Welp, they’re announcing a PE deal
byu/User0273649362539506 inAccounting

Text:

Welp, they’re announcing a PE deal

Not looking forward for what’s to come. We are currently very hybrid. Love the current firm culture but now I’m afraid that will change. Does this ever end in a positive light? Public accounting stinks.

These comments are a joy.

Some people are speculating it’s Crowe. I’d say possibly CohnReznick since there’s a rumor they’ve got a PE deal in the works but I don’t think they meet the culture requirement, by all accounts that place is a dumpster fire.

Crowe wasn’t listed as one of the two firms in the top 25 exploring private equity investment in Forbes‘ September piece “Why Private Equity Is Rushing To Buy Up Accounting Firms.” Carr, Riggs, & Ingram is though and it’s been rumored for months that they’re close to making a private equity deal official. The only other firm Forbes listed as “just looking” is Armanino whose minority investment from Further Global Capital Management quietly made the news a few weeks ago.

We’ll see if OP updates. Feel free to speculate in the meantime.

Update: Tips are saying it is in fact Carr, Riggs, & Ingram and that an external announcement will be made Monday.

Update #2: It appears that intel was good. PKF O’Connor Davies announced a deal of their own on the same day.

The post Let’s Speculate Wildly About Which Mid-Tier Firm is About to Announce a Private Equity Deal (UPDATE) appeared first on Going Concern.

“Trump has just so thoroughly failed to deliver on his economic populism (excepting a disjointed China policy),” Vance wrote in February 2020.

“I think Trump will probably lose,” he wrote in a message in June 2020, a few months before ballots were cast in an election that Vance would later claim, falsely and repeatedly, was stolen by the Democrats.

It’s no secret JD Vance used to be a Trump critic. In 2022, Vance’s former roommate Josh McLaurin (now a Georgia state senator) shared Facebook DMs from Vance he received in 2016 that said, among other things, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler.”

Although WaPo chose not to name the recipient of the 2020 DMs leaked to them due to the potential for retaliation, Breitbart was more than happy to do so in the spirit of such. In “Exclusive — Deloitte Consultant Behind Ethically Questionable Leak of JD Vance Communications to Washington Post,” Breitbart reveals the leaker to be Deloitte principal Kevin Gallagher:

But what the Post did not do is tell its audience who Vance was communicating with in these messages, or provide the full context of the conversation, since it only reported part of one side of it. The Post argued it granted the source who provided these messages anonymity “because of concerns about retaliation,” but Breitbart News can reveal the person’s identity here for the first time as a well-connected Deloitte consultant.

Oh no, here it comes.

The Deloitte consultant, whose identity the Washington Post’s Peter Jamison hid from the newspaper’s readers, is named Kevin Gallagher. Deloitte’s website lists Gallagher as a “principal” with the firm, based in Connecticut. Breitbart News has seen a screenshot of messages that Vance sent to Gallagher—the other side of the conversation is not available, because Gallagher had deleted his account, thereby deleting the messages—confirming that Gallagher is in fact the recipient of these.

That same day, Donald Trump Jr. accused Gallagher — who has since gone into internet hiding — of interfering in the election and asked if it’s time for the GOP to “end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train.”

An executive at @Deloitte named Kevin Gallagher decided to interfere in the election & leak private convos with JD Vance to help Kamala Harris. Deloitte also gets $2B in govt contracts. Maybe it's time for the GOP to end Deloitte's taxpayer funded gravy train?

CC @speakerjohnson pic.twitter.com/gAOs1TBt86

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 27, 2024

Conservative newsletter Amuse echoed this sentiment in a long-ass tweet:

The sheer audacity of Gallagher’s interference would be appalling on its own, but it is especially outrageous when considering his position at Deloitte—a firm that has raked in billions in government contracts. Over $2 billion, in fact, has flowed into Deloitte’s coffers from taxpayer-funded projects. Why, then, are we allowing such an entity, whose executives play politics for personal gain, to enjoy the spoils of government largesse? Deloitte has been cashing checks courtesy of American taxpayers while its leadership engages in partisan warfare. The GOP must recognize this glaring conflict and take swift action to curtail Deloitte’s access to federal contracts.

Not to ackshually here but ackshually, Deloitte plays both sides because what they value above all else is revenue. Here’s some data from government transparency group OpenSecrets. Remember they’re tracking individual donations among these.

LOL at the 77.45% to Republicans in 2002, the year Sarbanes-Oxley rose like a phoenix from the ashes of Arthur Andersen’s literal tons of shredded documents. Surely unrelated.

Here’s a breakdown by affiliate for the 2024 election cycle (a.k.a. the nightmare in which we are currently residing):

Lastly, recipient data from the 2024 election cycle. What this says is that individuals associated with Deloitte are throwing more money at Kamala Harris than Donald Trump. What it doesn’t say is that Deloitte endorses Kamala Harris. They’re gonna quietly endorse whoever is going to allow them to make the most money, which is probably why Kevin Gallagher is not getting invited to happy hour any time soon because this kind of heat is bad for business.

Wrote WaPo’s Peter Jamison in a follow-up article:

On Sept. 27, Donald Trump Jr. exposed the employee’s name and photograph to millions of people on social media, writing, “Maybe it’s time for the GOP to end Deloitte’s taxpayer funded gravy train?” Others — including Vance’s chief spokesman and a Republican senator — circulated Trump Jr.’s comments, and the conservative website Breitbart published a story naming the man and highlighting his job.

Deloitte receives about $3 billion annually from federal agencies including the Department of Health and Human Services and Department of Defense.

Ethics experts said the episode is a potentially ominous preview of how a second Trump administration might use the enormous power the federal government wields over private industry to punish political acts by individual workers. Although federal contracting laws prohibit cutting off a business because of its workers’ private political views, such threats could have a chilling effect, they said.

Added Jamison:

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Kedric Payne, senior director of ethics at the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center and former deputy chief counsel in the Office of Congressional Ethics, adding that the goal was probably to pressure Deloitte into firing the worker. “You can’t imagine that if one employee out of thousands made a statement that offended an official, that then the government contracts would be in jeopardy.”

Yeah, they’re probably not. The #boycottdeloitte hashtag is pretty quiet all things considered.

“This individual shared private personal messages on his own volition without the knowledge of Deloitte, which is a non-partisan firm,” Deloitte told WaPo in a statement. “Deloitte is deeply committed to supporting our government and commercial clients and we have a long track record of doing so across parties and administrations.”

Comments are open, don’t make us regret it. Behave like the educated adult professionals you are please and thank you.

The post Here’s Why Trump Fans Are Mad at Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

“When Anna joined this specific team, she was told that many employees had resigned due to the excessive workload, and the team manager told to her, ‘Anna, you must stick around and change everyone’s opinion about our team.’ My child didn’t realize she would pay for that with her life,” the email said.

A tweet by @kaay_rao — which is where we first saw the letter shared yesterday — has 3.2 million views as of publication time.

Heartbreaking news from EY Pune – a young CA succumbed to the work pressure and nobody from EY even attended her funeral – this is so appalling and nasty!!! pic.twitter.com/pt8ThUKiNR

— Malavika Rao (@kaay_rao) September 17, 2024

Social media reaction and media coverage since the letter dropped yesterday has pushed EY India into issuing a statement. “Anna was a part of the Audit team at S R Batliboi, a member firm of EY Global, in Pune for a brief period of four months, joining the firm on 18 March 2024. That her promising career was cut short in this tragic manner is an irreparable loss for all of us,” EY’s statement said [source: Economic Times]. She passed away on July 20.

“We are taking the family’s correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility. We place the highest importance on the well-being of all employees and will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace for our 100,000 people across EY member firms in India,” they said.

The statement, brusque and hollow even by corporatespeak standards, is not being well-received by the public so far.

EY’s response is a classic lesson on how to say nothing will change without saying nothing will change. pic.twitter.com/HuHIDScGLf

— Lavanya Mohan (@lavsmohan) September 18, 2024

More conversation in @kaay_rao’s replies.

Earlier: Mother Pens Letter Calling Out EY After Her Overworked Daughter Suddenly Passed Away at 26

The post EY Responds to the Viral Letter From Bereaved Mother of a Deceased Auditor, Social Media Calls BS appeared first on Going Concern.

The post Can Anyone Help This Eager Applicant Figure Out Why They Can’t Get an Interview at Deloitte? appeared first on Going Concern.

The pitch:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Paul Andon (@bized2052)

The contest is open only to UNSW students over the age of 18 who reside in Australia so no one in our audience get any bright ideas. Don’t think that’ll be a problem anyway.

The winner will receive $5,000 ($3,331 USD); runner up gets $3k and third place $2k.

Accounting in 60 Seconds – Student competition [UNSW]

The post You Couldn’t Pay Me Enough to Make Accounting Sound Cool appeared first on Going Concern.

Said the IRS in a press release:

The new combined effort follows a variety of increased scams and schemes that intensified during the past filing season that aimed to exploit vulnerable taxpayers while enriching fraudsters and promoters.

Convened at the request of IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel, the coalition of federal and state tax agencies along with software and financial companies as well as key national tax professional associations agreed to a three-pronged approach. They will work to expand outreach and education about emerging scams, develop new approaches to identify potentially fraudulent returns at the point of filing and create infrastructure improvements to protect taxpayers as well as federal, state and industry tax systems.

Some familiar names have joined the effort, namely the National Association of Computerized Tax Processors, National Association of Tax Professionals, National Association of Enrolled Agents, and the National Society of Accountants. The AICPA is on board too. As are the McTax companies: Intuit, H&R Block, Jackson Hewitt, and Liberty Tax.

The IRS said there has been increased activity involving a variety of scams and schemes harming taxpayers, including the Fuel Tax Credit, household employment taxes and the Sick and Family Leave Credit.

The IRS has seen hundreds of thousands of dubious claims come in where it appears taxpayers are claiming credits for which they are not eligible, leading to refunds being delayed and the need for taxpayers to show they have legitimate documentation to support these claims.

Numerous other scams and schemes continue to be seen circulating on social media and are highlighted through efforts including the annual IRS Dirty Dozen list and alerts from the Security Summit partners. The new approach will increase collaborative efforts to raise awareness and education about schemes, not just during tax season but throughout the year.

Yes, folks, they’ve created a coalition to battle TikTok tax advice. Finally. “Social media is an easy way for scammers and others to try encouraging people to pursue some really bad ideas, and that includes ways to magically increase your tax refund,” said IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel back in April. “There are many ways to get good tax information, including @irsnews on social media and from trusted tax professionals. But people should be careful with who they’re following on social media for tax advice. Unlike hacks to fix a leaky kitchen sink or creative makeup tips, people shouldn’t rely on made-up ways on social media to patch up their tax return and boost their refund.”

