Anyone Looking Forward to a Highly Militarized IRS SWAT Team is Going to Be Sorely Disappointed
Because the IRS SWAT team memes your crazy aunt Kathy is spreading on Facebook are getting out of control, the AICPA has stepped forward to clarify: no, there will not be 87,000 armed IRS agents deployed to bang down the doors of American taxpayers. From the Journal of Accountancy: Reaction to increased funding for IRS […]
Being Home During Lockdown Shifted Accountants’ Priorities, Says Lady
Kristy Illuzzi, CPA, CGMA of International Federation of Accountants (IFAC) on why the Great Resignation is affecting the profession so acutely: I think the Great Resignation is interesting in that it has impacted almost every sector of our economy and every profession in some way, and it’s no different in the accounting industry. I think […]
Mental Health Check-in: How’s Everyone Holding Up?
It’s hard to believe it’s been six months since the Journal of Accountancy cover story about one CPA’s struggle with depression. Not because I can’t believe a whole six months have passed (although that’s a thing for sure) but rather because no one could have known how timely that story would be when JofA published […]
Finally, the Key to Turning Baby CPAs Into Rainmakers
After years of intense technical training, many CPAs find it difficult to turn their attention to the new role of cultivating clients and attracting referrals. Firms can put strategies in place that teach up-and-coming talent how to look beyond a compliance mindset and uncover the strategic opportunities that lead to new business. This means giving […]
Journal of Accountancy Just Randomly Mentioning the CGMA in Articles Now
Here's an unremarkable (albeit relevant and timely) article at JofA entitled "Salaries, demand on the rise for U.S. accounting professionals." It has all the good things accountants go for — money, jobs, money, and money. It comes courtesy of Robert Half (Jesus, those guys are busy) and their 2014 salary guide. The post chugs along […]
Guess Which Accounting Firm Took Out The Biggest Ad In the 125th Anniversary Edition Journal of Accountancy
By now, most of you who are AICPA members in good standing have received your special 125th Anniversary edition Journal of Accountancy. As you thumb listlessly through it, no doubt you noticed that certain firms took out large ads while others – true to their benchwarming status among Top 10 firms – took out small, […]
If You Believe the AICPA, Hiring Is Looking Good
Sometimes we get job reports from certain mainstream media outlets that shall remain nameless that look a tad suspect but in the case of this info from the AICPA, I think we can safely rely on the findings.
Here’s the good news via the Journal of Accountancy:
On the demand front, hiring is back on the upswing after decreasing from 2007 to 2008. In 2007, the total number of accounting hires was 36,111. That dropped to 25,488 in 2008 but climbed to 33,321 in 2010. A large portion of that increase was in firms with fewer than 10 CPAs on staff. Firms of that size increased their hiring projections from 11,432 in 2008 to 16,342 in 2010 (see Exhibit 1).
In terms of the types of positions CPA firm new hires were recruited to fill across firms of all sizes, accounting and auditing still commanded a narrow majority at 51%; followed by taxation at 25%; other at 16%; and information technology at 8%.
The accounting and auditing share of new hires was down from 60% in 2007, with the declines coming from firms with 50 or more CPAs. Hiring of new CPA graduates likewise decreased for information technology (down 5 percentage points from 13%). Tax showed a slight increase (2 percentage points) with the strongest gains coming from firms with fewer than 10 CPAs, while the largest growth since 2007 was in the “other” category.
The percentage of overall firms expecting to hire the same or more new accounting graduates than last year also is up—to 89% from 74% when the question was asked in 2008.
Here’s the next obvious question: are we talking about real, created-from-nothing jobs or are we talking about covering massive staff turnover popularized in public accounting by serf-like working conditions and disappointing compensation? Because hiring the same guy in four different firms doesn’t add up the same as hiring four new accounting grads. Duh.
Oh, and something else – where’s 2009? It doesn’t appear in any of the included exhibits, nor is it mentioned in the Journal of Accountancy article even once. The full survey, available from the AICPA’s website, doesn’t specifically mention the exclusion of 2009 in the survey methodology. We aren’t one for conspiracy theories (yeah, right) but it seems suspect that an entire year would just disappear and fail to get a single mention. I mean it was only two years ago.
We’ll dig into the survey results in more detail later, maybe once we track down 2009. Though not specifically mentioned in the above charts, the entire 2009 Trends in the supply of Accounting Graduates and the Demand for Public Accounting Recruits report can be found here.
Doug Shulman Takes It as a Compliment That the IRS Is the ‘Go-to’ Government Agency
If you’re a member of the AICPA the biggest benefit you enjoy is not the prestige, not the certificate that you have mounted on your wall but the Journal of Accountancy that shows up in your mail every month. It’s really solid that your firm shells out good money on an annual basis so you can add new Excel tips to your spreadsheet wizard repertoire.
JofA manages to talk to a number of high profile as well, which you would expect from a behemoth professional journal. Case in point, when we received the latest month’s issue we couldn’t help but get a little giddy seeing Doug “Help me, help you” Shulman. We flipped to the Q&A immediately after seeing his handsome mug on the cover only to find the Commish’s picture at right. It makes us think that he’s channeling Monty Burns, which some of you probably find appropriate.
The Q&A is pretty much what you would expect, touching on the new preparer regulations, “We ran a very open, transparent, public dialogue about this,” to threatening offshore tax scofflaws, “The U.S. government is getting very serious about rooting out offshore tax evasion,” and warning whistleblowers not to expect that money any time soon, “[T]his could take multiple years to get the awards out. But I’m a big fan of the program.”
A couple of more interesting statements, include how excited Dougie is that all the assignments that other government agencies don’t want, get dumped on the service, “it’s…a big compliment that we’re seen as a ‘go-to’ agency in government.”
That being said, this particular interview was certainly conducted prior to the passage of the healthcare reform bill and no mention of the IRS’ role in enforcement (or lack thereof) was brought up. Maybe if the JofA had seen the Bill O’Reilly/Anthony Weiner throwndown it would have been a stop the presses moment.
The only other thing worth noting is that pizza parlors around the country might want to tighten up the ship in the coming months, “We will build features into our technology system so if we see, say, a pizza parlor that says they had $90,000 of sales last year and it shows that they had $85,000 of credit card sales and we know that pizzerias have a lot of cash sales, that will be a red flag. We’ll use it to better target our audits, to see where there’s potential noncompliance, and then we’ll use it to better focus our resources.”
Maybe the Commish is just giving an example of what a red flag is but using this particular example rather than say, a celebrity, seem peculiar. Just leave Di Fara alone, okay?
Tax From the Top: Q&A With IRS Commissioner Doug Shulman [Journal of Accountancy]