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Deloitte Associate Who Supports Occupy Wall Street Admits That His Idea of Camping is the W Hotel

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As you know, a number of people in Lower Manhattan have spent the last two months Occupying Wall Street by way of camping out in Zuccotti Park. While September and October proved to be unseasonably warm, thus allowing Occupiers to exercise their 1st Amendment rights in relative comfort, November has brought cooler temps which has caused some relative discomfort among the campers. Oh, and Mayor Bloomberg was sorta sick of the mess and had everyone’s tents forcibly removed.

While many protesters have had to seek less squalid accommodations, other supporters of the movement have been able to find quarters that are more suitable for their tastes. This includes Deloitte associate Brad Spitzer who has been traveling to New York from California for work and has taken the opportunity to get his occupy on. And while he’s enthusiastic about the cause, Spitzer isn’t exactly down for park living:

“Tents are not for me,” he confessed, when confronted in the sleek black lobby of the Washington Street hotel where sources described him as a “repeat” guest.

Spitzer, 24, an associate at financial-services giant Deloitte, which netted $29 billion in revenue last year, admitted he joined the protest at Zuccotti Park several times.

“I’m staying here for work,” said Spitzer, dressed down in a company T-shirt and holding a backpack and his suitcase. “I do finance, but I support it still.”

You guys understand. There are just certain comforts that a Green Dot employee gets accustomed to – a soft mattress, a hot shower, room service – no matter how good of a drum circle you find.

Occupy Wall Street protesters stay at $700-a-night hotel [NYP]

Accounting News Roundup: Supercommittee’s FAIL; Andersen’s Failures; Olympus Employees’ Betrayal | 11.21.11

Debt supercommittee members brace for failure [WaPo]
The congressional “supercommittee” stumbled its way toward failure Sunday, with final staff-level discussions focusing mostly on how the panel should publicly admit that lawmakers could not meet their mandate of shaving $1.2 trillion from the federal debt. Rather than making a final effort at compromise, members of the special deficit-reduction committee spent their final hours casting blame and pointing fingers, bracing for the reaction from financial markets that are already jittery over the European debt crisis.

Kyl, committee divide on taxes [The Hill]
“We are not a tax-cutting committee,” Kerry said. “We’re a deficit-reduction committee.”

U.S. Billionaires Avoid Reporting Gains to IRS [Bloomberg]
When billionaire Billy Joe “Red” McCombs, co-founder of Clear Channel Communications Inc., reported a $9.8 million loss on his tax return, he failed to include about $259 million from a lucrative stock transaction. After an audit, the Internal Revenue Service ordered him to pay $44.7 million in back taxes. McCombs, who is worth an estimated $1.4 billion and is a former owner of the Minnesota Vikings, Denver Nuggets and San Antonio Spurs sports franchises, sued the IRS, settling the case in March for about half the disputed amount.

Enron’s Tenth Anniversary: Arthur Andersen’s Audit Failures at Enron and Elsewhere [GOA]
From the Grumpies: “Arthur Andersen was not a hapless bystander when Enron’s managers committed their accounting frauds, nor was it a duped auditor, nor an innocent victim of the media. Perhaps it was a scapegoat as all the large firms have engaged in audits of less than stellar quality, but that does not excuse its poor performance at Enron.”

Olympus’s $687 Million Takeover Scam Lay Hidden in Cardiff Filing System [Bloomberg]
Olympus on Nov. 8 admitted inflated advisory fees paid in the $2.1 billion acquisition of Gyrus were used to conceal soured investments dating back decades. In a practice known as “tobashi” — loosely translated as “to make fly away” — the company used offshore entities to park assets in the hope that a market recovery would erase losses before they had to be accounted for. A week after Olympus paid $620 million in March 2010 to buy back preference shares given to its advisers as fees, former Chairman Tsuyoshi Kikukawa and two senior aides, who were all serving as Gyrus directors, filed financial statements saying it wasn’t “meaningful to estimate a fair value” for the securities. Gyrus instead booked them at $177 million, the documents show.

Loyal Olympus workers feel betrayal over accounting scandal [Reuters]
“I cried in front of my family when I watched that news conference,” one male employee wrote on Facebook, using the social-networking site to vent his feelings after television news coverage of the president’s revelation of the scandal. A co-worker posted a message to console him, appealing to a sense of loyalty for customers rather than the company, saying they simply had to work hard to regain their trust. But the co-worker was also enraged. “I know it’s deep in the night and everyone has fallen asleep. But I just want to scream out loud ‘idiots!!'” he wrote.

Financial Statement Fraud: Olympus Makes It Look Easy [Fraud Files]
Fraud never gets lost in translation.


