• BofA Seeks to Repay a Portion of Bailout – “Repaying this would mean BofA would no longer be considered an ‘exceptional’ aid recipient — a designation that has put it under a microscope by Congress and regulators, with its pay packages subject to review by the federal ‘pay czar'”. Ken Lewis isn’t going to take it anymore. [WSJ]
• Madoff Liquidator May ‘Claw Back’ Charities’ Fake Profits – ‘Picard has an obligation to the bankruptcy estate to collect all the assets he can find and in theory he has to treat everyone the same way.’ Most thankless job ever. [Bloomberg]
• Warning Signs: I Started Looking And The Bubble Burst… – Deloitte. Start listening. [RTA]
• Icahn Pares Yahoo Stake With Sale of 12.7M Shares – Deal is done. Might as well work on GTFO. [NYT]
• Corporate failures forecast to rise – “Insolvency specialists are forecasting a second wave of corporate restructurings to break in September as bankers and investors face problem investments.” [FT]
• IRS to Mine Payment Data on Mortgages – “The Treasury inspector general said in a Monday report that tens of thousands of homeowners who paid more than $20,000 in mortgage interest in 2005 either didn’t file a tax return or reported income that appears insufficient to cover their mortgage interest and basic living expenses.” GASP. Someone living beyond their means? [WSJ]
Layoff Watch ’26: KPMG Cuts 4% From Consulting
We've got another RIF at KPMG, a consulting cull that went down yesterday (that's Wednesday the 29th for those of you reading this a week from now). Let's start with…
The Department of War Broke Up with KPMG, KPMG Gives Up Federal Audits Altogether
The other day -- and by the other day we mean like more than a week ago -- we received a text on the tipline that read "KPMG US to…
KPMG Shoves 10% of Its Audit Partners Out the Door
We're sure you've seen this FT headline floating around today: KPMG to axe 10% of US audit partners. And if you, like most denizens of the internet these days, read…
PwC Tells Remote Tax Staff to Get Their Butts Into the Office
So much for PwC letting all their people work remotely forever. Remember when that got headlines five years ago? See: PwC Just Announced That You Never Have To Go Back…
KPMG Plans to Hand Routine Testing Off to AI
Did you happen to see this WSJ article from the other day? In "In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is Shrinking Fast," we're given a look into…
Layoff Watch ’26: RSM Trims Down in Audit
Seeing a couple Reddit posts about a wave of "Business Update" meetings being forced on people's calendars at RSM yesterday. As we all know, "business update" is code for "you're…
SEC Says “What If We Just… Didn’t” on Quarterly Reporting
So that thing that started with a Trump shower thought last fall and that WSJ said would be happening imminently is, in fact, now happening. Catch yourself up on earlier…
Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Claude Starts a Turf War With Consulting; An Article About How Much Big 4 Sucks | 5.4.26
Good morning! Not a fan of Star Wars so I won't be making any May 4th puns today, sorry. In this news briefAnthropic Aggressively Elbows In on Consulting's TurfThat's a…
Friday Footnotes: Maybe Deloitte Doesn’t Need Employee Trust and Retention; Minnesota Wants to Tax Fraud at 100 Percent | 5.1.26
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: KPMG Cuts 4% From Consulting
We've got another RIF at KPMG, a consulting cull that went down yesterday (that's Wednesday the 29th for those of you reading this a week from now). Let's start with…
KPMG Plans to Hand Routine Testing Off to AI
Did you happen to see this WSJ article from the other day? In "In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is Shrinking Fast," we're given a look into…
AI Will Be EY Auditors’ New BFF, According to EY
While staff in tax at EY US will soon be spending more time with their flesh-based colleagues due to a return-to-office mandate that requires them in the office for an…
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…
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
Layoff Watch ’26: RSM Trims Down in Audit
As noted by the national taxpayer advocate, a court's ruling that a taxpayer’s refund claim filing deadline was automatically extended due to the COVID-19 disaster declaration could have implications for other taxpayers’ refund claims. Here's why.
