ABC/ESPN college football commentator and former Ohio St. QB, Kirk Herbstreit and his wife donated their house to to the local fire department back in 2004 and the Herbstreits took a $330,000 deduction on their tax return.
In an extremely convenient coincidence, the IRS, for the first time, challenged the practice of donating individuals’ homes for such purposes the same year.
The Herbstreits were audited and paid back taxes and interest of $134,606 but are now suing the IRS to get that money back.
Apparently this is a matter of debate amongst tax wonks out there, some saying the donation is kosh and some saying it isn’t. You Michigan fans obviously hope Herbie gets stuck paying the extra scratch but the real question is whether Lee Corso is getting to the age where he’s burning down houses just because he’s totally gone senile.
Herbstreit ‘fire’ puts focus on IRS dispute [Columbus Dispatch via TaxProf Blog]
Breaking News
- Friday Footnotes: KPMG Staff Not Happy With How Layoffs Were Handled; SEC Says PCAOB Should Toss Independence Rules | 5.8.26
- In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
- Plante Moran Goes South of the Border to Acquire a Firm in Mexico
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…
Friday Footnotes: KPMG Staff Not Happy With How Layoffs Were Handled; SEC Says PCAOB Should Toss Independence Rules | 5.8.26
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…
In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
In the final ruling of a game of semantics that really chapped the AICPA's ass, accounting has not earned a place on the Department of Education list of "professional" degrees.…
Plante Moran Goes South of the Border to Acquire a Firm in Mexico
Shoutout to the person who sent us a link to this, might have slipped past the ol' radar otherwise: Plante Moran bought itself a 500-person Mexican firm called JA Del…
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…
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…
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In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words
The end of the ‘Always Available’ professional
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…
Have You Any Tchotchkes?
In the spirit of Lehman Brothers’ desperation, we’re looking to find out which firm out there has the best chance of financing its next big settlement by virtue of hocking its tchotchkes on eBay.
Because no one can say with absolute certainty which big firm will be the next be rendered extinct (although there are some wagers on it) and thus, none of you working for any firm can be sure when all that schwag you’re accumulating in your cube farm will be worth anything, we thought we would get your submissions so that we can determine which firm has as shot at using auctions in cyberspace as opposed to closing up shop. At first glance, E&Y has nothing on eBay but books, so we’re guessing you guys have the most to prove here.
Check out another schwagtastic example after the jump
Some of you have probably checked out for the day already anyway, so you might as well start putting that camera phone to use and email your submissions to tips@goingconcern.com. Big firms, small firms, we don’t care, we know there are some real finds out there. Just like this beauty:
The best submissions will be posted here and the respective firm’s ability to spend money on frivolous junk will be duly ridiculed.
Audit Opinions May Soon Require Partners’ Names Signed in Blood
The details are still being worked out but another idea being floated around is giving partners the option of signing some opinions in dog feces, when the opinion being signed is in fact, of equivalent value.
Press Release [PCAOB.org]
PwC’s New Investigation Will Invite Terrible Bovine Jokes
PwC has investigators all up in their grills again as another audit is going to be subject to an investigation. This time a sub-prime lender in the UK, Cattles.
Cattles is blaming the whole shitshow on a “breakdown in internal controls”, which has been the standard PR sound bite since before Enron.
The Accountancy and Actuarial Discipline Board (AADB), which regulates the profession, announced the inquiry on Thursday.The board, part of the Financial Reporting Council, said it would examine the conduct of PwC and its individual auditors concerning the preparation of financial statements of Cattles and Welcome Financial Services, its subsidiary, for the year ended December 31 2007 and for the six months ended June 30 2008.
According to one analyst referenced in FT Alphaville, Cattles was letting loans go 240 days delinquent before taking any impairment charges. Apparently PwC was okay with that practice.
And since the AADB is going to be looking at “individual auditor conduct”, what are they going to discover? Besides the partner and manager’s daily fat-cat lunches, obv. We invite your thoughts.
We’ve also got the feeling that this might be the type of engagement where you could include a high-def photo of the manager dry-humping the partner’s leg (wearing a leash and spiked collar, natch) as part of the audit workpapers and it would get signed off on anyway. But, like we said, it’s just a feeling.
UK watchdog opens probe into PwC audit of Cattles [Reuters]
Regulator probes PwC over Cattles audit [FT.com]
Scoping | 07.24.09
• Warren Buffett to Teach Kids About Finance in New Web Cartoon [Bloomberg]
• U.K. GDP Shrinks More Than Expected – “Hopes that the U.K. economy was on the road to recovery after a severe recession received a major blow Friday with official data showing output contracted far more than expected in the second quarter.” [WSJ]
• After Buffett Rebuff, CIT Eyes a Breakup – “Conglomerates Berkshire Hathaway Inc. and Leucadia National Corp. made a bid to buy parts of CIT Group Inc. but were rebuffed by CIT, according to people familiar with the matter, because the price was too low.” [WSJ]
• The Man Who Sank New Jersey [Forbes]
Review Comments | 07.23.09
• Council fired Scott Janke after learning of marriage to porn star Anabela Mota aka Jazella Moore – Last we checked, this was still America and bagging a porn star is in the Declaration of Independence or something [NYDN]
• Dozens Arrested in New Jersey Corruption Probe – “Federal agents swept into New Jersey towns across several counties Thursday morning, charging 44 people, including three mayors and religious leaders, in a federal investigation into public corruption and money laundering.” [WSJ]
• Wall Street Journal Coverage Of Crisis Finally Gets Serious – Cankles. Page one. Yes. [DealBreaker]
• Microsoft revenue misses, shares tumble – In other news, Bill Gates is still rich. [Reuters]
Dear Becker,
A reader was kind enough to share with us a letter they sent to Becker after the software expired and was rendered utterly useless.
