One way or another, lots of you are looking for jobs. The problem is that many of you have pre-tay, pret-tay, pre-tay similar work experiences. So how do you get your resumé to stand out without attaching nude glamor photos?
FINS has some tips including that may give you an advantage on your pavement pounding competition including:
• The Basics – If you’ve got letters behind your name, put that at the top. Don’t slip it in as an afterthought.
• Demonstrate How Skills Apply – If you’re a badass at anything, don’t be shy. SOX 404, tax planning, M&A, whatever your speciality, make it known.
• List High-Value Experience – Mention how you explained accounting for derivatives to all your clients. Don’t mention nightmare inventory counts.
Head over to FINS to see all their tips including a before and after example resumé. Oh, and DON’T. DO. THIS.
Foot in the Door: The Perfect Accounting Resume [FINS]
Breaking News
Once Again, a Mid-Tier Firm Beat Out Big 4 on This ‘Best Companies’ List
Fortune has released its Best Companies to Work For list for 2026 and we just realized we didn't cover it at all last year. Shrug, it's all just marketing anyway.…
Layoff Watch ’26: The King’s KPMG Kindly Asks 600 Auditors to GTFO
We covered this story in yesterday's Monday Morning Accounting News Brief but it's significant enough news to earn its own spot in a separate article as it's a large market…
A KPMG Senior Director Got Beat Up By a Guy Who Stars in Reacher
Oh my God it feels like it's 2010 all over again with that headline. Thanks to the algorithm for putting this item in my feed since no one saw fit…
KPMG Picked an Aussie to Rule Over the Global Empire [UPDATED]
Ed. note: This article was originally published on March 5, 2026. It was updated on March 18 after KPMG made a public announcement confirming Gary Wingrove as Global Chairman and…
Deloitte Runs a Photo Competition??
Wait, what is this? Deloitte Italy and Fondazione Deloitte [Deloitte Foundation] are handing out tens of thousands of euros in a photo competition centered around the subject of "proximites." Why?…
Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: You Can’t Spell Audit Without AI; An Elaborate Scheme to Defraud the Air Force | 4.6.26
Hey. To our readers in tax let me just say you're doing great! Almost there! For everyone else, hopefully you're hanging in there as well. To everyone: be sure to…
Friday Footnotes: EY Tells Tax to Get Back in the Office; Associates Are Vibe Coding Now | 4.3.26
Footnotes is a collection of stories from around the accounting profession curated by actual humans and published every Friday at 5pm Eastern. While you're here, subscribe to our newsletter to…
Layoff Watch ’26: The King’s KPMG Kindly Asks 600 Auditors to GTFO
We covered this story in yesterday's Monday Morning Accounting News Brief but it's significant enough news to earn its own spot in a separate article as it's a large market…
Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: KPMG Asks Hundreds of People to Go; One Big Beautiful Bill Equals Billable Hours | 3.30.26
Good morning and happy Monday, capital markets servants. I ventured out into the muck to dig up some news for you to start the week. In this news briefYour Services…
Friday Footnotes: EY Socks Away a Bunch of Money For Future Fines; Can You Leave at 5 and Still Make Partner? | 3.27.26
Footnotes is a collection of stories from around the accounting profession curated by actual humans and published every Friday at 5pm Eastern. While you're here, subscribe to our newsletter to…
ICYMI: According to This AI CEO You Won’t Have to Go to Work in a Year
Commence to fantasizing about what you'll do with all that glorious free time when you lose your job to AI in 12-18 months because that's the confident prediction made by…
Another Early AI Accounting Startup Just Bit the Dust
TIL that early AI accounting platform Botkeeper has died. I found out via this CFO Brew article which pointed to a post on Botkeeper's own site. Turns out r/accounting was…
KPMG Brings Cheating Into the AI Age By Using AI to Cheat on AI Exams
The image is upside down because Australia. This story sounds like a joke but we assure you it is not. KPMG Australia has expanded KPMG's storied cheating repertoire by being…
KPMG Brings AI Talking Points to a Fee Negotiation, Inadvertently Opens a Pandora’s Box Filled With Stingy Clients
As reported by Financial Times on February 6, included in Friday's edition of Footnotes, and widely chuckled at by public accountants both current and former across the world since, KPMG…
Hackers Set Out to Ruin Tax Season Early For One Old-Ass Firm
'Tis the season. For alleged data breaches, that is. Cybernews is reporting that a Russian ransomware group called Lynx claims to have gotten its hands on a whole mess of…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | October 16, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | October 2, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 25, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 18, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting or Tax Talent? We’ve Got You Covered.If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're…
Top Remote Tax and Accounting Candidates of the Week | September 4, 2025
