Good morning! It’s Monday, June 24, 2024 and this is your news in and around the accounting profession.
The IRS has dropped an Employee Retention Credit update. Update: Hella people were scammin’.
Following a detailed review to protect taxpayers and small businesses, the Internal Revenue Service today announced plans to deny tens of thousands of improper high-risk Employee Retention Credit claims while starting a new round of processing lower-risk claims to help eligible taxpayers.
“The completion of this review provided the IRS with new insight into risky Employee Retention Credit activity and confirmed widespread concerns about a large number of improper claims,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel. “We will now use this information to deny billions of dollars in clearly improper claims and begin additional work to issue payments to help taxpayers without any red flags on their claims.”
“This is one of the most complex credits the IRS has administered, and we continue to ask taxpayers for patience as we unravel this complex process,” Werfel added. “Ultimately, this period will help us protect taxpayers against improper payouts that flooded the system and get checks to those truly eligible.”
The review involved months of digitizing information and analyzing data since last September to assess a group of more than 1 million Employee Retention Credit (ERC) claims representing more than $86 billion filed amid aggressive marketing last year.
During this process, the IRS identified between 10% and 20% of claims fall into what the agency has determined to be the highest-risk group, which show clear signs of being erroneous claims for the pandemic-era credit. Tens of thousands of these will be denied in the weeks ahead. This high-risk group includes filings with warning signals that clearly fall outside the guidelines established by Congress.
Earlier:
- The IRS Has Stopped Processing ERC Claims Because ERC Mills Are Scamming the F*ck Out of Them
- The IRS Is Ready to Strike the Fear of God Into Anyone Who Took ERC
- Tax Preparer Finds Out in the Worst Way Possible That ERC Wasn’t a Free Money Glitch
On June 14, Inc. published a story about ERC lawsuits:
These delays aren’t just hurting companies who sought them out, but also the tax advisory firms that have helped businesses fill out the necessary paperwork to obtain those credits with hopes of getting a piece of the pie as payment.
Such is the case for Jonathan Cardella, who runs Strike Tax, a tax advisory firm in Boise, Idaho. Cardella’s firm–which initially focused on advising businesses on how to tap into R&D tax credits–saw interest spike from businesses wanting to pursue the employee retention tax credit. Within a year, he says, ERCs went from a small portion of the business to a majority of it.
But Cardella claims that he’s missed out on $5 million in revenue he had banked on through uncollected fees, since businesses he advised have yet to receive their credit. As a result, Cardella says he has had to lay off 20 staff members. Cardella himself is unable to sue the IRS, since his business would not have directly received the tax credit. But that’s not stopping him from exploring legal action.
“We’re still hoping the IRS can do the right thing, but we’re sort of in a bit of limbo as we work to develop our first handful of plaintiffs,” he says. “As soon as I get my first client who has the chutzpah to do it, we’re going to file our first case.”
Fortune wrote about some troubles with Deloitte-managed state Medicaid services:
The systems have generated incorrect notices to Medicaid beneficiaries, sent their paperwork to the wrong addresses, and been frozen for hours at a time, according to findings in state audits, allegations and declarations in court documents, and interviews. It can take months to fix problems, according to court documents from a lawsuit in federal court in Tennessee, company documents, and state agencies. Meanwhile, America’s poorest residents pay the price.
Deloitte dominates this important slice of government business: Twenty-five states have awarded it eligibility systems contracts — with 53 million Medicaid enrollees in those states as of April 1, 2023, when the unwinding of pandemic protections began, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Deloitte’s contracts are worth at least $5 billion, according to a KFF Health News review of government contracts, in which Deloitte commits to design, develop, implement, or operate state systems.
State officials work hand in glove with Deloitte behind closed doors to translate policy choices into computer code that forms the backbone of eligibility systems. When things go wrong, it can be difficult to know who’s at fault, according to attorneys, consumer advocates, and union workers. Sometimes it takes a lawsuit to pull back the curtain.
Australian telecom corp Telstra has broken up with EY after 25 years and hooked up with Deloitte. As to why…
Telstra, which revealed thousands of job cuts in late May to help it meet cost-cutting targets, confirmed on Monday it had chosen Deloitte to provide statutory auditing services from July. EY has audited Telstra’s books since 1999.
“After 25 years with EY, testing the market and choosing a new provider reflects our commitment to good governance. It will bring fresh perspectives and insights into our financial reporting processes,” a Telstra spokesman told The Australian Financial Review.