Mmm, we might need a Coalition Against TikTok Makeup Hacks too.

Statements of support from leading members of the nation’s tax community for Coalition Against Scam and Scheme Threats task force [IRS]

The post Dozens of Taxy Groups Join New Coalition to Stop Scammers and TikTok Tax Advice appeared first on Going Concern.

What do the initials BDO on Billy Horschel’s golf hat represent?

This is actually funny because they really didn’t know what BDO is. Which is fine because up until today we didn’t know who Billy Horschel is.

Horschel is sponsored by BDO, a professional services company that specializes in tax and business services for companies. The golfer has been seen wearing the logo on his left collar of his shirt or outerwear during tournaments, but the hat he’s wearing today has caught all of our attention.

We first thought it was LBDO, but realized immediately that the “L” isn’t really a letter and is just part of the design. He was playing yesterday with his hat on backwards as the rain was complicating things for everyone on the course.

And here’s another article from the sports corner of the internet that probably confused the hell out of the AI when it was asked to write it:

Do you ardently follow golf fashion? [Ed. note: no] Then you must be eager to find out what Billy Horschel wore on the greens. One of the most fashionable golfers around, Billy never fails to amaze, be it his Ralph Lauren polos, FootJoy shoes, or quirky printed trousers. And we know, despite finishing runner-up in the 2024 British Championships, he did not disappoint you with his fashion choices once again. After all, only a few could have carried that backward hat look on a golf course! While looking at that, we can not miss the BDO logo on it. What does it stand for?

With an instant glance, it might appear like LBDO. But the ‘L’ is not a letter and a part of the design. BDO stands for Binder Dijker Otte. It is the 5th largest global accounting network and has over $12.8 billion in revenue. The company became a sponsor of the 62nd OWGR-ranked golfer in 2022. But do you know why the association was first-of-its-kind?

The 8x PGA tour winner was BDO’s first US golf brand ambassador. During his three-year partnership with the firm, Billy is supposed to wear its logo on his jersey and cap.

And here’s Mr. Horschel rocking that LBDO hat and a sharp Ralph Lauren sweater:

After finishing T2, Billy Horschel had high praise for Xander Schauffele.

Also, he'll be grinding away on the range at the 3M Open on Tuesday. pic.twitter.com/q7QmbP196e

— Golf Digest (@GolfDigest) July 21, 2024

It seems random sports blogs weren’t the only ones that thought Billy’s hat said LBDO…

Always think about your logo in a one color versus multi color format.

BDO, the accounting firm who sponsors Billy Horschel- who led #TheOpen just lost out on a lot of search traffic to…ahem, LBDO pic.twitter.com/PyS1xgZJio

— Jordan Rogers (@JordanRogers26) July 22, 2024

What’s the emoji for? *Googles* Oh.

Losing out on some website hits from random golf fans probably wouldn’t be too bad except for one thing. The real LBDO is an Australian “sexual wellness” company with the tagline “Feel good about feeling good.” In other words, they sell stuff to help get you off.

I did some research, and Billy Horschel is sponsored by BDO, not LBDO, which is NOT a company that distributes boner pills

— Gstaad Blackledge (@loljocks_grimey) July 20, 2024

Oh no. The LBDO blog is packed with helpful articles such as “A five step guide to getting off with your shower head” and the first Instagram post we saw was advice on how to get into piss play. (BTW they’re currently having an Orgasm Day Sale if anyone’s interested. Not an ad.)

Let’s not dive into that world, OK?

At least this isn’t as controversial as the comments that made KPMG cut ties with Phil Mickelson and his hat forever back in 2022, it’s only sex toys. Billy may want to think about asking for a two-color hat though.

The post Golf Fans Everywhere Now Think BDO Sells Dildos and Lube appeared first on Going Concern.

I’m officially starting my hunt for acquiring an accounting firm.

General Filters:
* $0.7M – $1.5M revenue
* None to <2% tax audits
* >10% bookkeeping and payroll (more the better)
*Any state excluding CA & NY, but prefer TX

What do you think?
Know anyone interested?

— Chris Kimbell (@MeChrisKimbell) May 6, 2024

I’m not normally a Star Wars fan but pic.twitter.com/bTXZtw8uke

— Robert Sterling (@RobertMSterling) May 7, 2024

You’ll note Chris is not a CPA nor is he formerly (or informally) trained in the art of accounting. This comes up quite a lot in the responses.

You have nothing without the accountants and they are all exiting.

How do you seriously think you will run accounting/tax firm with no experience in actual accounting or tax?

— S~a~r~a~h (@Sarah238213) May 7, 2024

Don’t let people feed you the but but CPA…

Guys what has CPA done for you?
Middle class slave labor & most don’t see their kids & no pension or equity

AICPA isn’t even trying to stop offshoring to India & the work is terrible.
ALL Big 4 are outsourcing to India.

— S~a~r~a~h (@Sarah238213) May 7, 2024

Unless you have a great system and a plan for staffing don’t do it – no one wants to be an accountant anymore

— gldoha (@gldoha) May 7, 2024

Do you have an accounting background and know what it takes to run a firm? I’m afraid that it’s not as easy as simply having a manager to run your business, while you focus on sales.

Maybe with a brick and mortar type business you could do that! Accounting firms require hands-on…

— Parker Lathrop (@travelwithparkr) May 7, 2024

So you think you would convince a CPA to be a manager at a small version of some Liberty Tax type of company?

— Brandon Brock (@brandonbrock24) May 7, 2024

This is a formula for increasing costs to consumers and decreasing service then competency. But the lipstick looks good, kinda like an @DRHorton house.

— Aaron Sundstrom (@AA_ron1975) May 7, 2024

I purchased 3 firms. If you are not an accountant, I highly recommend reconsidering

— Benjamin Wann, CMA, CSCA, MBA, PMP (@BenWann_CMA) May 7, 2024

Bonus points to this person who did the math on an accounting firm for sale.

Don't buy this firm. Avg 1040 $295. They want 4 times earnings. No way. pic.twitter.com/VQNJej8fWS

— stop bunting now (@SSCougFan) May 7, 2024

There are currently 3,460 other practices listed for sale on accountingpracticesales.com, surely he can find one or two worth entertaining there.

We’ll be sure to check back in on him in a year.

The post So You Want to Buy an Accounting Firm? Prepare to Get Shit on By Tax Twitter appeared first on Going Concern.

So some guy tweeted the following on April 23:

Me: really enjoyed the call. Please see attached financial modeling test

Gen Z applicant: this looks like a lot of work. Without knowing where I stand in the process, I’m not comfortable spending 90 minutes in Excel

Me:…well…I can tell you where you stand now

— m. stanfield (@mu2myoc) April 23, 2024

As of today, it stands at 7.9 million views, nearly 12k likes, 1.6k replies, and 1.2k quotes. This is the top response:

Finally, a hero who will stand for the downwardly-mobile

— m. stanfield (@mu2myoc) April 23, 2024

Funny.

If you expected this guy to get ratioed hard, I’ll remind you this is Twitter not r/antiwork. Actually, I bet he’s been posted there already. Yep.

In one reply, the guy says the candidate knew there would be an assessment:

Absolutely. One of the first things discussed in the interview is the steps in the process.

I'm hiring an investment analyst. Underwriting potential real estate investments is the bulk of the job. No one was surprised when I sent the test.

— m. stanfield (@mu2myoc) April 24, 2024

And added this:

A response I would have actually enjoyed would have been. “I’m good at this and do t work for free. Give me $1,000 and I’ll break this deal down in amazing detail”

Would have gladly paid and probably hired

— m. stanfield (@mu2myoc) April 23, 2024

Easy for him to say after the fact when he’s getting pounded in the quote tweets. But good to note for anyone who’s been tempted to draw up an invoice for a potential employer requesting hours-long assessments.

To get the opinion of a recruiter in the accounting space we tracked one down to ask. “Some employers have abused the privilege of assessments, using hours and hours of someone’s time. In some cases (creative fields or marketing, for example), the candidate was not hired but their ideas were used by the hiring employer. Not cool,” she said. “In accounting or analytical positions, I don’t think it’s bad to ask someone to complete an assessment within reason. An assessment shouldn’t take longer than 15 or 20 minutes. Between that and good interviewing techniques, an employer should be able to get an understanding of a candidate’s technical skills. If a candidate is qualified then a quick assessment shouldn’t be a problem for them.”

Before you’re allowed to comment on this post with your own opinion, we’re going to need you to first complete the 16Personalities MBTI assessment, the HEXACO Personality Inventory, and the Official Hogwarts House Sorting Quiz. When you’ve finished with that, please submit a Google Doc of five sample comments with a short PPT explaining how you arrived at those comments. Thanks and maybe we’ll call you.

The post The Most Divisive Topic on the Internet This Week Is a Pre-Employment Excel Assessment appeared first on Going Concern.

I came across this CNBC Make It article the other day about LinkedIn’s ‘open to work’ banner and apparently using this is a red flag to know-it-all recruiters.

When you’re looking for a new job, it may seem like a no-brainer to let as many people as possible know. But career experts differ on their opinions about LinkedIn’s “open to work” banner, the green sign that shows up just under your photo if you choose to activate it.

“It is the biggest red flag” in a job candidate, says Nolan Church, former Google recruiter and current CEO of salary data company FairComp.

“There is a truism in recruiting that the best people are not looking for jobs,” he says, and therefore those people would not be advertising that they’re looking for work either. Former Amazon recruiter and current career coach Lindsay Mustain agrees.

They included some facts, too: 33 million LinkedIn users are currently using the feature that was introduced in the early days of COVID-19 when people lost their jobs en masse and people who have it on are twice as likely to be contacted by recruiters, per LinkedIn data.

Nolan was quoted in a different CNBC article a few months ago saying it makes you look desperate:

When it comes to job interviews, you want to give the company you’re interviewing with the sense that you have other options and that they have to fight for you. “Recruiting is like dating,” says Church. “You have to make the other side feel like you’re exclusive.”

What you’re signaling to hiring managers with the “open to work” sign on LinkedIn is that you’ll take any job, says Church, from whoever reaches out to you, because maybe nobody is. “It actually feels to a hiring manager like desperation,” he says.

As a recruiter, “you want to feel like that person really wants to work at your company versus any company,” says Church. And that sign makes it look like the opposite.

But he also says “the best people are not looking for jobs” and that “you have to go and pull them out.”

This is also him:

To quote LinkedIn “influencers”…Thoughts? Agree?