US SEC sues ex-Ernst worker in insider trading case [Reuters]
The SEC accused defendant Mark Konyndyk, a Los Angeles resident, of making $9,725 of illegal profit through his purchases of Activision call options before and soon after his Nov. 2, 2007 resignation from Ernst & Young. The combination was announced on Dec. 2 of that year. Konyndyk, who was a manager in Ernst & Young’s transaction advisory services group, made the trades after briefly working on a team conducting due diligence on behalf of Vivendi for the merger, which was code-named Project Sego, the SEC said.

Repo Accounting: After Lehman, another Debacle was Just a Matter of Time [Accounting Onion]
Tom Selling told you so.

Senators Grassley and Reed Would Like to Make Every Bit of PCAOB Wrist Slapping Public

For some time now, quite a few people have been asking for PCAOB disciplinary proceedings to be made public. Since your beloved Board came into existence, the process of slapping around sketchy auditors has been secret much to the chagrin of those people that would like audit firms to take just a little bit [pointer and thumb about an inch apart] of responsibility when they royally screw things up. It’s all for the investors, you see. After some rib jabbing by Board Member Dan Goelzer and Chairman Jim Doty, Chuck Grassley (R-IA) and Jack Reed (D-RI) have picked up the flag by introducing a bill that would make the proceedings public:

The bill would change a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act that requires the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to keep disciplinary proceedings against auditing firms confidential.

Undoubtedly, this will rankle auditors who would prefer that all the skeletons stay firmly stuffed in closets. Of course what many people forget is that the secretive nature of the PCAOB disciplinary proceedings are the exception rather than the rule:

[Grassley and Reed] argued that the PCAOB’s closed proceedings run counter to the public enforcement proceedings of other regulators. Not only the SEC, but also the Labor Department, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and other government agencies use public proceedings, as does the self-regulating Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Nearly all administrative proceedings brought by the SEC against public companies, brokers, dealers, investment advisers and others are open, public proceedings.

The Reed-Grassley bill would make PCAOB hearings and all related notices, orders and motions, open and available to the public unless otherwise ordered by the board. The PCAOB procedure would then be similar to SEC Rules of Practice for similar matters, where hearings and related notices, orders, and motions are open and available to the public.

This all seems like a pretty good idea. I mean, what makes auditors so special? Exactly. They’re not. They just happened to go from self-regulated to regulated in a flash and had a few K Street types twist in some features to Sarbanes-Oxley that kept things under wraps.

The problem, as a few people have pointed out, is that the Board still isn’t really that tough on auditors. Sure, a few more people might suffer some public embarrassment (which we’re happy to point out), but will investors really be better off? That remains to be seen but at least we’ll all be able to revel in the good fun of mocking the offenders.

Senate Bill Would Make PCAOB Disciplinary Hearings Public [AT]

General Electric Managed to Keep Their Tax Return Under 60,000 Pages

Recently, Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) was chattin’ up some citizens at a townhall meeting where he told a little anecdote about asking a GE “tax officer” how long the company’s tax return was for this year. He was told (and the Weekly Standard confirmed) that it was in the nabe of 57,000 pages. Granted, GE filed their return electronically, so there’s no way we can officially know what the count is but the combination of the world’s best tax law firm and a grip of savvy loaned KPMG employees managed to keep it under 60k. Nice job, everyone. [TWS via TaxProf]

New MACPA White Paper Outlines Future CPA Leaders’ Vision For the Industry

Our favorite revolutionaries over at the Maryland Association of CPAs never take a vacation, and for those of you interested in leadership, you might be interested in their latest project. Or at least enjoy the following without making snide comments about overachievers that mask your true feelings of jealousy. Let’s face it, you’re probably not as cool as Tom Hood. It’s fine, just embrace it.


A team of graduates from MACPA’s 2011 Leadership Academy say CPAs must become more global-minded, proactive, future-focused, balanced and tech-savvy to maintain their competitive edge in a complex and constantly-changing world. Getting there, they say, will require a brand new set of skills and characteristics. Among them: Unity and flexibility, the ability to collaborate and crowdsource, a mind shift from history to possibility, and a new tech-focused mindset.

It is likely no coincidence that Gen Yers, as the future leaders of the industry, are hyper-connected, collaborative and far more interested in the “possible” than the “already been done.”

Forty members of the MACPA’s 2011 Leadership Academy used those infamous collaboration skills to shape a new MACPA white paper, “What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: Maryland’s Young CPAs Create a Vision of the Profession’s Future.”

“These young CPAs care deeply about their profession,” said MACPA Executive Director Tom Hood, CPA. “They know we’re facing an increasingly complex and challenging future, and they see each challenge as an opportunity not only to help clients and employers, but to position CPAs as the world’s most trusted business advisor.”

