When accounting goes unaccounted for
From one of the usual suspects earlier this week:
DATE: October 14, 2009
TO: All Personnel, Washington, DC office
FROM: [Redacted]
SUBJECT: Outside visitors in the DC Office- October 14.
We have visitors in the DC office tomorrow October 14th in the 6th floor main conference room from 8am – 4:30pm which include senior partners and government officials from various agencies. Please be mindful of your conversations in and around the office.
Thank you.
So, Ixnay on the Project Dark Wing talk.
Tax professionals, now that you’ve managed to make it through yet another tax year with totally flipping out, it’s time for the annual ritual of working up the nerve to find a different job.
Good money says that most of you will look for about two hours over the next week and then, next thing you know, it’s January and you’re doomed for another 10 months.
Our attempt to give you a little push after the jump.
Company: CME Group
Location: Chicago
Title: Corporate Tax Manager
Description: This role is “hands on”, entailing day-to-day management and direct responsibility of several areas of the tax function. It will work crossfunctionally with a wide group, including staff, customers, vendors, and outside consultants. As such, the ability to effectively communicate tax technical terms to a nontax audience is very important. This position also requires the ability to work independently as well as the ability to manage over long distances.
Responsibilities:
• Compliance: Work with the Director, Tax, Manager, Tax, and outside service providers on federal and state income tax filings for CME Group. Research issues related to the preparation of nonincome and income tax returns.
• Audit defense: Work with Director, Tax on strategy and tactics. Research audit issues and respond to auditor questions.
• Tax research: Assist Director, Tax in identifying tax minimization opportunities. Research a variety of issues across a broad range of taxes, including transactional and project issues. Demonstrate the ability to communicate findings in written and verbal form to a wide range of internal and external customers, most of whom are not tax fluent.
• Income tax accounting (financial reporting): Work with Director and Manager, Tax on quarterly and yearend tax provisions for CME Group. Will also work with the Director and Manager to improve process and output.
See the full description at the GC Career Center and check out all the other great jobs at the main page.
From what we can tell, the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award is a BFD. If the other Big 4 have their own versions of this award, we sure haven’t heard of them.
And even if Deloitte were to start handing out the Uncle Dangle Vigilante of the Year award, it would pale in comparison to the EYEY because, now, a past winner is going to be on The Real Housewives of New York City.
Jennifer Gilbert won her EYEY in 1998 for her business, Save the Date, “A dedicated force of event planners who are in tune with the constantly evolving world of corporate events.” She’s even in the EYEY Hall of Fame. Jesus, this thing has a HoF?
J Dawg has to be bursting over this. Shamelessly up on his desk fist pumping, Tiger Woods style. A soon-to-be reality TV star that, God willing, will name drop E&Y every chance she gets on cable would be the best thing that ever happened to the firm. Sorry, NASCAR HoF.
The Real Housewives of New York Adds a Second New Non-Housewife [Gawker]
Thanks again to everyone for humoring us and taking our survey. Some of the highlights:
• 76% of the respondents work in public accounting.
• 41% of the respondents work for a company with more than 100,000 employees.
• 44% of the respondents describe themselves as “auditors”, 22% describe themselves as “tax professionals”. Some of the “other” responses include: marketing, attorney, financial modeler, teacher, engineer, professor, and of course, unemployed.
• Nearly 84% of the respondents are CPAs, 14% have a JD (with a handful of LLMs), along with a few CIAs, CFEs, CMAs, and one CFA but no CVAs. “Other” responses include: CISA, CISSP, CGFM, FRM, CLU, and CPCU.
• 47% of the respondents answered they work in the “accounting industry”, 13% in “banking/finance”. 19% responded “other” including: publishing, oil & gas, construction, real estate, forensic and litigation consulting, federal consulting, entertainment, law, and education.
Some of the comments and suggestions we received:
• I think you should speculate more on rumors. Add some fuel to the flame. but don’t go overboard and scare everyone.
