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Accounting News Roundup: Brewtown Neighbors, Cargo Shorts, Buffett vs. Trump | 08.02.16

Fancy seeing you here

In this unremarkable article on PwC moving its Milwaukee office to 833 East Michigan, we learn that it's not the first firm to have that idea:

Milwaukee developer Irgens completed the 833 East building in March, with law firm Godfrey & Kahn SC as the anchor tenant. In July, Johnson Controls spinoff Adient moved into the building’s 11th floor. Audit, tax and advisory firm KPMG and former Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig also moved into their new offices in 833 East last month.

I don't know how common it is for competing accounting firms to lease office space in the same building, but I imagine KPMG Brewtown doesn't appreciate its rival showing up on its new turf. In the past, PwC has had no problem convincing KPMG partners to join its ranks. Now that they'll be in the same building, any KPMG partner who disappears for an hour could easily be interviewing with PwC. All it'll take is the right people bumping into each other in the elevator.

Dress codes

It's been an important year for business fashion as we've witnessed many accounting firms ditch business casual for a more relaxed look (client expectations depending). Much to my delight, this trend has pleased many and irritated many others. One aspect of the new dress codes that I'm glad firms stood their ground on was the subject of shorts; i.e. they are still strictly forbidden. And the reason, I'll bet you, that they are strictly forbidden has a lot to do with cargo shorts. See, the thing about cargo shorts is that they are abjectly terrible. And this Wall Street Journal article hilariously attests to that fact:

Relationships around the country are being tested by cargo shorts, loosely cut shorts with large pockets sewn onto the sides. Men who love them say they’re comfortable and practical for summer. Detractors​ say they’ve been out of style for years, deriding them as bulky, uncool and just flat-out ugly.

[Dane] Hansen’s wife, Ashleigh Hansen, said she sneaks her husband’s cargo shorts off to Goodwill when he’s not around. Mrs. Hansen, 30, no longer throws them out at home because her husband has found them in the trash and fished them out.

“I despise them,” she said. “There were so many good things about the ’90s. Cargo shorts were not one of them.”

There are too many brilliant quotes in this article to list them all, however, I'll share this one:

“Those teenagers are now married, and they don’t get rid of their clothes. They don’t evolve,” said Joseph Hancock, a design and merchandising professor at Drexel University, who wrote his Ph.D. thesis about cargo pants.

Yes, a thesis about cargo pants. I love it. And because it's the Wall Street Journal, it includes the famous WWII picture of Dwight Eisenhower talking to his troops whose cargo pants are stuffed with every thing they could possibly need to beat back tyranny.

In any case, we've been spared hordes of CPAs ambling around in cargo shorts…for now. 

Trump's tax returns

At the rate things are going, I fear that this will become a recurring section, however, as we learned with Michael Bloomberg's DNC speech, it's always amusing to watch a self-made billionaire provoking an heir:

Trump can pick "any place, any time between now and election," and Omaha billionaire [Warren] Buffett will bring his tax returns — if Trump does too." I'll bring my tax return. He can bring his tax return … Just let people ask us questions about the items that are on there."

As far as billionaires go, Trump and Buffett couldn't be more different. But WB did mention one thing they have in common:

"I'm under audit too," Buffett said of Trump's top defense of why he can't release the records. "There are no rules against showing your tax returns."

Elsewhere in POTUS candidate tax returns, Peter Reilly is asking for Jill Stein's.

Previously, on Going Concern…

Bryce Sanders wrote about translating white lies. And I discussed KPMG UK's shorter recruiting process to appease Millennials. And in Open Items, someone asks: Where do I go now?

In other news:

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