The white paper comes on the heels of the profession’s CPA Horizons 2025 project, which leveraged input from CPAs, regulators, thought leaders and futurists to identify key trends and map what the profession will look like in 2025.

The interesting part about the MACPA’s project is that opinions and visions are a dime a dozen in this industry, but Leadership Academy participants went beyond postulating about the future to map opportunities from a future CPA leader’s point of view complete with action plans, timelines and desired results. This isn’t simply a report on the state of the industry at some point in the future but a report on how young leaders can get us there in the here and now.

“There have been a lot of questions swirling about the next generation of business leaders. Topping the list is, ‘Are they ready to lead?’” said Hood. “Our Leadership Academy provides the answer: Not only are they ready to lead, they’re hungry to lead, and this white paper is their starting point.”

Download the white paper here. To find out more about the Leadership Academy, head here.

Don’t Look Now But There Is Glimmer of Sensible Tax Policy in Congress

A long-overdue measure to limit state taxation of non-residents has cleared its first committee, reports the Tax Policy Blog. The House Judiciary Committee approved H.R. 1864, the Mobile Workforce State Income Tax Simplification Act, which provides:

An employee’s wages or other remuneration shall be subject to state income tax only in either:

-the employee’s state of residence, or

-a state where the employee is present and performing employment duties for more than 30 days during the calendar year. A day counts if the employee performs more employment duties in that state than in any other state during that day. Travel time does not count.

For traveling taxpayers, that’s good news. Lord knows how many loyal Going Concern readers flit from state to state in their unceasing efforts to ensure that the Nation’s financial statements are fairly stated in all material respects. But it’s also bad news — it reminds us that right now you can be taxable in a state after spending as little as a day there.


Why are the states so greedy? Think of LeBron James. When he visits the Staples Center to beat up the Clippers, the home team may lose, but the Franchise Tax Board wins every time. But the tax law in its majesty applies as much to the newbie auditor sent to count vegetables as to LeBron.

Fortunately for our auditor, the firm will probably tell her how much of her income is taxable in each state. Unfortunately, it won’t do all of the extra tax returns she will have to file in all of the exciting states a modern jet-setting auditor may visit.

H.R. 1864 is a long way from perfect. Its biggest flaw is that it doesn’t protect visiting entertainers or athletes. Sure, LeBron can afford the tax help to file in a couple dozen states, but the same rules apply to minor league ballplayers, comedians trying to become senators, and your friendly struggling road band. Still, anything that helps abused staff accountants isn’t all bad.

The proposal is a long ways from becoming law. The high tax states hate any limitations on their ability to pick visitor pockets. Still, it’s nice to have at least a glimmer of hope for sanity.

Partner Criticizes Subordinate for Dressing Like Peasant, Eating Like a Wild Beast

For the most part, performance reviews are a fairly disappointing affair. You walk in, prepared to explain why you’re such a badass CPA only to be informed that you’re pretty average. It’s nothing personal, it’s just that your auditing/tax/advisory skills could use some improvement and there are many, many other people that deserve more money than you. For whatever reason, occasionally a performance counselor will take the opportunity in the review process to get a little personal. Feedback like, “Personal hygiene needs work,” or “Dresses like a slob,” or “Sucks as a human being,” is hardly constructive but has been known to happen. This morning we have yet another example of someone getting a little nasty.

Here’s our recipient/tipster:

I have gotten some interesting evaluations by the Partner in my office over the last couple of years. I would be curious to know if other public accountants get the same amount of candid feedback that my partner is willing to provide. Here is a sample of what I received on a recent evaluation:

“I have also commented to ___ on his professional dress. It appears he was compliant with firm policy regarding attire without collars, but I must admit that the overall choice was on the very low scale of professional dress. I believe ___ has taken action to correct this matter and I encourage him to “dress for success.” I also encourage ___ to place greater emphasis on proper table manners. In particular, not eating french fries with your hands while with a client at a nice restaurant.

Our tipster explains that his dress “was a nice, crew neck sweater with brown slacks, [the partner] was pissed off that there was no collar. I sent him an email with the firm dress policy to prove that it was within the guidelines.”

But really, our reader admits, “the french fry comment is the best. The restaurant was middle-tier at best.”

As our reader said, he’s looking for similar stories, so if you’ve been admonished for rocking a turtleneck or ignoring your knife and fork, share your stories below. And then you should feel shame. SHAME.

Accounting News Roundup: SEC Close on IFRS Decision; Yelp’s S-1; The Tax Rule of 72? | 11.18.11

SEC Nearing Decision on Accounting Standards [WSJ]
The Securities and Exchange Commission this week cleared the way for a long-awaited decision on whether U.S. companies should switch to using global accounting rules. The SEC chief accountant’s office issued two fact-finding papers Wednesday about the use of the global rules, known as International Financial Reporting Standards. Those papers lay the groundwork for a recommendation from the SEC’s staff to the commissioners, expected by the end of the year, on whether they should move to IFRS and away from U.S. generally accepted accounting principles. The staff’s work “gives me the confidence that lets me know they are moving toward a decision,” said Joel Osnoss, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Ltd.’s global leader for IFRS.

