
Here’s the Deck EY Put Together to Sell the Audit/Consulting Split to Staff
Australian Financial Review has published slides shown to EY staff in a July global webcast led by Carmine Di Sibio and in them we learn more about EY’s plan — code-named Project Everest — to split off consulting and audit. First up, the why. “The transformative forces reshaping professional services are evolving at unprecedented speed and […]

Shocking News: 82.4% of Hiring Managers Are Struggling to Find Accounting and Finance Talent
What we’re about to share with you shouldn’t be news to anyone and in fact the only news here is that somewhere, 9.1% of public company hiring managers and 14.8% of private company hiring managers are not struggling to find talent. Well that’s what they reported to Deloitte, anyway. Sheryl Estrada writes in Fortune: Deloitte shared […]

Illinois Will Soon Let You Sit for the CPA Exam With 120 Units, Should All States?
“What are they gonna do, stop requiring 150 units? THAT’S CRAZY.” That’s what a stakeholder told me recently when we spoke about the accountant shortage and the growing gap between students getting accounting degrees and recent graduates sitting for the CPA exam. Fewer people are pursuing accounting degrees and the ones that are have been […]

The IRS is So Broke Staff Have to Buy Their Own Paperclips
While we continue to wonder which hat the IRS is going to magically pull 87,000 new agents out of, more stories are coming out about just how tight things are at our nation’s tax collector. Like this recent NBC News article: Will Kohler, who works as a tax examiner at the IRS office in Cincinnati, […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Yes, There’s Still a Shortage; PwC Probe; Puppers Hate EY | 8.15.22
Since February, 29,500 EY employees have gotten the firm to pay their commuting costs, all dependent care costs and all pet care costs so they can be back in the office, these reimbursements totaled $22 million for the year to EY’s FY year-end in July. The Times Record in Maine writes about the accountant shortage: […]

Friday Footnotes: Crippling Staff Shortages in Consulting; Hold Auditors Accountable; AICPA is Mad | 8.12.22
Ed. note: fans of accounting headlines are encouraged to sign up for our newsletter to get headlines delivered to your inbox twice a week. How to follow up after a job interview [Journal of Accountancy] You aced the job interview. What’s next? This is just one of many questions that have baffled accountants of all […]

Turns Out a Place Called “Accountant ‘R’ Us” Was Not a Legitimate Business at Which to Get Your Taxes Done
A man in Connecticut is accused of taking $373,201 in PPP loans to fund a phony accounting firm: Eric James O’Neil, 57, was arrested Aug. 9 at his Bethel home on an arrest warrant and indictment issued by federal court in Boise, Idaho, where the bank that processed the loan is based. O’Neil formed Accountant […]

ICYMI: There Was an Excel All-Star Battle on ESPN
3 Excel tasks, 1 winner. All-star Excel esports battle! Excel esports on ESPN show world the pain of format errors [Ars Technica]

Hoping Everyone Has Forgotten About All the Scandals, KPMG UK Is Bidding for Government Contracts Again
Late last year KPMG UK decided to stop bidding for government contracts for a bit while they worked out some scandals, piss poor audit quality, and client collapses. Well, it wasn’t so much that they decided but rather that the government threatened them and told them to get their shit together or they’d be banned […]

Where TF Is the IRS Supposed to Find 87,000 Agents?
While various factions bicker over the Inflation Reduction Act, we have one question: where is the IRS supposed to find 87,000 agents!? In case you haven’t heard or seen your aunt sharing Impact font memes about it, Senate Democrats want to throw some cash at the IRS (among other things not getting into here): The […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC Gets Fined; Big 4: What’s the Scam?; The IRS Straps Up | 8.8.22
Across the pond, PwC has been fined $2.12 million after the firm failed to properly challenge UK telecom group BT once a half-a-billion pound fraud was discovered in BT’s Italian operations: “The sanctions imposed in this case, where certain elements of the adjustments following a fraud were not subject to the required level of professional […]

Friday Footnotes: A World Without Accountants; GAO Finds a Big Mistake; ‘Fazbie’ | 8.5.22
Ed. note: are you obsessed with accounting news? Yeah, us too. Sign up for our newsletter to get headlines in your inbox twice a week. If the world had no accountants [The Indicator from Planet Money] As the unsung heroes of the financial world, CPAs (Certified Public Accountants) are responsible for a wide range of […]

FRC Head Tells Firms to Stop Bitching About Audit Fines and Just Git Gud, Scrubs
FT reports that Financial Reporting Council CEO Sir Jon Thompson has a strong message to firms upset about getting hit with fines for bad auditing: git gud. Accountants should stop complaining about extra scrutiny and fines for audit failures and improve the quality of their work, said the head of the sector’s UK watchdog, which […]

