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Here Are the Accounting Firms That Received PPP Loans Because We Know You Want to Know

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

As you may have seen by now, the U.S. government has recently released data on which companies received PPP funds, and anyone with more than $150,000 from Uncle Sam in their pocket had some ’splainin to do had they also laid off staff en masse. We figured a few accounting firms would be on the list, and thankfully no one around here had to dedicate half a day searching for them as some bored guy (or gal, I guess I’m being sexist assuming everyone on the Internet is a dude and I of all people should know better) waiting on requested client information did it already. That list, however, only covers the Accounting Today Top 100 firms.

What we’ve done is take bored OP’s list and cross-check it with our coronavirus layoff tracker, which lists 62 firms that have laid off staff and/or cut pay since the COVID-19 pandemic got rolling hard in March. Keep in mind, however, that our list also contains a few international arms of larger firms, so obviously those won’t appear on any SBA lists. You should also remember that our layoff information is based on tips and internal information we’ve received from within those affected firms. We shouldn’t assume that just because a firm does not appear on our list it did not lay anyone off, rather that our focus is on larger firms and therefore it’s more likely for readers at those firms to engage with our team to report layoffs. Make sense?

Before we get to the numbers, if you want to double-check your firm isn’t (or is) on the list, ProPublica’s got you. They created a tool that will let you search the government data by organization, business type, or even just by ZIP code if you want to see if your favorite local dive was able to take advantage of this program to save their business. You can also access the data directly from the Department of the Treasury, just keep in mind you can only download a .csv by state and do your digging from there. There are hundreds — if not thousands — of accounting firms listed, so we won’t be going that deep into the data. And only loans of greater than $150,000 are listed by company name; those who received less were not included in more detailed government data.

I can’t be arsed to dig up my Scribd login so here’s the sheet in JPG:

Of the 68 firms on the Reddit spreadsheet, eight of them appear in our layoff tracker. They are as follows, ranked by position on the Accounting Today Top 100 from highest to lowest.

Carr, Riggs & Ingram

  • 10% pay cut for staff, 20% for income partners, and 30% for equity and retired partners
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • No data on jobs retained

Friedman

  • 52 people laid off across all service lines
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • 491 jobs retained

Prager Metis

  • Some layoffs, 20% pay cut across the board (5% annualized)
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • 500 jobs retained

Whitley Penn

  • Some layoffs, partner pay cuts (no exact data obtained)
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • 486 jobs retained

Berdon

  • 15 people laid off, deferred partner distributions
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • 298 jobs retained

Aprio

  • 40 people laid off
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • 500 jobs retained

Grassi & Co

  • 11 people laid off
  • $5 million-$10 million PPP loan
  • No data on jobs retained

SingerLewak

  • 25% of staff laid off
  • $2 million-$5 million PPP loan
  • 291 jobs retained

A couple loans notably absent from the Reddit sheet are the Puerto Rican affiliates of BDO and GT. BDO Puerto Rico took a PPP loan of $2 million-$5 million while Kevane Grant Thornton LLP snagged $1 million-$2 million.

We were originally tipped to other firms on our layoff tracker appearing in the PPP loan data; however, we weren’t able to find anything when searching the database.

The SBA has said that all companies which received PPP loans will have to provide data for number of jobs retained in order to receive loan forgiveness, as the loans were specifically intended for this purpose.

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What Will Maryland CPAs Put on Their Vanity License Plates?

Of course Tom Hood had something to do with this.

Get your MACPA vanity license plate, complete with the CPA logo and tagline “CPA – Never Underestimate the Value” prominently featured. Let everyone know you are a member of the Maryland Association of CPAs. Plates cost just $25. They’re a fun way to show you are proud to be a CPA.

There’s one resident of Maryland who probably would like one of these that simply says “JDA” but we’re guessing “CPA wranglers” aren’t eligible. As for the legit CPAs out there, unless there’s a proctologist out there that’s already nabbed it, we suggest you move quick to get “ASSMAN” because it won’t last. We’ll hear your other clever suggestions now; shoot for style points.

Fund Manager Blames Just-in-Time Inventory and the Accountants Who Push It For High Food Prices

Yes, you read that headline correctly. Not inflation, not emerging nations, not more people on this planet than we have food to feed them and not Ben Bernanke’s penchant for leaning on the PRINT MORE button but inventory. Well, a specific inventory method and the accountants who encourage companies to use that particular method.

