Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Accounting News Roundup: Remote Working, Lying, and Cardigans | 05.19.17

Posted on by Caleb Newquist
remote-accounting-work

Remote workers

I don’t know if most accounting firms offer their employees the option to work remotely, but I get the sense that it has become more accepted in recent years. The timing of this acceptance seems about right given that one of the “pioneers” of remote work, IBM, is now abandoning the idea:

International Business Machines Corp. is giving thousands of its remote workers in the U.S. a choice this week: Abandon your home workspaces and relocate to a regional office—or leave the company.

The 105-year-old technology giant is quietly dismantling its popular decades-old remote work program to bring employees back into offices, a move it says will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work.

A lot of people will probably read this article and go, “Oh, it’s IBM. Maybe we should think about this more,” and that’s dumb. Full disclosure: I’ve worked remotely for nearly 8 years and if my company told me that I needed to relocate in order to work at a physical location, I would probably start hyperventilating.

There’s a reason remote working arrangements work so well: People really like them! They like freedom to work from anywhere and the flexibility that the rigors and confines of an office discourage. Some people consider this to be “not working” which is absurd. It’s pretty hard to not do anything productive and keep a job. (If you have a job that allows this, however, congratulations.)

And the claim that bringing people back into offices “will improve collaboration and accelerate the pace of work” is a pretty weak argument. Working in an office is full of annoyances, distraction, and inefficiencies. Yes, the movie Office Space was satire, but it also was an accurate depiction of the worst aspects of working at a mega company and those things that don’t make people more productive. They cause them to waste time and come up with harebrained schemes. Don’t act surprised if IBM offices start burning to the ground regularly.

Brought to you by Accountingfly

The featured job of the week is a Senior Finance Consultant with Umbaugh.

Previously, on Going Concern…

Megan Lewczyk wrote about technology disorders. Adrienne Gonzalez started a new series that features a Day in the Life of various accounting professionals. First up: Accounting Professor Alan Jagolinzer from the University of Colorado.

In other news:

Get the Accounting News Roundup in your inbox every weekday by signing up here.

Related Posts

Accounting News Roundup: PwC Wants More Women; Audit Credibility (or Lack Thereof); Big 4 Are Offshore | 01.31.11

PricewaterhouseCoopers targets women [Telegraph]
PricewaterhouseCoopers will announce that it wants the present 14pc figure to rise significantly over the next decade. It is believed that the first target could be 20pc. Ian Powell, the chairman of PwC, also wants to set an “aspirational goal” of 40pc to 50pc of partners being women or from other under-represented groups, such as ethnic minorities.

The Path to Global Standards? [CFO]
[L]ast week Leslie Seidman laid out her “three highest priorities” through June 30. Remember that date., the Securities and Exchange Commission could reveal whether it intends to require all U.S. public companies to incorporate international financial reporting standards into the current U.S. financial reporting system. Speaking on a FASB Webcast, Seidman, who became the top U.S. accounting standard-setter on December 23, said the board’s main tasks for the first two quarters of 2011 are to achieve, along with the International Accounting Standards Board, melded standards in three areas: financial instruments, revenue recognition, and leasing.

Audit Credibility [The Summa]
From Professor Albrecht, ” ‘Do credible CPA audit firms add benefits to clients that exceed the audit costs?’ It’s an interesting question, I suppose, to narcissists (Big 4 auditors, government regulators and accounting professors) who believe that the world revolves around the audit function. It isn’t a question that floats my boat, for I’m concerned with a different question, ‘Credibility?’ Do credible CPA audit firms add net benefits to investors?”

Finance Chiefs Expand Roles [WSJ]
Long seen as the overseer of a company’s books, finance chiefs have been getting more deeply involved in business strategy, deciding where to invest capital and even looking at a company’s product mix. They’re also taking on new responsibilities: overseeing divisions like information technology, production, customer service and human resources. The change comes as companies put more emphasis on controlling costs, seeking input from finance chiefs as the companies try to manage revenue growth more closely during a tentative economic recovery.

In Financial Crisis Autopsy Auditors Nowhere To Be Found [Forbes]
The auditors who weren’t there.

Continuous auditing: putting theory into practice [IIA/Marks on Governance]
Internal auditing, 24/7.

How to Tax the Rich [WSJ]
Turning bad ideas into good.


Harmonised accounting rules to hit US banks [FT]
US banks could see their balance sheets balloon under new proposals from the accountancy rulemakers that would dramatically reduce their ability to net their derivatives exposure. The Financial Accounting Standard Board and its international counterpart are planning to establish a common approach to the presentation of financial assets and liabilities on company balance sheets.

Big four auditors ’embedded in tax haven world’ [Daily Mail]
The Big Four accountancy firms have come under attack for maintaining on average more than 20 offices each in offshore tax havens despite countries working together to crack down on tax avoidance. The four firms – PricewaterhouseCoopers, KPMG, Deloitte and Ernst & Young – have 81 offices in offshore tax havens, according to new research by Financial Mail. MP Chuka Ummuna, who earlier this month confronted Barclays chief executive Bob Diamond over the banks’ 300 offshore subsidiaries, said: ‘There’s a whole industry out there dedicated to helping people avoid tax that will increasingly come under the microscope.