Whenever I take a workplace harassment training, I think about the partner at Deloitte who said to the about-to-retire partner at Deloitte, "Look at us, just a bunch of Micks," and the about-to-retire partner looked at the first partner and said, "What the fuck did you just say?"
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…
Review Comments | 08.31.09
• Allen Stanford to undergo heart tests: lawyer – What lengths is this guy willing to go to in order to get released from prison? [Reuters]
• Disney Buys Marvel In $4B Deal – The trickiest thing we foresee is reconciling comics sex with Disney sex. [NPR]
• Least Informative Announcement – Citi isn’t too concerned with telling you what they sold, who they sold it to, for how much, or what they made or lost on the deal. They just thought they would do us all the courtesy of letting us know that something happened. [Floyd Norris/NYT]
• Women, Testosterone, and Finance – “If they discriminate based on testosterone levels, isn’t that the same thing as discriminating based on gender (obvious extreme examples aside…i.e. Vera de Milo types)??” [Accounting Nation]
• AIG’s New CEO Will Do Unspeakable Things To Andrew Cuomo. You Don’t Even Want To Know. [DB]
Handicapping Firm Failure
God bless the speculative and sensationalist British media. They’ve got no problem wondering aloud about whether accounting firms will be able to survive the backlog of lawsuits out there that amount to billions in damages sought by plaintiffs.
More, after the jump
PwC has already pointed out to everyone that they were not the auditors of King Ponzi’s empire but nobody cares because, the bloody money has to come from somewhere to compensate the victims. Plus, accounting firms have deep pockets and are likely to settle when in a tight spot, using insurance coverage. The problem now is that the suits are so big that insurance coverage may not be enough to keep the partners safe.
We’ve mentioned some of the more prominent lawsuits in our firm watch series of posts if you need to get caught up.
Natch, everyone laments about Andersen when the topic of firm failure comes up as it serves as a template of what can happen when a firm gets in serious trouble:
Andersen’s collapse highlighted the fragility of a global accountancy partnership. As soon as the extent of the fraud was made public, Andersen’s international divisions and partners not involved in the scandal detached themselves from the firm, making it impossible for Andersen to survive.
We’re not really sure what the odds of another Andersen sitch are but you can definitely count on firms continuing to get sued when there’s no one left after company failures and frauds. We’d invite our readers who are partners (or have partner-knowledge) to give us an idea what the feeling is in the current secret society re: the liability risk. Bonus points for former Andersenites’ stories.
We invite the rest of you to handicap the field for chances of failure in the comments. Ours, after giving it very little thought, appear in the tag line.
Billion-dollar lawsuit could destroy top accountancy firms [Telegraph]
Today in IRS Employee Chicanery
Yet another example that should cause the IRS to seriously reconsider its employee screening policy, a now-former IRS compliance officer is looking at jail time after he thought it would be okay to swap a bogus audit report for $1,000 and assistance in finding an apartment.
More, after the jump
Web CPA:
[Fernando] Cruz…told the woman he could “fudge” their tax records so they would have less tax liability. Cruz coached the woman on how to answer questions during an upcoming audit appointment…and instructed her to say that she did not have receipts to verify expenses. Cruz also accepted $500 in cash from the woman and was told that he would receive another $500 if he could make their tax liability go away…the woman met with Cruz at his IRS office as planned, and Cruz prepared an IRS income form with the false information she provided. Cruz also mentioned that the woman might assist him in finding an apartment in exchange for his help to the couple on their audit.
Cruz pleaded guilty to accepting a bribe in exchange for preparing a false tax audit report for a taxpayer. He could also probably be found to be so socially awkward that he needs to be banished from society, since asking for a complete stranger’s help in finding an apartment is just plain weird.