Treasury Analyst Who Stole Hundreds in Designer Clothes Was Sleep Deprived and Temporarily Lost His Mind
A Spanish-born analyst living in Dublin who lifted designer duds from a department store told a judge he had no idea what came over him. Twice. Independent.ie reports: An accountant had a “moment of madness” when he shoplifted hundreds of euros worth of designer clothes that he could have afforded to buy. Alvaro Miguelena (36) […]

Happy 125th Birthday, KPMG!
Today is August 2 and KPMG is turning 125! Way to prove the naysayers wrong as they pointed and jeered and insisted that we’d be down to just three Big 4 firms by the end of the 2010s. YOU GO, KPMG. Don’t listen to those haters. There’s a press release because of course there is: […]

Los Angeles Might Outsource Its 211 Phone Service to Deloitte and People Are Not Happy
Deloitte Consulting might be picking up a new client: the downtrodden of Los Angeles County. ABC7 reports: Los Angeles County’s nonprofit “211LA” hotline to health, human and social services is on the verge of being turned over to a private company, pending a vote by the county’s Board of Supervisors. The supervisors are slated to […]

The Accounting Profession is Scaring Away Gay People (and Lesbians, and Transgender People, and…)
Despite accounting firms changing their Twitter logos to rainbows for the month of June, a shocking number of LGBT accountants are straight up leaving the profession because they feel they don’t belong. This is very bad news considering how shallow the talent pool is to begin with. Thomson Reuters on IMA and CalCPA research: LGBTQ+ […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: EY Exploitation; Ethics Training Sucks; Stick Around in Public? | 8.1.22
Happy Monday! Here are your headlines. SOX turned 20 over the weekend. SEC Chair Gary Gensler had some things to say about Sarbanes-Oxley’s past, present, and future. Tim Ryan on leadership: “Too often, I find in corporate America, we go into the huddle where we agree on a pass play but not on what routes […]

Friday Footnotes: KPMG Accounts For Half of All Audit Fines; LGBT Accountants Dip; EY in Big Debt? | 7.29.22
Ed. note: fans of accounting news — all two of you — are encouraged to sign up for our newsletter to get headlines delivered to your inbox twice a week on Tuesday and Friday. Check out today’s newsletter here. U.K Audit Regulator Hands Down Record Fines for Audit Failures [Wall Street Journal] The Financial Reporting […]

The PCAOB Hasn’t Done a Lot With Audit Standards in the Last 20 Years But They’re Getting Around to It Now
From remarks delivered yesterday by PCAOB Chair Erica Y. Williams at a virtual event hosted by Council on Institutional Investors (CII) on the 20th anniversary of Sarbanes-Oxley and the establishment of the PCAOB: When the PCAOB was first getting off the ground in 2003, it adopted existing standards that had been set by the auditing […]

PwC’s Summer Break Works, Says Tim Ryan
From a recent CNBC article on company-wide vacation breaks to foster employee well-being: Feeling revitalized is what many employees and their employers both want. Starting this year, accounting and consulting firm PwC is giving its 60,000 U.S. employees two annual company-wide, week-long breaks — one in July and one in December — in addition to […]

Deloitte Has Calculated the Tangible and Intangible Value of the Roman Colosseum Because of Course They Did
Deloitte got their calculators out and put a dollar value on The Colosseum of Rome, the largest amphitheater built during the Roman Empire, the largest standing amphitheater in the world today, and top Italian tourist destination. Despite listening to Tiziano Ferro for 20 years, my Italian sucks so here’s Google’s translation of the newly released […]

Deloitte Is Getting a Service Doggo!
We are putting aside our usual bitterness toward Big 4 firms for a moment here because PUPPY. Deloitte is getting a dog! We’re excited to share that @deloitte is getting another #puppywithapurpose 🐶💪– deepening our commitment to #veterans and their families. Before our puppy officially joins – he needs a name! Naming contest is open […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: EY Sucks at Auditing; Accounting Headaches; KPMG Partner Banned | 7.25.22
Some headlines to get you started on this fine Monday: KPMG partner banned from accounting after misleading regulator over Carillion. KPMG fined £14.4 million after the firm admitted to providing false and misleading information to its regulator during spot checks on audits of construction firm Carillion and outsourcing firm Regenersis. The spread of ESG labels […]

Friday Footnotes: New Managers Share Wisdom; KPMG Praised??; PwC Creeps Leave | 7.22.22
What new managers wish they’d known [Journal of Accountancy] “Having responsibility doesn’t mean I can’t be a little firm with my team. I learned how to say ‘no.’” Three PwC staff leave firm after ‘rating women’ scandal [Australian Financial Review] Three PwC staff members who allegedly attended male-only events where they rated the attractiveness of […]