“With the rapid evolution of digital tools in the audit profession, we’ll also be exploring opportunities to improve our process and reduce our costs.”
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Deloitte pitches “cloud-based, digital solutions” for auditing contracts, claiming it can reduce the time companies spend on manual tasks related to auditing.
Forvis Mazars has appointed two new audit and assurance partners in Switzerland. If anyone needs some free karma on r/justfuckmyshitup, have at it.
Raconteur profiled OnlyFans CFO Lee Taylor:
It was the desire to hold “an influential position at an interesting company” that led Lee Taylor to accept a job as chief financial officer at OnlyFans back in 2019.
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Taylor’s path to the C-suite was unconventional. He ditched university at age 17 to pursue an accountancy apprenticeship. “My preference has always been to learn by doing,” he says. This early practical experience provided the opportunity to “learn by osmosis” and exposed him to how the finance function actually works within a business.
It also helped to shape his approach as his career progressed. “I’m always trying to view finance through all the different lenses within an organisation,” he adds.
Unsurprisingly, Taylor rejects the idea that one needs a university degree to enter the C-suite.
Indeed, an aversion to following the herd was in part what prompted him to leave his safe and predictable senior finance role at a listed company and accept an executive position at OnlyFans.
Related?
The new-ish CFO of the city of Columbus, Mississippi had to explain how audits work and why this mess isn’t his problem:
“Not good” and “not acceptable” are how Columbus Chief Financial Officer Jim Brigham describes the state of internal controls reflected in the city’s audit for Fiscal Year 2021.
“This does portray the status of internal controls in 2020, at the end of Fiscal Year 2021. And, you know what? It’s not good. It’s not acceptable. We don’t accept it, but I want to tell you also, that these things happened because you have to put people – these are technical issues – And, you have to put the right people in position to take care of it, and to babysit it, and to make sure it’s right, and that you can trust. And, some of it is trust, and some of it is compliance, and that’s why we have auditors come in and check our trust,” said Brigham.
Brigham was hired on in March 2022 and makes $100k a year. His predecessor was arrested for embezzlement.
And Vance County, North Carolina is learning the importance of internal controls:
The FBI is investigating the financial dealings of Vance County’s former finance director. County manager Renee Perry confirmed the investigation to WRAL.
Katherine Bigelow was terminated in February after Perry said she misrepresented her qualifications as a CPA, or certified public accountant.
A financial audit found that Bigelow wired more than one million dollars of county funds to a company that she was affiliated with.
“This action was able to go undetected for the time that it did due to a lack of understanding by the staff of the County in their assigned duties, and no cross-training of individuals who would have been able to provide oversight on the transactions,” said Thompson, Price, Scott, and Adams & Company auditors in their report.
“We finally started digging into why we weren’t getting the numbers we wanted…and the timeliness of the numbers…and the accuracy of the numbers. We began to dig into why weren’t the numbers reconciled, why weren’t they timely…which led to our discovery,” said the auditor at a Board of Commissioners meeting. “Our folks started going, ‘The answers she’s giving us are not what somebody in her position should be giving us.’”
Bigelow was fired in February.
A news outlet in Ghana discusses a 24/7 Big 4 busy season and witchcraft in the same article:
Two of Ghana’s biggest issues currently affecting progress are joblessness/unemployment and witchcraft (both foreign and local).
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Anybody who has ever interned, worked or passed-through any of these accountancy firms would easily recognize the concept of a ’24 Hour Economy.’ In Ghana’s quest to solve the unemployment problem which is the single most depressing problem threatening to derail an entire generation of young adults and upending many families, the 24hr work cycle if successfully introduced and implemented would indeed be a game changer.
In principle, this concept which already exists in some industries like healthcare would be spread to other industries including Finance and Accountancy in the country just like their counterparts beyond the shores of Ghana have been running for decades.
Busy seasons, which could run anywhere from 6months to 9months for some and an entire 12months for others, is a period in the yearly life of a Big 4 employee where work never stops. In short, different people work at different times (shifts) continuously in a 24hr timeframe throughout the lifetime of a project. This is a period of tremendous hiring for many firms since as much hands as possible are needed to complete assignments. The burn out rate is so high during this period for various interns, independent contractors and consultants that compensation is exceptionally high. Some interns and consultants who make it through this period would get full time positions while others who may not necessarily enjoy the year-round experience of such tremendous workload would much prefer to be yearly seasonal hires using the time in between hires to either cool off or pursue other interest.
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