Going Concern

Quote of the Day

The IRS Outreach to Nonprofits Didn’t Go So Hot

Caleb Newquist
May 19, 2010

“The IRS has conducted an unprecedented outreach effort in the tax-exempt sector on the 2006 law’s new filing requirements, but many of these smaller organizations are just now learning of the May 17 deadline.”

~ Doug Shulman, IRS Commissioner

Fraud
News

Despite Being a ‘Wreck of a Man,’ Allen Stanford Managed to Fire Another Attorney

Caleb Newquist
May 19, 2010

Things are not going so well for the Stan as he awaits trial in H-town.

For starters, he managed to fire another lawyer, which is not going to go over well with Judge David Hittner. Judge Hittner warned Stan about his Steinbrenner-ish ways last month, “You’ve had 10 attorneys attempt to enter this case on your behalf. I will not entertain any further substitutions.”

And secondly, Al doesn’t seem to be very good at making friends:

When Mr. Stanford surrendered to authorities, he was a healthy 59-year-old man,” Stanford’s Houston-based lawyer, Robert Bennett, wrote in a brief on which Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz consulted.

“Mr. Stanford’s pretrial incarceration has reduced him to a wreck of a man: he has suffered potentially life-impairing illnesses; he has been so savagely beaten that he has lost all feeling in the right side of his face and has lost near-field vision in his right eye,” Bennett said.

Naturally, AS’s lawyers want him out and placed on house arrest ASAP since his trial doesn’t start until January but so far no one is convinced that Al won’t bolt the second he gets outside the prison walls.

“Savagely beaten” Stanford asks to be freed [Reuters]

KPMG

Exodus Watch ’10: KPMG New York

Caleb Newquist
May 19, 2010

From somewhere deep inside 345 Park Ave:

“Damage control beginning – 3 managers and 3 SAs out.”

It’s our understanding that this is the audit side of the house in financial services. No indication at this point whether it’s promotion de-nied related or if it’s has something to do with the unconfirmed compensation rumors we’re hearing.

If you’ve got details on comp, promotions, or lack thereof, email us with the details.

Imprisoned Russian Billionaire Shows Americans How To Protest Tax Injustices

Caleb Newquist
May 19, 2010

If you’re formerly the richest man in Russia and you’ve been wrongfully imprisoned (sayeth he) you’re not going to take this shit lightly. Flying a plane into a building is cowardly; shooting at another person – what does that accomplish?; Bulldozer? That guy is an idiot.

No, if you’re seriously going to show these tax happy bastards that you mean business, only explicit self-loathing will suffice.

Mikhail Khodorkovsky is serving an eight year prison sentence for tax evasion and fraud and he was recently dealt a blow in his attempt to land a new trial:

Mikhail Khodorkovsky has gone on hunger strike in protest at an order extending his detention ahead of a new trial. In a statement quoted by his lawyer, Khodorkovsky said the order violated legal amendments that had been approved by President Dmitry Medvedev. He has vowed to continue his protest until President Medvedev confirms that he is “fully aware” of the situation.

All he wants an acknowledgment from the President of the country and then he’ll get back to eating with a spork.

Russian oil tycoon Khodorkovsky on hunger strike [BBC]

BDO Breaks Barrier to Be First Accounting Firm to Land on Obscure Employer List

Caleb Newquist
May 18, 2010

First off, we can’t remember the last time BDO graced these pages twice in one day. You’d think something would come out of B to the D to the O more often but whatevs. BDO 2.0 today is a little bit of good news for the firm in the form of an exclusive spot on an obscure “Best Places” list.

God forbid our lives be devoid of a ranking in the last half of May but since it’s graduation season and there are some job hunters out there that need to start paying back school loans and credit cards debts, perhaps the timing isn’t so bad. A list we might add, that did not previously have an accounting firm on it. Progress people. Progress.

BDO shattered the glass ceiling on Experience’s “Best Places to Work for Recent Grads” that “picked 20 organizations whose entry-level hiring and retention practices are exceptional.” The list is specifically aimed at those companies that are hip to the Gen Y crowd, although we don’t really know any “recent grads” list that wouldn’t be.

Regardless, BDO has some decent company on the list that includes Accenture, Kellogg’s and Morningstar but BDO is the sole accounting firm. The fact that not a single accounting firm (let alone a Big 4 firm) is on the list is a travesty of the highest order. We then realized that the list’s very nature is severely flawed.

It’s too short. Any employer list with less than 50 companies on it simply cannot be taken seriously.

And since there were no accounting firms on last year’s list, this might as well have been random list of companies thrown together for the sake of keeping communications professionals busy.