Pittsburgh Man Acquitted of Manslaughter In the Death of Deloitte Consultant
A jury in Honolulu reached a not guilty verdict on July 11 in the manslaughter trial of 39-year-old Pittsburgh resident Benjamin Fleming who was charged last year in the death of his college classmate and Deloitte Consulting employee Abhishek Gupta while the two vacationed with another friend in Hawaii. “I emphasized throughout the trial that […]

EYers Are Waking Up to Overdrafts This Morning Due to a Serious Payroll Snafu (UPDATED)
We’re learning this morning that folks at EY will not be getting lunchtime DoorDash today, their paychecks from last Friday have been unceremoniously yeeted from their bank accounts. Per a tipster: There’s a payroll snafu of some sort at EY and seems just about everyone had their payroll reversed. Mass panic and overdrafts. And a […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Grant Thornton’s ‘Serious Failings’; PwC Won’t Split; IRS Zoom Calls? | 7.18.22
In an interview with the Financial Times, PwC’s Bob Moritz said that keeping audit and advisory arms together was essential to attract staff and that the benefits of the model outweighed the difficulty of managing the risk of conflicts of interest between the two divisions. Are accounting firms walking back remote work? Fire at a […]

Friday Footnotes: Sleazy PwC Partner Leaves; No You Can’t Claim a Boob Job; PCAOB Scholars | 7.15.22
PwC partner accused of rating female staff leaves firm [Australian Financial Review] A PwC partner who allegedly held male-only events with colleagues where they rated the attractiveness of women in their office and visited strip clubs has left the firm. Audit watchdog to overhaul UK corporate governance code [Financial Times] The UK’s corporate governance code […]

The KPMG Australia Cheaters Have Been Disciplined, Much Slapping of Wrists All Around
Back in May Australian Financial Review reported that 12 of the 422 KPMGers who took part in systemic exam cheating would be put through the Chartered Accountants ANZ individual disciplinary process. That process has now concluded. Here’s the update from CA ANZ: Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ) takes all allegations of academic […]

FRC Asks Large Audit Firms What They’re Doing About All This Cheating
Financial Times is reporting that across-the-pond regulators at the Financial Reporting Council have written a letter to CEOs at seven audit firms requesting details on how the firm prevents staff from cheating on professional exams. This comes after the SEC fined EY $100 million for cheating on CPE and CPA licensure ethics exams, KPMG’s dual […]

Benevolent Overlords of the CPA Exam Seeking Comment on Proposed 2024 CPA Exam Blueprints
The CPA Evolution project continues to chug along as we inch closer and closer to 2024 and now NASBA and the AICPA are asking informed parties to comment on proposed Blueprints. Finalizing these Blueprints is one of the last steps in the process to launch a redesigned CPA exam that started back in 2020. Comments […]

CPA Firms That Referred Clients to Alliantgroup Have Been Subpoenaed, Asked to Turn Over 11 Years of Client Data
On May 20 the Houston headquarters of R&D tax credit consulting firm Alliantgroup was raided by the IRS, in the weeks since we’ve had plenty of speculation about the whys and we’ve heard countless accounts from current and former Alliantgroup employees about the “evil, toxic, and emotionally damaging company” that employed them. We’ve now learned […]

Friday Footnotes: PwC Partner$; The Ketamine Accountant; Deloitte Mexico Missed Some Stuff | 7.8.22
Wirecard’s former top accountant admits forging documents for KPMG special audit [Financial Times] Wirecard’s ex-head of accounting has admitted to forging documents requested by KPMG during a special audit, ahead of a trial that is set for later this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Stephan von Erffa is one of three defendants […]

Accountants Behaving Badly: Kickback Schemes, Hiding Money From the IRS, Embezzlement Spree
Plus, Pennsylvania accountant loves tax evasion, North Carolina CPA indicted on securities fraud charge, and Kentucky accountant gets jail time for sex trafficking. Accountant sentenced to prison for role in doctor-bribery scheme [Press-Telegram] George Hammer—an accountant who enabled the owner of a hospital in Long Beach, CA, to pay more than $40 million in illegal […]

Friday Footnotes: XOXO, Accountants; PwC Wants Tax Cuts; KPMG Stacks Partners | 7.1.22
Accountants are voted the best kissers in Britain ahead of doctors and nurses while civil servants, bankers and lawyers are rated as the worst [Daily Mail] Often ridiculed as boring beancounters, accountants have surprisingly been voted the best kissers – ahead of doctors, nurses and engineers. And the worst are civil servants, bankers and lawyers, […]

How Exactly Did EY Auditors Cheat on CPE Exams? Details From the SEC Order
With the EY cheating scandal making headlines even outside of our precious little accountosphere we decided to take a look at the full SEC order to answer the question — how and why were EY auditors cheating on CPE exams? This post will be long so we’ll get deeper into the CPA ethics portion of […]

