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Private Equity
Why accountancy firm listings don’t add up [Financial Times Opinion]
Accountancies, and businesses like them, make investors squeamish for good reason. Their main assets are people, and people are liable to leave if they get a better offer. They may be especially inclined to be so if the spoils divvied out among partners must henceforth be shared with outside investors.
Private equity investments rapidly reshaping CPA firms, creating a gap in accounting education, study finds [Phys.org]
A new study, led by Portland State University accounting professor Elizabeth Dreike Almer, draws on extensive insights from regulators, practitioners and transaction experts to map out how PE ownership is altering the accounting landscape—and why higher education must bridge the growing gap between classroom instruction and workplace realities. The findings are published in the journal Issues in Accounting Education.
Tax
Whistle-Blower Says I.R.S. Leaked His Tax Records in Retaliation [New York Times]
Brian J. Visalli, a veteran investigator of tax fraud, said in a lawsuit that the agency had sent his personal and tax information to federal prosecutors.
IRS Employees Looked at Celebrities’ Tax Records, Report Says [Wall Street Journal]
Dozens of Internal Revenue Service employees improperly viewed the tax records of celebrities, government officials and business leaders from 2022 through 2025, according to an inspector general’s report released on Friday.
IRS released its 2026-2027 exempt organization priority guidance plan [PwC]
Treasury and the IRS on September 29 released the 2026-2027 Priority Guidance Plan, which identifies the guidance projects to which Treasury and the IRS intend to devote resources during the plan year. Notably, the 12-month “plan year” now aligns with the federal government’s fiscal year, running from October 1, 2026, through September 30, 2027—a change from the July-to-June cycle used in prior years.
Technology
AI beats out CPAs at month-end close tasks [CFO Brew] Claude’s Opus 5 outperformed CPAs on a benchmark test designed to mimic a real month-end close situation, according to AI training firm Mercor, which developed the test. The AI got 100% of the items on the rubric correct, while human accountants got only an average of 37%. “Models today already seem more meticulous than junior accountants,” Mercor’s researchers wrote in a report. “That’s extremely valuable in a field where small errors can be extraordinarily costly.”
The Varied Perceptions and Experiences of Internal Versus External Auditors in Adopting Artificial Intelligence [CPA Journal]
To better understand how AI is used in audit practices, this article investigates CPAs’ existing knowledge about AI as a general technology, their intentions to adopt AI in auditing, and the factors that may have contributed to such intentions. Moreover, it explores potential differences in responses between internal and external auditors, given that they face significantly different types of audit objectives and tasks. The case study research method was used to interview eight auditing professionals (Exhibit 1), three internal auditors, and five external auditors in order to gain insights on these issues. Case studies use multiple sources of evidence (e.g., interviews with different individuals) to investigate a contemporary phenomenon and are particularly useful when an existing body of knowledge is insufficient to permit the posing of causal questions. The authors chose the case study approach because the purpose of this investigation is exploratory rather than confirmatory.
Goldman Sachs and Man Group exposed in EY data breach [Financial Times]
Clients of Goldman Sachs’ wealth management division and UK-listed hedge fund Man Group are among the victims of a major data breach at Big Four accounting firm EY, according to notifications sent out in recent weeks. The disclosures widen the circle of victims of a hacking incident in March and April that the accounting firm first disclosed in July.
Careers
Accounting for AI’s professional impact – divergent studies on how young finance professionals see AI adding up when it comes to career prospects [diginomica]
“I think there’s going to be a big shift in what’s expected from entry-level accountants. If AI is taking care of the admin side of accountancy, employers are going to ask, ‘What else can you do?’”
Layoffs
KPMG tells staff facing the axe: Here’s £100, now zip it [The Register]
In addition to exit terms that some at KPMG previously described to us as insulting, The Reg understands the consultancy is offering £100 in exchange for employees’ existing contractual confidentiality and other post-termination obligations. Some staff see it as a gag order. “The firm’s original proposal remains unchanged,” one insider claimed, “offering marginally above statutory terms alongside a nominal £100 consideration for employees to waive their legal rights to appeal or bring claims.
Survey Says
Deloitte Survey: Gen Z Is Borrowing Now — and Wants to Buy More Stocks [PR Newswire]
The survey indicates that an increasingly larger share of Gen Z borrowers ages 18 and up are carrying credit card balances for more than a month, while respondents from other generations appear to be more actively managing their debt. From Q3 2023 through Q2 2026, the share of Gen Z respondents carrying credit card balances for more than a month rose nearly 20%, while declining among other generations. And Gen Z buy now pay later (BNPL) use surged to 22.8% in the first quarter of 2026 — the highest level among generations tracked in three years of data — before easing to 17.6% in the second quarter.
Big 4
KPMG Australia Boosts Outside Scrutiny, Forms ‘Integrity Office’ [Bloomberg Tax]
The Big Four firm issued an update to an action plan first launched in June in response to the whistleblower scandal. It has already hired an independent chair and Friday promised several new measures including setting up an “Integrity Office” and hiring a whistleblower protection officer.
PwC exec ushers in AI-assisted audits, awaits bigger time savings [CFO Dive]
“What surprised me the most is just the pace of change and how much even our tools that we’ve built have evolved over a one year period,” Shawn Panson told CFO Dive. “All in a good way but certainly I think it provides just one more challenge as you’re running a business and trying to build technology in the ever-changing landscape.”