The post Weekend Discussion: ‘Open to Work’ on LinkedIn, Yay or Nay? appeared first on Going Concern.

Among the #TaxTwitter trends we’ve witnessed of late — like enforcing proper onboarding and not proceeding with the relationship if the prospective client can’t bother to complete it — a new one is emerging. Faced with staffing shortages, firms are taking the unconventional approach of turning away work that isn’t worth the trouble.

Exhibit A:

Sucks for clients but great for the overworked professionals who serve them. Don’t say you weren’t warned, clients.

The post Confidential to Clients: You Better Act Right, You’re Getting Graded Now appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s LinkedIn’s pitch:

Our 8th annual LinkedIn Top Companies list highlights the 50 best large workplaces to grow your career in the U.S. right now. Fueled by unique LinkedIn data, the methodology analyzes various facets of career progression like promotion rates, skill development and more among employees at each company. You can read more about how we compile the list at the bottom of the article.

This year’s honorees are proving that investment in the employee experience is vital in today’s workplaces. Whether it’s launching upskilling initiatives or offering flexible working arrangements, these are the companies leading the way in not only attracting workers, but retaining them in our ever-changing world of work.

JP Morgan Chase took overall #1 followed by Amazon and Wells Fargo. And then there’s the Big D at #4.

Right after Deloitte in the fifth spot (and missing a logo for some reason) is PwC.

We have to scroll down to #18 before we see another accounting firm and it’s EY.

KPMG shows up at #27.

The only other accounting firm on the list is BDO at 46.

It might be useful to share LinkedIn’s methodology for this particular list. It is, of course, deeply dependent on LinkedIn data.

Our methodology uses LinkedIn data to rank companies based on eight pillars that have been shown to lead to career progression: ability to advance; skills growth; company stability; external opportunity; company affinity; gender diversity; educational background and employee presence in the country. Ability to advance tracks employee promotions within a company and when they move to a new company, based on standardized job titles. Skills growth looks at how employees across the company are gaining skills while employed at the company, using standardized LinkedIn skills. Company stability tracks attrition over the past year, as well as the percentage of employees that stay at the company at least three years. External opportunity looks at Recruiter outreach across employees at the company, signaling demand for workers coming from these companies. Company affinity, which seeks to measure how supportive a company’s culture is, looks at connection volume on LinkedIn among employees, controlled for company size. Gender diversity measures gender parity within a company and its subsidiaries. Educational background examines the variety of educational attainment among employees, from no degree up to Ph.D. levels, reflecting a commitment to recruiting a wide range of professionals. Finally, employee presence in the country looks at the company’s number of employees in the country relative to other companies, as a means of capturing companies that provide a diverse work environment and more opportunities for career advancement and networking.

Peep the bolded part:

To be eligible, companies must have had 5,000 or more global employees with at least 500 in the country as of Dec. 31, 2023. Attrition can be no higher than 10% over the methodology time period, based on LinkedIn data. Similarly, organizations that have had layoffs of 10% or more of their workforce based on corporate announcements or public, reliable sources between Jan. 1, 2023 and the list launch, are not eligible. These decisions are made by the LinkedIn News team based on company statements and/or reputable news outlets. Only parent companies rank on the list; majority-owned subsidiaries and data about those subsidiaries are incorporated into the parent company score. The methodology time frame is Jan. 1, 2023 through Dec. 31, 2023. This analysis represents the world seen through the lens of LinkedIn data, drawn from the anonymized and aggregated profile information of LinkedIn’s members around the world.

The last time we covered Big 4 exits, Wall Street Journal had reported about 307,000 total Big 4 exits in 2023 through October, up 15.4% from the same period the prior year according to data from workplace data outlet Revelio Labs. The Big 4 business model has 15-20% turnover baked in, hence why they’ve been doing layoffs (announced and otherwise) this past year. We don’t have exact figures for each firm however outgoing EY CEO Carmine Di Sibio said last almost a year ago that his firm went from over 20 percent attrition down to 12 “pretty suddenly.”

We’ll assume LinkedIn went off people’s job-switching profile data to determine if a company qualifies for the list with attrition no greater than 10 percent. Because if not, brace yourselves for more layoffs.

The post Three Quarters of Big 4 Firms Made the Top 20 on LinkedIn’s Top Companies 2024 List appeared first on Going Concern.

The article is not ours (hence the compliment for good reporting and citations) but rather published on ProMarket: Young People Are Shunning the Accounting Profession. The 150-Hour Rule Is Responsible.

In the piece, industry OG Ray Ball wrote:

Why would accountants voluntarily increase the cost of producing their largest input (CPAs) when the additional cost could not be passed on to clients? Economists have long been skeptical of occupational licensing. Adam Smith’s long discussion of apprenticeships concludes, among other things, that lengthening the required duration of apprenticeship increases the earnings of incumbents, denies the rights of those who now cannot enter, and provides no assurance of increased work quality. Echoing this, Milton Friedman observes that occupational licensing typically is advocated by producers, not consumers, on the alleged grounds of public and not personal interest. It is important to note that the AICPA vote to require an extra year of college for entry to the profession was conducted among its incumbent members (i.e., currently licensed accountants), and not among CPA firms (their employers). The Rule does look more like incumbent accountants voting to restrict entry than to enforce quality. It has reduced entry to the profession to a level that does not satisfy demand. And it has fallen more heavily on minorities.

When we say OG, we don’t mean a guy who’s slaved away over hot ledgers for 50 years, this guy is an O G. His bio reads:

Ray Ball is the Sidney Davidson Distinguished Service Professor of Accounting Emeritus at Booth. He pioneered the application of financial economics to accounting. He (with his co-author Philip Brown) was first to demonstrate the link between firms’ accounting earnings information and their market values. He also was first to identify the existence of systematic anomalies in efficient market theory. He has received many awards, including five honorary degrees and inductions to the American and Australian Accounting Halls of Fame.

He was elected to the Accounting Hall of Fame in 2009 and to the Australian Accounting Hall of Fame in 2018.

So yeah, direct any accusations of slander his way please.

The post A Tale of Two Reactions appeared first on Going Concern.

But wait! There’s more! Ten posters to be exact, nine of which are terrible.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by The Aussie Corporate (@theaussiecorporate)

This set includes:

• Don’t “circle back”
• Do Talk straight [Take your own advice here, Big D]
• Don’t “run it up the flagpole”
• Dare to boldly go work on a floor you’ve never been to before.
• Dare to not sit in the same side of the table that you usually do.

In the same side of the table?

Moving on:

• Dare to accidentally be on mute, but then own it
• Celebrating our wins? Well, that’s a win win. [I hear the faint sound of fapping off in the distance when I read this]
• Take a step towards empathy. Walk in someone else’s shoes today. Not literally though.
• Honesty is the best policy. Honestly.

OK, that last one is alright. Honestly.

What’s with the creepy “If you see something, say something” eyeballs on these? They make me nervous.

Digging past the cringe slogans into what “Aussie Signals” are, we find this explanation straight from Deloitte. These signals mentioned in small text at the bottom of each poster “showcase how our Australian firm uniquely exemplifies these values.” OK.

Be you

Be true to your authentic self, upholding your integrity, while embracing and honouring the diversity of others.

Empower and trust

Actively listen to and support the people around you. Trust others and earn trust through consistent actions.

Talk straight

Be open and honest, but always with care and empathy. Have the courage to speak up and back your sense of integrity.

Have fun and celebrate

Enjoy and celebrate what you do and those you do it with. Manage your energy so you can uplift and elevate others.

Dare to be different

Embrace creativity to make a greater impact. Be curious to learn and try new things.

Please just stick to professional services. I don’t know how many times and in how many different ways we have to say this.

The post Deloitte Has Out-Cringed Itself appeared first on Going Concern.

A woman agreed to work for our firm. Did all the paperwork. Came in for first day of training. Took a break to “move her car.” Never came back. It’s become legend and a thing to tease the one guy she met with.

She called this week asking for a second chance.

What would you do?

Second chance? Or nah?

The post Which One of You Was This? appeared first on Going Concern.

This guy graduated #1 in accounting so he should have no problems DIYing.

Client graduated # 1 in accounting and so doesn’t need us to do his simple tax returns anymore. Rental property, $1mil+ in stock transactions. I was charging $1800 (not $3000 – so much for the accounting). I hate losing cleats but buh-bye. pic.twitter.com/UWbrbVpn1Z

— Andrea MacDonald, CPA (@andreamacdcpa) January 17, 2024

This guy generated quite the buzz:

My CPA just increased her service fee again by 30%

Last year she increased her fee by 60%

Must be nice

— FourPlex Guy Carlos Gonzalez (@dig_deeper1) January 23, 2024

Accountants quit being stupid on fees. He says CPA was charging $500 for a 26 rental unit tax return and is upset his fee went up to $1,000 over 2 years. Do better. We are better off without bottom feeders (CPAs and Clients like this). https://t.co/3jynTmZxz7

— Hatfield's Mama CPA (@HatfieldsMama) January 23, 2024

Advice column:

My Tax Preparer Just Raised Her Fees — What Should I do? Oblivious Investor

• My tax guy just told me he’s going to be charging about 40% more this year for our return, relative to what he charged for the last several years. What should I do?
• My tax preparer told me her price is increasing to [whatever dollar amount]. Is that reasonable for [a particular level of return complexity]?
• My CPA’s hourly rate just increased to $250. That seems insane. Do CPAs really make $10,000 per week during tax season?*

Double L for this person on Reddit:

Tax Prep Fee
byu/Terrible-Chip-3049 intax

Comment
byu/Terrible-Chip-3049 from discussion
intax

Some random forum:

Just wondering if my CPA fees were reasonable? I’ve experience fee creep over the last few years and the creep seems to be on a much higher level than inflation itself would suggest. My CPA is actually an EA, not a CPA and he prepares a joint personal tax return for myself and wife, and a corporate tax return for my small business S-corp. He does the federal and CA filings. He also includes the tax return for three children (two of whom are adults but earn no income other than investments). Fee is $4000

I have no problem with the accountant and feels he knows what he’s doing. However, recently he contacted his clients to let them know he is moving to a lawyer type fee structure ie: additional hourly charges for any issues that you may want him to answer.

I felt that $4000 was enough and am now thinking of abandoning ship before I figure out how much is really enough for him. Previous accountants have always had a fee structure where you paid them per return but could call them anytime throughout the year and ask questions. I don’t like this new arrangement and was wondering if it was common and what kind of rates others were paying.

“You can take the tax preparation class yourself for under $200”

Charging that much to do taxes??? Lmfao no ma'am… You can take the tax preparation class yourself for under $200

— Gucci Ma'am (@TittyFlex) January 23, 2024

And now for a little encouragement. Read and internalize this message.