Deloitte Survey: C-suite Execs are Burned Out, Delusional, and Lack Empathy (And Also Want to Quit)
There’s some new Deloitte research out this week and it is hi-lar-ious. It seems executives have absolutely no clue what their underlings are going through, mistakenly think they’re doing a good job of making said underlings think they care, oh and they too are stressed AF and thinking about quitting their jobs. Man, things are […]

KPMG Will Pay the Department of Justice $307k For Discriminatory Job Postings
Apparently KPMG was discriminating against non-U.S. citizens in job postings? News to us. Now it’s news to you, too. Anyway, the firm was ordered to pay $306,656, the largest fine of the 16 total employers involved in the Department of Justice settlement. These civil penalties depend, in part, on the number of discriminatory advertisements employers […]

EY Auditors Cheated on Ethics Exams and Tried to Cover It Up, Will Pay a Record Fine for Naughtiness
Well this is bad. The SEC has fined EY a record $100 million after an investigation revealed auditors at EY were cheating on ethics exams (open book ethics exams we presume) and CPE; worse than cheating alone, they actively tried to cover it up and hide the cheating from the SEC. From the SEC news […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC UK Raises; ESG = $$$; Mid-Tier Tech Sucks | 6.27.22
Crypto has crashed–oops sorry, there’s a “crypto winter” and apparently that’s important for CPAs to be aware of. Mid-tier firms have crappy technology. “Deloitte Consulting Analyst got minimum 15% base increase since May 2021” is something relevant to PwC UK staff getting a 9% pay bump to offset cost of living according to one Redditor […]

Former and Current Alliantgroup Employees Speak Out About ‘Evil, Toxic, Emotionally Damaging Company’ (NEW UPDATE)
[Update to post originally published on May 25 with a fourth ex-Alliantgroup employee sharing their experience.] One thing I have learned since IRS Criminal Investigation and the Justice Department conducted a court-ordered raid of Alliantgroup’s Houston offices on May 20 is that there are A LOT of horror stories from ex-Ag employees about their experience working […]

Friday Footnotes: A CPA Grindset We Can Get Behind; The Klynveld Krypto Team; Firms Still Desperate (For People) | 6.24.22
Accounting Firm EY Grapples With Partner Pay, Bear Market in Breakup [Wall Street Journal] Ernst & Young’s leaders, trying to persuade partners to split up the firm, said windfalls would be spread evenly, but a bear market threatens to cut the value of a potential initial public offering of its consulting business, according to an […]

KPMG CEO Pats His Firm on the Back For Being So Behind the Times, Roasts EY While He Does It
Sky News has obtained part of an internal memo KPMG Global Chairman and CEO Bill Thomas sent to firm partners earlier this month in which Mr. Thomas turns his nose up at EY’s plan to split consulting and audit practices. Some choice quotes from the memo: We are a partnership that has been strong and […]

RIP Longtime Green Bay Packers Accountant Richard “Dick” Blasczyk
Longtime Green Bay Packers executive and former team accountant Richard “Dick” Blasczyk passed away on June 13 [obit]. 87-year-old Blasczyk, a native of Pulaski, WI, worked for the Pack from 1976-1994. Blasczyk served in the U.S. Army during the Korean war, married his high school sweetheart, and worked as finance manager at a Pulaski Ford […]

Audit Supervisors at the PCAOB Want Auditors to Better Supervise Their Auditors
The PCAOB adopted a new audit standard yesterday (AS 1206, Dividing Responsibility for the Audit With Another Accounting Firm) to ensure that lead auditors are properly supervising the outside auditors they use. From the PCAOB: The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) today adopted amendments to its auditing standards [PDF] to strengthen requirements that apply […]

Partners Stand to Make Millions (Maybe) If EY Breaks Up
The big hurdle in EY’s plan to split audit and consulting lies in whether or not its partners want to take the risk per earlier Wall Street Journal coverage in which people familiar with the matter told WSJ its roughly 12,000 partners will need to vote to approve the spinoff. Well according to this it […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: SEC Backdoors; MAcc Prof Makes a List; Advise All the Clients! | 6.20.22
Excuse the afternoon morning news brief this afternoon, today is a holiday. “Juneteenth is a day of profound weight and power.” EY partners stand to make a lot of scratch if this split happens. You’re going to be hearing a lot about Client Advisory Services in the coming months and years and it was all the […]

Friday Footnotes: Accounting AI Explodes; SOX Compliance Sux; KPMG Gets on a List | 6.17.22
The 2022 Client Advisory Services (CAS) Benchmark Survey is now open for participation [CPA.com] Participation in the CAS Benchmark Survey provides an opportunity for you to work on your business – first, by reviewing the data about your practice in preparation to take the survey, and later, when you can review your practice’s data compared […]