Tax Spat Stymies Debt Panel [WSJ]
Days away from a deadline, Congress’s deficit-reduction supercommittee is stymied, stumped in large part by one of Washington’s seemingly unsolvable problems: What to do with the Bush-era tax cuts? Republicans are digging in against any agreement that does not extend current income-tax rates, which are scheduled to expire at the end of 2012.

Yelp Files for I.P.O. [DealBook, S-1]
Yelp, which makes the bulk of its revenue from advertising contracts with local businesses, is not yet profitable. Though revenue rose 79.9 percent, to $58.4 million for the first nine months of this year, the company recorded a loss of $7.4 million.

Fund Transfers Are Focus of MF Global Probe [WSJ]
Regulators have unearthed new details indicating MF Global Holdings Ltd. shifted hundreds of millions of dollars in customer funds to its own brokerage accounts in the days before its bankruptcy filing, according to people familiar with the matter. Such moves could violate regulations stipulating that commodities brokers can’t mix customer funds with brokerage funds. Brokerage funds often are used to back proprietary trading positions. According to MF Global’s internal records, the transactions were as large as hundreds of millions of dollars at a time, these people said.

Rule of 72? [Tax Update]
Please keep filing tax returns after your 72nd birthday.


Barnier’s audit reforms ‘might be delayed’ [Accountancy Age]
You know how things are.

Hiring Watch ’12: Grant Thornton Chicago Looking for Some New Dynamos

Much like E&Y, GT’s Chicago office is looking to get more asses in the seats because business is swell:

Grant Thornton LLP said it intends to add 140 jobs in its Chicago office next year, 80 of them entry level and 60 internships, most of them paid. Similar hiring this year was less than 100. According to a press release and a spokeswoman, the new hires are needed because the firm’s business is growing. The hires will work in “nearly every area” of the firm, including audit, tax and consulting.

Unlike E&Y, Hizzoner was not attendance:

[T]his announcement was not made by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, who has unveiled several somewhat similar moves by other companies in recent months.

Always a bridesmaid, GT. Always a bridesmaid.

Grant Thornton to step up Chicago hiring 40% next year [Crain’s, Earlier]

IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman Puts Tax Preparers’ Job Security Concerns to Rest

“Perhaps the most telling indicator of taxpayer confusion over the code’s complexity is that today, 90% of individual taxpayers pay for professional tax preparation or tax software to prepare their tax returns. IRS research estimates that, over the past 10 years, the burden for the typical taxpayer has increased by about 20% and would likely be even more if they had to prepare returns themselves without any aids or tools. Moreover, we estimate individual taxpayers and businesses spend more than 7 [billion] hours each year complying with filing requirements.” [Tax-News via Tax Foundation]

Grover Norquist Did His Best to Educate the Patriotic Millionaires on How to Pay Their Fair Share of Taxes

Not everyone agrees with tax hit man Grover Norquist’s ideas. While GGN would like nothing better than to see every federal and state levy banished to the darkness, there are a number of people who don’t share this view. A certain group of these people are from the more affluent corners of society and they’ve organized themselves as the “Patriotic Millionaires” in order to make the case that they are sick and tired of being able to afford competent CPAs to legally reduce their tax burden to an unfair amount. Grover, being the big softie that he is, realizes (not from personal experience, mind you) that the burden of not paying your fair of taxes is a heavy one. And because he’s upstanding patriot himself, he went to the Hill yesterday to meet with these troubled folks to help alleviate their pain:

“If you think the federal government can spend your money better than you can, then by all means” pay more in taxes than you owe, said Grover Norquist, of Americans for Tax Reform, a group that has gotten almost all congressional Republicans to pledge to vote against tax hikes. The IRS should have a little line on the form where people can donate money to the government, he suggested, “just like the tip line on a restaurant receipt.”

Tipping! Millionaires know how to do that, don’t they? I mean with all the servants and eating at fancy restaurants and whatnot, this should be an easy way for the wealthy to ease their low tax guilt. But despite all his suggestions and support, some did not receive the message all too well:

One of the millionaires suggested that if Norquist wanted low taxes and less government, “Renounce your American citizenship and move to Somalia where they don’t collect any tax.”

Well! If that’s the thanks Grover gets, don’t expect him to be so forthcoming with the advice next time.

With supercommittee silent, millionaires and others eagerly jump in with their own advice [WaPo]