Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Friday Footnotes: The Salary Problem Catches Up to Firms; Deloitte Changes Its Mind; KPMG Punished (Again) | 3.18.22

An orange cat with its paw over its face

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 Half. “They are demanding perks and benefits that we haven’t seen before,” McDonald said of workers in accounting and finance.

Deloitte reverses COVID-19 vaccine mandate, but remains one of few large employers to do so [The Globe and Mail] Auditing giant Deloitte Canada is reversing its mandatory vaccination policy for employees, as more provinces move toward eliminating COVID-19 restrictions and companies begin re-evaluating their mandates.

Take a Career Break, but Stay in the Game [Wall Street Journal] You got burned out. Your kids needed you. You became a crypto millionaire overnight. Whatever the reason—congrats. Welcome to your career break, length TBD. Time off by choice can be wonderful if you can swing it, a chance to recalibrate your priorities and detox from the stress of the working world. It can also be a kind of limbo. How to keep your edge without getting sucked back into corporate overwhelm? How do you know when it’s the right moment to job hunt again? And what comes next, anyway?

This is how much partners at PwC are being paid [Australian Financial Review] Partners at PwC will probably be paid more this financial year compared to pre-pandemic rates, which ranged between $380,000 for junior partners to $3.9 million for the most senior partners, The Australian Financial Review can reveal.

Wait, are we still doing someecards?

China plans audit concession in face of US delisting threat [Financial Times] Beijing is preparing to make a concession on the disclosure of Chinese audit information in an effort to resolve an impasse threatening more than $2tn of shares in US-listed Chinese companies.

Auto depreciation limits leap with inflation [Journal of Accountancy] The IRS issued sharply higher new depreciation limitations Wednesday for passenger automobiles, reflecting inflation of vehicle prices in the past year. These limits are updated annually for inflation according to the automobile component of the chained consumer price index for urban consumers. Rev. Proc. 2022-17 contains the Sec. 280F(a) inflation-adjusted dollar limitations on depreciation deductions for passenger automobiles (which includes trucks and vans) acquired after Sept. 27, 2017, and placed in service during 2022, for 2022 and each succeeding tax year.

Ernst & Young Faces German Class Action Case Over Wirecard [Bloomberg] A Munich court opened a class-action style procedure against Ernst & Young LLP to jointly hear cases brought by Wirecard AG investors who claim the firm violated its duties when auditing the now bankrupt payment company.

Can I interest anyone in some salary spreadsheets from Reddit?

Steve Harvey Details Owing Over $20M To The IRS — ‘They Were Cashing The Checks, Keeping The Money’ [AfroTech] “My old tax accountant, who passed, had done some, let’s say, not so smart things,” Steve Harvey said. “And since he’s not alive anymore, and I don’t slam people who are gone, so let’s just say some bad things were done and I looked up and I was in a lot of trouble to the tune of almost $25 million.”

Carson Wentz showed up to his first Washington Commanders press conference dressed like Ronald McDonald’s sketchy accountant [GolfDigest] I have never in my 15 years in this industry met a single one of you who dresses like this.

Changing business: This is what the future accountant will look like [IOL] There’s a long-standing joke about accountants not having personalities. Now is the time to truly break that stereotype. The reality of accounting now is very much centered around client interaction and understanding client needs. Being able to communicate effectively and deliver value to clients in terms of their specific needs is vital.

How Audit is Changing in the Remote World [AccountingWEB] Remote auditing, previously a rarity, quickly became the norm during the COVID-19 pandemic. It seems that shift is here to stay — creating both challenges and opportunities for CPAs engaged in audit work.

KPMG Agrees to Pay $35 Million to Resolve Energy Investor Action [Bloomberg Law] Consulting group KPMG LLP has agreed to pay $35 million to resolve claims from a class of Miller Energy Resources Inc. investors who say audit failures let the oil and gas company overstate some asset values, according to documents filed in federal court in Tennessee. Earlier Going Concern coverage on KPMG’s Miller Energy problems linked here.

‘Failures not insignificant’: auditor suspended after Big Un work [Australian Financial Review] Big Un collapsed in early 2018 after a series of reports in The Australian Financial Review questioned how the fast-growing company was achieving its stellar growth. ASIC’s investigation into Big Un is ongoing. ASIC argued Mr Loke failed in his duties as an auditor for a range of reasons, including having carried out auditing duties when he should have known his firm, Ecovis Clark Jacobs, had a conflict of interest, which affect the firm and his ability to show the required independence required by professional accountants.

Photo by Matthias Oben

Latest Accounting Jobs--Apply Now:

Have something to add to this story? Give us a shout by email, Twitter, or text/call the tipline at 202-505-8885. As always, all tips are anonymous.

Related articles

counting money

Researchers Shockingly Discover That If You Pay Low Level Grunts More, They Do Better Financial Reporting

A new working paper from Stanford Graduate School of Business professors Christopher Armstrong, John Kepler, and David Larcker, and Shawn Shi, Ph.D. ’23, of the University of Washington’s Foster School of Business has found a connection between how well low-ranking accountants are paid and the quality of their work. This is a new area for […]

freaked out guy

ChatGPT Talks About AI Taking Accountants’ Jobs From the Perspective of an Accountant Losing Their Job to AI

Ed. note: I asked ChatGPT to write about automation in accounting from the perspective of an accountant losing his or her job to AI. Here’s what it said. Note: Going Concern does not publish AI-generated content unless it’s clearly labeled as in this case. Believe it or not, humans write most of this crap. As […]