Author: Adrienne Gonzalez

Adrienne is a 15-year veteran of the accounting industry, if by "veteran" you mean "vulture prowling the periphery of the profession waiting for something exciting to happen." She has been spewing vitriol on Going Concern since the site was founded in 2009. A former CPA review employee, she has sat through more FAR classes than any CPA exam candidate ever could -- even one who has failed FAR seven times -- and can still recall most of the mnemonics all these years later.

Accounting News Roundup: The IRS Hates On Gay Marriage; Damon Dash in Tax Trouble; Small Businesses Complain About Accounting Fees | 08.09.11

China, U.S. vow to step up audit oversight cooperation [Xinhua]
Officials from China and United States have pledged to increase cooperation on cross-border audit oversight, China’s securities regulator said Monday, in the wake of a string of accounting scandals of U.S.-listed Chinese companies. The two parties aimed to improve the quality of auditing and accounting information of public companies, protect the rights of investors and assist in safeguarding of financial markets in both countries, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said in a statement on its website.

Damon Dash Talks $3 Million Tax Debt [MTV]
The once-flamboyant Roc-A-Fella Records co-founder Damon Dash is now in debt. In July, The Detroit News reported that the music mogul and Jay-Z’s former business partner owes almost $3 million in back taxes, according to a tax lien filed June 30. On Friday, Dash visited the “Sway in the Morning” radio show on Shade 45 and spoke to host and MTV News correspondent Sway Calloway about his recent troubles with the IRS. After being asked about owing “$2 million,” Dash quickly set the record straight: “I owe way more than $2 million in taxes. That must’ve just been the IRS,” Dash said, laughing, before admitting that he was in a bad space financially. “Nah, nah, I’m f—ed up.”

Rich say wealth managers not worth as much as accountants [Citywire]
Wealth managers and advisers might be dismayed to hear that 60% of high net worth clients would expect to pay an adviser less than their accountant, and do not believe investment management is good value for money. The findings form part of management consulting firm MDRC’s 2011 UK High Net Worth Report, which is based on contributions from more than 4,000 high net worth individuals and 600 ultra high net worths. The report also found that nearly 90% of respondents would expect to pay their financial adviser less than their lawyer.

IRS shows newly married gay couples no love [MSNBC]
For all those same-sex newlyweds in New York, Lawrence S. Jacobs has a message: Enjoy the Champagne and the honeymoon, but expect no gifts from the IRS. Jacobs, a lawyer in Washington, specializes in estate planning for same-sex couples — and in delivering the bad news that their unions aren’t legal in the eyes of the IRS, a policy that will cost them time and money during tax season. Same-sex couples in Washington, which last year legalized gay marriage, must fill out a federal return to make calculations required for their D.C. joint return. But then they must set that work aside and fill out separate federal returns because the IRS doesn’t regard their union as legal, Jacobs says. “You just spent decades getting your marriage recognized, and now the feds say, ‘No, you’re not,’” says Jacobs, who as a partner in a same-sex marriage has firsthand experience of the problem.

Small firms not happy with rising accountancy fees [Fresh Business Thinking]
According to new research 15% of small businesses say that rising fees is their biggest accounting gripe. The survey of 269 businesses by Crunch.co.uk, which questioned attitudes to and experiences of accountants, was carried out in July. Other top gripes were jargon, or ‘accountant-speak’, and charging for communication such as phone calls and emails — 18% combined agreed these were pet hates.

The IRS’ Amnesty Program for Foreign Account Holders: What You Need to Know [Reuters]
In case you have missed the recent press coverage on unreported foreign bank and other financial accounts, the IRS announced a second amnesty initiative earlier this year. The good news, if you have not already disclosed your foreign financial accounts, is that under the amnesty you can avoid criminal prosecution and get back into the system at a relatively low cost.