Comment
byu/fupapatrol29 from discussion
intaxpros

Remember, clients are having a harder time finding a professional than you are finding clients. You’re the hot girl on Tinder, they’re the guy holding up a dead fish who didn’t even fill out his profile.

Talked 2 prospect 2day whose reason 4 finding new CPA: old CPA raised fee 500 over 2 yrs. Spent 10 mins expl why old CPA had 2 raise fee. Don’t know who old CPA is. Told prospect we more than doubled min fees this year. Still wants 2 meet. Stick by ur guns people! #TaxTwitter

— Johanna Sweaney Salt (@JohannaSalt) December 6, 2022

Bonus late addition:

GOOD LUCK!

Good luck! pic.twitter.com/tJCOc7GgIA

— Blake Oliver (@BlakeTOliver) January 25, 2024

Related:

The post F in the Chat For All the Clients Losing Their CPAs to Higher Fees This Year appeared first on Going Concern.

We’ll share the full results after the survey closes but for now I wanted to highlight this response to the question “What issue ISN’T being talked about and should be?”

Why not have more schooling for a CPA. Attorneys did this years ago, and there is not a shortage of Attorneys. I think if CPAs were a more elite group, although it may take a while there will be more CPAs once people realize that it is an elite group. Also, why do we care so much if there are fewer accountants, just let some of these clients go without an accountant when they complain about the fees. Why does this profession think that there ought to be no client left behind. This profession isn’t a public school. We should have waiting lists for new clients. We should dump about half our clients and charge 150% more than we are charging now. Then we could afford to pay staff more.

Breezing right past the suggestion that CPAs need more schooling, they make an excellent point. Maybe it’s just the #taxtwitter accounts we see often in our feed (as in, the influencers and disruptors who are leading the charge to…well, charge) but there has definitely been a shift in the past few years away from lowballing yourself and toward charging what you’re worth and being picky about which clients you take on. FINALLY. Maybe preparers are starting to internalize the messaging.

A few examples:

2024 Pricing Update
I am more or less doubling fees to $2500 individual, $10,000 business minimum. I expect big drop off. That is intentional. But 2024 services are bundled and that will help everyone. I will have room to add 10-20 new clients so started advertising. #taxtwitter

— Tony Novak (@tonynovak) December 29, 2023

Thank you, Logan, Mike, Brian Tax Season 2024 I am implementing the tools I learned from #TaxTwitter You inspired me to make a change and start raising prices and asking for a deposit. Thank you! You made a difference in this small firm's success.

— Howard Knudsen CPA (@howard_knudsen) December 18, 2023

I'm trying really hard to break the cycle. I'll be releasing clients, better defining my ideal client/niche, requiring retainers, and raising prices. What about you, #TaxTwitter and accounting friends? pic.twitter.com/KFyJA3xXtj

— JL CPA (@JLoBeanCntr) November 22, 2023

Yes to all. Our staff want raises so the fee increases should be consistent.

— Craig Hausz, CPA (@CPATaxTeam) November 21, 2023

But then we also have:

I know we've all seen some low fees but this has to be the lowest I've seen given the detail of the return. Rates your rates folks. #TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/qPlFWxV9JC

— Albert J. Campo, CPA, MBA (@ajthecpa1226) December 12, 2023

And Albert again with another:

So it seems that the new race to the bottom for fees is for monthly bookkeeping services. I get outsourcing can play a role here but some of these prices firms are charging is insane. Their profit margins have to be awful. #taxtwitter

— Albert J. Campo, CPA, MBA (@ajthecpa1226) October 20, 2023

Awfully low. As in $250/month for an avg of 400 monthly transactions.

— Albert J. Campo, CPA, MBA (@ajthecpa1226) October 21, 2023

I was doing some much overdue shredding today and I came across my husband‘s tax returns from 1996 done by H&R Block where they charged him $140. When W-2, two states both part year returns. I know people charging that much or less. It’s time to stop that.#taxtwitter

— Debra Beckman (@SeptemberAcres) September 28, 2023

Can we shout this from the rooftops and rafters so ALL of #TaxTwitter can have faith that if clients leave just because you raised prices you Can Still Make $!

— Seth Fineberg (@B2BSeth) October 25, 2023

Look, I don’t know who needs to hear this but you’re allowed to charge more. You will probably lose some clients, so what. They’re cheap and don’t value what you do for them. DITCH THEM.

The post ‘Why Does This Profession Think There Ought to Be No Client Left Behind?’ appeared first on Going Concern.

The message conveyed is that firms will work you to death with minimal pay increases, there is little long-term career pay-off for the majority of new hires, and the work is mundane and boring.

OK, context. The article “What Can the Profession Do?” is predominantly about the profession’s diversity problem and how despite “decades of effort” to diversify accounting programs and CPA firms, Black representation is still low. Great topic and they did a great job laying it all out but should you scroll down, you find a criticism of the overall messaging that deters not only Black students but, well, everyone (see also: Research: Why Students — Particularly Diverse Ones — Aren’t Pursuing Accounting). By “messaging” they mean all the negative things accountants talk about on the internet like “I feel so trapped. I worked so hard in college to still not be able to afford to live comfortably. I hate my job” and “I had a manager last year who had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized, but was back at work after a week to keep the partner happy and he’s on his way towards another breakdown. It’s not normal.”

TLDR kids are hearing horror stories about accounting on social media and it’s scaring them away.

This is exactly what was said about messaging:

And what if the messaging has some truth to it? What if TB4A has 665,000 followers because the memes are relatable and painfully accurate? There are 428,000 members of the AICPA (as of 2020) which means TB4A beats them out in followers by 237,000 people. What does that say?

Messaging is not the problem. Stop blaming the messengers.

accounting doesn’t have a “marketing” problem

it has a “salary that doesn’t match the hours worked compared to other majors” problem

— TB4A.com (@TheBig4Tweets) November 30, 2023

The post Quote of the Day: ‘The Message Conveyed is That Firms Will Work You to Death with Minimal Pay Increases’ appeared first on Going Concern.

Yavinka Mendis, a University of Manchester economics graduate, joined KPMG’s Manchester office as an audit associate in 2019. He worked there for just over a year, auditing investment banks among other things, before leaving and spending four months working for Domino’s Pizza while looking for other roles. Mendis eventually found one at Grant Thornton, where he spent nine months as an audit associate in the public sector assurance at the Manchester office before leaving to work in Spain.

Mendis says he left Grant Thornton because he was burnt out. A letter he received from the firm nearly 12 months after he left, published to his LinkedIn account, helps explain why: after looking back through its timesheet data and considering his Mendi’s ‘flexible benefit choices,’ Grant Thornton said it had realised that he’d earned less than the minimum wage for the time he’d spent there. It sent him £100 [$121.12] for the inconvenience and promised to make up the difference.

Mendis says he wasn’t aggrieved at his underpayment, and instead complimented Grant Thornton for its honesty. He didn’t respond to a request to comment for this article.

Although Mendis didn’t want to speak to eFinancialCareers, GT did and said they discovered that “a small number of our people were inadvertently paid under the National Minimum Wage threshold, owing to them having made significant salary sacrifice deductions via our flexible benefit choices and/or having worked longer hours during specific periods of the year” after an internal review. However:

[The firm] added that no one there actually receives a salary below the minimum wage threshold.

Indeed says the average salary for a Grant Thornton audit associate in the UK is £32,059, Payscale puts it in a range of £17k – £30k or an average of £23,031. While the National Minimum Wage is currently £10.42 ($12.64) an hour, assuming he spent a year at KPMG he would have started at GT in 2020 or 2021 at the latest, at which time minimum wage in the UK was up to £8.91 ($10.79).

Accounting firm apologises for paying trainee below minimum wage [eFinancialCareers]

The post Grant Thornton Apologizes to Ex-Audit Associate For Paying Him Less Than Minimum Wage appeared first on Going Concern.

We talked all the time in grad school (approx 6 years ago) that there was no way the (then) current model would be sustainable… I think it’s finally starting to crumble. Deloitte just announced more audit layoffs.

— Pwnyboy (@The_Mr__Smith) October 6, 2023

There’s been no official announcement but there’s this. We’ll assume Mr. D is consulting chair Dan Helfrich and not someone’s actual uncle but who knows with Reddit.

Reduction in workforce
byu/Brilliant_Mess_8307 indeloitte

The number getting thrown around is 3%.

These layoffs are a joke
byu/nsfo indeloitte

The last official layoff announcement was in April when Deloitte announced the culling of around 1200 people (1.5% of the workforce). Those layoffs were concentrated primarily in financial advisory.

If you know more on this you know what to do.

The post Layoff Watch ’23: Deloitte’s Up to Something appeared first on Going Concern.

Some choice quotes from her “Why I quit my job with no backup plan” video (embedded below):

“I don’t understand accounting, I don’t like what I’m doing.”
“When I would tell other seniors and staff, like, how I felt they would all tell me ‘Everyone here is faking it, we have no idea what we’re doing.'”
“I got my Master’s in accounting, I went to school for accounting and I just don’t want to do anything related to accounting anymore.”
“I hate wearing business professional stuff, I hate just sitting at the computer, I hate meetings, I hate talking professionally, I just hate it all, guys.”

@sabrinabui1999 Why I quit my job with no backup plan #big4accountant #corporatelife #corporatetiktok #fyp #accountinglife #accounting #unemployed #unemployedlife #ey #resign #quitingbig4 #worklife #stayathomedaughter #accountingstudent #accountingtiktok #corporateamerica #quittingmyjob #resignationletter ♬ What Was I Made For? [From The Motion Picture “Barbie”] – Billie Eilish

Her resignation letter from an earlier video:

She seems to be doing just fine without the Big 4 hassle in her life.

@sabrinabui1999 My life now #unemployedlife #fyp #quitingbig4 #resign #unemployed #corporatelife #livingathomeinyour20s #livingmybestlife #dayinmylife #dayinthelife ♬ all-american bitch – Olivia Rodrigo

The post Staff 2 Who Couldn’t Fake It at EY Anymore: “I Would Just Cry Every Single Day After Work” appeared first on Going Concern.

She’s riding a skateboard because you can’t afford a car on a public accounting starting salary.

Why’s there a bearded hipster hanging out creepily in the back?

