Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Claude Starts a Turf War With Consulting; An Article About How Much Big 4 Sucks | 5.4.26

Anthropic Aggressively Elbows In on Consulting’s Turf

Uh oh. This doesn’t bode well for consulting’s quest to rack up billings and, in the case of Big 4, get their revenue numbers back up after years of slump:

Anthropic announced Monday that it has partnered with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, and Goldman Sachs to launch a new AI-native enterprise services company — one that puts the Claude maker in direct competition with the world’s largest consulting firms for the lucrative business of corporate AI transformation.

The venture, backed by approximately $1.5 billion in committed capital, is designed to embed Anthropic’s engineers and models directly into the core operations of mid-size businesses, according to the Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter.

That’s a Lot of Words to Say Big 4 Sucks

Here’s something lovely from The Telegraph to brighten your Monday: The end of the accountancy gravy train. Look at this graphic they used lol

The (long) article talks about how Big 4 partnership is no longer as illustrious as it once was (was it though?). A few quotes:

Prof Laura Empson, a former board member at KPMG, says the big four model increasingly looks like the “worst of both worlds”, involving all the “complex bureaucracy” that comes with the federalised structure, without the “partnership ethos”.
Some have been left feeling demoralised.

And this:

One former Deloitte partner says the “relentless focus on profit per partner” has caused the firms to become “a lot more short-term,” as partners have pivoted “towards maximising their personal take over a shorter time frame”.

This short-sightedness has limited “their ability to respond to market change” as partners aim for quick gains over long-term growth, he said.

The prioritisation of profits instead of “impact for society” has also taken a psychological toll on many partners in the big four, he says, adding that some have lost faith in the value in their work, as “public perception” has started to turn against the firms too.

When was Big 4 ever about “impact for society” over profits? Someone drank the spiked Kool-Aid.

The Finance Roles Likely to Get Hit By AI

These are the finance roles most at risk due to automation, according to Bain & Company research as reported by CFO Brew.

Bain’s survey of 102 senior finance executives in January and February found that the majority expected headcounts in tax, treasury, and investor relations subfunctions to remain steady over the next 12 months. But about half expected the impact of AI to reduce headcount in day-to-day, or transactional, finance, like accounting and period close, procure to pay, and invoice to cash, Bain Partner Michael Heric and Emilia Fallas, an EVP in the company’s corporate support practice, noted in the survey report.

Research on projections of AI’s impact on overall headcount has predicted little effect so far. A JPMorgan survey of 1,500 CFOs and finance executives at US middle-market firms last November found that a majority (60%) thought AI would have no impact on overall headcount this year.

A Big Samsung Tax

TIL that there’s a Samsung family, here I thought it was just a brand name. And because of this BBC article, we can all learn about the family’s gigantic inheritance tax bill which has now been fully settled:

The family behind the South Korean corporate giant Samsung has completed its payment of a 12 trillion won (£6bn; $8bn) inheritance tax bill, the largest such settlement in the country’s history.

Chairman Lee Jae-yong and other members of the family, including his mother Hong Ra-hee and sisters Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun, paid the sum in six installments over the last five years.

The bill is tied to the estate left by the firm’s late chairman Lee Kun-hee, who died in October 2020.

The fortune was 26 trillion won total (about $17.5 billion USD) and get this, the final payment is more than the entire inheritance tax revenue for 2024.

Tax-Exempt Under Attack?

Some people are concerned about plans to bring additional transparency to non-profit reporting. Those people in this Bloomberg Tax article are Senate Democrats:

The Trump administration wants to boost transparency as part of efforts to scrutinize tax-exempt organizations—an area that’s had bipartisan interest—but Democrats aren’t sure they can trust the oversight will be applied fairly.

They can’t ignore President Donald Trump’s track record of using the government to go after his perceived enemies—from Harvard University to the Southern Poverty Law Center.

“There is right now some political targeting going on right out in the open on the far right,” said Senate Finance Committee ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) at a Thursday virtual press event. “The exact kind of IRS weaponization Republicans have been upset about for years is now basically happening in front of their eyes, and I consider it an assault on free speech.”