Almost 1,500 Millionaires Do Not Pay Income Tax [ABC]
At a time when America is borrowing about 40 cents of every dollar it spends because tax revenues cannot keep up with government spending, hundreds of America’s wealthiest households are paying no income tax at all. According to a recently released IRS report, almost 1,500 of America’s 230,000 millionaires avoided paying any federal income tax in 2009.

Cantor urges GOP to resist tax hike pressure after S&P downgrade [The Hill]
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) told Republican lawmakers to expect — and resist — increased pressure to raise taxes following the downgrade of the U.S. credit rating by Standard and Poor’s. “Over the next several months, there will be tremendous pressure on Congress to prove that S&P’s analysis of the inability of the political parties to bridge our differences is wrong,” Cantor wrote Monday in a memo to House Republicans. “In short, there will be pressure to compromise on tax increases. We will be told that there is no other way forward. I respectfully disagree.”

China Calls For a New International Reserve Currency That Isn’t the Dollar (Again)

Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research writes via Business Insider:

The NYT told readers that:

“Beijing has few options other than to continue to purchase United States Treasury bonds, Chinese officials are clearly concerned that China’s substantial holdings of American debt, worth at least $1.1 trillion, is being devalued.”

Both parts of this statement are wrong. Beijing has the option to stop buying dollars from its exporters. The reason that the government accumulates dollars and other foreign currencies is that it buys the currency from the companies who are exporting to the United States and other countries.

If Chinese officials were that concerned about it, they wouldn’t keep selling us their useless crap, thereby continuing the vicious cycle of being forced to “cash out” in Treasurys on the difference. If we as Americans were that concerned about it, we’d stop buying the useless crap. Like the “Presidents of the United States” mugs I bought this weekend, which happened to have “Made in China” stickers slapped on the bottom.

On Saturday, after S&P downgraded the U.S. credit rating to AA+ (pretty sure you guys heard about that), Chinese officials said Washington needed to “cure its addiction to debts” and “live within its means,” harsh words considering our living beyond our means has been the main driver of China’s explosive growth in the last decade. ““The U.S. government has to come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone,” read the statement, released by state-run Xinhua news.

“China, the largest creditor of the world’s sole superpower, has every right now to demand the United States address its structural debt problems and ensure the safety of China’s dollar assets,” it said.

Wrong. The Federal Reserve is the largest creditor of the world’s former superpower (that’s us), and according to them, we can’t inflate fast enough.

“International supervision over the issue of U.S. dollars should be introduced and a new, stable and secured global reserve currency may also be an option to avert a catastrophe caused by any single country,” Xinhua said.

Notice a pattern here yet? GAAP isn’t good enough, we need the IASB to tell us how to recognize leases. Now the dollar isn’t good enough. Not that it ever was, at least not in my lifetime or yours.

Better learn Chinese, people.

Can Someone Help This Guy Know What It Feels Like To Be Wanted?

I am pretty sure some of you have some sage advice for this poor lost little sheep who can’t seem to elbow his way into the Big 4.

I have a question. I go to a small college where I am an accounting major. I hold a high GPA, several internships, involved in campus activity and in the community and a member of a fraternity. I understand that your resume is not going to get you an interview with one of the big 4. However, since I do not attend a school that the big 4 recruit from I am not able to gain any face time. I cannot get the time of day from any recruiter because I am not in their “pipleline” and I am always told that they willl keep it for consideration come time to recruit in the fall. I have networked like crazy through alumni of my school, my fraternity, my friends, my church, and my community. I am always referred to the recruiter and then I am always told that I will be considered. If you can shed any advice on how to obtain an interview from the big 4 that does not recruit your school I would appreciate it. I am I just out of luck and should of went to a bigger university?

Ahem. “Should have gone to a bigger university” for starters. This particular OP also attached a resume which I obviously won’t share and didn’t even open. I didn’t need to. And I’m a no-CPA-having, pissed off blogger, imagine what Big 4 recruiters would think reading a submission like the one above.