Some appropriate Twitter reactions:

Vibes: pic.twitter.com/p9pqErdnyG

— Matthew J. Cordes, EA (@cordes_tax) September 26, 2023

CPAs be like pic.twitter.com/FwlwKqi2s7

— Daily Tax Memes (@DailyTaxMemes) September 26, 2023

Someone there watched Barbie one too many times

— Jack Castonguay, PhD, CPA (@profjackc) September 26, 2023

pic.twitter.com/P5h8whajDM

— Nick Meals (@nickmeals) September 26, 2023

Earlier: AICPA Council Approves 12-Point Plan to Do F*ck All to Solve the Accountant Shortage

The post AICPA Unveils Its Most Desperate Pipeline Initiative Yet appeared first on Going Concern.

Anyway, at least your grandma had good intentions and lived through the Great Depression. What’s EY’s excuse?

EY pushback date + 5k Stipend
by u/New-Application-4467 in Big4

OP was supposed to start in April 2023, then pushed back to July, now pushed back again to March 2024. That works out to approximately $555.56/mo, plenty to live off of if you’re sharing a trailer with four roommates in Springfield, MO.

Looks like Deloitte is offering $2k-$2500 a month to (some of?) their deferred starters, KPMG $10,000, and PwC NADA (confirmed with a source). Please let us know if you have different info.

Compare this to Bain offering their delayed MBAs $40,000 to work for a nonprofit while they wait for their pushed back start, $30,000 if they learn a new language, or $20k to become a yoga instructor or take a safari (seriously, it’s in WSJ).

It’s getting rough out there, remember to look out for yourself first and foremost. Deferred start dates might not be the worst thing in the world (if you have a safety net), go out and live a little before you enter the gauntlet. Take up a volunteer position, do some freelancing, travel, hit the gym, take some classes, foster a puppy, or made the excruciating climb to GM in Overwatch. The world’s your oyster, though you probably can’t afford oysters right now.

Any gripes about deferred start dates may be directed to the comment section and/or the editor.

The post These Firms Are Cheap AF With the Deferred Start Date Stipends appeared first on Going Concern.

The BDO bowl at Fishbowl is abuzz over a discovery that partners — apparently all of them — have suddenly booked travel to Orlando next week and no one there seems to know what for. Thanks to a tipster for providing screenshots as plebs like us are not authorized to view the bowl.

Text:

An in person all partner meeting with < a week of notice to book flights … let the wild speculation begin! But hold up, let me pop my popcorn first.

As predicted by BDO 1, there was in fact a bit of bellyaching. The firm has been closely clutching the purse strings since June when all non-billable travel was suspended.

If it guides your wild speculation any, apparently whatever it is is good news according to at least two people. It’s sounding a lot like a sale what with the freeze on non-essential travel and now this. BDO switching from a partnership to a corporation on July 1 might also bear some relevance to whatever’s going on here. Private equity taking a stake, perhaps? We know of one PE firm in particular that might be looking for a deal with an accounting firm after their last deal fell apart in the 11th hour (allegedly).

Let the speculation commence. We’ll let you know if we hear more.

Update: Here’s what we were told by a tipster. I want to share a few choice quotes I got from them related to the meeting and recent actions by the firm, they told us things have been on a downward slide ever since well-respected advisory leadership was kicked to the curb in October. When our tipster uses “they,” they are referring to top leadership. Remember we’re just relaying what we were told here, some of which aligns closely with info we’ve gotten from other sources.

• “This is nothing but greed at the top”
• “They’re going to burn us, cash out, leave everyone with a massive amount of debt”
• “This is just gonna destroy BDO”

We’re told the super secretive partner meeting is centered around a plan to offer employee stock options, there will be a vote and it’s expected to pass though many partners are not thrilled about the direction the firm is going. You’ll recall BDO switched from a partnership to a corporation effective this past July 1. If all works out as planned, BDO senior leadership stands to make a good chunk of money. We have the figures, still digging in further.

We were also told something very interesting, our tipster informs us that private equity is involved. Past tense, as in they’ve been in the picture. If true, it’s curious this somehow remained under wraps all this time. There’s a whole bunch of debt involved here, don’t want to drop names or numbers yet but they’re both big. Allegedly. (Edit: someone name dropped this PE firm in the comments, same firm we were told)

There’s more but that’s the gist of it. TL;DR: ESOP. Those who guessed this is good news for partners you’re right, but our tipster says only about 100 of them really stand to benefit the most.

Again, you have something to add to this coverage don’t be afraid to get in touch. I mean that more literally that I’d like to. We’re on Signal if you prefer to use that.

Update #2: A comment below says RSM leadership will be in attendance and there’s a merger in the works (!). We may have to resume wild speculation until Wednesday.

Update #3: Now that FT has reported the PE deal, we can add some more information from our tipster. As far as payouts go, we’re told Wayne Berson will receive $25-30 million. Variable share partners will see $1-2 million and fixed share partners will get $30-50,000 each. As we understand it, Apollo will get 48% of the firm, 42% will be made available in the ESOP, Wayne Berson holds 1% and the remaining bits are scattered among leadership. Our tipster told us the Apollo deal “was not done in good faith.” More on that later.

The post Let’s Speculate Wildly About Why All the BDO USA Partners Are Getting Together for a Secret Meeting in Florida (UPDATE) appeared first on Going Concern.

AFR columnist Joe Aston writes:

A month ago, embattled consultancy giant PwC announced it was booting eight partners, including Sydney-based Peter van Dongen, following an internal investigation into its tax leak scandal. This week, van Dongen made his departure from PwC LinkedIn official, with a decidedly different perspective on events.

“Almost 40 years since starting as an undergraduate in the Melbourne assurance practice, I have agreed with PwC to bring forward my planned retirement by a few months, and voluntarily retire,” he wrote, adding he wished PwC nothing but great success. “Now for a short career break – and then to re-emerge for whatever is next …”

On Monday July 3, after the sacrifice of CEO Tom Seymour wasn’t sufficient to call off the hounds, PwC Australia announced via press release that eight partners have exited or were in the process of being removed from the partnership after an internal investigation. The investigation was intended to get to the bottom of circumstances that caused a high ranking partner to try and monetize confidential government tax information, or rather the investigation’s purpose was to gas up the bus and find a few people to throw under it.

Said that press release:

The investigation identified a number of specific examples where professional standards were breached with respect to misuse of confidential information or other matters reviewed by the ATO [Australian Tax Office]. Furthermore, the investigation identified a failure of leadership and governance to adequately address the matters, either at the time or whilst the matters were under investigation by the TPB [Tax Practitioners Board] or ATO. This enabled poor behaviours to persist with no accountability. These behaviours are not, and never have been, acceptable under PwC’s standards.

Two partners — Peter Konidaris and Eddy Moussa — exited the PwC partnership because their actions failed to meet their professional responsibilities and two others — Pete Calleja and Sean Gregory — were counseled out of the PwC partnership “as a result of their failure to adequately exercise their expected leadership or governance responsibilities to prevent these actions or to address the deficiencies in culture at the firm or hold others accountable for their behaviors.” Our boy van Dongen was grouped with Wayne Plummer and former CEO Tom Seymour as one of the three partners who “have been given notice of PwC Australia’s findings against them and the same process started under the Partnership Agreement to remove them from the partnership.”

Ironically, as it relates to van Dongen’s LinkedIn post, acting CEO Kristin Stubbins provided a juicy quote in that press release about the importance of accountability. “Accountability is critical to improving our culture and based on our investigation to date, it is clear that the conduct of a number of partners fell short of what was expected of them. They are now being held accountable for their misconduct. While we cannot change the past, we can control our actions today and in the future,” she said.

Or we can just sweep it under the rug and wait for it all to blow over.

It seems van Dongen’s connections did not receive that July 3 press release regarding the reasons behind his departure. From his LinkedIn post (archive):

Note to Associates: the next time someone tells you be careful not to burn bridges because public accounting is a small world, you tell them to go fuck themselves and then write a LinkedIn post congratulating yourself for leveling up to your next great opportunity after security escorts you out of the building.

The post Disgraced PwC Partner Who Got Forced Out Forgot to Mention the Disgrace in His Farewell LinkedIn Post appeared first on Going Concern.

Why is this profession so depressing?
by u/Good-Honeydew3309 in Accounting

TL;DR on the protest: Reddit announced an API pricing change, popular third-party apps that rely on the API to function were outraged at the exorbitant fees, moderators across the site organized a two-day blackout that began today to communicate their anger and frustration over the change. Not all subreddits are participating and many support subs in particular have chosen to remain open, moderators of several mental health subs felt it was important their users have a place to talk if needed. Suppose r/accounting fits right in there next to communities built around anxiety, ADHD, and healing from trauma.

The Reddit API has been incredibly valuable to AI companies as a source for training LLMs, the change would mean these companies have to enter into a separate agreement with the site to continue accessing this data via the API ($$$). Up until now AI has been able to feast on Reddit content with the API acting like an almost unlimited firehose of data, some of which is generated by actual humans (there’s a huge bot problem on Reddit so really the bots are learning a lot from other bots). “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” said Reddit CEO Steve Huffman to NYT when the change was announced in April. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”

See also: https://save3rdpartyapps.com/

The post While Most of Reddit Is Silent in Protest, the Glorious Misery of r/Accounting Chugs Along appeared first on Going Concern.

Today we charged Binance Holdings Ltd. (Binance); U.S.-based affiliate, BAM Trading Services Inc., which, together with Binance, operates https://t.co/swcxioZKVP; and their founder, Changpeng Zhao, with a variety of securities law violations.https://t.co/H1wgGgR5ir pic.twitter.com/IWTb7Et86H

— U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (@SECGov) June 5, 2023

The SEC’s complaint [PDF], filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleges that, since at least July 2017, Binance.com and Binance.US, while controlled by Zhao, operated as exchanges, brokers, dealers, and clearing agencies and earned at least $11.6 billion in revenue from, among other things, transaction fees from U.S. customers. The SEC’s complaint alleges that (1) with respect to Binance.com, Binance should have registered as an exchange, broker-dealer, and clearing agency; (2) with respect to Binance.US, Binance and BAM Trading should have registered as an exchange and as clearing agencies; and (3) BAM Trading should have registered as a broker-dealer. The SEC also alleges that Zhao is liable as a control person for Binance’s and BAM Trading’s respective registration violations.

“Through thirteen charges, we allege that Zhao and Binance entities engaged in an extensive web of deception, conflicts of interest, lack of disclosure, and calculated evasion of the law,” said SEC Chair Gary Gensler. “As alleged, Zhao and Binance misled investors about their risk controls and corrupted trading volumes while actively concealing who was operating the platform, the manipulative trading of its affiliated market maker, and even where and with whom investor funds and crypto assets were custodied. They attempted to evade U.S. securities laws by announcing sham controls that they disregarded behind the scenes so that they could keep high-value U.S. customers on their platforms. The public should beware of investing any of their hard-earned assets with or on these unlawful platforms.”