Struggling to Find Remote Accounting Talent? We’ve Got You Covered. If your firm or internal team is having a tough time sourcing qualified remote tax and accounting professionals, you're not…
Twitter Feed
Via @Inc: Meet the AI Co-Worker That Snitches to Your Boss—and Never Stops Working
South Florida rapper known as “Walking Bankroll” arrested for alleged multimillion-dollar tax fraud scheme
Here Are Tax and Audit Salaries at Top 25, Top 300, and Regional Firms
Recruiting firm Brewer Morris has released its 2025 US CPA salary guide and should you want to read the whole thing you can request it from them here. Perhaps you,…
Friendly Reminder Not to Work Yourself to Death For This Profession
Saw this on the bird app yesterday and thought its message would be worth passing along what with 20 days remaining until April 15 and nerves as strained as ever…
Accounting Firm Abruptly Nopes Out of Tax Season Early (UPDATE)
Ed. note: An earlier version of this article's headline stated the sheriff is investigating. The Alexander County Sheriff's Office informed us they are not investigating, only fielding calls from the…
This Deloitte Office Has Eliminated Trash Cans at Desks to Make Staff Get Up Off Their Asses
Boston Business Journal wrote an article about Deloitte's new office in Boston and for some reason they chose to lead with this: You won’t find trash cans at the desks…
The IRS Decided to Troll Tax Pros For 10/15
We realize the decision to run maintenance on IRS systems likely isn't made by anyone who understands deadlines but surely someone who does could inform the IT department of these…
Top Remote Accounting Freelancers: February 3, 2024
Looking to staff up for a season or hire a freelancer for a project? Accountingfly is ready to partner with you! Gain full access to a pool of highly skilled…
10 Essential Project Management Principles for Accounting Firms
Every accounting firm struggles with project management, with smaller practices that are rapidly expanding taking the brunt of the damage. As your firm adds new clients, takes on more work,…
6 Ways Email is Secretly Destroying Your Accounting Firm
Email: The word itself sounds innocent, doesn't it? Kind of like "snail mail," but faster, sleeker, and without the slimy trail. But don't be fooled—email is secretly a sinister beast,…
Don’t Grow Your Accounting Firm Out of Business! Break Up With These Unscalable Practices Now
Business growth is always a high priority for accounting firms, especially small-to-midsize practices. Take care, though, because growth can be a double-edged sword. If your firm expands too quickly or…
Rumor Mill: KPMG Wants You To Stop Smothering Your Kids
Klynveldians, what are you doing today at 2 pm? Nothing? Here you go:
As we continue to observe National Work & Family Month during October,
KPMG will host a national MSO from Lifeworks entitled Being an Involved
Parent: How Much Is Too Much? on Thursday, October 22, from 2:00 p.m. –
3:00 p.m. ET.
This special session is designed to help parents:
§ Understand the traits of overly involved parents
§ Learn the long-term consequences of over-involvement
§ Identify strategies for raising self-reliant, resilient children
§ Find a balance of involvement that will help children ultimately become
independent adults.
If you’d like to join us for this session, be sure to sign up today!
Don’t have kids? No worries. This will load up your queue of excuses for why you’re working late after you enter parenthood.
Are Going Concern Opinions the Kiss of Death?
One thing is for sure: clients don’t like getting them. Auditors may even go out of their way to not give one in order to maintain “excellent client service” or whatever the latest buzz phrase is.
Many companies risking the dreaded explanatory paragraph arrived there on their own accord but if a company is legitimately trying to recover from their stay in financial intensive care, auditors may be piling on by issuing the GCO.
CFO:
Such a qualification can result in tougher-to-get and more expensive financing deals, just when the company is most in need of a break. Indeed, once hit with a going-concern qualification, companies may succumb to a “self-fulfilling prophecy,” say accounting observers. The pariah status such an opinion confers all but forces investors, suppliers, and lenders to turn away, often driving a company on the brink of bankruptcy into a Chapter 11 filing.
CFO’s piece cites the opinion of Al King, former Chairman of the Institute of Management Accountants, who mentions the guidance of auditing rules “don’t allow auditors a wider range of possible warnings.” The situation comes down to one of options: 1) we’re cool or 2) we’re doomed.
That may be a valid point but the idea of an explanatory paragraph that discusses the alignment of the planets along with management’s brilliant plan to save the sinking ship doesn’t seem like the answer.
Nevermind breaking the bad news to your client, who may be living in denial over the state of their company. Or as the Overland Storage situation demonstrated, clients just get their panties in a bunch and start firing auditors. But you still have to the your jobs, amiright?
The GC opinion. Discuss any experiences you have had in comments. Did it involve grown men sobbing like children? Delusional clients? Maybe just gnashing of teeth? Or did the partner fold like a cheap lawn chair in the name of client service?