When you say you’ve “networked,” what exactly does that mean? “Networking” with your fraternity usually doesn’t have anything to do with work, and unless you are a member of the St H&R Block congregation, I’m unclear as to how your church is helping you get in at the Big 4. It’s good that you are making the rounds to get advice and support on this but the best thing you can do is evaluate your own way of approaching this because something obviously isn’t working.

In any correspondence with the firm, double-check this list to make sure you aren’t making any of these. I wouldn’t dare say working at the Big 4 is like rocket science or that you need to write a perfectly-worded dissertation to get in but maybe your fraternity experience is better expressed in person than written. You’d probably do great at a recruiting event if you had the opportunity to go to one.

There is a back door you can take by attending other professional events to see if you can meet someone who knows someone that likes your __________ (knowledge; ability to be molded into whatever they need; desire to please people whose job it is to bullshit you into one more busy season) and get you in. I don’t think writing to these people is going to help you.

In short, your fast track to the “pipeline” is to make yourself marketable and desirable to these bloodthirsty sharks. Slit your wrists in the water if you have to knowwhatI’msayin.

In a followup email to the OP, I asked “How are you approaching these recruiters? ‘Hey I kinda want a job with you guys’ or ‘I have x to offer and will take y assrape in exchange for it’ ?”

“I am pretty assertive so I am probably approaching it the second way you mentioned it. I am not sure if I would want to stay forever but, I want the name on my resume and I am willing to put in the time while I am young and single,” he wrote. I’d have to see his communications with recruiters or HR shlubs to confirm if he is being explicit about the level of assrape he’s willing to endure and for how long.

They can smell it, you know.

Small Pennsylvania Town Sues the Fire Department Over Shady Accounting

I would expect more and more items like these in the news in the months and years ahead but that’s just my humble opinion.

Apparently commissioners in Lawrence Park Township, Pennsylvania are sick of messing around and would like an Erie County judge to appoint a custodian to handle the volunteer Lawrence Park Fire Department. On Friday, the township filed a petition, after a July 12th vote of 3-2 to go to court.

Via Firehouse.com:

The three commissioners are claiming the Fire Department is violating a township ordinance by not providing an accounting of how the department is spending township money. The commissioners are arguing a custodian should be in place long enough to bring the department in compliance with the law.

The commissioners and the Fire Department have been feuding over the department’s finances since 2009. The firefighters have said the department is fiscally sound.

The funny part of all this is that the fire department claimed part of the reason why their finances were so jacked up was the Form 990 they “never knew existed” according to department president Maureen Crotty. Apparently the township commissioners felt the lack of a 990 (which reveals any non-profit organization’s expenses and revenues and is required for all non-profits above $250,000) was one of many good reasons not to give the department more money.

So back in April, almost a year after the IRS said all required 990s better be in or else, the fire department was still waiting to get a completed 990 back from its newly hired accountant, who didn’t have time to fill out the simple form while also auditing the department’s financial records by request of the stingy township commissioners.

Back then, Crotty stated she hoped the finished 990 and audit would help repair the strained relationship between the fire department and the five-member board of commissioners. Guess that didn’t happen.

How To Make Yourself More Marketable In This Economy

Lately, it feels like a lot of you are trying to jump ship, rally against “The Man” or trap a firm into poaching you like a 19-year-old actress catches a predator. Maybe you guys have always been like that and it only feels like it’s happening more often now that we email each other about it but I’m sensing a pattern here.

Anyway, there are a few things you can do (and a couple you absolutely shouldn’t) that can help you on that road. Maybe these are obvious to you; if so, congratulations. Let’s just go over them again anyway, not everyone is as good at this as you.

1. Learn IFRS. Or at least have a baseline knowledge extensive enough to fake it when you have to talk to people who actually care and/or know more than you. What this means is that you can either take a class, some CPE, maybe get a “free” masters on your firm’s dime or read a damn book. Whatever you do, remember that unless you are at an IFRS conference, chances are you don’t have to be an expert on the matter, just knowledgeable enough to appear as though you have some idea what you are talking about. If you have the opportunity to actually work on IFRS financial statements at work, do it. It’ll be an awesome item on your resume.

