Hey, people. Who wants some news? If you have news of your own, email or text me your tips or links to stories and I’d be thrilled to take a look.
New York is the latest state to make a non-150 hour CPA pathway law. Says CFO Dive:
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday signed into law state legislation (A7613B) that establishes an alternative route for candidates to obtain a certified public accountant license that doesn’t require 150 hours of college credit — typically the equivalent of five years of post-secondary education.
“The Governor has officially signed the 120-credit-hour CPA pathway into law, giving future CPAs an additional route to enter the profession,” Calvin Harris Jr., CEO of the New York State Society of CPAs wrote in a Friday Linkedin post. “This new pathway becomes effective one year from today — and represents one of the most significant pipeline reforms in a generation.”
That brings us to 24 states that have made alternate pathways official. MNCPA maintains a map of these jurisdictions here.
Break out the tiny violins, PwC can’t find the right AI talent. BBC writes:
The growth of artificial intelligence (AI) may eventually lead to fewer entry-level graduates being hired, the boss of accountancy giant PwC has told the BBC.
However, global chairman Mohamed Kande said AI was not behind recent job cuts at the firm, adding that the company actually needed to hire hundreds of new AI engineers but was struggling to find them.
Perhaps it’s those accounting firm salaries. Anyway:
Every year, the company hires thousands of new graduates in entry-level positions – including 1,300 in the UK and 3,200 in the US last year – but it recently dropped long-term plans to continue increasing its headcount.
In 2021, PwC said it wanted to hire 100,000 people over the course of five years – but Mr Kande said this would no longer be possible.
“When we made the plans to hire that many people, the world looked very, very different,” he said.
“Now we have artificial intelligence. We want to hire, but I don’t know if it’s going to be the same level of people that we hire – it will be a different set of people.”
Depressing. Also we all know what he means when he says “artificial intelligence” and it isn’t artificial intelligence.
A 42-year-old former newscaster is headed to prison for COVID relief fraud. A LOT of COVID relief fraud and a lot of prison. Said the DoJ:
A co-founder of a lender service provider was sentenced to 10 years in prison for participating in a scheme to fraudulently obtain over $63 million in Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans guaranteed by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act. The defendant was also ordered to pay over $63 million in restitution.
According to evidence presented at trial, Stephanie Hockridge, also known as Stephanie Reis, 42, of Rio Grande, Puerto Rico, and previously of Arizona, co-founded Blueacorn in April 2020, purportedly to assist small businesses and individuals in obtaining PPP loans. To get larger loans for certain PPP applicants, Hockridge and her co-conspirators fabricated documents, including payroll records, tax documentation and bank statements. Hockridge and her co-conspirators charged borrowers kickbacks based on a percentage of the funds received.
As part of the scheme, Hockridge and others offered a personalized service to their clients called “VIPPP” to help potential borrowers complete PPP loan applications. Hockridge recruited co-conspirators to work as VIPPP referral agents and coach borrowers on how to submit false PPP loan applications. To get more kickbacks from borrowers and a higher percentage of lender fees from the SBA, Hockridge and her co-conspirators submitted PPP loan applications that they knew contained materially false information. In total, Hockridge and her co-conspirators processed over $63 million in fraudulent PPP loans.
Meanwhile, a dozen people from New Jersey and Pennsylvania got picked up for ERC fraud. Wild they were doing this as recently as this year (allegedly):
A dozen people have been charged after allegedly working together to steal millions from a program created during the COVID pandemic meant to help businesses, according to the New Jersey District Attorney’s Office.
The people involved are accused of obtaining official documents of various businesses and then using those documents to steal checks and deposit the money into fake bank accounts that they opened in New Jersey and in Pennsylvania, officials said.
These crimes happened between March 2023 and March 2025, officials explained. Many of the stolen checks were issued through the Treasury Department’s Employee Retention Credit which was meant to help businesses keep their employees during COVID.
Those of you who enjoy law reads will want to check out this piece on Hunt v. PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP from Morgan Lewis, it goes pretty deep in the weeds: Ninth Circuit Confirms Securities Act of 1933 Does Not Impose Strict Liability on Auditors
In their complaint, plaintiffs alleged the accounting firm was liable under Section 11 for purportedly actionable statements and omissions in Bloom’s registration statement regarding its accounting for MSAs because the audit opinion did not identify that Bloom should have classified the MSAs as capital leases instead of operating leases. The accounting firm moved to dismiss, and the District Court granted the motion. Rather than amend their complaint, plaintiffs appealed to the Ninth Circuit.
On appeal, plaintiffs did not challenge the District Court’s dismissal of their claim that the audit opinion itself was false or misleading apart from its certification of the financial statements. Put differently, plaintiffs did not deny that Bloom prepared its own financial statements or that the accounting firm neither prepared the statements nor repeated those statements in its opinion. Rather, plaintiffs argued that the accounting firm should be strictly liable under Section 11(a)(4) of the Securities Act for the misstatements in Bloom’s financial statements.
Workers across the world are feeling busier according to EY’s Work Reimagined Survey, Business Insider wrote it up:
If you’re feeling like your workload has increased in 2025, you’re not the only one.
A new EY survey of 15,000 workers found that nearly two-thirds of employees believe their workload has increased in the last 12 months.
AI isn’t directly to blame, but, as with most workplace trends today, it’s a big part of the story.
“Our research doesn’t show that AI is actually increasing workloads,” Kim Billeter, EY’s global people consulting leader, told Business Insider.
Journal of Accountancy discusses penalty relief:
The IRS will provide penalty relief to about 1 million taxpayers automatically starting next year, the national taxpayer advocate (NTA) said during a session at the AICPA National Tax Conference.
The IRS will offer first-time abatements (FTAs) to taxpayers who file their return late, provided they meet certain criteria, said NTA Erin Collins, who heads the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS). Those criteria include having no unreversed penalties in the preceding three tax years, except estimated tax penalties.
“So, if someone files late after April 15, they will get a lovely letter from the IRS,” Collins said. “I haven’t seen it yet, but I suspect it’ll say something like, ‘Dear Erin Collins, thank you for filing your tax return, albeit late. Please don’t do it again, and we are nice enough to waive the penalty.’ I assume they’re going to be notifying the taxpayers and explaining things to them as to what the law is and what the rules are, to educate them so that they don’t have a challenge again.”
We’ll end this here, it’s a holiday week and there isn’t a ton going on. Now go out there and make it a great week. Happy Thanksgiving!