Former IRS Employee Pleads Guilty to Accepting a Bribe [Web CPA]
Chrysler Auditor Switcheroo Follow-up (UPDATE)
We’ve confirmed with a Chrysler Spokesperson that the new entity emerging from bankruptcy has appointed Deloitte as the external auditors, a role that KPMG held for the entity that remains in bankruptcy:
More, after the jump
[We] can confirm that, as a new company, Chrysler Group LLC has appointed Deloitte as its external auditors. KPMG had previously served this role for the old Chrysler, which remains in bankruptcy. The new company, Chrysler Group LLC became operational on June 10, 2009.
Basically, as some have speculated, this may be a chance for Deloitte to poach the entire KPMG team, which, we have to admit, might not be a bad idea.
KPMG did not immediately respond to our requests for comment. Deloitte got back to us with no comment.
UPDATE: Chrysler got back to us with some additional information including
• Why the change in auditors – “Chrysler Group LLC is a new company and, as such, the company has decided to appoint Deloitte as its new external auditors.”
• If Deloitte was in the field – “Deloitte has begun initial planning work for the 2009 audit.”
• KPMG’s remaining responsibilities – “We cannot address any services KPMG may be performing for OldCarco (the official name of the company that remains in bankruptcy).”
Nothing too surprising here except for the hilarious awesomeness of “OldCarco”.
Guess the Tab: E&Y Edition
Unfortunately our source didn’t know the final tab on this particular fiesta so we’ll put out for you to speculate.
Possibly a Bacardi bottle on the far left and maybe that’s Glenfiddich, second from the left, so we’re not talking top shelf but it’s also not that garbage that gets served out of the well. Plus, the receipt seems far too long for the number of bottle shown. Leave your best guess in the comments.
Cash and Cash Equivalents, Insolvent State Version
Is your state broke? Suffering from liquidity issues? Desperate to buff up municipal coffers? Worry no more, dear resident, if your state is anything like mine, they’ve got one hell of a plan up their sleeve.
Lots of bright ideas, after the jump
NYT:
With the economy floundering and tax revenues falling, governments and public authorities have tried to patch holes in their tattered budgets by charging new or higher fees for a broad range of services — including taking a civil service exam and operating a nuclear power plant.
The purpose of the many microcharges is to help avoid, or at least limit, broader tax increases. But with escalating fees for things like tanning bed inspections, pistol permits and marriage certificates, daily life can start to seem like a labyrinth of public-sector panhandlers.
There are increased payments required from cradle (birth certificates) to grave (plots in municipal cemeteries); in the workplace (licenses for private investigators, lifeguards and tax preparers) and at leisure spots (entrances to parks and public golf courses).
It doesn’t end there. Municipalities will have to make their pennies up wherever they can – this affects everything from parking meters to licenses (yes, even your precious CPA, little beancounter!), booze to license plates. “Fee-based government” is the new “tax and spend” and you can pretty safely bet that you’re going to get it squeezed out of you everywhere you turn. States argue that the policy allows them to make up vulgar budget shortfalls in the least offensive way possible, applying increased fees to specific services instead of vague, across-the-board tax increases.
We are used to this when it comes to the CPA exam as NASBA has increased fees every August as far back as I can remember (thankfully a beer is now $96 in California so my short term memory has increased as I’ve cut out discretionary spending and at the same time unintentionally solved my drinking problem that came as a result of my accounting job) and 2009 is no exception. It cost $809.71 in 2008 and is now $822.73. Putting this into perspective, just Audit would have cost you $159.25 in 2006. By 2008, it was up to $226.28 – keeping in mind that this is only the fee paid to NASBA and does not include re-exam fees and/or applicable State Board of Accountancy/Prometric fees.
Ouch. Don’t expect this to get better any time soon.
Recruiting Season Kicks Off
Classes started for a lot of colleges in the past week and it sounds like some firms are already out there spreading their propoganda good word. At least according to one account, the early events have been well attended which fits with the notion that enrollment has remained high.