Here’s an excerpt:
“The Becker lectures sang to me like a siren’s song. Much like poor Odysseus, I screamed for more. Yet, unlike Odysseus, there was no one there to keep me safe. Tim Gearty became the man that I yearned to be. He is smart, funny, humorous, debonair, more dashing than James Bond and full of more knowledge than Ken Jennings. His style rivals that of GQ’s Man of the Month.”
Check out more love for Tim Gearty and Peter Olinto in the whole letter, after the jump
Don’t Worry, the IRS isn’t Getting Too Soft
In 2004, Congress wanted to lay the smackdown on individuals and entities using tax shelters. In order to scare the beejesus out those thinking about the practice, Congress enacted penalties of $100,000 for individuals and $200,000 for entities per non-disclosure to the IRS.
Problem is, Congress, who often pulls out the jump to conclusions mat, didn’t give the IRS any discretion on enforcement so Mom & Pop (who often don’t have kids) shops were getting hammered with fines they couldn’t pay:
In one case cited by the Small Business Council of America, a husband and wife followed the advice of a consultant and set up a limited liability company and Roth individual retirement accounts. When the IRS challenged the way the transactions were done and found income tax deficiencies of $6,812, it was required to impose a penalty of $1.2 million.
The IRS figured that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t really working the way it was intended and has suspended the collection of fines in order to make the penalties more proportional. Not to worry though, the IRS hasn’t decided whether or not apply the changes retroactively and are only suspending the fines until September 30. They wouldn’t want to tarnish their image as faceless cold-blooded bureaucrats.
IRS Halts Fine Linked To Tax Shelters [WSJ]
We’re Here to Listen to Your CPA Exam Stories Because We’re Solid Like That
Okay, so the purpose of the Elijah Watt Sells post was not to make any of you feel like you’re lesser accountants. We just figured that a good portion of you were hung over today and the story of 10 individuals that got vomit-worthy scores on the CPA exam would get you past the nausea and running to the bathroom to lose that 3 am breakfast.
Now that you’re feeling better, we want to appeal to the rest of you. We want your CPA exam horror stories. Not because we want you to send you running back into the bathroom to sob in the stall. Not because some people we know passed all four sections in one sitting and don’t have any good stories. No, no. We want your stories because we here to listen to you. Besides, they’re probably funny now anyway. Aren’t they? Even if you’re still mortified or pissed off, this your opportunity to vent about it.
Sooooo, did you run out of gas on the way to the exam site? Did your computer crash with 10 minutes to go and you had to re-take the entire exam? We’re you caught cheating?!? Or watching porn? Impress us…
What’s the Move When You Get Fired for Looking at Porn?
Okay number-crunchers, we realize you don’t have the most exciting jobs in the world and sometimes you need a little distraction from Excel. Totally natch. Checking out ESPN, Perez Hilton, Going Concern, Facebook is even encouraged in some circles.
Some of you might even be so bold to see what the latest uploads on YouPorn, XTube, et al. are. Fine. We get that. It’s just your biology running wild right? We totally understand. What we can’t understand is those of you that are blatantly watching two girls, one guy, and a Clydesdale reenact the Kama Sutra in your cubicle.
Of course, when somebody catches you drooling on your keyboard, you have to act completely dumbfounded about how such a graphic display of human and equine love could have ended up on your screen. Somehow your superiors don’t buy your stammered out explanation and you’re out on your ass. Time to find to new job that’s not so uptight anyway, right?
So when you’re sitting in the interview with the potential new boss and he/she asks you why you left your last job, how do you explain your penchant for bestiality in a way that gets you hired? The Journal seems to think honesty is the best policy. Just admit what you did and swear that you’ll never, never, never do it again. We’re not convinced this would go over well but whatevs.
Anyone been fired for “inappropriate” Internet use? Did you cover it up in your next interview with “management and I had differences”? Or did you do your damnedest to find a workplace with a less stringent web use policy? Discuss.
Getting Fired for Inappropriate Web Use [WSJ]
Accountants Should Have the Passion of Glenn Beck
It starts to get interesting around the 54 second mark.
Elijah Watt Sells Award Recipients Make the Rest of Us Want to Puke
The AICPA announced the winners of the Elijah Watt Sells awards yesterday. For you mere mortals, this is an award for the 10 highest cumulative scorers on the CPA exam.
Glancing over the recipients we notice that two Big 4 firms (KPMG and Deloitte) enslave employ five of the recipients. A couple of recipients work in industry and a few more work for smaller, local firms.
This leads to the obvious question of why the hell P. Dubya and E&Y were totally shut out? Grant Thornton and BDO were also blanked. Are the honchos at the Radio Station and Big D giving the worker bees more time to study? Are P. Dubs, E&Y, et al. cutting out the bonuses for passing and thus destroying anyone’s motivation for passing? Are those of you looking to pass already choosing between eating and sleeping (and maybe sex) so studying just isn’t happening? Sells was a Big D founder so maybe the whole thing is rigged? Thoughts anyone?
Oh and congratulate the recipients while you’re at it (without vomiting on them).
AICPA-HONORS-TOP-CPA-EXAMINATION-PERFORMERS.pdf