Author: Caleb Newquist

Founding editor, Going Concern.

Happy March 15th! (2011)

Today marks a great day for our tax troll friends as the first corporate filing deadline of the year. For many of you, this marks the end of the traditional tax season and for the rest of you it’s more of a speed bump but it’s a sure sign that the traditional tax season is winding down.

So as the interns slap together the extensions, maybe dig into your drawer for a little pick-me-up and look over your bracket one last time. Just keep an eye out for the Judases amongst you. As far as they’re concerned, the extensions should have been finished a week ago and you should already be a dead sprint towards April 15th 18th.

Accounting News Roundup: IRS Audits of Wealthy Nearly Double; Why the New 1099 Rules Are NBD; E&Y Fired by China Agritech | 03.15.11

Futures Tumble After Nikkei Plunges [WSJ]
In Japan, the Nikkei Stock Average plunged 11%, sparking broad declines in Asian and European markets. Germany’s DAX 30 index was particularly hard hit, down 4.2%in intraday trading. Against this backdrop, futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average were down 232 points to 11694 about 90 minutes before the opening bell. They had fallen as low as 11611.

IRS Boosted Auditing of Richest Taxpayers, Almost Doubling Rate Last Year [BloombergKraft CFO to leave in mid-2011 [BBW]
Chief Financial Officer Timothy McLevish is leaving the company in mid-2011 to “pursue opportunities in general management.”

Is Happiness Overrated? [WSJ]
[R]esearchers say happiness as people usually think of it—the experience of pleasure or positive feelings—is far less important to physical health than the type of well-being that comes from engaging in meaningful activity. Researchers refer to this latter state as “eudaimonic well-being.” Happiness research, a field known as “positive psychology,” is exploding. Some of the newest evidence suggests that people who focus on living with a sense of purpose as they age are more likely to remain cognitively intact, have better mental health and even live longer than people who focus on achieving feelings of happiness.

Why the New 1099 Rules Aren’t That Bad for Small Businesses [You’re the Boss/NYT]
THE HORROR!

China Agritech, Inc. Dismisses Ernst & Young Hua Ming As Auditor [PR Newswire]
The dismissal of Ernst & Young Hua Ming was made after thorough consideration by the Audit Committee, and the Board of Directors of the Company. The decision to dismiss the auditor was the result of Ernst & Young (China) Advisory Limited Beijing Branch Office entering into a SOX 404 service agreement including performing the test of the Company’s internal controls from 2008 to 2010. Recently, the public and the management team have raised doubts about this service agreement’s impact on Ernst & Young Hua Ming’s independence to act as the Company’s auditor.

Professional gamblers gain with tax ruling [LVRJ]
A January ruling by the U.S. Tax Court changed a portion of a half-century-old opinion that equated expenses related to a gambling trip with gambling losses — they were deductible only to the extent of their winnings. The court now believes the expenses to reach a casino or racetrack, and other expenses associated with the activity of gambling, can be written off.

Taking Stock of India’s New Accounting Standards [WSJ]
The Indian Ministry of Corporate Affairs recently notified that it had converged 35 Indian accounting standards with international guidelines. This is an important first step in bringing International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) to India, and making Indian companies’ financial statements comparable to that of their global peers. However, several deviations of the proposed Indian standards from international practices have raised concerns among investors.

Heir to H&R Block Fortune Is Ready to Pay Higher Taxes

Tom Bloch is so ready in fact that he wants his to go up first.

“Congress will have no choice, in my opinion, but to raise taxes sooner rather than later.

“I also believe that the rich are significantly under-taxed compared to the middle class. That’s why I suggest that raising taxes on the very wealthiest taxpayers must be the first step toward restoring equity in our income tax system and ensuring the financial security of our children’s future.”