This year, the Experience folks must have recognized their gross error and that since no employer list could be taken seriously devoid of a professional services firm. Not wanting to make it too complicated, BDO’s inclusion be probably chalked up to an alphabetical advantage.

Best Places to Work for Recent Grads [Experience]
BDO Press Release

Career Center

Job of the Day: PwC Needs a Tax Manager

GoingConcern
May 18, 2010

PricewaterhouseCoopers is looking for an experienced tax professional to join its Private Company Services (“PCS”) team. PCS helps private companies and their owners with tax planning an compliance decisions at all stages of the business.

The position requires five to seven years experience and is located in Chicago.

Company: PricewaterhouseCoopers

Title: Tax Manager

Location: Chicago, IL

Description: The Private Company Services (PCS) team is a dedicated group of professionals who focus on the audit, tax compliance and planning, and business advisory needs of public interest entities, and private companies and their owners. By helping private companies make strategic decisions throughout the business lifecycle, our PCS practice is designed to help clients improve cash flow and increase owners’ wealth accumulation. This includes access to capital markets, initial public offerings and assistance with growth into international markets. The team’s clients primarily reside in private equity portfolio companies and the manufacturing, retail, wholesale and distribution, professional services and construction industries.

Qualifications/Skills: 5 – 7 years of tax consulting or compliance experience is required.

See the entire description over at the GC Career Center and visit the main page for all your job search needs.

Small Business

Small Businesses Lead on Long-term Job Growth

GoingConcern
May 18, 2010

This story is republished from CFOZone, where you’ll find news, analysis and professional networking tools for finance executives.

If you harbored any doubts about the importance of small businesses to job growth, then you should consider the results of new research looking at payroll data over the past ten years. The clear conclusion is that the lion’s share of employment growth over the long term has happened at establishments employing fewer than 50 people.

But the implications for our current economic situation are disturbing.

The research, from Case Western Reserve’s Scott Shane, looked at data collected from Automated Data Processing’s monthly employment numbers from 2000 to 2010. The numbers are broken down into three categories: establishments with 1-49, 50-499, and more than 499 employees. By establishment, ADP means “a single physical location where business transactions take place and for which payroll and employment records are kept.”

According to Shane’s analysis, the most job loss has occurred at the bigger establishments. For example, in March 2010, the biggest folks employed 84.3 percent of the people who worked for them in December 2000. As for establishments with 50 to 499 workers, they employed 93.6 percent of those who worked for them over that same time period.

But, for the smallest establishments, the story is startlingly different. They now employ 103.5 percent of the people they employed in December 2000.

Then, there’s a study from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation I wrote about recently. It showed that high-growth companies that are three -to- five years old account for about 10 percent of new jobs in any given year, although they make up less than one percent of all businesses.

But, if small establishments and so-called gazelle firms are so important to job growth, then the latest data from the National Federation of Independent Business, reported on by my colleague Stephen Taub, is especially sobering. The findings showed continued decreases in hiring and flat growth in capital expenditures.

It all has urgent implications for government policy. Given the importance of fast-growing young firms, in particular, to employment creation, the wisest policies would be those that support these promising, three-to-five year old businesses. Something has to be done to get our engine of employment creation back on track.

BDO Not Thrilled with the Legal Advice It Got Re: Tax Shelters

Caleb Newquist
May 18, 2010

BDO’s Tax Solutions Group was going gangbusters back in the late 90s and early aughts. Unfortunately, the party more or less ended in December 2000 when the IRS served notice to the firm that some of the products were not ingenious tax planning strategies but rather illegal tax shelters. The DOJ launched an enforcement action in 2002 and just last year BDO partners started pleading guilty to tax evasion, conspiracy and some other fun charges.

BDO isn’t crazy about shouldering all the shame and embarrassment so it has decided to sue the law firm Morgan Lewis for “professional negligence, breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud and constructive fraud.” BDO alleges that ML’s breach amounted to “disastrous results” which is likely referring to the tax shelter shitshow. They just want their $9 million back that they paid in fees and call it a day (they’re saving up!).

Morgan Lewis finds this all very amusing, stating that they advised BDO only on minor issues. ML is represented by Gibson, Dunn, & Crutcher led by James Fogelman, who made his client’s position very clear:

Morgan Lewis called the lawsuit a “sham” and contended it only advised [BDO Partners] on a few minor questions — none of which involved the questionable tax products. “There was nothing that Morgan Lewis knew about to warn BDO concerning BDO’s own conduct. … There was nothing more BDO needed to know,” Fogelman wrote.