“We allege that Zhao and the Binance entities not only knew the rules of the road, but they also consciously chose to evade them and put their customers and investors at risk – all in an effort to maximize their own profits,” said Gurbir S. Grewal, Director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement. “By engaging in multiple unregistered offerings and also failing to register while at the same time combining the functions of exchanges, brokers, dealers, and clearing agencies, the Binance platforms under Zhao’s control imposed outsized risks and conflicts of interest on investors. Those risks and conflicts are only heightened by the Binance platforms’ lack of transparency, reliance on related-party transactions, and lies about controls to prevent manipulative trading. Despite their years-long efforts to not ‘be held accountable,’ today’s complaint begins the process of doing so.”

SEC Files 13 Charges Against Binance Entities and Founder Changpeng Zhao [SEC]

The post The SEC Charges and Then Trolls Crypto Exchange Binance appeared first on Going Concern.

Neerabh Mehrotra, formerly Associate Director at Deloitte India, has been let go after he gushed over Adolf Hitler’s charisma, intelligence, and confidence on LinkedIn. The post:

Text transcription, courtesy Google Lens:

Friday Inspiration
Recently I picked up a book on Adolf Hitler “The Dark Charisma of Adolf Hitler” by Laurence Rees. I always wanted to read about Hitler and the World War II and this book gave me a fair understanding about these topic.

Although, this book narrated lot of stories about Hitler and how he become the Chancellor of Germany. If you search him on Google, it will say, he was an autocratic leader, very egocentric, un-empathic, ruthless, aggressive, tough-minded, in fact many people believed that he was a psycho and needed a medical assistant.

One of his key personality traits was that he couldn’t tolerate any discussion/ debate/argument and he used to get annoyed if anyone interrupt or try to deliberate on any topic with him. He lived most of his life alone, never allowed anyone to get closure to him, had no family or friends either.

However, there are several charismatic qualities he had, and we all should learn from him.

Some of the imperative qualities of Hitler were.
1. Charismatic Visionary
2. Magnetic Speaker 3. Extremely Confident
4. Very Intellectual
5. Massive Action Taker

As the Nazis salute says “Heil Hitler!”

Would you like to add anything about Adolf Hitler?

#people #inspiration #leader #adolfhitler

When I first came across this story on Jewish Chronicle I had to Google to make sure I wasn’t about to eat the onion. Alas it’s real, there’s a whole discussion on r/deloitte, it appeared on the compendium of all LinkedIn lunacy r/LinkedInLunatics (many, many times in the last several days), and even VICE wrote about it. So I’m late, clearly.

A post on r/deloitte two days ago said he was still at Deloitte however a spokesperson at the firm told JC he doesn’t work there anymore. “The views on social media expressed by the individual, who joined our organization last month, are not aligned with our shared values and violate our internal policies,” said a firm spokesperson. “This individual no longer works for Deloitte India.”

Comment
by u/Fantastic_Form3607 from discussion Anyone have an update on the Associate Director at Deloitte that was praising Nazis and saying Heil Hitler?
in deloitte

There’s also an apology, though it appears it couldn’t salvage the pieces of his career shattered in a single social media post. On his now-disappeared LinkedIn he posted this apology letter (with two exclamation points!!):

Text:

Open Apology Letter!!

Dear LinkedIn Professionals,

This is an open apology letter to each one of you whose sentiments/feelings were hurt because of my recent post on “Hitler”.

Honestly, I had no intention to hurt anyone’s feeling instead I was just trying to share my learnings from the book. It is like any other post I have written in the past, but I agree, I should have been more careful.
My mentors/coaches/bosses have always taught me that if I make a mistake then I should have an audacity accept it as well so here I come forward to sincerely apologize for my post and I will not write anything about such personalities in the future.

I would also like to clarify that this was my personal opinion, and it has nothing to do with my race, religion, country or the organizations I am associated with at the moment or in the past.

On this platform, we all are professionals, and we keep sharing and learning for each other and some time we do make mistakes, retrospect and improvise it so I request you to forgive me, disregard the distraction I had created and continue our growth journey with full force.

Appreciate your consideration and support.

Thank you, Neerabh

Apparently the guy has a YouTube channel on which he describes himself as “Intraprenuer’s Holistic Success Coach.” There’s not much on there but this one aged particularly well.

This guy definitely will never work in this town again.

Deloitte director who called Hitler ‘charismatic visionary’ no longer works at the company [Jewish Chronicle]

The post Deloitte Risk Advisory Associate Director Who Praised Hitler on LinkedIn No Longer Works at Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

I just met with my coach and although I was rated as strong in all categories, the firm has decided to defer my promotion for 1 year. I am 2nd year analyst up for promo to C. I had been told this whole time that promo to C is basically automatic. Coach shared the due diligence feed back with me and nothing bad was listed. I really don’t understand what I did wrong. He doesn’t know either. Came in as exp hire as well, so the title demotion was already a bit of a shock. GPS consulting HC 93k. Hired June 2021.

He did just say that As who haven’t hit the 2 year mark are less likely to be promoted this round cause the firm is worried about not having enough analysts since they aren’t hiring as many. But idk if I believe that.

Anyone else in the same boat?

Edit to add: current utilization over 100%. December utilization was 88%.

According to our tipster, there are “several known instances” of coaches having told their coachees that promotion was inevitable. “Today [yesterday], several of these employees had their promotions clawed back due to a ‘final screening process’ that office PPMDs and coaches did not have insight to.” Our tipster doesn’t know if any senior manager promo candidates were affected, telling us the people they know of were up for consultant, senior, or manager in both risk and financial advisory and consulting.

Numerous people have reported similar experiences, and these aren’t burnouts we’re talking about.

Yes, happened to me too. Util 95%, 100% this year. Higher end for all categories, recommendations from leaders, many strong impacts, etc. Coach said he heard promos were limited due to how the business is performing

And:

Welcome to the party. I was also not promoted. Experienced hire within EP. 5 years of experience. Onboarded as an analyst w/ promotion timeline of 2023. Coach states, likely event is economic uncertainty. He also stated if I had joined a year earlier, my results would have definitely allowed me to get promoted. I’m bummed but, life goes on.

Client work: Strong

Firm work: Exceptional

AND:

I don’t think it’s you’re [sic] coaches fault. Looks like alot of people are getting screwed with promos. Cost cutting and difficulty staffing the higher up you go.

Conspiracy time:

Most likely a tactic to get people to voluntarily leave especially if there was no negative feedback.

I think it’s to get people to voluntarily leave tbh. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s the case

Only days ago, Deloitte announced layoffs of 3% (1200 people) on a Risk & Financial Advisory all-hands call but the firm insists that overall client demand remains strong. “As growth in select practices moderates, we are taking modest personnel actions where necessary,” said Jonathan Gandal, managing director of Deloitte Services to FOX Business.

Audit and Tax promotion announcements have not been made yet.

The post What TF Is Going on With Deloitte Promotions? appeared first on Going Concern.

This screenshot couldn’t have worked out better.

Since late 2021, PwC has touted a super flexible remote work policy. Come in, don’t, whatever. This depends on your team and clients of course but as far as we are aware there hasn’t been any blanket policy to get people back into the office.

One thing to note, and others threw this out there in the Reddit post, a conspiratorially-minded person might suggest that if a business were looking to make cuts without the accompanying bad publicity that comes from layoffs, forcing people back into the office would be a really good way to do it. At least some of those people who threatened to leave if they can’t work remotely will actually leave, still more will not leave but phone it in so hard they can get counseled out without much controversy. Boom, you just eliminated a bunch of people without some business rag putting your layoffs on blast.

One other thing to acknowledge: we have seen advisory layoffs at other firms in recent months. Consulting demand is down across the board. At least down under, Big 4 firms have all said the business is slowing down and PwC Australia specifically told AFR the firm “had no plans to cut jobs despite the fall in client demand.” The red hot job market has cooled, turnover is down a bit from its frenzied peak last year, and firms are lowering their hiring targets to keep headcount numbers under control (plus there’s that whole shortage thing anyway). Steps firms are already taking appear to be sufficient for now unless the business really starts suffering. There doesn’t seem to be much reason for PwC to make a controversial move like this right now. What benefit does it serve the firm?

But wait. Is turnover actually down? No idea. These comments are all over the place.

And then there’s this from Fishbowl:

Wait what? This needs more digging into. Keep you posted. For now this rumor is definitely just a rumor unless we hear otherwise.

The post Someone’s Starting Rumors That PwCers Are Getting Forced Back Into the Office appeared first on Going Concern.

If you’re scheduled to test with Prometric, may the odds be ever in your favor.

Soon to be ex-proctor here. Just a heads up on the chaos and hell going on behind the scenes. Prometric got a new CEO a couple of months ago and he has gone scorched earth with cost cutting. “Low revenue” test sites (like mine) are being closed. And they have eliminated over 75 center manager positions effective April 19th.

What does this mean for you as a test taker? Well, be prepared for sporadic center closures. It has already happened in a few centers ( Wilkes Barre, PA and Sarasota, FL I know of for sure). Also, less than motivated staff taking care of your exam. I’m doing my best personally to hold it together. But it is quite stressful not knowing what the next day brings.

It stinks because it was a nice job to pick up during the pandemic. If you’re a manager whose position is being eliminated, your choices are to stay on as a proctor with a pay cut or take a severance. I was offered a position at either one of 2 centers almost an hour from my home. I instead chose to take the severance. Thankfully I have gig work to fall back on.

I hope CPA has other companies to test with. It’s going to get worse before it gets worse at Prometric.

“It’s going to get worse before it gets worse” is my new favorite saying.

Prometric did get a new CEO in February, Stuart Udell. Udell is “a 30-year education industry veteran,” most recently serving as CEO of Achieve3000, “a leading software and services provider of reading and math intervention and acceleration solutions.” Before that, he served as CEO of “other prominent EdTech organizations” including virtual school operator K12, Inc.; intervention and specialized services provider Catapult Learning; and online career education provider Penn Foster. He specializes in assessment, career education, test preparation, curriculum, and other areas of educational technology and service delivery, says the news release about his new gig.

Let’s talk about his gig at K12. He resigned from K12 — now called Stride — in March 2018. Here’s a story about that:

The CEO of the major for-profit online education provider K12 Inc., Stuart J. Udell, has resigned his post after the company said that its board decided to “redefine his responsibilities.”

The publicly traded Herndon, Va.-based company announced the shakeup Tuesday. It said that the company’s chairman of the board, Nathaniel Davis, who served as CEO from 2014 to 2016, will take over the post again with Udell’s departure.