US taxes are too low, should be raised: H&R Block heir [PhillyDeals]

Deloitte Resigns as China MediaExpress Auditor; CFO Quits

In the wake of Roddy Boyd’s epic post from March 11th, China MediaExpress announced some bad news today – Deloitte resigned as their auditor effective Friday and as a result the company’s CFO, Jacky Lam, quit yesterday:

China’s largest television advertising operator on inter-city and airport express buses, today announced that the Company’s registered independent accounting firm, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu (“DTT”) has formally resigned its engagement by the Company as of March 11, 2011. Following the receipt of the DTT resignation letter, on March 13, 2011, the Company received notice of the resignation of Jacky Lam from his position as Chief Financial Officer and director of the Company, effective immediately. As a result, CME will delay its fourth quarter earnings release and will not file its Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2010 by March 16, 2011, its original due date.

As you might have already guessed, Deloitte got spooked after all the fraud talk and they also came to the conclusion that management couldn’t be trusted (even if he did say great things about them):

The DTT resignation letter stated that DTT was no longer able to rely on the representations of management, and recommended that certain issues encountered during the audit be addressed by an independent investigation. DTT’s letter also stated that these issues may have adverse implications for the prior periods’ financial reports and that, in their view, further investigatory procedures would be required to determine whether the prior periods’ financial reports are reliable. Upon receipt of the formal DTT resignation letter, the Company requested the suspension of trading in the Company’s common stock on the NASDAQ Global Market to permit full disclosure of DTT’s resignation to be disseminated to the public.

So the company now needs a new auditor and a new CFO. Of course you’ll have to work around forensic accountants and a bunch of lawyers that will be helping the company through this little hiccough but otherwise, this should be a snap.

Earlier:
Apparently ‘The Purpose of Auditors Is Completely, Entirely, and Wholly’ to Look for Fraud and ‘Deloitte is the best. Period. End of Statement.’

PwC Introduces Cleverly-Named Fortnightly Social Function

I overheard – and by that I mean someone sent us the gchat – the following conversation that occurred earlier today regarding friendly get-togethers that will be going down at 300 Madison starting next Thursday.

[Someone at PwC]: From my good friend [Someone else at PwC]
[Someone at PwC, quoting an email]: Take a break. Unwind. Catch up with your coach or colleagues. Enjoy refreshments. Play a game. Right here in 300 Madison at our new Post work Connections. Designed to show appreciation for everything you do — and to provide a place for you and your colleagues — to meet and get to know people. It’s a place to just have fun! Post work Connections will be open every other Thursday, from 5:00-8:00 p.m., in 300 Madison’s deck/cafeteria, from March 24 – June 16. We look forward to seeing you at our grand opening on March 24. Give it a try. There will be beer, wine, soda, snacks, games — and raffles for prizes! Get caught in the act of having fun at work! Hope to see you there!
[Someone at PwC]: Note that post work connections starts with PwC
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Good lord
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: That’s epic
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Is the “post work connections starts with..” comment theirs or yourts
[Someone at PwC]: Mine
[Someone who knows someone at PwC]: Love it.

Personally, I’m mostly curious about the “games” aspect of these events. Are we talking Risk™? Beer pong? Scrabble™? Or we talking an Angry Birds round-robin tournament? Regardless, we’ll be interested to hear how these Thursday ragers will go. Keep us in the loop.

How Bad Are the Odds of Making Partner at a Big 4 Firm?

If you’re a (senior) manager at one of the Final Four horsemen of the accounting firm apocalypse, you may have asked yourself this very question. A reader recently dropped some quantitative analysis on us, writing, “I tried to step past anecdote and see how bad things really were.” This is specifically for the audit practice and is fairly large office, so adjust your expectations accordingly.

Using commonly available data from my firm, I decided to create a quasi-statistical analysis of the likelihood of senior managers making partner in the near future.

There were, as of the date I pulled this data, 843 senior managers in our audit practice. It’s too time consuming to divide these among starting classes, so I’ve made the following simplified assumptions:

Tenure:
9 year – 30% of the population, or 253 senior managers
10 year – 25%, or 211
11 year – 20%, or 169
12 year – 15%, or 126
13 year – 10% or 84

Let’s consider half of year 11 and all of year 12 and 13+ to be “in the pipeline”. That’s 295 senior managers competing for a given number of partner/principal/director (“partner”) spots.

