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What’s the Cutoff Date for Leaving Your Accounting Firm Pre-Busy Season?
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Prometric Disses One CPA Exam Candidate…with a Note
Imagine, if you will, heading to your exam (on a Sunday after a holiday, no less) with just a handful of days left in the final testing window of the year only to find a note stating Prometric is closed. That’s right, closed. It happened to this guy, it could happen to you.
I showed up to take FAR today only to find a note on the door stating that the testing center was closed and giving me a ticket number to reschedule. There are three days left in this testing window and I literally don’t know what to do. I don’t believe I’ve ever been this furious.
Furious is a good word. The problem with a note is that there’s no one there to yell and scream at, leaving you standing there with your FAR notes in your hand questioning your entire plan to become a CPA right then and there.
In any other circumstance, I might snicker and tell this person to get over it, it’s not the end of the world. Like if they showed up to the DMV to renew their license only to find the DMV closed. But in the case of the CPA exam, you’re talking about highly left-brained people spending weeks on end preparing for D-day down to the minute. I know you guys, and I know a lot of you meticulously plan your program with the type of dedication usually reserved for Bridezillas and control freaks. So I could see how a wrench in the plan like this could completely ruin your weeks of careful preparation.
Is it really the end of the world? No. Is it a pretty hardcore jerk move on the part of Prometric? Totally. Unless the testing center is actually on fire (3 alarm minimum, no smoke in the garbage can crap), I can’t see a scenario where this is an okay way to treat CPA exam candidates. Somehow I get the feeling the future truck drivers and nurses who showed up to Prometric that day for their exams handled the news a little better than any future CPAs who read this note.
That was a dick thing to do, Prometric. Seriously.
New York Will Probably Make Old People’s Lives Difficult If They Move to a Low-tax State
There’s a state fiscal crisis after all. Plus, old people have all the money.
[H]igh-tax states do not like to lose high-income emigrants, and will check to make sure that former residents really have moved and are not simply pretending that their winter home is their permanent domicile.
“New York is the most aggressive, probably followed by California,” said Bob Meighan of TurboTax. “New York has a long reach and will go after retirees, in particular.”
And one more thing – keep those receipts!
David Moise [of] WeiserMazar[s], said that there are two forces at work there. “More people are leaving because of the disparity in income and estate taxes, and New York is becoming much more aggressive about examining those people because there’s much more of a need for revenue,” he said.
“The state will come in and ask for ‘clear and convincing evidence’ that a person who keeps his New York ties has really moved to Florida, or elsewhere,” he said. At WeiserMazar[s], clients have had to produce phone bills, credit card statements, apartment measurements and EZ pass receipts to prove that they no longer spend most of their time in New York.
“Robert Herz has had a more interesting career than any accountant deserves.”
We probably don’t need to remind you that today is Bob Herz’s last day at the FASB. It’s a sad day indeed for many that have been addressing their poignant comment letters to Roberto for the last eight years.
How Herz is celebrating his last day up in Norwalk isn’t immediately known but we’re sure it involves making crank calls to the American Bankers Association, Barney Frank’s face on a dartboard and plenty of cake.
Not so surprisingly, there’s not much mention of Bob’s last day out there except for cheeky article over at the Economist that informs us of precisely nothing new but manages to give Bob a backhanded compliment and take a major swipe at every single accountant on Earth:
Robert Herz[…]has had a more interesting career than any accountant deserves. He began his tenure as chairman of America’s Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) in 2002, dealing almost immediately with the fallout from the Enron and WorldCom scandals, which had been abetted by accountants. He was due to end it on October 1st, a sudden departure for undefined personal reasons, after a crisis also partly pinned on the profession.
Accountants “deserve” boring careers? Their choice of a profession automatically merits a long drab livelihood that involves choice of pen color, whether or not to upgrade the 10-key calculator on their desk and auditing Excel formulas? Forget about the rest of us for a minute; there are people who are ashamed to share humanity with Herz. It’s the man’s last day. Way harsh, Economist.
Beancounter there, done that [The Economist]