Debate that on your own time. They threw in an interesting figure on non-profits in the US:

The IRS recognized 1.5 million tax-exempt organizations in fiscal year 2024, which employed 12.8 million workers and contributed $1.4 trillion to the economy, according to the National Council of Nonprofits. Though a majority have budgets under $50,000, about 3% have annual budgets over $5 million.

See, Going Concern readership understands that non-profit doesn’t mean no profits because many of you have worked in this kind of accounting. Gonna be an uphill battle explaining it to the general public. Let’s be real, it’s an uphill battle explaining anything to the general public.

To be fair, sometimes it’s an uphill battle explaining how things work to your fully trained and credentialed colleagues too.

Opinion: This $1.3 trillion industry deserves to be taxed

On the topic of non-profits and Congressional puppets yapping (did someone say puppets? I was humming this song out of nowhere while scrolling some headlines this weekend, for no reason I’m sure), this Washington Post opinion piece by Scott Hodge, president emeritus of the Tax Foundation and the author of “Taxocracy: What You Don’t Know About Taxes and How They Rule Your Daily Life, discusses non-profit hospitals in This $1.3 trillion industry deserves to be taxed:

Members of Congress seem to enjoy holding performative hearings more than solving real problems. Witness the recent House Ways and Means Committee hearing on health care costs, where it appeared the purpose was to scold health system chief executives about putting profits before patients. However, Rep. Jason T. Smith (R-Missouri), chairman of the committee, rightly labeled nonprofit hospitals as “hedge funds with hospital beds.”

But if the past is prologue, nothing will come of the hearing. Here is the problem: The hospital sector is unlike any other. More than half of all U.S. hospitals operate as nonprofits, which sounds like a public good. No profit motive, more resources for patients, right? Wrong.

Nonprofit hospitals have grown into a $1.3 trillion industry, generating nearly $45 billion in tax-free “profits” in 2023. Researchers have estimated that the total annual tax benefit flowing to nonprofit hospitals reached $37.4 billion in 2021 — including $11.5 billion in federal income taxes that Uncle Sam simply forgoes. In exchange for this enormous subsidy, nonprofit hospitals are supposed to provide charity care and community benefits, such as subsidized health services or training of medical professionals. Many don’t come close to earning their keep.

What Makes a Good Fraud Fighter Anyway?

Senator Amy Klobuchar is running for governor of Minnesota and says she won’t be like the current one:

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar promised to “transform” Minnesota’s government if elected governor in the fall, announcing a plan Sunday, May 3, to reduce fraud while speeding up business permitting, state services and homebuilding.

Klobuchar pitched herself as a force for change as she works to counter Republicans on the campaign trail arguing she represents an extension of Gov. Tim Walz’s administration, which struggled to contain sprawling fraud problems in Minnesota’s social services programs.

Walz ended his bid for a third term amid a growing drumbeat of fraud scandals.

Klobuchar said she would have done some things differently than Walz and that her experience prosecuting crime as Hennepin County Attorney would help in addressing fraud.

“I don’t like the status quo, I wouldn’t be running for governor if I wanted to have things remain the same,” Klobuchar said, speaking from an event center in downtown St. Paul.

Life in Prison For $300,000 in Fraud

A man in Texas is going to prison for life for fraud, specifically for healthcare fraud after he gave respiratory therapist services that he was not licensed to perform and billed Medicare/Medicaid for it which is a major no-no. Actually, he’s going to prison for life because his probation was revoked:

Benny Georges, 51, had been sentenced to 10 years’ deferred adjudication probation on Dec. 4, 2025, in the 114th District Court after entering a guilty plea to healthcare fraud worth over $300,000.

But on Friday, his probation was revoked and the judge handed down a sentence of life in prison. He received 154 days for credit for time served, according to judicial records.

The article doesn’t say what he did to violate his probation, assuming that’s what happened on Friday. More fraud? TELL US!