2. Don’t get a useless degree. “Useless” is, of course, defined by how far you want to go and where. Please take inventory of your personal situation to define “useless degree” for your own circumstances. For some of you, this is a MAcc. For some, it is an MBA from a for-profit. For others, it is a bachelors in philosophy. Whatever it is, avoid it at all costs, even if you can afford it. Get by on your merits and don’t waste your time pursuing education you don’t need. If you’re that bored, find a hobby.

3. Learn how to play the game. You can’t negotiate a better salary if you are spending half the day on the Internet interrogating strangers about their salaries in our comment section. We don’t care either way but if you are trying to elbow your way into a better salary, you may have to actually try to set yourself apart from your slacker colleagues.

4. Pass the CPA exam. Before some troll shows up and asks me why I haven’t done #4, I’m not trying to market myself as a CPA, writing about this and helping actual CPAs have a single “water cooler” to sit around is much more fulfilling. For people who actually want to work in this industry, this one is pretty necessary. If you actually focus on getting it done sooner rather than later, you’ll save yourself a lot of pain later down the road. As for me, I’m sure I’ll be deflecting this same troll 5 years from now when you’re making way more money than I am writing these articles. Feel free to rub it in.

5. Know your enemy. Some of you are vicious, money-grubbing pricks and I really love that about you. If you believe it when partners say “you really have potential” and tossed a few extra back at your recruiting events to “loosen up a bit,” you’re going to have to understand what it is you want and how best to get it. For some of you, more money is enough until you want more money after that. For others, you just want to experience the thrill of being wanted by several firms at once. Whatever your vice, you need to analyze your own strengths and weaknesses before you try to get three firms to bitchfight over who gets to have you. You can’t negotiate if you’re delusional about what you offer to any of them.

Comp Watch ’11: A Detailed Explanation of Uncle Ernie’s Complicated “Metrics”

… and it promises that if you just stick around for 12 years, you could be an executive, director, partner or principal.

Warning: the propaganda is absolutely raging in this piece of HR gold, dive into it accordingly (and turn your head to be able to read it).

EY Curve

Accounting News Roundup: BofA Gets Sued For ‘Massive Fraud’; U.S. and China Try To Get Along on Audits; Groupon Dumps ACSOI | 08.08.11

AIG sues BofA for $10 billion over “massive fraud” [Reuters]
The insurer American International Group Inc (AIG.N) is suing Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) to recover more than $10 billion of losses from a “massive fraud” on mortgage debt, deepening the morass of litigation faced by the largest U.S. bank. AIG, still largely owned by taxpayers after $182.3 billion of government bailouts, is the latest of a growing number of investors filing lawsuits seeking to hold banks responsible for losses on troubled mortgages that contributed to the financial crisis.

US and China Fail to Agree on Cross-Border Auditing Standards [Business Insider]
On July 11-12, US regulators flew to Beijing in part to address the series of financial scandals of Chinese companies listed in America, but failed to agree upon a standard set of cross-border auditing standards with their Chinese counterparts. In an alphabet soup of acronyms, a U.S. delegation from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) and Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) met with Chinese counterparts at the Ministry of Finance and the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC).

Exclusive: Groupon Will Dump Controversial ACSOI Accounting in Amended IPO Filing [All Things D]
According to numerous sources close to the situation and after regulatory pressure, Groupon will amend its S-1 public offering filing to remove references to an unusual accounting treatment that has attracted controversy. Sources said the new filing by the social buying company, which is helmed by CEO and co-founder Andrew Mason (pictured above), will likely occur as early as Monday.

Less than zero: How companies can end up with negative revenues [Globe and Mail]
Even savvy investors are often puzzled at how some companies arrive at the bottom lines on their income statements. Now, as a result of ever more elaborate new accounting standards and complex corporate structures, the top line can be just as bewildering.