Our tipster used a sample of approximately 200 partners (out of an assumed total of ~1,000) to conclude that approximately 14% of them would retire in the next five years (assuming 30+ years with the firm, mandatory retirement at 62) and assumed a 6% growth rate (which he/she admits, is on the aggressive side).

Here’s an extrapolation of open spots based on turnover and growth:

1,000 partners x 14% turnover = 140 partners turn over due to attrition, or 28 partners per year
1,000 partners x 6% growth = 60 partners per year, ignoring compounding

84 new partners sounds like a lot of partners. That’s because it is. Those in the know put our planned crop of partners at ~50 for 2011. At best, you’re looking at 1 in 4 of those high performing senior managers making partner, based on our assumptions. More realistically, it means that 1 in 6 can make partner.

Maybe you’ll take those odds, maybe you won’t but like we said, if you’re working in an office that is a fraction of the size in our tipster’s pattern, your odds could be worse depending on the situation in your office. Our tipster continues:

These odds are much worse than anyone is willing to admit, and simply making promotion a war of attrition by extending the partner track to 15 years isn’t going to do much to clear up the pipeline, since very few senior managers are going to find an opportunity that presents the chance of making $300k plus within 2 or 3 years. The situation gets even more grim for senior managers in their 9th and 10th year, who have a huge backlog in front of them and a glut of peers who were hired in the SarBox days of senior managers leaving for 30-40% raises and expect the same in their own careers.

Experienced seniors and new managers should very carefully consider the extended consequences of this data, and what it’s going to look like in 7-9 years when they are trying to make partner. The days of 15% growth in our industry are over and aren’t coming back, and the reality is that many Big 4 senior managers simply are not employable in industry at their current salary levels. Think through your career decisions in the coming 18 months very carefully.

As we’ve discussed, the firms know full well that not everyone has the goal of becoming a partner but if you do have partner ambitions, you’re in a pretty select group. The problem is, the odds still seem to be against you. Now with busy season winding down and three of the four firms closing in on fiscal year-ends, this year’s performance (and prospects outside the firm, depending on how promotions fall out) will be weighing heavy on the minds of many.

Nearly One in Four of Your Co-workers Is Not Down with March Madness Pools

Our friends at Vault put together a fun little survey on your gambling habits at work and, no surprise, nearly 75% of you participate in a March Madness pool. What about the remainder? Well, there are the puritanical types who probably leave Bible verses on your desk, “My office is awash in sinners. Some day a real rain will come and these cubicles will be cleansed.” But then there’s the jerks who are simply all business:

“The next time I see [colleagues using work time to focus on office pools], I’m going to put an anonymous note on all the bosses desks to make them aware” warns one respondent. (Presumably they fall into the 22 percent of respondents who disapprove of workplace betting altogether.)

If you know someone who is capable of this level of dickishness, the temptation to violently pinch them with a stapler remover is great, however we’d ask that you refrain from this until they actually make good on their threat. Of course if you impress upon them that there is a valid purpose for studying a bracket, maybe they’ll let it slide.

Vault 2011 Office Betting Survey

View more presentations from philstott.

Ohio Mistakenly Notified a Woman That She Was Due a $200 Million Tax Refund

Ohio, like many states, is in a bit of a budget pickle and perhaps this level of vigilance is part of the reason.

Denise Bossetti received a notice in the mail that indicated she was due $200 million but was skeptical (even with the letterhead).

Apparently 9,700 Ohioans received notices of inflated refunds and the Ohio Department of Taxation claims this is a new one and that “The problem has been fixed.” Probably a good idea.

