Looks like promotion bonuses are available to view under Self Service Connection for those who got promoted. 2nd year promote to senior (high SP rated) in specialty advisory (N. California) = 1.25% or $700 in my case. What a fucking joke…working for 2 years and I’ve been making progressively less and less money every year when you factor in a signing bonus in 2008 and a CPA bonus in 2009.
Keep in mind that the promotion bonuses are only for the “stub period” of July-September until the full year bonus/raise come into effect. I’ve also been told by numerous people not to extrapolate the stub period amount to a full year amount. Good thing they said that cause if 5% is my full year raise after 2 years of nothing, I’m out of here before you can spell GAAP.
The long-awaited PCAOB inspection report of KPMG came out on Friday and while we were excited for this unveiling, the Board managed to issue the report at around 4 pm on Friday. Since the Board lacks any sense of timing whatsoever, we opted to punt on our respective post until today because well, we’re human and not a soulless blogging robot as likely perceived by TPTB at the PCAOB.
It’s worth mentioning that this is the first PCAOB report that has been issued since the SEC’s final rule on the inspections that allows audit firms to postpone the release of the report simply by taking issue with any of the findings. Since any appeal could reportedly delay the report by “30 to 100 days,” it’s safe to assume that, with a report date of October 5th, KPMG didn’t have a beef with the findings. You could also assume that since the SEC is taking a peek at these reports now, there’s going to be a ten day lag on the release of the report to allow the Commission enough time to give it their extra-special sniff test.
Anyway, back to the matter at hand –
KPMG had eight issuers noted in the Board’s inspection report and the first two are doozies. “Issuer A” runs approximately two pages and includes failure on testing of “allowance for loan losses” to “test[ing] the issuer’s estimates of fair values of financial instruments” and goodwill impairment.
“Issuer B” is a little more interesting since one of the failures the Board found was related to deferred tax assets which makes us wonder if this is Citi, since analyst Mike Mayo was loudly questioning the bank’s treatment of its DTA. Francine McKenna not-so-subtly solicited guesses on Friday as to who this “bank” might be (even though no issuer is identified as such) but it does make us wonder.
The Board cites run-of-the-mill failures for the rest of the issuers (e.g. fair value testing, pension plan testing, failure to confirm cash[!]) and the House of Klynveld’s response letter was cordial and anticlimactic.
But if you’re KPMG, do you really care what the PCAOB thinks when you’ve got an adorable gnome-ish looking analyst giving you the tepid thumbs-up (despite not knowing your name)? That’s the only endorsement we would need.
So you take a position on a tax issue. You don’t really know why or how you got there but your CFO says it’s legit. How does he/she know? “Johnson in the tax department told me.”
Does Johnson understand it? Of course not! It’s an uncertain tax position. It’s a shot in the dark at best.
Naturally, the IRS has gotten all nosy about this sort of thing so you have to formulate something that vaguely resembles an explanation that doesn’t read like Bittker & Eustice.
You can’t simply make it a copy and paste job since we’re guessing the IRS wouldn’t appreciate the bloggy approach. But you’ve got to come up with something. Oh, and try to keep it brief.
Almost half of senior executives polled are most concerned about the prospect of providing a concise description of their uncertain tax positions (UTPs) in order to comply with a new, much-discussed Internal Revenue Service disclosure requirement, according to a survey conducted by KPMG’s Tax Governance Institute (TGI).
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise since we’re talking about interpreting the INTERNAL REVENUE CODE. But the BSDs out there are worried about explaining why they’re taking a stand on something that don’t understand one iota. Plus, if you’re already pret-tay sure that the IRS is going to call bullshit on you, that warrants an explanation as well [teeth being grit into dust].
According to the survey of 1100 business leaders conducted in early October, 44 percent of respondents said their biggest concern was providing the concise description for a disclosed UTP, defined by the IRS as a federal income tax position for which a taxpayer or related party has recorded a reserve in an audited financial statement (or for which no reserve was recorded because of an expectation to litigate). Other major concerns cited centered on the IRS’s ability to effectively administer the UTP program (20 percent) and on the scope of taxpayers required to file UTPs under the new rule (15 percent).
This could all be avoided if the IRS required companies to use Twitter as a guide for brevity. Just a suggestion.
So you take a position on a tax issue. You don’t really know why or how you got there but your CFO says it’s legit. How does he/she know? “Johnson in the tax department told me.”