We feel compelled to remind everyone that there is exactly one week to go until the corporate tax filing deadline of September 15th. By now, with seven days to go, most of you working in tax compliance have probably had one of the following experiences:
• A nervous breakdown
• MSG overdose
• Showered using the bathroom sink at the office
Regardless of your sitch, we’re here to get you to the finish line, even if the layoff rumors are still lurking. Discuss how things look down the stretch and drop us anything you hear regarding potential layoffs at your firm after the deadline.
EY Is Giving Audit Interns 8 to 12 Months to Prove They’re Useful
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Sandy Torchia is Out, Jason LaRue is in as Vice Chair of Talent & Culture at KPMG
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The PCAOB Won’t Be Wagging Their Disappointed Finger at Big 4 Firms This Year
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Firms (and Some Guy Obsessed With China) Have Weighed in on the PCAOB Turning an Eye to AI
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PwC CEO Said He’s Cool With It If His Kids Want to Go Into Consulting
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The IRS is Looking For a Few Good Special Agents
When you were little did you ever wish you could grow up to be a super cool agent? If you missed the chance to be recruited by the CIA at…
Sandy Torchia is Out, Jason LaRue is in as Vice Chair of Talent & Culture at KPMG
Announced yesterday via press release, KPMG has picked Jason LaRue as its next Vice Chair of Talent & Culture. He replaces Sandy Torchia, who will be riding off into the…
Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: No More Traditional Audit Internships at EY; Guy Has Some Choice Words For Big 4 | 8.17.26
Hey you, you're finally awake. We're not going to Helgen, we're reading accounting news. In this news briefBig Government Payday For EY and KPMGEY Burns Down the Old Intern-to-Associate PipelineOh…
Friday Footnotes: IT Manager at Stole 423 Deloitte Laptops to Fund His Stock Trading Addiction; AI Agents at EY to Get Their Own Executive Manager | 8.14.26
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…
The IRS’s Drug-Free Workforce Plan Tested Positive For Low Effort
While most people who care about this kind of stuff were focused on Treasury announcing that FinCEN would permanently remove the requirement for US companies to report beneficial ownership information…
Firms (and Some Guy Obsessed With China) Have Weighed in on the PCAOB Turning an Eye to AI
The comment period for PCAOB Release No. 2026-005 Request for Public Comment on PCAOB Standard Setting has closed and when all was said and done, it racked up an unremarkable…
Audit Leaders Currently in the “Throw AI at the Wall and See What Sticks” Phase
Gartner has released some numbers on AI usage they harvested from audit professionals and the headline figure shouldn't surprise anyone: only 7% of those surveyed report they aren't using AI…
EY’s Latest Data Breach Comes With a Fun New Game: Guess the Client (UPDATE)
Ed. note: This article was originally published on July 23, 2026. It was updated on July 30, 2026. Just as EY was moving on from the 2023 MOVEit data breach…
Big 4 Firm With AI Quotas Unironically Explains Why AI Quotas Are Such a Terrible Idea in Latest Survey
KPMG has released its AI Quarterly Pulse Survey for Q2 2026 and we're gonna have to be real with you, it's all over the place. Not the survey itself, just…
Beware This Hot New Scam: LinkedIn Job Hunt Takes a Sharp Detour Into Attempted Bank Emptying
Saw this post on r/accounting and while I know some of you feel a certain type of way about using Reddit for "content" it felt important to pass along to…
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The PCAOB Won’t Be Wagging Their Disappointed Finger at Big 4 Firms This Year
Via @SCMPNews: Ex-Deloitte IT manager remanded for stealing 423 laptops to fund stock trading
"Ho said he had lost all illegal proceeds through unsuccessful stock trading and remained in debt."
Here Are Tax and Audit Salaries at Top 25, Top 300, and Regional Firms
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Friendly Reminder Not to Work Yourself to Death For This Profession
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Accounting Firm Abruptly Nopes Out of Tax Season Early (UPDATE)
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This Deloitte Office Has Eliminated Trash Cans at Desks to Make Staff Get Up Off Their Asses
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The IRS Decided to Troll Tax Pros For 10/15
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Top Remote Accounting Freelancers: February 3, 2024
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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…
PwC Isn’t Starving
Since flat is the new up or whatever the hell people are saying these days, we’ll go so far to say that PwC continues to kick ass in the UK. Their revenue increased 0.5%, to to £2.25 billion, for the latest fiscal year. Advisory revenues managed to drag the audit and tax business out of the negative as the advisory revenue increased 5% while audit and tax dropped 1% and 4%.
BFD. Standard boilerplate statements accompany these numbers. Tough economy. Challenges. Hard work. Whatever. Partners still seem to be doing ok, as per partner profit was £777,000, although that’s down 3%, according to Accountancy Age.