The Guardian has the story:

Speculators, the weather, biofuels and the growing appetite for meat in developing countries have all been blamed for the high food prices that have hit countries such as Kenya, Somalia and Ethiopia particularly hard.

But what about the accountant accountants. Greg Smith, managing director of Global Commodities, an Australian investment fund, said fund managers were being unfairly scapegoated. He argued that measures to curb speculative activity, such as limits on contracts and higher margins (less reliance on borrowed funds when making trades), would not deal with the fundamental problems, such as the weather and, more pertinent from Smith’s viewpoint, just-in-time inventory.

“We have volatility in food prices because of inventory shortages,” said Smith, who was attending the fourth annual world agriculture investment summit in London, bringing together investment managers, policymakers and NGOs. “What we need is more inventory instead of this just-in-time approach. We need to look at how we increase buffer stocks of grain. After the second world war, governments would have three to six months of supply of grain. Now it’s two or three weeks.”

Smith feels the accountants bear the brunt of the blame for this just-in-time issue as they are the ones who try to convince companies to adopt this particular inventory method in the interest of cost cutting.

While they don’t specifically come out and blame the accountants like Smith, Oxfam recently published a paper called Preparing for Thin Cows in which they question the current view on food reserves. “International institutions have warned G20 leaders that renewed food price volatility is now a high risk. However, the same institutions have summarily dismissed food reserves as one of the ways to stabilise prices,” said the report’s co-author Thierry Kesteloot. “Food reserves were largely dismantled in the 1990s and have been ignored ever since as too expensive and ineffective.”

Check out this 2008 piece from The Hightower Report which foretells the problem with the just-in-time idea. “The combination of oversupply, ultra high interest rates and new business practices quickly turned the idea of owning extra inventory into financial heresy of the highest order. Accountants, bankers and MBAs descended on America’s businesses to preach the gospel of wringing every last ounce of unnecessary corn, wheat, cotton, copper or wing nuts out of every conceivable supply ‘pipeline.’ To a large degree, the gospel of just-in-time inventory control has prevailed right up to the present – or at least into 2007.” The article blames a global attitude that inventory can easily be had should it be needed – thereby eliminating the need to keep excess reserves – for just-in-time’s popularity.

Problem being this attitude assumes an unrealistic scenario in an inflationary environment in which 40% of the U.S. corn supply is used as “fuel” (ask Joe Kristan about ethanol if you’re not hip) and completely ignores unforeseen issues like, oh, I don’t know, drought and higher demand in emerging nations for corn-fed meat.

There’s a problem alright, just not sure if it’s with the accountants.

The National Society of Accountants Has a Bone to Pick with the AICPA

A couple weeks back the AICPA gave its members the go-ahead to Crtl+C, Crtl+V its letter to the IRS about how certain parts of the proposed tax preparer regulations were a load of crap.

We just assumed that everyone in the accounting biz was on the same page here but boy we’re we wrong. The National Society of Accountants sent this letter to Treasury honcho Geithner stating that they don’t want any tax preparers exempted from obtaining a PTIN (among other complaints):

NSA Letter Regarding CPA Firm Exemption


What’s especially interesting is that the AICPA is not named in this letter once, however they are named specifically in the NSA’s press release:

Now, at the 11th hour, just before the registration process is scheduled to begin, some – including the American Institute of CPAs – are demanding that staff members of ‘CPA firms’ be exempted from the registration requirements. This flies in the face of why this registration program was set up. The point of the new regulations is to ensure that all tax preparers are accountable for their work in preparing returns, and that should include anyone who paid to prepare all or substantially all of a return, no matter where they may work.

The basic tenet here is that big firms will get away with letting the underlings preparing the returns not be held accountable for their (apparently) shoddy work. The NSA’s position is that if every single legit tax professional is registered then they can track down the shitty ones and the IRS can act accordingly. The NSA claims that the “loophole” proposed by the AICPA will let these amateurs skate the testing and registration requirements and thus won’t be serving taxpayers one iota.

On the one hand you might have been totally against the tax preparer regulations from the start but now that they’re unavoidable, the AICPA’s request for exemptions in some cases may burn the unlucky bunch that wouldn’t get to enjoy waiver.