Put your back Intuit
Here’s a strange thing that Brad Smith, CEO of Intuit and taker of weird selfies, said recently:
“Anyone who wants to stay in the business of, ‘Send me your shoebox, and I’ll type it in, and I’ll charge you by the hour,’ I think those will be the ones who will be struggling in 5 years,” Smith told Yahoo Finance this week at the company’s fourth-annual QuickBooks Connect conference, held in San Jose, California.
Okay, who wants to stay in the shoebox accountant business? And why does he think it’ll take 5 years for them to struggle? Are they thriving now? Smith’s impression of some accountants seems like an odd vintage.
Revenue recognition procrastination
New revenue recognition rules are coming for companies that follow U.S. GAAP but also International Financial Reporting Standards. Companies following IFRS “must publicly disclose that they have assessed the impact,” but this Wall Street Journal article reports that some are a little behind:
Some sectors, such as telecommunications, media and pharmaceuticals, are expected to be affected more than others. So far, 29% of FTSE 100 companies still haven’t disclosed an impact assessment, according to a September report by KPMG LLP.
“Many companies seem to be crawling to the starting line,” says a guy.
How’s tax reform coming along?
On Friday, we mentioned how no one seems to like the Trump Administration’s tax plan. Now, we’ve come across this LinkedIn post by David Mendels, the former CEO of Brightcove, that has found some traction in business circles. It challenges the Trump Administration’s premise that CEOs are excited about its tax plan and that it will be good for the middle class. Mendels writes:
The Trump team is arguing that massively cutting taxes for corporations will somehow translate into significant wage increases for working people. This argument fundamentally disregards everything we know about how companies actually decide to hire and how much to pay their employees. As a CEO (and in prior roles) I was involved in hiring and determining salaries for 1000s of people over 25 years. From real world experience I can tell you that tax rates literally never came up in any discussion about hiring or pay levels. Customers (demand) and markets determine when we hire, how much we hire, and how much we pay.
College football teams aren’t too thrilled about the plan either.
Previously, on Going Concern…
Jason Bramwell wrote about how chief accounting officers, controllers, and other accounting team leaders retain their best talent, rather than obsess over finding it.
Also, we announced some changes and enhancements to our forum, Open Items. These include new technical categories to discuss audit, financial reporting and tax issues; compensation, and the Meta channel, where you can leave comments and feedback about Going Concern.
Speaking of Open Items, someone is choosing between a sales tax auditor job with a state comptroller and audit associate position with a Big 4 firm.
In other news:
- A Bill for $154,831,682.32.
- Marvell Technology to buy smaller rival Cavium for $6 billion
- British Airways to board passengers in cheap seats last
- Charles Manson is dead.
- Man finds car 20 years after forgetting where he parked it
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