taxes. And it has figured out a way to do so without a rate increase. It is called a return-free system. Instead of completing your 1040 form yourself, the IRS would fill it out for you. All you have to do is cut a check. Congress is currently considering a bill to create such a system: H.R. 1069, sponsored by Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.).

CEOs say they are confident: PwC poll [China Daily]
More than half the CEOs in the Asia-Pacific region are “very confident” of increased revenue for their companies over the next three to five years, despite the ongoing economic turbulence in Europe and the United States, according to a survey from the international accountants, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC).

FASB Seeks Comments on Proposal to Defer Changes to Presentation of Reclassification of Other Comprehensive Income on Financial Statements [MarketWatch]
So, you know, get those comments ready if you’re all about the OCI

Rajaratnam Ordered in SEC Case to Pay Record $92.8 Million Fine [Business Week]
Rumor is Raj is looking for a new insider trading scheme to fund the fine, any takers?

Accounting News Roundup | 04.22.11

~ It’ll be half day here at GC today, resuming a regular schedule on Monday. We suggest you do the same.

80-Year-Old Ex-UBS Client Given 2 Years Probation In Tax Case [Dow Jones]
An 80-year-old one-time UBS AG (UBS) client was sentenced to two years probation for hiding $4.9 million from the IRS, the Department of Justice said Thursday. Ernest Vogliano was also ordered to pay a civil penalty of $950,381 and a $10,000 fine for five counts of filing false federal income-tax returns and conspiring to defraud the IRS. He pleaded guilty to the charges in December. He was one of seven UBS clients charged in a probe into U.S. taxpayers concealing funds through overseas accounts and companies.

FASB, IASB Extend Timetable For Some Accounting Projects [Dow Jones]
Two organizations in charge of U.S. and international accounting standards said they could take until the end of the year to agree on unified bookkeeping rules for publicly traded companies. Officials at the International Accounting Standards Board and the U.S.-based Financial Accounting Standards Board want to see a single set of accounting standards used worldwide. The boards have been working for years on “convergence” projects to eliminate major differences between U.S. and global rules.

Nice Girls Finish Last [FINS]
And they apologize, among other things.

Business Development Skill Builders for Young CPAs [JofA]
Many firm leaders think that young CPAs lack the necessary business development skills to move to the next level or become a future leader of the firm. However, young CPAs are often not given the opportunity to develop those skills on a daily basis. Business development is a difficult thing to teach, and it’s unrealistic to expect the skills to come naturally to many CPAs.


Hatch will oppose any deficit-reduction deal that includes raising taxes [The Hill]
Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) poses a significant obstacle to any bipartisan deficit reduction deal in the Senate that would raise taxes, according to Senate aides and activists. Hatch would have significant say over any deficit-reduction as ranking Republican on the Senate Finance panel, which has jurisdiction over taxes, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. He told conservative activists shortly before the April recess that he would oppose any deficit-reduction package that raises taxes, period.