Accounting News Roundup: GOP Senators Not Caving on Tax Cuts; NY Court of Appeals Hears In Pari Delicto Cases; Convicted Ex-PwC Employee Loses Case to Get MBA Back | 09.14.10

~ Good morning capital market servants. It’s Dan Braddock’s favorite day of the week. Just another reminder that we’ll be on a lighter posting schedule today as TPTB continue to interrogate us about our lack of influence. We’ll pop in from time to time today to make sure everyone is playing nice and be back to a full schedule tomorrow.

A Career in Accounting [WSJ]
“[W]hile jobs dried up during the economic crisis, hiring in accounting wasn’t hit as hard, and cutbacks have created a need for more hiring as the econmy Thompson, the U.S. campus recruiting leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. She’ll be hiring 3,000 people this year, up from 2,600 last year.”

Does Anyone Really Want to Be an Accountant? A Tailgate Survey [Re:Balance]
Jim Peterson articulates two time-honored traditions: college football and accounting. The former’s popularity is never in question but Jim talked to some young tailgaters that might make you doubt the substantive popularity of the latter.

Senate Republicans firm on tax cuts for rich [Reuters]
“Republicans in the U.S. Senate poured cold water on Monday on hopes for a compromise with President Barack Obama that would have allowed Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans to expire.

Taxes have become a flashpoint going into a November 2 election in which Republicans are seeking to wrest control of Congress from the president’s fellow Democrats. Obama says the cost of keeping the tax cuts for the rich is too high as the United States emerges from recession with a massive budget deficit.”

AIG Plots End to U.S. Aid [WSJ]
“American International Group Inc. and its government overseers are in talks to speed up an exit plan designed to repay U.S. taxpayers in full while enabling the giant insurer to regain independence, according to people familiar with the matter.

Under the plan, which could commence as early as the first half of 2011, the Treasury Department is likely to convert $49 billion in AIG preferred shares it holds into common shares, a move that could bring the government’s ownership stake in AIG to above 90%, from 79.8% currently, the people familiar said. The common shares would then be gradually sold off to private investors, a move that would reduce U.S. ownership and potentially earn the government a profit if the shares rise in value.”

Auditors Anticipate NY Ruling on Malpractice Exposure [Compliance Week]
“A group of investors in the reinsurance firm American International Group are suing the company’s audit firm, PricewaterhouseCoopers, for failing to detect a long-running bid-rigging and accounting fraud scheme at AIG. PwC won a dismissal of the suit contending AIG shared blame because it was AIG employees who carried out the fraud that PwC failed to identify, a common defense for audit firms against shareholder claims.

The investor group, led by the Teachers Retirement System of Louisiana and the City of New Orleans Employees’ Retirement System, appealed the dismissal and will have their day in the New York Court of Appeals this week. A Delaware appeals court handed the case over to the New York Appeals court, saying ‘a resolution of this appeal depends on significant and unsettled questions of New York law.’ “


Seeking An Equitable Outcome: NY State Court of Appeals Hears In Pari Delicto Cases [RTA]
Francine McKenna’s take on the case above.

Verizon Finance Chief Joh Killian Announces Plan to Retire After 31 Years [Bloomberg]
Get your résumé in now.

So Then I Guess Accounting Is Mostly Influenced By Middle-Aged White Dudes? [JDA]
“I’m on a roll with offending people lately so let’s just take this all the way and pull the diversity card, specifically when it comes to Accounting Today’s recent list of 100 Most Influential in accounting.

OK so some faces were predictable and totally warranted; soon-to-be-former FASB Chairman Bob Herz (we’re talking about influence in the profession, not sexiest), GASB Chairman Robert Attmore, PwC Chairman Dennis Nally, IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman… you get the idea. No, I mean you really get the idea, as the rest of the list is comprised of middle-aged white guys too except for 13 women and 3 1/2 black men (Barack Obama counts as .5 if we’re looking at this in a strictly statistical way). Yeah, we noticed.”

Convicted Accountant Loses Legal Bid for MBA Degree [BusinessWeek]
“A certified public accountant who hid his conviction for insider trading from his teachers at New York University’s graduate business school wasn’t entitled to the MBA degree that he thought he earned, a judge ruled.

In February 2007, three months after completing his course work at NYU’s Stern School of Business, Ayal Rosenthal pleaded guilty to charges that he leaked to his brother secret tips that he learned at his job at PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP. Rosenthal never told the school about the investigation of him or his guilty plea, even while serving as a teaching assistant in a professional responsibility course, according to a court ruling.”

ANR: SEC Eyes Accounting Fraud; Groups Were Pushing IRS Tax-exempt Rules; Deloitte’s Controversial New Hire | 05.28.13

Accounting Fraud Targeted [WSJ][A]s the volume of crisis-related cases ebbs, top SEC officials are expected […]