Deloitte Shares Unique Data on How Many Bullies and Perverts Used to Work for Them
Deloitte Australia has disclosed stats on workplace misconduct and revealed how many people got punted as a result of internal investigations reports Australian Financial Review: Deloitte has investigated 145 misconduct allegations over the past year and found more than half, or 80, were substantiated, leading to 20 employees being “exited” from the consulting firm. The […]

Deloitte is Coming to Take PwC’s Consulting Crown in Australia
News is slow over here in the land of Coors and corn syrup, let’s take a quick trip to Oceania. Via AFR: Deloitte is challenging PwC’s place as the largest consultancy by revenue in Australia as the firm posts a 19 per cent jump in income to $2.5 billion in the year to May. The […]

Davis and Whitley Get Shafted in Latest Accounting Firm Merger
There’s a new megafirm on the block and it’s called Elliott Penn LLP. Not quite as ✨dynamic✨ as Forvis but we can’t all have forward vision now can we? Since people are already getting dissed by this arrangement, here is the Whitley Penn press release and here is the same exact thing from Elliott Davis, […]

The Economy’s So Bad the IRS Got Bullied Into Upping the Mileage Rate Midyear
As most of you have heard by now, the IRS is increasing the standard mileage rate by four whole cents as of July 1. Via Journal of Accountancy: While the IRS usually sets the optional standard mileage rates for computing deductible costs of operating an automobile only at the beginning of each calendar year, Thursday’s […]

We Could Soon Know the Results (If Any) of the Feds’ Raid of Alliantgroup
It has been more than three weeks since IRS Criminal Investigation conducted a court-ordered raid of Alliantgroup’s offices in Houston. Since then we still haven’t learned exactly why the IRS paid a visit to the tax consulting firm’s Houston headquarters. No arrests were made that day. But we might know by the end of the […]

Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Where Are the Ethics?; The SEC is Watching | 6.13.22
Financial Times boldly suggests that because of constant financial scandals accounting programs need to do a better job of teaching students not to screw up. “These scandals have intensified concerns that a poorly developed approach to teaching behavioral, as opposed to technical, skills is reducing ethical standards and professional independence,” writes FT. Meanwhile in Canada, […]

Friday Footnotes: EY Buffs PE Practice; A Thirst for Integrity; “Everyone Feels KPMG Is 4th” | 6.10.22
SEC Acting Chief Accountant Cautions Against “Checklist Compliance” Approach to Auditor Independence [JD Supra] SEC Acting Chief Accountant Paul Munter re-emphasized the SEC’s focus on auditor independence in his June 8 statement on “The Critical Importance of the General Standard of Auditor Independence and an Ethical Culture for the Accounting Profession.” This latest statement follows […]

Deloitte Sued by Former Manager After the Partner She Was Banging Turned Weird and Stalkery (Allegedly)
Guys (and gals) I don’t know how many times we have to say this but please, please don’t bang people you work with. There are like three billion men or women in the world for you to pick from (6 billion if you’re bisexual heck yeah *high five*); more precisely there are 2.3 billion adults […]

SEC Slaps CohnReznick and Three Partners with Improper Professional Conduct
This press release from the SEC is wayyyy too boring to be rewritten in an interesting way on a sunny Friday afternoon so have some copy paste instead: The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged audit firm CohnReznick LLP with improper professional conduct on engagements for two clients in 2017. The two clients, Sequential Brands […]

Deloitte Will Be the Next Big 4 Firm to Split Audit and Consulting, Says WSJ; Deloitte Denies
The rumor mill got fired up a mere 14 days ago when the Wall Street Journal reported EY was considering splitting its audit and advisory arms (pesky regulators and conflicts of interest and whatnot). As interns and accounting students who aren’t even going to Meet the Firms yet blew up social media asking what this […]

PwC Will Not Let Economic Chaos Foil Its Aggressive Hiring Plans
That’s per PwC US chair Tim Ryan who told Insider the firm has its all-seeing eye firmly focused on the market. For now though? Let’s get those warm bodies into chairs. Tim Ryan, the US chair of PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the firm’s hiring plans aren’t going through “any major shocks or changes right now” and that […]

Finding/Retaining Staff and Challenges Working With the IRS Are Top PITAs for CPA Firms, Says AICPA Survey
Small firms think ‘challenges when working with the IRS’ is a bigger PITA than trying to find and retain talent according to the results of the 2022 AICPA Private Companies Practice Section (PCPS) CPA Firm Top Issues Survey released by the AICPA this week. Via Journal of Accountancy: The IRS issue didn’t resonate only with […]