More, after the jump
Fine but what we’ll kindly remind you of is that the firms in the U.S. don’t have to issue these fancy-schmancy annual reports with all the gory details. If they exist, we’ve never seen one.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the U.S. firms were required to put out thousands of copies of reports with plenty of pictures of happy employees, oh, and squeeze in some financial statements? One more explanation from Dr. Phil or Jimmy Turley about the awesome job you’re all doing wouldn’t hurt either.
Maybe you get enough of that already but isn’t knowing how much potential liability the firm has relevant to everyone that is stakeholder in the firm? Or what is being spent on magic 8 balls? The Brits don’t seem to have any problem putting out there. Just a thought.
PWC_Annual report 2009.pdf
Wanted: Auditor for a Failing Bank (And a Buyer Too)
In another case of an auditor giving a Titantic-esque bank the ‘It’s not you, it’s me’ routine, E&Y resigned as the auditor of Corus Bankshares, Inc., in a filing late last Friday.
This one really had no chance. After the Chief Accounting Officer resigned after five months on the job, family shareholders continuing to dump their shares, and filing their Q late, you can’t really expect Ernie to stick around.
E&Y had given the going concern paragraph kiss of death on Corus’s audit opinion earlier in the year and according to the last amended quarterly filing, Corus had over $7 billion in assets but negative equity. So, nature seems to be taking its course. Chalk it up, She Bair.
Ernst & Young resigns as Corus’ accounting firm [Chicago Tribune]
In a Pinch, Deloitte Lets Anyone Sign Off on Audit Reports
Audit partners are busy people. Regrettably, things get overlooked from time to time. Birthdays. Anniversaries. Pants. There’s just too much to think about sometimes.
One thing that you wouldn’t expect an audit partner to forget is to sign an audit report. Sadly, it appears that this crucial piece of the engagement sneaks by too:
More, after the jump
Deloitte has agreed to pay a £10,000 fine after allowing three members of staff to sign audit reports who were not designated as “responsible individuals”, contrary to audit regulations. Between March 2003 and November 2007 the three employees signed 95 audit reports.
Personally, we’re hoping that interns signed off on these because that would amount to a level of irresponsibility of the utmost hilarity. Speculation aside, Deloitte took this matter very seriously:
“Deloitte prides itself on its rigorous quality procedures and is disappointed that the individuals concerned failed to comply with the explicit policy that only those authorised to sign audit opinions may do so. None of the individuals concerned now work for Deloitte and the firm has implemented further improvements to its processes and controls.”
Rigorous quality procedures that let 95 audit reports sneak by? Short of the partner being on their deathbed, what could have come up that would make it a good idea to have someone else sign the reports? As for “rigorous quality procedures”, these must be on a sliding scale dependent on the number of pints that everyone has at lunch.
Deloitte fined £10,000 over mis-signed audits [Accountancy Age]
WORST. DAY. EVER.
The first post-holiday workday is tough. We’re pretty sure most of you are to the point of seriously considering packing it up because the melancholy is too much for you. For those of you that aren’t using a cocktail of illegal prescriptions to get you through this day, get caught up on some stuff you may have missed last week. It will help you make it to lunch at least.
• Deloitte Tops Business Week’s “Top Place to Launch a Career”. E&Y, PwC, KPMG round out the top four. GT landed at 51. Highest three year retention rate for these five was 56%.
• E&Y bans Pandora, seemingly to save on bandwidth. It’s still worth bitching about.
• Nearly half of you didn’t work this holiday weekend which means half of you did work (12% worked all weekend). Of course, lots of you probably didn’t get asked to take mandatory PTO.
• Surprisingly, bitterness is rampant.
• RSM McGladrey seems to have a good understanding of why men are interested in golf.
Feel better people, it’s a short week (for some).
Preliminary Analytics | 09.08.09
• Study: 2 out of 5 working-age Californians jobless – That sorta seems not good. [AP via SF Chronicle]
• Volunteer 5-0: Civilian Patrols Grow As Recession Puts Citizens on Guard – “After parking her truck in this beachside town in July, local resident Pamela Miller says she was confronted by a man wearing a neon-lemon “Parking Enforcement” T-shirt. He accused her of parking illegally, called her “retarded,” and, after she refused to move her truck, bumped her legs with his Ford Crown Victoria, she later told town officials.” [WSJ]
• Closely Watched Buffett Recalculating His Bets – Not that you’re going to do anything about it. [NYT]
• Deadline for $24m Leibovitz loan – Due today. If this somehow gets pulled off, can any of you help this woman? [BBC]
• Cadbury vows to fight Kraft offer – Because chocolate eggs and manufactured cheese don’t belong together. [FT]
• France to oppose Google book scheme – Your back-up career plan to scan the likes of Atlas Shrugged and the Harry Potter series may be put on hold. [FT]
• Swiss topple U.S. as most competitive economy: WEF – Obviously not taking the whole ‘End of Swiss Banking as we know it’ very well. [Reuters]
Review Comments | 09.04.09
• H&R Block will convert 500 company offices to franchises – Sort of a Tax Prep McDonalds? [DBJ]
• IFRS Adoption in the US: One Year Later – No rush. [JDA]
• #48 Free Wi-Fi [Stuff Accountants Like]
• Lamest Accountant Video “Winners” – Shout out from Paul Caron on his blog. Thanks Paul! [TaxProf Blog]
That’s it for us today and we’re off on Monday. Have a great holiday weekend and try not to spend it working.
