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In New AI Guidelines, IRS Politely Suggests You Not Make Up Sources Like Deloitte Did

The IRS sent out a bulletin yesterday and we're going to write about it because for once it's not about tedious tax stuff that our audience doesn't have the patience…

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The Big 4 Model Might Be Cooked

For nearly 17 years now, this website you're reading has been meticulously documenting the accounting profession, Big 4 in particular and often through the lens of younger staff coming through…

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Layoff Watch ’26: EY Trims Some Newbies in Audit

Seeing multiple posts about audit Staff 1s getting let go from EY this week, it's unclear how many are affected and if other service lines should brace for impact as…

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Deloitte Made the Creepy Digital Librarian From The Time Machine But For Golf

Have you seen the 2002 movie The Time Machine? If you haven't then the reference in the headline isn't going to make a lick of sense. Lucky for you YouTube…

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KPMG Redefines Excellence in the Age of AI By Using AI to Pump Out Dubious Citations in This Now-Removed Report

GPTZero, the folks who brought you this glorious takedown of an EY Canada report stuffed with completely made up sources, are back at it again and this time they've caught…

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News

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Friday Footnotes: Amateur and Non-Independent Forensic Accounting Not Appreciated By Local Parks Department; KPMG Getting Dogged | 6.26.26

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…

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Top 20 Firm Eide Bailly Gets on the Private Equity Train

The private equity train may have slowed a bit in accounting but it's still choo-chooing along with another big deal coming on the heels of Crowe's $3 billion deal with…

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Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC Gave Us a Reason to Mention GTA 6; The Bad KPMG Anecdotes Are Adding Up | 6.22.26

Hey, here we are again at Monday. Guess we should get to it. In this news briefA Less Thrilling Transfer Pricing StoryThe Ghost of Tax Preparer Fraud PastWho Doesn't Want…

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Friday Footnotes: Deloitte UK Asks Nearly 200 Auditors to Please F Off; AI Chatbots Favored Over Actual Accountants | 6.19.26

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…

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EY building exterior with scissors overlay

Layoff Watch ’26: EY Trims Some Newbies in Audit

Seeing multiple posts about audit Staff 1s getting let go from EY this week, it's unclear how many are affected and if other service lines should brace for impact as…

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Technology

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Overworked robot sitting at a desk

In New AI Guidelines, IRS Politely Suggests You Not Make Up Sources Like Deloitte Did

The IRS sent out a bulletin yesterday and we're going to write about it because for once it's not about tedious tax stuff that our audience doesn't have the patience…

Read More
golf ball at hole, golf green

Deloitte Made the Creepy Digital Librarian From The Time Machine But For Golf

Have you seen the 2002 movie The Time Machine? If you haven't then the reference in the headline isn't going to make a lick of sense. Lucky for you YouTube…

Read More
error on a phone screen

KPMG Redefines Excellence in the Age of AI By Using AI to Pump Out Dubious Citations in This Now-Removed Report

GPTZero, the folks who brought you this glorious takedown of an EY Canada report stuffed with completely made up sources, are back at it again and this time they've caught…

Read More
woman and cat with laptop

KPMGers Are Maliciously Complying With The Firm’s AI Usage Requirements By Generating Fluff

On May 4, Business Insider published an article about KPMG's new AI dashboard. They've been publishing several articles in recent weeks about KPMG's AI initiatives actually, like the tax simulation…

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Starbucks inside

Starbucks Kills Off Its Automated Counting AI Tool After Just 9 Months Because It Sucked at Counting Beans

While people outside of the accounting profession continue to smugly insist that accountants will be out of work in 12 months 18 months two years five years any day now…

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Practice Management

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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…

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remote accountants to hire

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…

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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…

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tax hiring season

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…

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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…

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Quick Reads

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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,…

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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…

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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…

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an office trash can with paper

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…

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screenshot of an IRS system outage warning

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…

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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…

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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,…

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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,…

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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…

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Lock up the Booze, E&Y Interns in Orlando

We just picked up one of the few Tweets that has made it through today:
Picture 4.jpg
This type of event will likely lead to many things including international hookups, late night skinny dipping (and probably urinating) in the pool, and widespread drunkenness of epic proportions.
If you’re down in Orlando this weekend for this three day extravaganza, send us your stories of debauchery to tips@goingconcern.com. According to the website, the festivities are at Disney World, so don’t embarass your firm yourself and try to keep the nudity out of the view of children.
International Intern Leadership Conference [EY.com]

Rumor of the Day: All Big 4 Firms Freezing and/or Cutting Pay?

We’ve heard some rumors that all the firms are giving serious consideration to freezing pay this year and possibly pay cuts in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions. This would follow the Radio Station rumors that we mentioned last week.
Top performers and promotees, determined by God knows how, may be getting bumps but we haven’t heard anything definite. If you’ve got some deets or just more rumors, shoot us an email to tips@goingconcern.com.