Corporate Overlords Try to Scare Us Back Into the Office With Figures on How Much WFH is Costing You
As we watch gas prices tick higher and higher, commercial lessors and middle managers everywhere are anxious to get people back in chairs. Their chairs. Gross, old, shared-space, contains-the-farts-of-coworkers-past chairs. Nothing at all like the luxurious gaming chair your firm WFH stipend covered, though let’s be honest that one is harboring some ghost farts too. […]

Alliantgroup Is Considering Retention Bonuses to Keep People From Fleeing (UPDATE)
[Update at the bottom of article originally posted on May 31.] Much like at the biggest public accounting firms in the US, the Great Resignation has hit Alliantgroup hard over the last year or two, as employees have left the House of Jadav for greener pastures, more money, and a less toxic work environment. And […]

Friday Footnotes: Big 4 Pride; KPMG Gets Snubbed; EY Goes on a Poaching Spree | 6.3.22
Accountant Finds Out Client Has “Skeletons In The Closet”, Gets The IRS Involved And Makes Him Lose Everything [Bored Panda] It was posted on Reddit so obviously it must be true. How a New Accounting Rule Is Making Bank Earnings Go Wild [Wall Street Journal] The new accounting standard, known as current expected credit loss, […]

Young People Want to Return to the Office Says Old Guy Who’s Never Spoken to a Young Person
EY Global Chairman and CEO Carmine Di Sibio is out here making some wild claims, namely that EY’s 20-somethings are eager to get back to the office. From CNBC: In the tug of war between returning to the office and working from home, Ernst & Young (EY) CEO and Global Chairman Carmine Di Sibio falls […]

Friday Footnotes: EY Gets Extra Empathetic; Broke KPMG Partner Sues; Auditor Pay Cuts? | 5.27.22
Accounting Giant EY Created A Chief Wellbeing Officer To Uplift And Empower Their People [Forbes] EY investing in that empathetic leadership everyone loves so much. Bankrupt former KPMG partner sues law firm over job loss [Financial Times] A former KPMG partner who went bankrupt after investing in French ski chalets is suing law firm Herbert […]

Which Big 4 Firm Had the Most Elijah Watt Sells Award Winners in 2021?
For years I would copy paste the entire list of Elijah Watt Sells Award winners on this here website even though I’m sure winners Googling themselves were the only ones reading said list. This year I’m continuing the tradition from last year and skipping past that to get right to the one thing all you […]

Friday Footnotes: Which Firm Puts in the Most Hours?; Clients Pay for the Talent War; Spotting Burnout | 5.20.22
Boring No More: Accountants, Auditors See Themselves as Creative, Curious and Adventurous, Study Shows [PR Newswire] Creative, curious and adventurous may not be traits normally associated with accountants and auditors, but a recent study shows that’s just how a growing number of industry professionals see themselves. The research – conducted by leading software provider Caseware […]

Guy Blames Failing the CPA Exam on Why His Clients Got Busted for Bank Fraud and Tax Evasion
Hanlon’s razor states “never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.” Meaning most of the time when someone does something bad, it’s not because they’re a bad person, rather too stupid to know better. Or something. Socially anxious people with victim complexes — who no doubt make up a large portion of […]

Smug Smirking Douchebag Leaves Federal Prison Early
Insufferable former Citrin Cooperman client Martin Shkreli is no longer behind bars. From the Wall Street Journal: Martin Shkreli, the so-called “pharma bro” who was widely criticized for raising the price of a lifesaving AIDS drug, has been released from federal prison. Mr. Shkreli departed the Federal Correctional Institution Allenwood Low on Wednesday, according to […]

Friday Footnotes: KPMG’s Idea of a Fun Summer; IRS Eats Their Homework; Downsized GT Downsizes | 5.13.22
Junior KPMG auditor ‘should not lose his home’ for misleading regulator, says tribunal [Financial Times] A former junior KPMG auditor should not receive a fine so large it could force him to sell his matrimonial home, a tribunal has said. The UK accounting regulator asked the industry tribunal to fine Pratik Paw £50,000 and ban […]

What a Sh*tty Way to Find Out You’ve Been Laid Off
Getting laid off sucks. It has happened to me twice in the past 23 years. I’ve also been fired once for poor performance, but unlike the two times I was laid off, I knew exactly when I was being fired. I hated my job, I hated my boss (I was her only employee and she […]

Accountants Didn’t Wind Up In Court As Often In 2021
While there were plenty of accountants who behaved badly in 2021, the accounting profession as a whole was fairly well-behaved and competent last year, according to a new report from Cornerstone Research. Good job, everyone. From the report, Accounting Class Action Filings and Settlements – 2021 Review and Analysis: Reversing a three year trend, the […]