• More professionalism. the foolishness of some stories is great and well taken as a break from work, but i am interested in hearing more about the industry and the dirt accompanying layoffs.
• ATL writers know how to be witty without being juvenile. This site, not so much.
• Not as snarky/funny as, say, above the law, but accountants just aren’t (as) interesting (as almost anything that’s not an accountant).
• Stop being so negative. I know the Big 4 aren’t perfect but the constant bad mouthing is out of place on a website devoted to them.
• More focus on the big 4.
• Suggestions: It would be interesting to see posts about sexual harrassment stories and stories about times our firms have asked/encouraged us to do illegal things…
• Maybe there are too many articles?
• Please have more posts per day and more information “after the jump”
• Language formality will improve overall credibility.
• I heart Caleb and Pomeranians.
So based on some of these responses, we will try to do the following: post more, post less, avoid dick and fart jokes (or maybe just grow up), find out if ATL does workshops, and get a Pom. Got it.
Seriously, thank you for all your feedback and suggestions. We also need you to keep sending us ideas and tips. In fact, it’s imperative that you do so, in order for us to inform you about all rumors, gossip, and chicanery going out their in the bean counter universe.
Here’s where we make like your performance counselor and ask you to double your efforts, step it up, or whatever the hell it is they say to you. Let’s take it to next the level, people. Ugh, we just managed to creep ourselves out with that…
Thanks again!
• SEC, CFTC Mull Joint Enforcement Squad: Sources – “U.S. securities and futures regulators are considering a joint enforcement squad to investigate and root out fraud in the markets, two sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.” All together now: FRAUD SQUAD. [Reuters via NYT]
• Suspicions Arise After Balloon Boy Found Safe – We’re saturated by the coverage already. [NPR]
• Obama wins first financial reform victory in months – Derivatives are no match for a debatable Nobel Peace Prize recipient. [Reuters]
• Justice Agency Resists Music Merger – “The Ticketmaster-Live Nation deal is widely regarded as a bellwether of the department’s attitude toward such potential deals as Comcast Corp.’s proposal to take a majority stake in General Electric Co.’s NBC Universal. Like the proposed Ticketmaster-Live Nation alliance, a Comcast-NBC deal would represent ‘vertical integration,’ in which several links in the chain between producer and consumer are controlled by a single entity.” [WSJ]
• On the Calendar: What Every Auditor Should Know About Litigation – Jim Peterson will be at Baruch College on Dec. 2 for Corporate Integrity’s 4th Annual Audit Conference, “Ensuring Integrity.” Check it out. [Re: The Balance]
• Is your boss honest? Hec no, say most Americans, according to Adecco Group survey – Thoughts? [NYDN]
• More Goldman Lies – Goldman Sachs: social crusader. [Naked Capitalism]
• Outgoing BofA CEO Ken Lewis to Receive No Salary, Bonus for 2009 – Our suggestion: grow the beard back Ken. [WSJ]
• Europe must stop its meddling, says FASB chief – We wish he talked that way. C’mon Accountancy Age, he’s not out of a Scooby Doo cartoon. [Accountancy Age]
And some sickos like this (click to enlarge):
Oh sure, anything is possible. However, on top of everyone not called Fox News calling P. Dubs the most shameless whore ever to issue a report on anything, Jonathan Weil at Bloomberg is now calling out some of P. Dubs’s (and KPMG probably for good measure) banking clients’ less-than consistent use of mark-to-whatever-the-hell-we-like.
Weil names three PwC clients (Midwest Banc Holdings, First Bancorp, BB&T Corp.) as showing loans with fair values greater than their carrying values as of June 30th. Midwest and First Bancorp’s stock prices are trading far below book value while BB&T’s stock price trades above book value.
As Weil points out, WTFK if these values are right or not? What is obvious is it seem like some banks are legitimately making a run at fair value and others are still using a dart board. Oh, and the PwC audit teams are okay with that. Nevermind comparability, Dow is above 10k bitches! Onward!