Woman gets $200 million tax-return notice — but it was mistake [Sandusky Register via AT]

Here’s How This Year’s NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament Would Shake Out If It Were Based on Accounting Research Production

It’s that time of year again where thousands of Americans spend countless hours of company time researching basketball teams and agonizing over which #12 seed will pull a minor upset only to have someone from marketing, who doesn’t know a damn thing about basketball, to win the pool. It also marks the time of year when the accounting faculty at BYU puts outs their own simulated version of the tournament, played out based on the productivity of accounting researchers over the last six years.


As you can see, a lot of similar schools are making a run again this year including Texas (last year’s simulated champion) and Michigan State. If you’re interested in what this year’s non-bracketed accounting rankings are, you can check them out on the campanion research page.

Games start on Thursday tomorrow (obviously I’m not in a pool) so if you’re having trouble filling out your bracket, this seems like a good place to start. You could do a helluva lot worse when it comes to strategy.

Will a Couple of Past Arrests Jeopardize Your Big 4 Job Offer?

Welcome to the bracketastic edition of Accounting Career Emergencies. In today’s edition, a future tax associate is losing sleep over his offer with a Big 4 firm that could be at risk because of two past convictions. Will his past indiscretions torpedo his job prospects before things get rolling?

Need some semi-reasonable career advice? Do you avoid confrontation as a general rule? Looking for some ideas on how to carry on an imaginary conversation? Email us at advice@goingconcern.com and we’ll get you prepared for an elevator ride.

Back to our tax troublemaker:

To whom it may (going) concern,

I recently accepted an offer to join the Tax Department at a local Big 4 office. Although quite ecstatic to receive an offer from my top choice, I am worried that a past arrest may jeopardize my prospects with the firm. The case consisted of two convictions, unlawful open container and trespassing. I am in the process of getting the convictions expunged, however, I don’t know if they will be off my record by the time background checks are performed.

What will the firm make of this? They seem pretty minor on the continuum of things to be arrested for, but I didn’t know if any arrest is seen as a warning signal. If it’s something I should worry about, when and who should I contact with this information.

Any help is welcomed, because after pre first-round interview dreams and pre-second round interview dreams, the last thing I want is to have dreams regarding my background check for the next seven months.

Thank you

Dear Open Trespasser,

Lucky for you, I have experience in this regard, as I had my share of minor offenses prior to starting my career. The details of which are inconsequential but let’s just say I had a run of bad luck prior to reaching the age of 21. In your case, I’m pretty confident that you have little to worry with regard to your two convictions, mostly because they are minor, non-violent offenses. If you had taken the open container, cracked it over someone’s skull (the trespassee, let’s say), which then resulted in a circus of a trial that tarnished your entire school’s/fraternity’s/family’s reputation, then you might have a valid concern.

Having said that, it’s not impossible that a firm wouldn’t, all of sudden, decide to make an example out of someone but it seems pretty unlikely. Everybody makes mistakes and if your tax group really was excited about bring ing you on board, a couple of slip-ups like this aren’t going to change their mind about you.

You’re doing the right thing by requesting the convictions to be expunged and I believe they would do so after a number of years, even if you chose not to do so. Good luck with the new gig and try to keep your nose clean. But, breaking the law while an employee of a Big 4 firm is definitely not a great way to keep a job.

Accounting News Roundup: Will E&Y Take the Brunt of Lehman’s Bankruptcy?; Texting Japan Donations; Richard Hatch’s Light Sentence | 03.14.11

Japan Battles Nuclear Meltdown as Millions Without Power, Water [Bloomberg]
Workers battled to prevent a nuclear meltdown after a second blast rocked an atomic plant north of Tokyo, as helicopters and convoys of army trucks headed toward areas worst-hit by Japan’s strongest earthquake. No large release of radiation was detected after the explosion, which didn’t breach Fukushima power station’s No. 3 reactor and followed a build-up of hydrogen gas, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano told reporters in Tokyo today. The risk of a large leak is very small, he said.