Living with a Scarlet Audit Letter [CFO]
Preliminary Analytics | 10.22.09
• Former car czar: GM, Chrysler were on brink of death – But no gc opinion? [DFP]
• Galleon Sinks; Informant Surfaces – “Tipper A” has a name: Roomy Khan. [WSJ]
• EU warns Oracle over Sun takeover – Oracle hasn’t really made a case that the takeover wouldn’t be anti-competitive. [BBC]
• Microsoft launches Windows 7 – Microsoft’s obvious attempt to derail the career of John Hodgman. [Reuters]
• Pay Czar Decides to Collect a Few Scalps, a Sign of Weakness – We’re looking for Basterds-like numbers Feinberg! [Naked Capitalsm]
• Wall Street Steps Up Political Donations, Lobbying – “Most Wall Street firms stopped making donations to lawmakers when they were receiving government funds, and many lawmakers stopped accepting them. But now that the companies have begun returning the bailout funds, they are making campaign donations again.” [WSJ]
• Further reading – Thanks to FT Alphaville for linking Francine McKenna’s post on KPMG’s Madoff exposure. [FT Alphaville]
Review Comments | 10.21.09
• Galleon to Begin Wind-Down of Funds – At least one person is optimistic. [DealBook]
• Tax (Return) Stories: F. Scott Fitzgerald – Apparently FSF was not so spendy. [TaxProf Blog]
• Pay Czar to Slash Compensation at Seven Firms – “Kenneth Feinberg, the Treasury Department’s special master for compensation, will lower total compensation for 175 employees by an average of 50%, these people said. As expected, the biggest cut will be to salaries, which will drop 90% on average.” Special master? [WSJ]
• The Top Five Twitter Feeds for Job Hunters in Accounting – Use it. And follow us while you’re at it. [FINS]
PwC Employees Don’t Need AmEx Gift Cards to Motivate Them
That’s right! We’ve confirmed that PwC’s annual employee survey went out Monday and unlike other firms, the rank and file at P. Dubs are more than happy to tell TPTB exactly how they feel without being bribed (but it would be nice).
Ernst & Young Pranks Involve Heavy Lifting, Possibly Spending $200-$300
In these tough times, office pranks are the perfect remedy for all the bad attitudes out there. Except for you no-fun-under-any-circumstances types.
From an E&Y office in (we’re assuming) the Northeast:
our latest prank was to get the nascar fan in the office a thrill by putting a race car bed over his cube when he returned from his trip to dover for the weekend with some co-workers for the Dover 400 race.
Photos, after the jump
Wonder Bread getting a little exposure.
It’s one thing if one of perpetrators boosted this thing from their nephew. It’s a whole new level of prank-commitment if they put it on the expense report.
The Moment You’ve All Been Waiting For
If you work at KPMG anyway. We heard that the annual employee survey was sent out today so that’s exciting. The most thrilling news is that FIVE of you will win $200 AMEX gift cards for participating. If there are questions missing on the survey that are not addressed, feel free to bring those up in the comments.
The only other firm that we’ve heard about having their survey is E&Y so if yours is rolling out be sure to let us know.
The IRS Has Control Issues
Editor’s Note: Want more JDA? You can see all of her posts for GC here, her blog here and stalk her on Twitter.
The IRS is going after off-shore tax shelters and international banks to get its cut (presumably to make up for some tax revenue it has been missing out on in the last, oh, 8 years or so) but according to WebCPA, the IRS might want to tighten up its game on refunds.
It isn’t that the IRS is cutting checks for the heck of it – it turns out that the Treasury Department may need a quick refresher on controls for payments.
[The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration report] found problems in the IRS’s handling of taxpayer payments that are subsequently dishonored by the banks in which they are deposited. Dishonored payments are not processed by banks for a variety of reasons, the report noted, including insufficient taxpayer funds. The IRS occasionally issues a refund to a taxpayer who had submitted an overpayment of taxes before the IRS realizes that the taxpayer’s check has been dishonored by the bank. This results in the taxpayer receiving an erroneous refund.
Between Jan. 1, 2008, and July 17, 2008, the IRS generated refunds as a result of dishonored check overpayments totaling approximately $53 million. TIGTA estimates that the IRS was unable to stop more than $20 million in refunds from being erroneously issued to nearly 14,000 individuals.
Well wait a minute, it was going to issue $53 million but was able to figure out $33 million were cut in error. That’s not so bad, is it?
The IRS cop out is that tricky stimulus check business of 2008 in which several dishonest taxpayers stopped payment on tax checks and made off with the stimulus booty instead of the money going towards offsetting the taxpayer’s tax liability. Sneaky!