IRS auditing Louisville high school booster club [AP via Fox19.com]
The Internal Revenue Service is auditing a high school booster club’s books to find out why it has as much as $480,000 in funds that are unaccounted for.

MetLife Says 30 Jurisdictions Are Auditing Unpaid Benefits [Bloomberg via the SF Chronicle]
MetLife Inc., the largest U.S. life insurer, said more than 30 U.S. jurisdictions are auditing its practices in a review of whether the industry is holding unclaimed funds owed to policyholders, beneficiaries or states. The audits may lead to more payments to beneficiaries, administrative penalties or changes in procedures, New York- based MetLife said today in its quarterly filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

Google App Engine now officially secure [ZDnet]
The announcement got lost in the pre-weekend shuffle, but Google has announced that both the Google Apps cloud productivity and collaboration suite and the Google App Engine application platform have received the SSAE-16 security certification. If you can get past the alphabet soup, this news could open a lot of doors for Google in the enterprise.

SEC, Rajat Gupta Drop Their Cases, for Now [WSJ]
The Securities and Exchange Commission dropped its civil administrative proceeding against former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director Rajat Gupta, but left the door open to pursue insider-trading charges against him in a civil lawsuit. The agency “is fully committed to the case and will proceed as appropriate,” a spokesman said Thursday. Specifically, the agency said that “it is in the public interest” to dismiss the administrative case but that “dismissing these proceedings will not prevent the Commission from filing an action against Mr. Gupta in United States District Court.”

Comp Watch ’11: Deloitte Audit Comp Call Details Are In

Thanks to our tipster who spilled the dirty details just moments ago:

No specific salary increases or bonuses were addressed, as the call was high-level. But here are the approximate levels:

Raise and Bonus Percentages:

3-rated (average) – 7% salary increase, 5% bonus
2-rated (middle) – 8.5% salary increase, 7% bonus
1-rated (highest) – 10% salary increase, 10% bonus

Milestone promotions (senior, manager, senior manager) would be 3 to 5% on top of the salary increases above. No additional bonuses or raises for new managers.

As expected, Deloitte talked a bit about salary multipliers, but not nearly to the extent that PwC did in their presentation. Of note on this front are the fact that experienced audit seniors can expect to earn 1.3x their starting salaries, as opposed to 1.5x at PwC. Also notable is the Deloitte model is “total compensation” (salary + bonus + rewards received), whereas PwC’s structure appears to apply only to salary.

Smart Guy With Useless Masters Wants to Know How to Break Into Public

This is a good one. A really good one. If you have a good question for us (none of this crap we’ve answered before nonsense), please get in touch.

The lesson we learn here is that: A) not all Masters degrees are created equal and B) appreciate those networking and recruiting events you get at school because not everyone is so fortunate.

Hi GC,

Just need some advice and suggestions on how I should approach my accounting future. I finished my MBA – Accounting from Keller (Graduate division of Devry) about 2 years ago. I have a really good GPA (3.72), and I have some years of experience of accounting in private industries under my belt (3 years of being staff act a job recently as an Senior Accountant in a non profit organization. However, my true goal has been to get into public accounting, and I have tried and tried to breakthrough with no avail. Even before my recent job, I have applied to many entry level positions at any and every accounting firms (small, big 4, and in between) and no response. NONE… Networking and job assistance at Keller/DeVry is a joke… I sometimes regret going there…

As for the CPA exam, I am working on them right now. None passed so far, but I am really aiming for finishing it by the end of this year.

Something that piqued my interest recently is that CSUN is offering a Master’s in Accounting program this fall. I have already applied, and I have a good chance of getting in. However, I don’t know if its a worthwhile endeavor.

My question is, should I go back and get another master’s for the whole chance of getting networking and interning opportunities? It feels like it might be a waste of $20000 just for that… but then again, I spent about $50000 at Keller/DeVry for hopes of getting into public accounting with no result… and just because I’ll be attending an MSA program doesn’t mean that it’s a lock in getting into public accounting either…

Another thing that interested me is a MST program, possibly from Cal State Fullerton, or again, CSUN. However, time is an issue for me. I’m in my early 30’s already, and waiting another year seems like a death knell to my already slim window of opportunity in getting into public accounting.
Does anyone have advice on how I can get my foot in the door into public accounting?