Firm Watch: Deloitte

DTa.jpgThe last of the Big 4 Horsemen of the Bean Counter Apocalypse is Big D-period. Catch up on the rest of the usual suspects: Radio Station, P. Dubya, and E&Y to get the gist of this little exercise.
Deloitte’s got a pretty similar list as the rest of the firms but with a couple twists so let’s get down to brass tacks:
Get the details, after the jump


Losing Clients – We’ve heard that firms are low-balling their RFP’s so it’s no surprise that some clients are switching but Deloitte seems to have had worse luck than others. UAL, Heelys (for the kids), Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, and Washington Mutual have all disappeared from D-period.
Lawsuits – Believe it or not, the Parmalat debacle is not a done deal, as some lawsuits against the US and Internationalfirms are still out there as a judge ruled in January that the agent/agency issue was worth a closer look.
Madoff Exposure – All week we’ve been referring you to the list of Feeder Fund Lawsuits over at D&O Diary. In a small water into wine moment, Deloitte does not appear on the list once. Nice bullet dodge Big D.
Overtime Lawsuits in California – Deloitte is listed as the defendant in three of the cases.
Layoffs, performance reviews, etc. – So, as we saw yesterday, this is where Deloitte’s sitch gets, pret-tay, pret-tay, pret-tay ugly. Layoffs were reported in both December and March nationwide. The performance stealth cuts are common here too and more may occur. All this is going on while an out-going CEO is talking to the press about how bad things have been in the last five years and the UK CEO is having Scrooge McDuck pool parties.
Miscellaneous – The worst drug dealers in the world used to work for Big D.
So that does it for Deloitte, God bless ’em. And that does it for the Final Big 4. We’ll throw in GT and BDO in for good measure but if you want to throw some more jabs at the big boys, email us at tips@goingconcern.com. You’ve got until around high noon tomorrow before we’ll start coming up with our completely unfair and unscientific ranking.

Your New Career: Actor

Are you a young bean counter totally apathetic towards your career choice? Do you wake up thinking that if you have to look at spreadsheets for one more day you might just go mental on everyone in your office?
Well, the gods are shining on you today:
See the role, after the jump

Casting for the short thriller “A Paper Trail”
A group of friends finds a large sum of money hidden away in the woods. Unfortunately the owners come looking for what is theirs.
Casting for the male and female leads:
Matt – A competent accountant who decides that the best course of action will be to keep the money.

Stacey – She is nervous and has her reservations about taking the money.
Send an email with your headshot and resume. We will be casting on Sunday, August 9th, from 12-5 @ The Rosendale Youth Center!

Sorry lady number crunchers, unless you’re capable of summoning your inner-Hillary Swank, this one is for the gents.
So dudes, basically no acting involved. Show up, looking however you normally look and act how you normally act: Competent. Best course of action is to keep the money. Completely natch.
Not a thespian? Then tell us what you’d rather be doing than pulling sample selections or researching 1031 exchanges. SHUDDER. Anything has gotta beat the hell out of what you’re working on right this second.
Casting for a Short Thriller film (Rosendale) [Craigslist.org]

Preliminary Analytics | 08.06.09

Businesses Learn To Make Do With Fewer Workers – Sound familiar to anyone? [NPR]
Judge raps $33m bank bonus fine – “A US judge has refused to approve a $33m (£19m) fine that Bank of America agreed to pay to settle charges that it misled investors about bonuses.” [BBC]
SEC Asks to Self Fund to Allow for Better Enforcement – OH, that was the problem. [naked capitalsm]
AIG Breakup Is Fee Bonanza – Bankers, lawyers, accountants. Everybody’s happy. Oh wait. Taxpayers. [WSJ]
Madoff Victims Said to Start Getting Tax Refunds – Anger will only subside briefly. [DealBook]

Review Comments | 08.05.09

stanford10.jpgWho Will Defend R. Allen Stanford? – There’s always…hmmm, anyone? [DealBook]
Judge Orders Sale of Creation Science Theme Park to Pay Evangelist’s Tax Debts Agnostic judge probably. [TaxProf Blog]
The alleged grifter who duped corporate giants – The fairer sex, taking it to the man. [Fortune]
A Battle of Goliaths: Michael Bloomberg and His Gun Control Group Take on the NRA – At least this is a fair match. [Washington Post]
Huron’s ex-CEO cashed out $8.3 million since last July But it wasn’t about the money. [Greg Burns/Chicago Tribune]
IRS Commissioner Joins alliantgroup [Press Release]
Bernard Madoff and the Solo Auditor Red Flag [Ross D. Fuerman]
Going Concern is now on Facebook! Join the group.