BOJ Takes Action to Bolster Moneya href=”http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704893604576199261875222164.html?mod=WSJ_hp_MIDDLETopStories”>WSJ]
The Bank of Japan jumped into action Monday to temper the economic blow from the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear emergency that hit northern Japan, doubling the size of its asset-purchase program and pouring a record 15 trillion yen ($183.17 billion) into money markets to ease liquidity concerns. “What we were most concerned about was the possibility that increases in anxiety and risk-aversion moves would negatively affect the real economy, so we judged it appropriate to mainly boost purchases of risk assets,” BOJ Gov. Masaaki Shirakawa said after the bank’s policy board meeting, which was cut to one day from two because of the crisis.

Lehman Auditor May Bear The Brunt [WSJ]
Federal investigators have grown increasingly doubtful they can prove Lehman executives violated the law by using an accounting maneuver known as Repo 105, which obscured the amount of risk Lehman held, making the firm’s finances look better than they were, The Wall Street Journal has reported. But Ernst & Young, Lehman’s auditor, is fighting fraud charges filed in December by the New York attorney general for, among other things, allegedly failing to adequately follow up on a whistleblower’s claim that Lehman was misstating the value and size of its assets.

Texting Japan earthquake donations [DMWT]
$10 will be added to your next phone bill for contributions to the following charities: American Red Cross, Salvation Army, Convoy of Hope, GlobalGiving and World Relief.

Big 4 Bias – Can We Ever Overcome It? [BDO/CEO Insights]
BDO Global CEO Jeremy Newman wants some respect!


Nine Months is Not a ‘Severe Punishment’ Fitting Survivor Winner Hatch [Yahoo]
Hatch famously failed to pay the taxes due on the $1 million prize won from the first season of “Survivor” more than 10 years ago. He was convicted of tax evasion and subsequently served more than three years in prison. He also, obviously, was ordered to refile amended tax returns that accurately reflect his 2000 and 2001 income and pay the income taxes due. Though any reasonable person disinterested in spending any more time in federal prison would have immediately filed corrected tax returns and pay the taxes due, Hatch failed to do so, and according to the Hollywood Reporter, he has been sentenced to prison for an additional nine months. Hatch was released from prison in 2009, and since then has been serving a three year term of supervised release.

India’s IFRS Carve-Outs and the Pipedream of Global Accounting Standards [The Accounting Onion]
If IFRS adoption was ever a goal worth pursuing, it has long since vanished, and the political motivations of its remaining supporters are now deprived of any pretense of legitimacy. It’s time to let the rest of the world “countdown to IFRS” if they want to, but If the SEC were really serious about protecting investors, it would scrap the IFRS roadmap. In it’s place, there should be a new plan for making U.S. GAAP unquestionably the pre-eminent financial reporting system in the world.

AIG Adopts Poison Pill to Preserve $65 Billion NOL [TaxProf Blog]
AIG, like GM and Citigroup before it, has adopted a poison pill to preserve its $65 billion NOL by ensuring that no investor acquires a 5% stake and triggers the change of ownership rules.

PwC Is Giving $5,000 to a College Student Who Makes the Best ‘Elevator Pitch’ Video That Won’t Closely Resemble Any Conversation They’ll Ever Have in an Elevator

For any current PwC employees if you, in the off-chance, happen to run into Bob Moritz in the elevator at 300 Madison, you might say, “Hey, thanks for the iPad,” or “I don’t care what anyone says, I love the colors of the new logo,” or “You look great with your shirt off.”


On the other hand, if you’re a college student and you need a little extra cash, you might be willing to script together a few awkward sentences that you would say to BoMo or Dennis Nally if, in fact they were interested in being accosted by a wide-eyed eager beaver that is rambling on about their leadership roles in Beta Alpha Psi only to be cut off with, “Sounds great but I really got hit the john.”

If that sounds like something you’d be interested in, you’ve got until March 25th to get your entry submitted.

Making an Impression [PwC Careers/Facebook]