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Tag: Scare tactics

Pennsylvania’s Tax Amnesty Ad Will Work on the Most Paranoid of Citizens

Pennsylvania’s tax amnesty program started on April 26th and to help taxpayers get off their non-complying asses, this ad has been introduced to motivate Keystone Staters that owe back taxes.

If this doesn’t get Quaker stoners into compliance, nothing will:


Personally, we would liked to have seen the PA Dept of Rev go the route of PICPA and incorporate Snuggies or breathlessly judgmental friends. Although we understand that scare tactics may be effective, a state must be pretty desperate to run this to get taxpayers motivated.

Btw, Philadelphia’s tax amnesty program started today and, so far, is considerably less Orwellian.

Earlier:
Tax Amnesty Programs: A Gold Mine for States or Bad Policy?

The Fortune 100 Best Companies to Work For: PricewaterhouseCoopers #71

Next on the F100BCTWF is PwC. While one of you (yes, we’re speculating that it was an inside job) was irked enough at P Dubs to send bogus checks out to randos, enough of you still love the place to keep it on the list.

PwC – Previously ranked #58. More lemons into lemonade from Fortune, “Accounting firm had minor layoffs (less than 1% of the staff), canceled 2008 year-end holiday parties, and gave two extra paid holidays to employees.”


Other interesting stats per the snapshot:
• New Jobs (1 year): 402
• % Job Growth (1 year): 1%
• % Voluntary Turnover: 8%
• No. of Job Openings at 1/13/2010: 5,097
• Most common salaried job: Manager/Supervisor with average salary of $93,274

Still not sure about that number of job openings but it’s less unbelievable than the 11k that Deloitte had in their snapshot.

We still get the feeling that PwC is the biggest of Big of Brothers what with everyone’s utilization getting extra special attention. We’re not saying utilization can’t be considered but motivating employees with something more useful, like say, tighty whiteys, may be a better approach. Certainly wouldn’t hurt the ranking.

Earlier:
Ernst & Young #44
Plante & Moran #66
Deloitte #70

PwC Is Here to Remind You that Someone Is Watching Your Utilization

scrutiny.jpgEarlier this month, we mentioned a rumor we heard about PwC putting in calls to the rank in and file of one industry group in the tax practice. The caller was just letting them know that their utilization was getting the crook eye by the partner in charge of the group. Not exactly something that would give you the warm and fuzzies Well, now have another report of P. Dubs putting people on notice:

I was recently informed that despite my good performance and strong mid-year reviews, “[my] utilization is being watched.” Its nice to know that this company values cold metrics as opposed to quality, hardworking employees.

Here’s a question: who at PwC thought that notifying employees that their utilization is being scrutinized was a good idea? Especially since Bob Mortiz sent an email to say that it’s unlikely that there will be layoffs in tax and assurance?
One email says “don’t worry, everything is fine” while someone else calls you up in order to scare the bejesus out of you by letting you know that despite your fine performance someone is watching. Can anyone explain the rationale? Our emails to PwC have gone unreturned, so we’re all ears.