Grant Thornton Spreads Out the Liability, Admits Nineteen New Partners

grant-thornton-logo-with-rose.jpgNineteen individuals have proven their passion for the business of accounting (as well as an intrepid attitude towards liability) as G to the T admitted new partners and directors effective August 1.
The press release is your standard trite lexicon but we can’t help but notice GT taking the opportunity to slip in their favorite moniker, “Global 6 accounting organization” or a derivative of such. GT is bound and determined to get this to catch fire even though no one outside of the GT press team has probably uttered the phrase.
Grant Thornton LLP admits 19 new partners and principals to the firm [Press Release]

IASB Chairman Would Like the SEC to Get With It

TOLD YOU.jpgSir David Tweedie, IASB Chairman, would sure appreciate it if the SEC would make up its damn mind about whether or not to commit to converging U.S. GAAP with IFRS. He spoke at the American Association of Accountants (AAA) annual meeting in New York yesterday and figured he might as well call out the SEC, who seems to be stonewalling him. He’s giving them until 2011 to figure it out.
Tweedie has been making like some kind of financial reporting missionary, going all around the world preaching the good word of IFRS. He’s said he’ll have 150 believers by 2011. But everywhere he goes, all anyone can talk about is whether the U.S. is converted yet.
More, after the jump

“That is a question I am asked all around the world. The convergence program is designed to reduce the cost of transition. FASB is riding two horses: US GAAP and trying to converge at the same time, but so are we.”…If you’re going to have global standards, we need the US, but it can’t go on indefinitely,” he said

We’re impressed that the knighted bean counter is putting his foot down here. We figured the SEC and the FASB could just continue doing whatever it is they do and Tweedie would just keeping asking them about it every month or so like they owed him fifty bucks.
Tweedie Warns of 2011 Deadline for IFRS Choice [Web CPA via Accountancy Age]

Moss Adams Gives Venture Bank the ‘It’s Not You, It’s Me’ Routine

GeorgeCostanza_art_200v_20090306003944.jpgThings that could be perceived as bad:
Your auditor is putting a going concern paragraph in your audit opinion.
You agree with your auditors when they tell you that you have a material weakness in internal controls.
It’s August 5th and you haven’t filed your 10-K..
Along with everything listed above, Venture Financial Group entered into an agreement with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that lists a bunch of stuff that Venture can’t do. Plus they get to report to Fed-SanFran every quarter how they’re doing such a good job at not doing anything they’re not supposed to.
More, after the jump


Apparently all this was more excitement than Moss Adams could stand because they’re kicking Venture to the curb after the 2008 agreements are finished. The firm broke the news to Venture on July 24th and the SEC got the filing just last week.
Accounting firms being the dumper and not the dumpee is usually a good sign of damaged goods. Best of luck to Venture Bank in its quest to find new auditors.
Firm bows out of Venture audit [The News Tribune via Jr. Deputy Accountant]

Firm Watch: KPMG

KPMG_chair.jpgSo after dissecting opining on sliming P. Dubs and E&Y, we’re moving on to KPMG in round three. We’ll dispense with the pleasantries and get right to the list:
New Century Lawsuit – This is the ball buster for KPMG. A $1 billion lawsuit filed back in April that alleges “grossly negligent audits”. This tale also includes a smoking gun quote from an email sent from New Century engagement partner to a specialist, “As far as I am concerned, we are done. The client thinks we are done. All we are going to do is piss everybody off.” We’re not sure if it’s possible to take that out of context.
Check out the rest of the Radio Station’s list, after the jump


Madoff Exposure – Per D&O Diary, the Radio Station is named as a defendant in at least ten lawsuits as a result of auditing the Madoff feeder funds.
Overtime Lawsuits – Listed as a defendant in five lawuits.
Layoffs, Pay Freezes, etc. – Allegedly, the word that pay was being frozen was slowly leaked from the top on down. Layoffs have been pretty steady for the last twelve months including rounds in November and March in the audit and advisory practices. In addition, the ubiquitous trend of performance rating cuts is in full effect, and we just learned that by the this time last year, audit interns had heard yay or nay on receiving a full time offer. That probably makes for some nervous intoxicated co-eds.
Miscellaneous – Phil Mickelson, the Radio Station’s walking billboard, was a bridesmaid at the U.S. Open for a third fourth fifth time.
Done-zo. Anything else you want to see tacked on? Drop us the dirt at tips@goingconcern.com and we’ll get it in for the final tab.

Try to Compose Yourselves After Reading This Post

Being accountants, we don’t have too may rock stars among us. Oh sure, maybe Tim Flynn is the cock of the walk at the Radio Station or Barry Salzberg can’t walk around Big D’s office without associates crawling all over each other to touch his clothes but these men pale in comparison to the immortal we are about to present to you.
If you saw this man on the street, his swagger would make your knees week, his impeccable attire would cause you to stare uncontrollably and the sound of his voice might overcome you with so much nervous excitement that you might projectile vomit all over him.
Find out who this man-god is, after the jump


We present you with this:
Tim2.png
Now we realize that the mere thought of Tim Gearty and Bob Herz on a cruise at the same time is probably more than most of you can handle but we had to share with you that the oracle of Becker Review was on Twitter bestowing encouragement and wisdom. All of you out there working to dominate the CPA exam can now rest easy that Tim will always be available in the Twitterverse.
You’re welcome.