Mark-to-Make-Believe Turns Junk Loans to Gold [Bloomberg/Jonathan Weil]
Chicago is maintaining it’s decades-long tradition of putting mobsters in prison not for murder, not for racketeering, but for tax evasion.
Rudy Fratto pleaded guilty to tax evasion yesterdy which could result in a sentence of 12-18 months. He admitted to not paying $140,000 in taxes he owed on $800,000 earned from 2001-2007.
Despite being from a family of alleged mobsters, association with crooked cops, and an alleged threat to a government witness in another mob case, Fratto will simply take 2010 off.
It’s unlikely that this particular story will result in a historically inaccurate movie starring Kevin Costner but at least it demonstrates the consistency of Chicago law enforcement.
Reputed mobster admits tax evasion [Chicago Sun-Times via Roth & Company, P.C.]
We’ve finally received some details on a possible restructuring at the House of Klynveld in the U.S.
According to our source, the plans were announced over the past week on a series of calls by Tim Flynn. The firm would be consolidated down to two regions, East and West and each would have a regional managing partner and one service line managing partner per region.
This would result in the elimination of one level of regional leadership and would transfer several partners into client-facing roles.
The restructuring would also include placing some partners on ‘profit improvement plans’ and some layoffs would occur over the next year. Additional staff layoffs would occur across all ranks over the next year as well.
The bad news is obvious. The silver lining, as some of our other sources have indicated, is that the Firm would be eliminating at least one level of bureaucracy that should allow partners to be more active in developing potential client relationships.
Messages left with KPMG were not immediately returned. We’ll update you with any response that the firm gives us.
If you can expand on of the details we mentioned on this restructuring, let us know, otherwise, discuss your thoughts in the comments.
Earlier: KPMG Atlanta Shake-up Makes Us Wonder
UPDATE, 4:45 pm: Regardless of this rumor, we learned a short time ago that KPMG admitted thirty-six new partners last month. Seventeen in Audit, twelve in Tax, and seven in Advisory. Congrats to the new partners! No, seriously. Good job.
One way or another most people move on from their Big 4 experience, regardless of practice or firm. Whether you left on on your own accord or by other means, you all have experiences of what life is like now.
Starting a career with a Big 4 firm is definitely a good way to go (yes, we said it) but shit happens and things change right?
So whatever you want to discuss: Money. Work/life. Does the Big 4 firm on the resume really impress? Did you leave and go back? If you’re still living the glamorous life in the B4, discuss your thoughts on your firm and why leaving is unthinkable. We realize that the Stockholm Syndrome is a bitch.
No one panic, if you get licensed before 2014, you’re grandfathered in as substantially equivalent. So if you feel like procrastinating, don’t let us stop you but maybe keep the date in mind.
In addition to the new credit hour requirements, Ah-nuld also signed bills requiring mandatory peer review for CPA firms starting next year and requiring non-active CPAs to disclose their status. We thought those were both standard operating procedure but a couple more laws won’t hurt anything.
If you can’t bear the thought of 25-30 extra credit hours in college, move to Colorado, Puerto Rico, or the Virgin Islands as they’re the holdouts on the 150 credit-hour requirement.
California Adopts 150-Hour Rule [Web CPA]
Did Dow 10,000 get you excited about your 401k again? No? Just a psychological level? Bah. “We don’t give a damn because we’re still down from the highs you jerk.”
Fine, you kill-joys, regardless if you still consider your nest egg to be in the crapper, there are lots of people out there that ingested inhuman amounts of MSG last night to get employee benefit plan audits completed and submitted with their Form 5500s for today’s deadline. This is our tribute to them*.
Sure, EBP audits are the redheaded step-child of audits but they keep some of you employed, they’re profitable and low risk so everybody a few people win. Good work EBP trolls, finish up and go get your drink on.
*Maybe we were just waiting until the day of the deadline to mention EBPs. Didja ever think of that? Didja?