E&Y is Not One for Music Appreciation
We just received word that Pandora is blocked for Uncle Ernie’s troops. We’re thinking if BW had got ahold of this news, E&Y would have dropped out of at least the top five.
We thinks this is a strange way to wish everyone a nice holiday weekend but we understand that everyone shows love differently. Anyone else out there now working in eerie 2001-esque silence? Confirm for us or discuss in the comments.
Charlie Rangel Needs Your Help
For those of you that don’t concern yourselves with civics nonetoomuch, Chuck is the chair of the House Ways and Means Committee. Ways and Means writes the tax laws for this fair land of ours. Get it?
Anyhoo, Rangs has a bit of a problem. People are shouting from the rooftops that this guy has to go. Why? A small matter of forgetting to list some assets on his disclosure forms.
Minor omissions, after the jump
Web CPA:
…in the Washington Post today decrying some of the newest revelations from last week, including a Merrill Lynch account valued between $250,000 and $500,000, tens of thousands in municipal bonds, and between $30,000 and $100,000 in rent from a Harlem brownstone that he owns, all of which he failed to list on his congressional disclosure forms from 2002 to 2006.
And if you remember:
This comes on top of the news last year about the four rent-stabilized apartments he rented at below-market rents, his use of government stationery to raise money for a pet project, his failure to report income from his sale of a Florida condo, and his failure to pay taxes on rental income from another home in the Dominican Republic.
According to the WaPo piece, Rangs’s net worth doubled-ish, “from between $516,015 and $1,316,000 to between $1,028,024 and $2,495,000”.
Yeah, so, that’s kind of a big change. We’re thinking that Chuck is way too busy being a tax wonk to track all this stuff. Or maybe he’s just too tired. Either way, it’s way easier to forget about four rent-controlled apartments than you think.
Rangel Under Pressure to Step Down [Web CPA Debits & Credits]
Deloitte is Handing Out Giant Foam Fingers Today
BusinessWeek’s “Best Places to Launch a Career” hits the newsstands today and Deloitte stuffed the ballot box best.
E&Y is the first loser, PwC gets the bronze and KPMG jumped one spot to #4, up from #5 last year. Grant Thornton dropped in at #51.
A few stats that probably help Deloitte land on top include:
• Average pay range being $5k higher than all the other firms
• Highest average signing bonus and 90% of new hires received them
• Highest three year retention rate of 56%
• Lowest drop in entry level hiring
Regardless of who comes out on top in this list, all the firms will be hyping their inclusion while on campus this fall.
We’ll revisit this next week when more of you are actually at work, not hungover, or haven’t already left.
For the rest of you, feel free to discuss the list in the comments, as we’re sure there are opinions out there on this.
Best Places to Launch a Career [BusinessWeek]
Preliminary Analytics | 09.04.09
• Stanford’s Money-Losers, Unlike Madoff’s, Get No Help From SIPC – Sucks. [Bloomberg]
• Ex-SEC Lawyer: Madoff Report Misses Point – “Genevievette Walker-Lightfoot told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday the SEC inspector general should have focused more of his attention on how supervisors, rather than the staff examiners and investigators, handled the agency’s many stillborn probes of Mr. Madoff.” Supervisors? Responsibility? Get out. [WSJ]
• Zimbabwe to get $500m IMF loans – Seems silly that these are called loans. [BBC]
• U.S. Job Losses Increased in August, Unemployment Rose to 9.7% – And the spin is that this good news. [Bloomberg]
• Congress to probe SEC’s lapse on Madoff – Because this is a perfect opportunity for members of Congress to talk about how smart they are and how stupid the SEC is. We haven’t had enough of these anyway. [Reuters]
Review Comments | 09.03.09
• Madoff ‘Astonished’ SEC Failed to Act After Interview – And the guy must tell a helluva yarn. [Bloomberg]
• Yahoo accounting chief searching for a new job – This could be you. [Accountancy Age]
• Retailers Show Best Results in a Year – “Still, a quick recovery isn’t expected; half of retailers missed projections.” Dead? Alive? WTFK? [WSJ]
• Triumph of Consumerism – Naming children after your favorite brands. Who needs a drink? [Floyd Norris/NYT]