Any feedback will be appreciated!

Thanks!

Sincerely,

Hopelessly Frustrated

Dear Hopelessly Frustrated,

If I spent $50,000 on a degree that won’t help me get a job, I’d be Incredibly Pissed Off so congrats on taking this so well. Your frustration is warranted, however, I have seen that Keller complaint before – did you do your due diligence before you forked over that kind of cash or was this a case of you getting suckered into their Masters/CPA review package without reading the fine print? Either way, I am really not going to tell you to go get another Masters just to bump into a few recruiters on campus, that’s a dumb idea and you don’t seem like a dumb guy. I mean if you’d do that just to get a Big 4 job, why not just bring a suitcase stuffed with $100 bills to your nearest Big 4 office and tell them you’ll work for free in exchange for work experience?

You’re right that at 30-something your chances of breaking into public are slipping by the day, old man. My thought on this is that at 30, you have pretty much formulated your opinions on the world, lost the idealism of your youth and settled into who you are pretty comfortably. Of course, the Big 4 don’t like hiring people with solid opinions about how the world works, it’s much easier to take on an army of starry-eyed 22-year-olds eager to be told how they feel and what they think.

That being said, sounds like you have a lot to offer, especially if you knock out the CPA exam. I have difficulty believing you cannot get in with any firm; when you say you’ve been trying, what exactly have you been trying? Lingering outside of recruiting events pretending that you attend that school? Waiting outside in the parking lot to pounce on HR people?

If you haven’t already, I would get your ass on the good old Internets and start networking like a motherfucker. There are tons of recruiters lurking on Twitter and LinkedIn, and the better your professional presence on these sites, the higher your chances of bumping into one. It can’t hurt.

Firms do troll the schools you mentioned (both CSUN and Cal State Fullerton have – believe it or not – decent accounting programs, at least by California standards) but do you really want to be elbowing 25-year-olds out of the way at awkward recruiting events? Instead, I would advise getting active with CalCPA and hitting any other professional networking events (like AICPA conferences) you can afford. It’s all about who you know, and if you know enough people, eventually one of them is going to know where you can get in and be so impressed with your decent GPA, previous experience and communication skills that they will put in a good word for you. It can’t hurt. Another $20,000 on a second degree, however, sounds pretty painful.

Good luck!

Deloitte Hedge Fund Adviser Threatens Soros Won’t Be the Last

When George Soros announced he was essentially shuttering Soros Fund Management and his infamous Quantum fund after almost a decade of declining new client money, you could almost hear the jaws drop around the world. But one person was not surprised: Ellen Schubert, chief adviser to Deloitte’s hedge fund practice.

“Soros won’t be the last,” Schubert told investment website AdvisorOne this week. “Hedge fund managers generally are very smart people who have usually enjoyed what they were doing.”

Earlier in the year, Schubert actually described Soros’ new strategy pretty well when she shared a new trend among startup hedge funds; bypassing clients that aren’t friends or family to avoid hitting the mandatory SEC registration requirement for funds managing a minimum of $150 million.

When Bloomberg told us Soros was out, they made Dodd-Frank sound like a dirty word writing “There’s a two-word explanation for closing what was once one of the world’s biggest hedge funds and consistently one of the best-performing — with returns of about 30 percent annually in its first 30 years: Dodd-Frank.”

How many more hedge fund managers will follow Soros’ lead? And how many of them could blame Dodd-Frank for their departures from other people’s money?

Soros’ fund was exempt from rules that require private investment advisers to register with the SEC but those exemptions will not be an option come March 2012. Which could or could not have something to do with Soros’ decision, though that’s doubtful given the fact this decision has been in the making since 2000.