Friday Footnotes: Firms on India Hiring Spree; PCAOB Heads Overseas; PwC Lets You See Your Family This Summer | 5.6.22
Mesa grandma, 25-year-old accountant share love of Phoenix Suns [Arizona’s Family] JoAnne Ralph and Ben Barchilon have a special bond, and it all started with their love of the Phoenix Suns. “It’s just wonderful to have another grandson,” said Ralph. “It upsets my granddaughter because she says ‘I’m not sharing you!’ And I said, yes […]

Friday Footnotes: EY and KPMG This Week’s Big 4 Lawsuits; Eliminate Accounting Majors?; Auditors Fire Messy Municipal | 4.29.22
New Deloitte report: working women face alarmingly high levels of burnout despite shifting work arrangements, rise in hybrid working [PR Newswire] Widespread burnout and lack of flexible work continues to hinder progress in supporting working women, according to the latest Deloitte report, “Women @ Work 2022: A Global Outlook” released today. The research reveals that […]

Friday Footnotes: 43% Plan to Quit; Earf Day and ESG; Deloitte Director Stole $3m to Flex | 4.22.22
Ed. note: Happy belated 420 Earth Day, everyone! In honor of the one day a year we recognize the detrimental impact humans have on our home rock, we’re including a couple relevant links on performative environmentalism as it relates to the accounting industry and financial reporting below. Firms and audit committees focus on ESG for […]

State of the Accounting Profession 2022 Via the AICPA Trends Report
As I snarkily mentioned last week, the AICPA has finally released its much-anticipated 2021 Trends in the Supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits (or Trends, for short) report [PDF here], a behemoth data dump of accounting industry stats first released in 1971 and released every two years since 2009. We’re […]

Friday Footnotes: Client Hid ‘Damning’ Audit; Predictions for the Profession; Accounting Firm Gets Compromised | 4.15.22
Ed. note: Happy almost Easter to those who celebrate, happy 11th birthday today to my cat Cash Money (no, I did not purposely track down a cat born on tax day when I adopted him from Humane Rescue Alliance in DC 11 years ago), and a very happy April 18th to those of you who […]

Your Naughty Corporate Controller of the Day
Gerard Beauzile is facing a potentially lengthy stay in federal prison after he was charged with embezzlement earlier today for thinking no one would notice $2.3 million missing from the unnamed New York-based company where he had been the controller since 2001. Beauzile, 61, a resident of South Plainfield, NJ, appeared by videoconference on Monday […]

Friday Footnotes: Firms Make Progress on Diversity; EY Growth Plan; PIZZA PARTY! | 3.8.22
CPA firms show progress in diversity amid pipeline challenges [Journal of Accountancy] The AICPA finally got around to releasing their 2021 Trends report, which we’ll dissect shortly. In the meantime, here’s a tidbit: The profession’s efforts to encourage diversity, equity, and inclusion delivered progress with a rise of almost 5 percentage points (a change from […]

Team With No Accounting Majors Takes On Another Team With No Accounting Majors For Men’s College Basketball Supremacy
Tonight at the Caesars Superdome in New Orleans, the eighth-seeded North Carolina Tar Heels will be taking on the No. 1 seed Kansas Jayhawks for the 2022 men’s college basketball championship. After disposing its longtime archrival Duke and Coack K (thank god) on Saturday, the Tar Heels are looking to win their seventh NCAA men’s […]

Friday Footnotes: No Foolin’ Here; 18,000 New Accounting Jobs; Skills Auditors Need NOW to Be Future-Ready | 4.1.22
Ed. note: forgive us, we lack the bandwidth to come up with an April Fool’s prank today. For your reading pleasure, you can reminisce on the time we hid the entire site behind a (fake) Bitcoin paywall for a few hours on April Fool’s Day 2014 and proceeded to get cussed out by readers and […]

Friday Footnotes: ‘KPMG Did Not Know What They Were Doing’; Are You Boring?; PCAOB Warns About Confirmations | 3.25.22
These are the 5 most ‘boring’ — and exciting — jobs in the world, according to a recent study [CNBC] You’ll be happy to hear accounting made #2 on the most boring list. Don’t feel bad, MY job ranked #3 most exciting and I assure you it absolutely is not, I write about accounting after […]

Friday Footnotes: The Salary Problem Catches Up to Firms; Deloitte Changes Its Mind; KPMG Punished (Again) | 3.18.22
Accounting Faces Reckoning After Years of Sluggish Pay Growth [Bloomberg Law] Gasp! Asking for time off? WELL I NEVER! The shift in power toward workers and away from employers has forced businesses to meet demands for more time off, remote work, and flexible schedules—not just wages—said Paul McDonald, senior executive director for staffing firm Robert […]

