CPA Group Pushes for Clarity on Trump’s Payroll Tax Deferral [Bloomberg Tax] Treasury and the IRS should issue guidance on President Donald Trump’s order delaying collection of some payroll taxes to clear up confusion among accountants and businesses, the American Institute of CPAs said. The group said one of its biggest remaining questions is whether employees will have the choice to opt in or out of the program.
NASBA: Is It Time for a COVID-19 CPE Break? [CPA Practice Advisor] Gail Perry writes: I find it interesting that, while most of life as we know it has been suspended or at least upended in the era of COVID-19, NASBA has not suspended the CPE requirement for 2020. I believe we can say that anyone who is actively practicing in the accounting profession is learning every single day, connecting with clients in new ways, improving the use of technology, staying on top of all of the changing COVID-19-related government programs and procedures available to our clients. In fact, I would suggest that we as a profession have experienced more, learned more, achieved more, adapted more in the past six months than we have in the past several years. We just didn’t have the CPE 50-minute hour clock turned on, and no one was issuing us credits for the extra hours we logged keeping this profession front and center without missing a beat.
AICPA encourages COVID-19 tax relief and issues new auditing standards [Journal of Accountancy] The AICPA Auditing Standards Board issued two final standards designed to help auditors tackle technology and enhance audit quality. Statement on Auditing Standards No. 142, Audit Evidence, modernizes private company auditing standards by recognizing technology and information. SAS No. 143, Auditing Accounting Estimates and Related Disclosures, is one piece of a larger project to enhance audit quality. The standards take effect in December 2022 and December 2023, respectively.
Former Hertz CEO Agrees to Settle Claims Tied to Accounting Misconduct [WSJ] The former chief executive of Hertz Global Holdings Inc. agreed to pay nearly $2.2 million to settle claims that he pressured subordinates to “find money” to meet financial targets, causing employees to violate accounting rules, according to regulators.
Pentagon selects Deloitte Consulting to support AI center [Consulting.us] The JAIC earlier this week selected Deloitte as the prime integrator for the Joint Common Foundation (JCF), overseeing systems engineering, technology, and innovation. Deloitte will be responsible for managing the technologies and subcontractors needed to build the JCF, as well as operating, maintaining, and keeping the system secure. The contract is worth $31 million in the first year, and has three option years for a total of up to $106 million. Deloitte beat out three unnamed firms to win the government contract.
How much Deloitte, KPMG, EY, and PwC accountants and consultants make, from entry level to executive roles [Business Insider] You’ll have to subscribe to BI for the scoop.
Test of faith: Will Morris, PwC tax expert and part-time priest [Financial Times] On the third Sunday of Lent last year, Will Morris, deputy global tax policy leader at accounting giant PwC, admitted he felt conflicted when he became a part-time priest. “I had asked myself whether I was — as a very well-paid tax lawyer for a large US corporation — subconsciously trying to cleanse a job that some viewed as ethically dodgy, by throwing a priestly cloak over it all,” he told a congregation at London’s St Martin-in-the-Fields church, describing his ordination a decade earlier.
SEC Proposes New Modernization Fund Disclosure Regime [National Law Review] On August 5, 2020, the SEC proposed Rule 498B and other corresponding rule amendments and related changes to Forms N-1A and N-CSR (collectively, the Proposal), which some may view as a capstone of the SEC’s investment company disclosure modernization efforts. The Proposal would make extensive and impactful changes to the current disclosure regime for mutual funds and exchange-traded funds.
2010. What a year, amiright? It got off to a bit of a rough start after 