Seriously, in the age of electronic funds transfers and billion dollar money market runs that cripple the financial system in a matter of minutes, how is it the IRS is still so far behind the times?
The TIGTA report claims that resolving this issue with proper controls on the IRS’ end could “protect approximately $102 million over the next five years from being issued to taxpayers in error.”
What’s $102 million nowadays anyway? That’s not even a fraction of an AIG bailout. No wonder the IRS isn’t trying too hard.
$500k Will Not Satisfy One CPA’s Quest for Vindication
A CPA in Redmond, Washington is receiving $500,000 from the state’s board of accountancy after battling with them for nearly five years over a disciplinary action that probably should have been NBD.
D. Edson Clark had claimed that the state Board of Accountancy was improperly pursuing unwarranted charges against him in retaliation for complaints he had made about the handling of another case. He requested tens of thousands of pages of public records and launched seven lawsuits against board employees over the past two years.
Clark was very determined to clear his good name. So much so that the Board of Accountancy claimed, “it has been disrupted by Clark’s requests, and that his demands for public records are burning up its budget and limiting its ability to function.” Apparently, the Board was so overwhelmed that it threatened Clark with an anti-harassment complaint because the volume of emails he was sending was disruptive.
This brings up some questions: A) How many emails does it take to disrupt an office? B) Did they try hiring a temp? C) Was Clark spending his entire day copying and pasting the same email over and over or was he drafting individually scathing rants? D) At what point does a person cross the line of crazy-ass obsession?
Despite the metric asston of emails received by the Board, a judge in one of Clark’s lawsuits was not impressed with the Board’s handling of the situation:
In an oral hearing in June, Judge Thomas McPhee, a judge in Thurston County Superior Court, said that the board had “developed a pattern of incompetence in answering these discovery requests that is just difficult to believe for a state agency.”
We’re all familiar with governments’ inability to do much of anything but for a judge to put the situation in this context might be a new low for bureaucratic inefficiency.
Don’t worry though, the saga isn’t over as Mr. Clark has indicated that he plans further litigation in order to FULLY EXONERATE himself. Nevermind that the $500,000 is over a third of the Board’s budget. This is obviously personal. We admire the gusto.
Redmond CPA to get $500K settlement from state board [Puget Sound Business Journal]
Redmond accountant, Washington regulator at odds [Puget Sound Business Journal]
Bonus Watch: Follow-up on Grant Thornton
According to a tip we received, less than “special” people at GT are receiving bonuses too:
Based upon my salary [the bonus is] about 2%….[I’m] assuming the criteria for a bonus wasn’t as stringent as Nusbaum made it out to be, or the pool was larger than we were led to believe. Based upon the call with Nus, I figured only 5.0 would get a bonus.
A pleasant surprise for some. This particular tip came out of the Southeast region. Apparently these conversations are occurring circa now so continue to keep us updated for your city or region.
(UPDATE) Madoff Investors Sue KPMG, JP Morgan, Bank of New York Mellon
By our last count KPMG had been named in ten lawsuits related to Madoff feeder funds. What’s one more?
KPMG, JP Morgan, Bank of New York Mellon, Oppenheimer Acquisition Corp. and Mass Mutual Life Insurance, along with the Tremont founders were all named in an amended lawsuit that was filed yesterday.
Cotchettt, Pitre, & McCarthy, the attorneys for the Plaintiffs, are not mincing words on KPMG’s part in the whole mess. From the firm’s website:
The sheer size and scope of the fraud make it impossible for Madoff to have acted alone. The complaint alleges JP Morgan and the Bank of New York as well as powerhouse accounting firm KPMG LLP and their international counterparts, KPMG UK and KPMG International were primary players responsible for the fraud.
The amended complaint further alleges that the phantom trades “should have been discovered by KPMG UK, the auditor for Madoff’s London based operation, Madoff Securities International Ltd. Instead, KMPG UK never raised any red flags that investors’ money was used by Madoff as his personal piggy bank.”
KPMG declined to comment for the Reuters article but we’ll assume that they don’t take kindly to the complaint.
Madoff investors sue KPMG and major banks [Reuters]
MADOFF_WEXLER_FIRST_AMENDED_COMPLAINT.pdf
UPDATE: The UK Firm issued the following, per Accountancy Age:
KPMG considers the allegations in the complaint to be wholly without merit and will defend them vigorously. The complaint cites KPMG in its capacity as statutory auditor of Madoff Securities International Limited (MSIL), a London based company directly owned by the Madoff family. KPMG acted in this capacity for several years and issued unqualified audit opinions on MSIL’s financial statements. We are not aware of any suggestion that the financial statements of MSIL contain errors.