The only time Morgan Lewis opined on a tax product, the firm contends, was in February 2000, when BDO asked it to weigh in on a tax shelter dubbed the Sentinal Transaction. Morgan Lewis responded that the tax shelter was “unlikely” to expose BDO to criminal convictions. In its motion to dismiss, the firm said, “[I]t does not appear that anybody has ever been convicted of any federal crime based on the Sentinal Transaction.”

And Morgan Lewis doesn’t simply want to be vindicated in this matter, they want to be right AND they they would like BDO and DLA Piper (BDO’s counsel) to have sanctions slapped on their asses for lying through their teeth in their complaint. ML contends that they presented evidence disproving the allegations but BDO and DLA must have decided that a bitter fight would be more fun.

And it is.

BDO Seidman Seeks $9 Million in Fees Back From Morgan Lewis [The National Law Journal via Law.com]

How to Choose a CPA Exam Review Course

Adrienne Gonzalez
May 18, 2010

As many of you who have been reading Going Concern for some time already know, I used to be in CPA Review. I ditched that gig months ago to pursue my dream of writing full-time (so far so good) and can finally write a completely unbiased post on choosing a review course. I won’t name names here just for the sake of equal opportunity but let’s talk about how to pick a review coursntly, whether or not you actually need one.

First and foremost, if you are broke, you need to know that review courses are expensive. Like new car expensive. Ok, maybe like used Ford Focus expensive, either way, if you’re fresh out of school or still looking for work, you probably don’t have $2,000 lying around. It’s fine, you can get by on cheap textbooks but you’re going to have to bust your ass a tad harder than the guy who got his flashcards and full review paid for by the firm.

Keep in mind: the CPA exam is an investment of not just money but time. If you put $2,000 into it but still don’t study, you’re going to fail miserably. Unless you pay some brainiac $2,000 to take the exam for you but that would be illegal.

If you’ve got the cash for a full review, the first thing you’ll want to do is your homework. No, not practice MCQ, we’re talking research. A simple Google search will give you plenty of options (hell, there are less than a dozen CPA review providers so it’s not like you have to slog through pages upon pages of results). Remember: every candidate is different and what works for the stock photo chick on the company’s website may or may not work for you. Before you start looking for a course, take a personal inventory of your own needs and think up some questions to ask. Try these if you’re really stumped:

• Is there an instructor or teacher available if I have questions about homework or content? And if so, how long should I expect to wait for a response?

• How long from purchase do I have to access the material? Will it expire? Can I renew after that period and if so, are there any limitations on when?

• Are there any discounts available?

• Am I limited to one format or can I have the flexibility of combining online/live courses?

• What is the policy for students who fail a part? Is there a repeat or discounted option?

• Will I have access to updates as they are released and is there a cost and/or time limitation for this?

Those are a start. Most of this information is available on CPA review courses’ websites but sometimes it helps to get a real person on the phone and ask. You can quickly tell what sort of operation you are dealing with by the way the company’s phone staff handle your questions. The exam is a commitment and so is your choice of review course so be sure you are comfortable before you commit.

If you have already committed to a course that isn’t working for you, call around and ask if there are discounts available for students who have taken other courses. Most CPA review companies offer this.

Keep in mind that review courses – like all businesses – are still interested in making money above all else. Some will push full programs with all the bells and whistles while others rely on materials that look like they were made at Kinkos; at the end of the day, it’s not how shiny your review book is but how effective the instruction style is in teaching you the concepts that will help you pass.

And you will, as long as you put in the effort.

Adrienne Gonzalez is the founder of Jr. Deputy Accountant, a former CPA wrangler and a Going Concern contributor . You can see more of her posts here and all posts on the CPA Exam here.

Accounting News Roundup: Bidz.com’s Financial Reporting Could Have Some Issues; Tax Planning Stays One Step Ahead Financial Reform; Accountant Denied Bail in Terror Case | 05.18.10

Caleb Newquist
May 18, 2010

Can We Trust Bidz.com’s Financial Reporting? [White Collar Fraud]
We won’t tell you what to think but you should know that Bidz reported “material weaknesses in internal control over financial reporting” specifically those controls over “management oversight and anti-fraud controls specifically in processing of financial transactions, vendor review and payment processing,” in its most recent 10-K and 10-Q As an investor in Bidz, this should make you queasy. Unless, of course, you’re not concerned with such matters.

Sam Antar probably doesn’t care either way but he does put something out there, “Bidz.com cannot effectively prevent anyone from robbing the company blind and cannot prevent material errors in paying its vendors. Yet, the company wants you to believe that its financial reports contain no material errors and comply with GAAP.” But if you’re not sketched out by such things, then by all means, invest away.