So if you’re a student, let us know what your early recruiting events have been like and if you’re a recruiter for a firm or a professional working these glad-handing fests, let us know your early impressions about next year’s newbies and interns.
PwC Basically Says That the Lehman Brothers Bankruptcy is a Trainwreck
If you find yourself out of work but are willing to endure several sleepless nights across the pond, PwC in the UK may need some help with the administration of Lehman Brothers.
More, after the jump
Reuters, via NYT:
PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which is working with over 100 companies, mostly in the UK but also in continental Europe, said on Sunday: “We’re dealing with a large number of entities and therefore the claims could be as much as $100 billion.
“These claims are exceptionally complex and we anticipate a large amount of further work in dealing with (them).”
A significant amount of the claims arose as a result of guarantees issued by the parent company to its subsidiaries, the administrator said.
PwC said it had worked with administrators in other affiliates to understand Lehman’s accounting system so a standard approach to the reconciliation of inter company balances could be agreed.
“If this can be achieved then it should reduce the likelihood of affiliates suing each other in pursuit of amounts that are owed between the different Lehman estates,” it added.
Not sure what kind of expectations Lehman’s creditors have but we’d encourage a cynical outlook.
Lehman Claims Could Reach $100 Billion: PwC [Reuters via NYT]
Lehman Bankruptcy Won’t Be Pretty [JDA]
Labor Day: Long Weekend or Just a Long Weekend?
As the psychological end of summer approaches, there’s an issue out there that we find confusing. We heard a rumor that KPMG is requiring its remaining faithful to take Friday as PTO, even though some offices have kindly asked for their employees’ to squeeze in some extra time for the month of September.
On the one hand we’re sure lots of you don’t have to be asked twice to take an extra day of PTO. However, this is still America, which means if you’re inclined to spend an extra eight hours in your massive gray cubicle, to comply with your office’s request of 50 hour weeks, you’re allowed to do so.
The risk the firms run here is that by extending a typical three day bender into a fourth, this will allow you additional time to seriously consider saying, “To hell with this,” and fulfilling your lifelong dream of becoming a freak show performer.
So discuss in the comments the upcoming weekend and whether your firm is putting the gun to your head (and if you’re cool with that) to start the festivities early or if you’re expecting a long romantic weekend with your spreadsheets.
Preliminary Analytics | 08.31.09
• Frank Said to Back Broader Fed Audits – “In an interview Friday, Mr. Paul said Mr. Frank agreed to allow a vote on the bill and to work on language that would allow the Government Accountability Office, the investigative arm of Congress, to audit the Fed’s monetary-policy operations.” [WSJ]
• Fed makes $14bn profit on crisis loans – In case anyone needed another reason to audit the Fed. [FT]
• Big Firms Are Quick to Collect, Slow to Pay – “As credit markets remain tight and banks rein in lending, corporations are being forced to squeeze more cash from their day-to-day operations at a time when revenues are slowing and the economy remains weak. ” [WSJ]
• The Savings Rate Has Recovered…if You Ignore the Bottom 99% – Dubious government stats? The horror. [Naked Capitalism]
• Raft of Deals for Failed Banks Puts U.S. on Hook for Billions – “The agency’s total exposure is about six times the amount remaining in its fund that guarantees consumers’ deposits, exposing taxpayers to a big, new risk.” She Bair, rebuttal? [WSJ]
Review Comments | 08.28.09
• Michael Jackson’s Death Ruled a Homicide – Thank the Maker. We’re in need of a circus. [Reuters via NYT]
• MADOFF VICTIMS FIGHT PICARD OVER PROFITS – Yes, because he’s working against you people. [NYP]
• Tech Firms Drowning in Their Options Worthless paper. [CFO]
• FASB Stakes A Claim On Disclosure Of Litigation Contingencies – Let’s just go back to cash basis. Thoughts? [FEI Blog]