Udell’s resignation will take effect on March 2, the company said in a statement.

The company’s board had sought from Udell a “narrowing of his responsibilities” that would have been a departure from the “original scope of his work,” said Michael Kraft, K12’s vice-president of finance, public relations, and corporate communications, in an interview.

Davis will assume the CEO role on a permanent, not an interim basis, holding that position “for the foreseeable future,” Kraft said.

K12 Inc. is one of the most polarizing companies operating in the school space. It is the largest commercial operator of online schools in the United States, but the lackluster academic record of its schools has come under fire in many states. (See Education Week’s reporting on the scrutiny of K12-operated online schools in Indiana, and the company’s political influence, in our in-depth series on shortcomings in the cyber charter world, as one example.)

Around the time that Stuart dipped out, K12 pivoted away from education into career training. Here’s a U.S. News article on that if you care, this backstory is already running too long.

We haven’t heard of widespread Prometric closures, though shuttering low volume centers sounds more than plausible especially if there’s a new CEO who wants to hit the ground running on profitability. This could also have something to do with Prometric’s remote testing service ProProctor. Though a remote CPA exam from the comfort of home is just a pipe dream for now, plenty of other professional licensing bodies allow candidates to test remotely using this service which means fewer bodies at testing centers.

You can see temporary Prometric site closures on their site here, always a good idea to check ahead of test day so you don’t get hit with an unexpected note telling you to go away.

If you have more information on happenings behind the scenes at Prometric, get in touch.

The post An Alleged Insider Warns About ‘Chaos and Hell’ Behind the Scenes at Prometric appeared first on Going Concern.

She writes:

Over the past 12 months, I have met countless motivated, hardworking individuals that are interested in pursuing a career in accounting. However, many of those same candidates expressed their frustration as they struggle with the financial commitment of obtaining 150 credit hours to become a certified public accountant (CPA).

Many students are eager to enter the workforce full time and make a living. Some of the most inspiring students we meet with are working 30 to 40 hours a week on top of their academic courseload to make ends meet.

They continually share that any dollar invested in education needs to have a clear value proposition. The goal for many is to complete necessary coursework and start working at the earliest opportunity, nothing more.

The value proposition is something I wrote about last year, back before the Wall Street Journal gave a shit about the accountant shortage. Allow me to resurrect that paragraph:

The accounting profession has a critical value proposition problem — it has consistently failed year after year to demonstrate that it offers enough perks to make up for the downsides. The profession asks students to commit five years of their life plus however long it takes to study for a difficult professional licensing exam oh and also you’re going to be doing 70 hour weeks in a good week while living with four roommates for the first couple years but don’t worry, one day you’ll make some good scratch. You just have to get through a very unpleasant gauntlet first. If you express any discomfort about this process, you’re labeled a punk who can’t hack it in public by people who also can’t hack it because no one can but they do it anyway and say nothing because their university professor told them if they don’t shut up and take it they’ll be marked unemployable for the remainder of their career.

Back to Jen and her LinkedIn post. She says that the Minnesota initiative is “opens [a] much-needed pathway to licensure and that the “conversation and remedy is years in the making.”

Minnesota has argued, and Jen seems to agree, that whether a person has 120 or 150 units, it doesn’t matter as long as they can pass the CPA exam. In other words, the exam is perfectly sufficient as a barrier to entry to keep out the riff-raff. As anyone who has taken it knows (and though I never took it, I sat through hundreds upon hundreds of hours of CPA review class and served as therapist to many CPA exam candidates over the years so I can say with confidence I have a general idea), it requires you to know a little bit about a lot of things and just getting through the entire process is a test by itself. Licensing bodies oversee the application process and can purge “undesirables” before they get that far. So enough bouncers already exist without the profession needing 30 arbitrary college units to really really weed people out.

Critics of the legislation argue that adjustments to the credit requirement may impact the quality of accounting candidates entering the profession. However, there is no empirical evidence to suggest that the 150-hour requirement has elevated our profession. In reality, we’ve experienced a shortage of talent that continues to accelerate. Before the current rule was implemented, the industry welcomed top talent that currently comprises far-reaching leadership positions with crucial experience navigating the country’s biggest economic crises. I can see a clear plan where this legacy and standard of work can continue without the additional 30-hour course requirement.

In reality, the uniform CPA exam is our mechanism to provide talent with the technical acumen to serve in today’s world. Just as this exam has continuously evolved, so must our certification process.

She references the lack of empirical evidence to suggest that the 150 hour rule has elevated the profession. Not only is there little to no evidence, there is evidence that the 150 hour rule decreases CPA candidates, and we’ve known this for a while. See: “Occupational licensing and accounting quality: Evidence from the 150-hour rule” by John Barrios, a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He found a 15% reduction in first-time CPA exam candidates after the 150-credit requirement was implemented, a decline that aggregates over multiple years. AND he found that the 150 rule did not actually improve the quality of talent. So not only did it function a little too well as a barrier to entry, it did not lead to better CPAs like it was supposed to. Which, duh. But boy do we have some expert basket weavers in the profession.

“I myself graduated from college when you needed only 120 credit hours plus work experience. As someone who could not afford another day of college after graduation, I can honestly say I wouldn’t be in my current role if the 150-hour requirement was enacted when I was working on my CPA certification,” writes Jen.

“Minnesota’s proposal marks tremendous progress in attempting to remove a barrier to entry by broadening the pathways and increasing accessibility to the accounting profession. To tackle declining numbers of new talent and be sustainable well into the future, we need to double or even triple the number of students who choose accounting as a major and stick with it through graduation and beyond. Broadening the pathway to become a CPA has the potential to increase the number of CPAs overall and encourage hard working, diverse talent to join the profession.”

“Our hope is that, with the exemplary action taken by Minnesota, this legislation can spur a national dialogue that challenges the current licensure requirements and empowers the accounting profession to look inward at how it welcomes and fosters prospective talent.”

I will say this. From where I am sitting and from feedback I have received from readers, lurkers, and other citizens of the CPA peanut gallery, the AICPA’s stance on Minnesota’s proposal does not vibe with the general consensus. All the comments I saw on Jen’s post are also in agreement that something must be done, and maybe offering an alternative to 150 units is a good start. It is my hope that more stakeholders, leaders, and educators will speak up and share their views publicly as Jen has. Even if they disagree.

If you have an opinion on alternative pathways to CPA licensure please feel free to reach out and weigh in, your viewpoints are important and better inform our coverage on this topic. Remember also to contact your state board of accountancy and let your voice be heard. They don’t read Going Concern comments. At least I hope not.

Earlier:
The Accountant Shortage Isn’t Bad Enough For NASBA to Entertain Dropping the 150 Hour Requirement
Minnesota Throws TPTB the Finger and Introduces Legislation to Offer an Alternate Pathway to CPA Licensure
The Beef Between the AICPA and Minnesota Over the 150 Hour Rule Heats Up
MNCPA to Educators: “We Do Not Need New CPAs Who Have Additional College Credits; We Need More CPAs, Period.”

The post One of Minnesota’s Largest Accounting Firms Can Totally Get Behind the Alternative Pathway to CPA Licensure appeared first on Going Concern.

It’s been a while since we’ve checked in with #TaxTwitter so let’s do just that and see how things are going.

This year just feels different. Professionals are standing their ground, making time for self care, telling bad clients to take a leap, and LET ME TELL YOU am I happy to see it. Oh and extensions are the hottest trend in tax for 2023 (no, not the Jersey Shore kind). It’s beautiful. You’re doing great, keep it up

If you can’t respond to my requests because you are on spring break in Hawaii with your 4 kids, and when you get back and finally get around to calling me and I tell you that you owe $50k, and you have the nerve to be mad at ME – you can fuck right off. #TaxTwitter

— QueenBizzy (@NotAHobbyCPA) March 25, 2023

Friendly reminder that your Tax Pro is exhausted and doing the best they can do. Tread cautiously and use kind words . #TaxTwitter

— Deej, CPA (@DJFochs) March 21, 2023

3 weeks to go and this is me holding the boundaries. #TaxTwitter #ExtensionSZN pic.twitter.com/ZgvhrptcdL

— Brad Lindeberg (@BradRunsFar) March 27, 2023

Just have to update to 2023.#taxtwitter pic.twitter.com/0RirjblNJ5

— Al Beatty, EA, CPA, MT (@AlBeattyEA) March 27, 2023

Spoke with partner of regional CPA firm in KC today. He asked if I wanted good referrals they’ve outpriced. Told him I have no capacity . He said every firm he’d consider sending clients to in KC is at capacity. It’s wild out there these days. 28 more days!#TaxTwitter

— Itown Hard, CPA (@itownhard) March 23, 2023

People who paid for their blue check marks spamming everyone in “tax twitter” with their AI/Automation stuff.” Who cares about that right now? Read the fucking room . They can’t though because Clout is a powerful powerful drug pic.twitter.com/rlbJnMifRA

— Charles D. Liddell, CPA (@GFan815) March 27, 2023

Let this be a lesson to all of #TaxTwitter.
I post well thought out, thorough threads on tax topics and get decent engagement.
My engagement sees a massive jump posting “Horse taxes are weird, huh?” or “I deducted fake cum today.”
Know your platform.

— Spooky Scary, CPA (@SpookyScaryCPA) March 25, 2023

Let’s just say this marketing email might have missed the mark a little…#TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/gfhWROiiqN

— Chris Keegan (@ckeegan04) March 27, 2023

Well that was fun. How’s your Monday? #taxtwitter pic.twitter.com/23mFuV1yuC

— Matt Metras cryptotaxpro.eth (@EmDeeEm) March 27, 2023

March 28 and 29 seems like a great time to discuss the state of the tax industry. #TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/cv8ngll0vF

— Adam Watson (@tallycpa) March 27, 2023

Serious question #TaxTwitter – Would it be a reasonable expectation that a CFP with more than ~30 years of experience under their belt would know how to read a K1 and how it breaks down on a tax return?

— Manasa Sogal Nadig (@ManasaSogNadig) March 27, 2023

How far into 150 hours do they teach you that married people don’t file single with a spouse as a dependent? Bc I have a new client that’s been filing WITH A PAID PREPARER that way for 6+ years.#TaxTwitter

— William Holtsman, CPA (@W_Holtsman) March 24, 2023

“Can you remove the Estimated Tax Vouchers from our return so the IRS doesn’t charge us a penalty?” C

Sorry man, you gotta actually pay them for the IRS to not charge you a penalty.#TaxTwitter

— Stephanie S (@SNS92569093) March 27, 2023

The culture in our industry needs to change. There are a ton of people on #taxtwitter that get it, but so many more who do not. Tax pros need to stop wearing 16 hours days like a badge of honor.