But wait, in case that doesn’t earn your skepticism, the SEC began its investigation last year after Sam pointed out inventory irregularities at the company. Shortly thereafter, the Commission expanded its investigation into “the Company’s co-op marketing contributions and minimum gross profit guarantees.” If that wasn’t enough, the company’s auditors, Stonefield Josephson, were cited by the PCAOB for “significant deficiencies in a smaller sample of one of four audits reviewed.” So, again, if you can get over all that, this is probably a fine company to have your money invested in.

Bobbing as the Taxman Weaves [DealBook]
As Congress continues to dispel its wisdom on financial reform, it’s has become the natural order of things for any regulation to be circumvented prior to the passage of any bill.

In the case of carried interest, an incentive paid to hedge and private equity fund managers out of gains on the funds’ investments, Congress would like to tax these incentives at the ordinary rate (soon to be 39.6%). Currently, carried interest is taxed at the capital gains rate of 15%. DealBook reports that, despite threats by House to penalize those who use creative tax strategies that later fail, the maneuvering has not slowed:

The House of Representatives, aware that some titans of finance were already charting a course around any proposed change to their tax status, included a special provision in its version of the new legislation levying a 40 percent penalty for executives who invoked a loophole to cut their tax bill but were later ruled to have been wrong in doing so.

Still, that hasn’t stopped them from trying.

One of the latest machinations being whispered about in the industry goes like this: Private equity executives would sell their “carried interest” to a third party and then use the cash they received to invest directly in the deal so that any increase in value would be a capital gain.

It’s not clear whether this will work or not but it sure seems like fun.

Accountant held without bail in NYC in terror case [AP]
Sabirhan Hasanoff, a former PwC Senior Manager, was denied bail yesterday for his role in an alleged conspiracy that supported al-Qaida. He pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Quote of the Day

We’re Talking About Congress, Right?

Caleb Newquist
May 18, 2010

“I continue to count on good sense and wisdom to trump short-term political advantage.”

~ Ben Bernanke, who may be right out of his mind.

Allegedly, a Few Ernst & Young Partners Just So Happened to Join PwC

Caleb Newquist
May 18, 2010

Never having the pleasure of attending a partner-only soiree, we don’t have much knowledge about the haps at these events but we do imagine catering slightly better than what you would find at an in-house training but served by oompa loompas. And an open bar, natch.

Likewise, we’ve never heard about Big 4 partner mixers where, for example, an PwC partner might chat up a E&Y partner talking IFRS, where they fall on the staff’s hottie list and “oh by the way, waddaya say you join our firm?” To save face, we imagine said E&Yer responding with a “No, I will not make out with you” retort followed by open-faced slaps and ripped Jos. A. Bank until the beefy security pulled the two apart (at which point the P. Dubs partner gives his target the “call me” sign).

We bring all this up because the Times Online reports that there has been a fair amount of defection from Ernst & Young to PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Middle East (no sissies allowed). PwC’s Middle East practice was purchased by the UK firm last year and now the Times reports that 20 E&Y partners have been poached by P. Dubs:

According to people familiar with the situation, the defections — amounting to almost a fifth of Ernst & Young’s partners in the Middle East — were in several locations across the region. Most were from Ernst & Young’s consulting business, The moves began last summer but were kept secret because of a settlement between the two firms. PwC agreed that it would not approach any more Ernst & Young staff in return for Ernst & Young agreeing not to take legal action to block the departures.

Neither firm would comment for the Times article except to boast about their numbers in the region, “PwC confirmed that it had recruited 25 new partners and 400 staff in its Middle East offices in the past 12 months,” and “A spokesman for Ernst & Young said that it remained ‘easily the largest’ of the Big Four in the Middle East,” so both firms’ communication departments seem to be operating as normal.

Whether such (alleged) deliberate defections have happened in the States, we don’t know but we hear it is quite the spectacle (marched out by the OMP the second the news got dropped) when one partner notifies his/her intent to leave for a competitor, so all out war could reasonably be expected.

PwC raids rival before Middle East step [Times Online]

Careers

Big 4

News

Technology

Practice Management

Site Search

Twitter Feed

Get the Accounting News Roundup

Quick Reads

Sponsored Content

Get the Accounting News Roundup

Remote Tax Advisor, CPA Firm

Remote Tax Manager

Remote Accounting & Tax Director

Remote Tax Advisor, CPA Firm

Remote Tax Manager

Remote Accounting & Tax Director