Friday Footnotes: PwC’s Turn For a Probe; Accounting Professor Does a Naughty; The IRS is Hiring | 3.11.22
‘Big Four’ Targeted Again in U.K.—PwC Becomes Latest Subject of Investigations [Bloomberg Tax] Paul Brehony of Signature Litigation LLP looks at the growing number of investigations by the U.K. tax authority into historic audit failures by the “Big Four” firms, and discusses the prospects for success of proposed major reforms to the audit regime. The […]

Friday Footnotes: Deloitte’s Naughty Workpapers; Audit Reform Critics; Clients Getting Dropped Like Mics | 3.4.22
Deloitte considers Russia pull out as pressure grows on western firms to exit [Financial News] Deloitte is considering pulling out of Russia, becoming the first Big Four audit firm to do so as pressure grows on Western companies to cut ties with the country following its invasion of Ukraine. The firm is reviewing its “business […]

Taking the CPA Exam In 2023? Here’s What You Need to Know About Rolling Your Scores Over In 2024
I was tempted to start this post with “it’s hard to believe it’s already 2022,” but you know what, time has been pretty nebulous for at least the last two years, if not longer, and it really doesn’t even matter anymore. It’s as if the aliens who run the simulation cranked us up a la […]

Elizabeth Warren Shocked to Learn Big Public Accounting Firms Do Shady Sh*t (UPDATE)
[UPDATE] It looks like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) is still on her quest to make life miserable for the biggest public accounting firms in the US. According to a Feb. 22 report by the New York Times, Liz and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) are asking the US Treasury Department to investigate the cozy relationship Treasury […]

Friday Footnotes: KPMG’s ‘Scandal-Ridden’ Crisis; PwC Cheats; Give Me a Straight Answer | 2.25.22
Why KPMG’s Culture Crisis is Symptomatic of a Broken Audit Industry [International Policy Digest] A disciplinary tribunal filed against auditing giant KPMG has unearthed an internal survey conducted between 2016-17, revealing a veritable crisis of culture among the firm’s ranks. Although KPMG may purport to prioritize the ideals of integrity and quality in all their […]

Friday Footnotes: KPMG Still On Its Bullsh*t; Here’s Why You’re Burned Out; EY Gives Itself a Hand(ie) | 2.18.22
This is why so many accountants are burned out and quitting right now [Fast Company] “If you go into investment banking or medicine, the financial ROI is worth the long hours. It’s not worth it in accounting. A junior accountant could be making $80,000 a year. A bank teller could be at $55,000 a year, […]

If Y’all Keep Quitting Your Jobs Like This You’re Going to Break the Economy
Before we get into the meat and potatoes of this article on Bloomberg Tax, I just want to call out the photo they used for the header. “Paraphernalia” got a chuckle out of me. OK so everyone and your mother knows by now that public accounting firms are struggling with a talent shortage. Regardless of […]

Accountant Behaving Badly: There’s a Special Place In Hell For Someone Who Steals $800,000 From an Elderly Client With Dementia
Hey! Have you guys listened to “Oh My Fraud” yet? It’s a new podcast on the Earmark CPE platform hosted by our good friends Caleb Newquist and Greg Kyte. And Earmark CPE was created by another pal of Going Concern’s—Blake Oliver. The latest episode of “Oh My Fraud” is about the massive fraud in Dixon, […]

Lonely Old Man Chides Going Concern Writers For Having a Life on Valentine’s Day
Our curmudgeon-in-chief is feeling a little extra asshatty today: Went to @going_concern’s website today to see if they’d have anything clever to say about the big Mazars story, but if course there is nothing. Of course. — Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) February 14, 2022 Here ya go, big guy. We’re about to cut out for the day, […]

Friday Footnotes: More Accounting Probes; IRS Gets Out of Your Face; KPMG’s Acquires Krypto | 2.11.22
Deloitte’s $5M Data Security Deal OK Is Sought by Plaintiffs [Bloomberg Law] A $4.95 million settlement with Deloitte Consulting LLP to resolve claims it created websites with poor security should receive final approval, the plaintiffs are arguing in New York federal court. German financial regulator probes Adler over its accounting [Financial Times] Shares in Adler […]

Surprise, You’re Depressed
New research conducted across the pond by the accountant well-being charity caba shows that more than half of accountants surveyed — 56% — are stressed and burned out, compared to 41% of those across a range of sectors, business sizes, and positions. Writes ICAEW Insights about the survey results: Accountants are significantly more stressed than […]

Accountant Behaving Badly: Cherry Bekaert Partner Arrested For Allegedly Peeing In Someone’s Gas Tank
Today’s “Accountant Behaving Badly” comes via a tip from a reader. Usually public accounting firm partners get into trouble for insider trading, participating in some elaborate fraud, or sexually harassing a subordinate. But Cherry Bekaert partner William Billips got himself into trouble for allegedly going on a rampage after getting kicked out of a Nashville […]