Happy MLK Day, all. Never forget:
This will be a brief brief as we technically don’t have to work today and hopefully neither do you.
Forbes covers some academic research on public accounting leavers. Those darn academics will research anything, won’t they!
“Poor work-life balance is a primary factor influencing the decision to leave. Firms must offer genuine improvements if they want people to stay. Leavers are skeptical of empty promises for work-life balance improvements, so efforts to retain employees need to provide authentic, realistic solutions,” says co-author Nancy Harp from Clemson University.
The study finds that leavers often discuss their thoughts about leaving with others at the firm (e.g., co-workers, mentors, supervisors) and spend months thinking about leaving before making their decision. Stayers also report noticing several warning signs of leaving. Top warning signs include lower quality work and personality changes. Thus, firms have ample opportunities to intervene in most turnover cases.
Turnover experiences in public accounting and alumni’s decisions to “give back”
The IRS has confirmed that the $1,776 “Warrior Dividend” the government handed out to service members last month is tax-free.
In a press release posted today, the IRS confirmed the tax-free status of the dividend.
“The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service today confirmed that supplemental basic allowance for housing payments made to members of the uniformed services in December 2025 are not to be included in income by those who received the payments; they are not taxable,” the statement reads.
According to the IRS, U.S. tax law excludes from gross income a “qualified military benefit.” The Warrior Dividend is just such a benefit and is therefore not taxable. Service members will keep all of the dividend to use as they see fit.
A Ponzi investigation is really racking up the billable hours at PwC, reports CBC News in Canada:
As fallout from the Greg Martel Ponzi scheme continues to inflict hardship for over 1,700 people who invested with the Victoria, B.C., fraudster, newly released documents show that the company appointed to manage Martel’s bankruptcy stands to bill over $12 million for untangling his web of deceit.
The estimate is contained in minutes of a meeting posted online by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), the accounting firm appointed receiver and bankruptcy trustee of Martel and his Ponzi-vehicle My Mortgage Auction Corp. (MMAC).
Of the estimated $12 million, PwC has only collected $892,490 to date for work it performed between April and July 2023, according to its website.
Another $6 million in fees is outstanding for invoices amassed between July 2023 and September 2025. Those relate to a mountain of work done to identify investors and their financial dealings with Martel, and to create a “funds flow analysis” from over 65,000 transaction records recovered from 33 unique Martel bank accounts and credit cards.
Huh, PwC really does have it published on their website.
India is starting to figure out they’re getting screwed. This could get interesting.
This is from “90-day notice period: Manager at Big Four firm calls long notice periods in Indian companies ‘painful’ and ‘toxic’,” published in Economic Times:
A manager at a leading accounting firm has criticised the 90-day notice period followed by many Indian companies, calling it “inefficient” and “toxic”, and saying it harms both employers and employees. The manager, who works as a software developer at a Big Four accounting firm, said the long notice period has made hiring an “absolute nightmare”.
In the post, the manager said a 90-day notice period is standard practice in India, unlike other major economies. He noted that in China, the maximum notice period allowed by law is 30 days, while in the US it is typically two weeks.
“In the US, you give two weeks. In China, 30 days is maximum by law. In India? We hold people hostage for a quarter of a year. It makes zero sense,” the manager said.
A three month notice period is pretty wack, we’ll give him that.
And here’s a related article about working conditions in India:
“It is not that simple to resign. Not everyone is privileged enough to walk away,” an audit trainee at a prestigious firm in Colombo told The Sunday Morning on condition of anonymity, describing the constraints faced by young trainees in some of Sri Lanka’s audit firms.
“Most of us come from ordinary families. We do not have the luxury of waiting for the perfect job. And every audit firm has the same culture. If we refuse to work under those conditions, how do we complete training for Chartered Accountancy (CA)?” a trainee lamented.
His comments come in the wake of the death of 27-year-old Chamith Darshana, a graduate of the University of Sri Jayewardenepura (USJ) from Galle, who had been employed at the local office of a major audit firm.
He reportedly died in a late-night motorcycle accident after returning from a stock count assignment. His friends allege that he had been working continuous late-night shifts for several days without adequate rest, meals, or safe transport arrangements – conditions many in the profession claim are all too common.
Look, we talk a lot of smack about offshoring but we have always had a lot of sympathy for the workers themselves. Exploitation is the name of this game, we know it well. And it sucks.
Online betting is down in Illinois after the state started taxing wagers.
New data from the Illinois Gaming Board shows sports betting in Illinois is down significantly. In September of last year, the state implemented a $0.25 tax on the first 20 million wagers at each sportsbook. After that, the tax increases to $0.50 per wager.
In response, the largest sportsbooks in the state, FanDuel and DraftKings, rolled out a flat $0.50 fee on customers, passing the tax to its players.
Comparing September 2024 to September 2025, there were five million fewer wagers placed in Illinois, which is a 15% decrease.
The president of the Sports Betting Alliance thinks those people are now using illegal sites. “Any bettor with any level of sophistication is really paying attention to their costs, right?” said Joe Maloney. “So, when you have the ability to have multiple competitive entrants in the legal regulated marketplace and then a myriad number of options in illegal or unregulated sites, you’re going to go for that best price.”
Yeah, well, we’re all kind of sick of being nickel and dimed to death. We’re going to need to change that phrase soon. Quartered and half-dollared, with inflation.
OK we’ll wrap things up here. Give us a shout via email or text if you have a tip, story, or comment and have a good week or else. Bye!
