Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: They’re Begging Firms to Hire Grads Now; Who Wants to Be a CFO Anyway | 9.28.26

Is It Services or Is It Work?

Here’s an interesting one that could have consequences for other firms depending on how it shakes out:

Global consulting firm EY, formerly Ernst & Young, has taken its tax dispute over employees sent to India to the Supreme Court, challenging a Delhi High Court ruling of June 2026 that said payments made by EY’s Indian entities to its US arm for such employees were taxable as fees for technical services, rather than simply reimbursement of salary costs.

According to the Supreme Court website, reviewed by Mint, EY filed its appeal on 15 September. The case has not yet been assigned to a bench for hearing.

The dispute covers assessment years 2018-19 to 2022-23 and centres on whether payments made by an Indian company to its overseas group company under a secondment arrangement, where employees are temporarily sent to work in India, are merely reimbursement of employee costs or payment for technical services, which can attract tax in India.

Should probably keep an eye on it.

Film Tax Breaks Are a Whole Thing

Capitol News Illinois and Illinois Answers Project wrote a big long story about Illinois film tax credits. If you’re into the accounting (and politics) behind movies and TV you may enjoy it.

Hire Them, Please

As increasingly more fresh graduates find themselves unable to find employment in South Korea and are therefore unable to be licensed due to lack of experience, the head of the Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants puts out a plea to accounting firms:

As the employment problems of new certified public accountants have emerged as an industry concern, with “unassigned accountants” surging in recent years, Choi Un-yeol, president of The Korean Institute of Certified Public Accountants, was found to have sent letters to accounting firm heads appealing for the hiring of trainee accountants.

According to the accounting industry on the 28th, President Choi sent letters last month to the heads of some 270 accounting firms asking them to “join forces to hire trainee accountants.”

In the letters, President Choi formally requested support to expand the hiring of trainee accountants and asked firms to provide opportunities for practical training to as many trainee accountants as possible, even one more, within the limits allowed by their circumstances. In response, the Big Four accounting firms were also said to have reacted positively. The Big Four are expected to increase their hiring compared with last year.

Can You Blame Them?

Do you aspire to be a CFO? Nearly half of UK finance professionals (48%) surveyed by recruiting company Robert Walters do not:

In the firm’s survey, 48% said they did not want the top finance job and 26% said they definitely did. Work-life balance was the leading deterrent, cited by 61%. A further 72% said their current role was not giving them the experience needed to become a CFO.

Board-level exposure and leading transformation were the hardest capabilities to build for 76% of respondents. Asked what would best prepare them, half chose mentoring from leaders; 21% selected cross-functional career moves, 18% broader responsibilities and 11% formal training.

CFOs Appear to Be Sending Mixed Signals

Speaking of CFOs, Deloitte has a fresh CFO Signals report. Let’s see how CFOs are feeling for Q3:

• CFO confidence inches back into “high” territory: The CFO Confidence Score rose to 6.1 from 5.9 in Q2, returning to the “high” confidence range.
• Company optimism remains resilient: 90% of surveyed CFOs say they are optimistic about their companies’ financial prospects; 37.5% rate the current North American economy favorably.
• Technology risks stand out among business challenges: Technology deployment, including GenAI, was CFOs’ most-cited internal concern (50%), while cybersecurity topped the list of external concerns (50%).
• Slight cooling on CFOs’ appetite for risk: 53% of CFOs say now is a good time to take greater risks, compared to 59% last quarter.
• Financing remains relatively attractive: 55% of CFOs say equity financing is attractive, while 50% say the same about debt financing, suggesting CFOs continue to see multiple paths to capital amid a shifting risk appetite.
• Growth expectations are mixed: CFOs expect revenue to grow 4.6% and capital expenditures to increase 4.3% over the next year, both modestly higher than last quarter, while expectations for earnings, dividends, domestic wages and salaries, and domestic hiring declined.

Rotate This

Firms in Australia aren’t fans of the idea of mandatory auditor rotation but this guy is:

A governance, audit, and probity consultant Jason Masters – who serves on audit and risk committees in the NSW public sector – has lodged a submission to Treasury’s options paper on the regulation of accounting, auditing, and consulting firms in Australia.

In his submission, Masters has recommended that reporting entities should rotate to a different audit firm every 10 years, with a five-year cooling-off period before reappointment, applied to public interest entities and enacted through the Corporations Act.

You Expected The IRS to Move Faster?

National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins thinks it’s “unconscionable” that identity theft victims have to wait many months for the IRS to resolve the issue. Her office’s new report is covered in Journal of Accountancy:

The report, The Process to Resolve Identity Theft Cases Is Long, Costly, and Frustrating for Taxpayers, reviewed 114 identity theft cases closed during fiscal year 2023 and found that they took an average of 655 days to process. Only four cases were completed within the IRS’s 120-day goal. Most of the delay occurred before an employee was assigned to the case, with the average case spending 533 days in an unassigned inventory.

The watchdog estimated the IRS paid about $124.2 million in interest on delayed refunds tied to identity theft cases closed from fiscal years 2023 through 2025. According to TIGTA, the amount rose from about $17.1 million in fiscal year 2023 to $45.6 million in fiscal year 2024 and $61.6 million in fiscal year 2025.

A programming note: An Accountingfly client is still hiring for an AI project. If you’re looking for a job in this lame market, have 7 or more years of experience and want to help train the robots that will one day take your job (hopefully soon amirite), give this post a look. You get paid to take the assessment which is nice.