Comp Watch ’11: Let’s Discuss the KPMG Comp Talks That Started Last Week

We’re really sorry for taking so long to get this in order, or rather, Caleb should be sorry because it happened on his watch but, in his defense, he was off in the UK kissing up to the people who actually own this website and therefore technically make sure our checks are signed every month. So we’ll give him a pass. I’m sure ignoring KPMG compensation had absolutely nothing to do with any residual feelings he may have for the firm he once called home.

Anyway, we got word last week that some more KPMG comp talks started some time last week (OK, so they started last Monday) and apparently they are making all those fools at Uncle Ernie’s look pretty lame with their 11 percents.

We have it on good authority that, at least for our audit staff tipster, last week’s comp talks were probably going to bring news somewhere in the 16% range or thereabouts.

Well great, that’s not very helpful at this point, is it? We’ll have to badger our tipster incessantly to see how that worked out (we never heard further so maybe they took that 16.4%, bought a bunch of gold and ran off to Sri Lanka) but if any of you KPMGers have good news to share, please let it launch below.

As always, it’s extra helpful if you A) avoid commenting with your full name so the partners don’t get their Depends in a bunch over you blabbing your salary all over the Internet and B) include where you are, what service line you are in and any bonus.

Earlier: (UPDATE) Comp Watch ‘11: Early Returns Are in at KPMG

AICPA Has Chosen Its 2011 Leadership Academy, You Probably Aren’t On It

We’re not saying that pillars of the profession don’t frequent this site (we know Tom Hood shows up from time to time) but chances are, if you’re reading this at noon on a Friday with absolutely no intention to even pretend like you’re working for the rest of the day, you’re not among the AICPA’s new Leadership Academy choices.

The diverse group of 34 young CPAs will attend courses, lectures and mentoring sessions to develop the skills necessary to become the next generation of leaders in business, industry, government and the accounting profession.

“The AICPA takes its commitment to diversity and the development of young leaders within the accounting profession very seriously,” said Paul Stahlin, CPA, AICPA chair. “Within the last three years, we’ve happily witnessed a surge in the amount of highly qualified young people choosing to become CPAs. The young CPAs selected to participate in this year’s Leadership Academy have demonstrated their commitment to the profession, to their communities and their potential to become future leaders.”

This year’s participants represent a cross section of the profession’s role in the American capital market system, meaning they come from different backgrounds, specialties and even ethnicities. Some work in public accounting and others in business, industry, government or academia. The 2011 class has twice the number of business, industry and government participants as the classes of 2009 and 2010. The tax and audit split is 50 / 50 and 11 states have first time candidates. On an ethnic, gender and geographic basis, this year’s Leadership Academy is as diverse as America. They are equally divided between men and women and include CPAs of Asian, African American, Caucasian, Hispanic / Latino, Native American and Pacific Islander descent from all over the United States.

“The Leadership Academy is a great example of how the AICPA works to achieve its vitally important mission to develop young CPAs to lead the accounting profession and help meet its obligation to serve the public interest,” said Barry Melancon, CPA, AICPA president and CEO, who will address the Leadership Academy. “These ambitious, talented professionals are the future of the accounting profession. And through the AICPA’s Leadership Academy, the future begins now.”

The Institute selected the participants from a large pool of candidates sponsored by either their employers and/or state CPA societies. Candidates, who must be under 35 years of age, were selected on the basis of their work history, licensure information, professional volunteer activities, community service and awards and honors. In addition, each candidate supplied a statement explaining why participating in the academy would be important personally. AICPA senior leadership reviewed and evaluated each submission and a selection committee recommended the participants. All finalists were personally approved by both the AICPA Chair and CEO.

What this means is that it isn’t too late for a lot of you, but, you know, you better stop spending so much time complaining about work and start kissing up to your state society folks.

In all seriousness, this is an excellent opportunity for these young CPAs, and if any of them do somehow read this, we’d love to hear from you and talk about how you feel about being chosen.