— Andrea MacDonald, CPA (@andreamacdcpa) March 27, 2023

We are at the point of tax season where I just want one…easy….return that I can finish in one sitting #taxtwitter

— Gretchen (@VickneyCPA) March 23, 2023

I’m being too reactive and allowing my inbox to dictate how my day goes. I want to reclaim my independence but I feel like if I don’t keep putting out the mini fires then I’ll fall too far behind. I guess admitting you have a problem is the first step. #TaxTwitter

— Zachary Hellman, EA (@taxpreptech) March 21, 2023

My favorite tax documents are tax documents with dried up bbq sauce on them. Actually, I pray that its only bbq sauce. #TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/Ed9N0bWil6

— Tequila, Naps, Puppies & Taxes (@suzieemac) March 19, 2023

Drip:

Etsy find by a friend:

Cute, right! #TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/BusSd8YRZx

— Nicole Davis (@wifemomcpa100) March 23, 2023

Ending on a positive note. Times they are a-changin’.

I completely redesigned my practice top to bottom this year. I don’t work long days. I’ve worked a total of 4hrs on weekends all season. I’m happy and unstressed. I’ve never had a tax season like this.#TaxTwitter https://t.co/xTwCcmOmDv

— Matt Metras cryptotaxpro.eth (@EmDeeEm) March 26, 2023

Embracing a more manageable approach to outdated tax deadlines. With only 3.5 months to do all this work, we can’t be sacrificing our well-being!#TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/kEeAHvr4T0

— Vimal {Vee-mull} (@vimalcpa) March 21, 2023

The post Busy Season Problems: You Deducted What?, Dumbest Conference Idea Ever, Clients Taking Ls appeared first on Going Concern.

IRS employees, y’all are out of luck sorry. Not like you’re allowed to partake anyway.

The post Busy Season Survival Tip #626: Save Those Paperclips appeared first on Going Concern.

(Auditors and people who scored a 71 or above on AUD may ignore this next part, you know this already) An audit isn’t the financial equivalent of a doctor running every blood test available and feeling around in your butthole with a gloved finger to figure out everything wrong with you. It’s more like a trip to your general practitioner, checking vitals, getting a routine complete blood count and basic metabolic panel, giving the patient a thorough look over, and determining that the patient is not in immediate medical danger. (Anyone with a better analogy that doesn’t involve rooting around in butts is welcome to message the editor, thank you) Auditors don’t provide absolute assurance but reasonable; stated another way: audits are not perfect, they are good enough. This of course opens the floor for a discussion about why even bother with audits then, a topic best left to people who know better than we do (Francine McKenna and Jim Peterson are two such people I can think of off the top of my head).

Back to the auditors. KPMG Chair and CEO Paul Knopp talked about his firm’s work on the failed banks at an event at the NYU Stern Center for Sustainable Business on Tuesday and made it clear that the firm stands behind their opinions, per an article in Financial Times yesterday. “As we take into account everything we know today . . . we stand behind the reports we issued and we think we followed all professional standards,” he said.

“You have a responsibility until the day you issue the audit report to consider all facts that you know, so we absolutely did do that. But what you can’t know with certainty is what might happen after that audit report is issued.”

“There were actions taken in the month of March that set off another set of reactions that led to those two institutions being closed,” he said.

12 days after KPMG said it is their opinion that the consolidated financial statements present fairly, in all material respects, the financial position of the Company in conformity with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles, SVB parent company SVB Financial Group disclosed it sold $21 billion of bonds and booked an after-tax loss of $1.8 billion.

Former Federal Reserve bank examiner Mark T. Williams told Fortune‘s Sheryl Estrada he thought the actions taken by SVB Financial Group in March were a risk nightmare and “a colossal failure in asset-liability risk management.”

“To prevent a crisis of confidence, SVB’s CEO and CFO should have relied more on an old-fashioned banking approach of diversification of its lending and deposit customers,” says Williams, a master lecturer in the finance department at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. “Venture capital is a highly risky business. So not only did the bank expose its asset side of the balance sheet but also its liability side.”

“The CFO and, I would argue, the board failed to adequately protect shareholder value,” Williams says. “The board-appointed risk management committee, which works closely with the CFO, should have done adequate scenario analysis to examine the deposit withdrawal risk. That, in fact, was the bank’s downfall.”

During this time, Y Combinator CEO Garry Tan warned his organization’s startups to be wary of the developing situation as it could mean life and death for them. “We have no specific knowledge of what’s happening at SVB,” he wrote in an internal message seen by Bloomberg News. “But anytime you hear problems of solvency in any bank, and it can be deemed credible, you should take it seriously and prioritize the interests of your startup by not exposing yourself to more than $250K of exposure there. As always, your startup dies when you run out of money for whatever reason.” Let’s be real, he wasn’t saying “be wary.” He was saying “GTFO while you can.”

Meanwhile, there was a storm brewing online from the time KPMG issued their opinion on February 24 and Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse two weeks later, an event that would require a kind of clairvoyance not currently required by PCAOB standards to foresee. A day before regulators seized the bank, investors and depositors attempted to pull $42 billion from SVB. Precipitating that, an influential person said some things and people who value this person’s opinion reacted in swift and extreme fashion.

First reported on Fortune, Evan Armstrong of Napkin Math pinned the whole thing (“potentially“) on Byrne Hobart and his newsletter The Diff so expect lawmakers to say we should regulate newsletters any day now. Armstrong tweeted:

Kinda insane that this entire debacle was potentially caused by @ByrneHobart‘s newsletter. Here’s how the butterfly effect happened.

1) Byrne posts this article/Tweet calling out SVB’s risk.
2) Pretty much every VC I know reads this newsletter
3) They all start to pay very,… https://t.co/zUSKF1ZW4J

— Evan Armstrong (@itsurboyevan) March 11, 2023

Full text:

Kinda insane that this entire debacle was potentially caused by @ByrneHobart’s newsletter. Here’s how the butterfly effect happened.

1) Byrne posts this article/Tweet calling out SVB’s risk.
2) Pretty much every VC I know reads this newsletter
3) They all start to pay very, very close attention to SVB earnings
4) Absolutely massive earnings miss by SVB
5) Peter Thiel, USV, and Coatue are first to send out messages/mass emails to portfolio co’s to pull out funds
6) Tech Twitter catches word of this
7) Bank Run
8) Collapse
9) If FDIC/Buyer doesn’t come in, in the next 7 days, potential 20%+ collapse of entire startup industry.

All started by one overly prolific dude in Austin. Amazing.

He then links to the one overly prolific dude in Austin who tweeted this on February 23:

Also in today’s newsletter: Silicon Valley Bank was, based on the market value of their assets, technically insolvent last quarter and is now levered 185:1.

One thing to add—there was viral thread that talked about it earlier. I’ve also heard reports of 1 or 2 firms warning their portcos late last year. But my estimation is that this tweet/newsletter was the one that truly entered the vc hive consciousness https://t.co/ZXnUZmMLM8

— Evan Armstrong (@itsurboyevan) March 11, 2023

“I think Byrne helped tipped the industry into a frenzy, but the speed and ferocity of this was beyond anything I thought possible,” wrote Armstrong.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Patrick McHenry (R-NC) called the events of the past few days “the first Twitter fueled bank run” and The Atlantic said earlier this week that the world’s first online-inspired bank run doesn’t bode well for the next major crisis. Finger-pointing at the internet aside, these incidents have once again put audit front and center as a checkbox exercise that even when performed perfectly is anything but perfect. And that’s when audits are done right, which they so often are not. So again the public has to ask: what is the point then? And who do we blame for this? 

Of these questions, ex-Freddie Mac CFO, former PwC partner, and former PCAOB chief auditor Marty Baumann said: “I suspect that may cause some people to question the value of an audit, but I believe the audit is incredibly valuable to investors. But I do question whether accounting disclosures of asset and liability duration mismatch is adequate.” Expect the PCAOB to start digging around in the SVB workpapers post haste.

A KPMG spokesperson provided the following statement to Going Concern regarding the SVB and Signature Bank audits: “Due to client confidentiality, we have no specific comment. We conduct our audits in accordance with professional standards. Any unanticipated events or actions taken by management after the date of an opinion could not be contemplated as part of the audit. It’s important to recognize that audit opinions, which only address the financial statements and internal controls of the business, are based on audit evidence available up to and at the date of the opinion.”

Whatever happened and how much of it should have been called out by auditors, I think we all agree that this is a bad look for a profession already struggling with optics.

Related:
This SVB Securities Exec’s Resume Reads Like a Wikipedia Page For 21st Century Accounting Trash Fires

The post WTF Happened at SVB and Should KPMG Auditors Have Seen It Coming? appeared first on Going Concern.

With the accountant shortage in full swing and the profession’s talking heads, peanut galleries, unwashed masses, and unelected old white guys in charge discussing ways to ease it, it’s inevitable that we’ll start throwing out some WILD ideas. Like this one:

Want more CPAs?

Make the exam easier… that test is hard

120 vs 150-hour rule doesn’t make a difference because you still have to conquer the beast

There are many with 150 hours that never become CPAs because they give up on trying to pass

Expanding the pass credit window… https://t.co/L57RWaVqav

— Tax TeleGraf (@LoganGrafTax) March 10, 2023

Logan meant to open the floor on a discussion about this crazy idea, a noble intention that was immediately met with rage. The kind of rage that only Twitter can stir up.

I’m trying to redirect attention away from the 120 vs 150-hour rule debate

You can make it easier to sit for the test, but that doesn’t mean more people will become CPAs

Lowering hour requirements will increase the pool of who is eligible

But as I said, the difficulty of the test will weed out a lot of candidates

Observations about the reactions towards this tweet…

Seeing a trend with anon accounts being very against increasing the ability to become a CPA

People are so passionate about this topic at a level that doesn’t make sense

— Tax TeleGraf (@LoganGrafTax) March 10, 2023

In fairness to Twitter, some folks understood the assignment. Like David here:

How many of those CPAs saying “You can’t make the exam easier, it’ll diminish the profession” could score higher than a 40 on AUD or FAR today? It’s 2023, we don’t need to memorize every arcane rule anymore. Ease the exam up before there are only like 12 CPAs left.

— David Troyer (@DavidTroyer4) March 10, 2023

There’s some more reasoned discussion to be had here should you be interested.

SO. Let’s place a moratorium on discussing this particular item, perhaps permanently. What else we got? Have we considered giving CPA exam candidates free toasters upon passing all four parts?

The post PSA: Do Not Suggest That We Make the CPA Exam Easier in Order to Solve the Accountant Shortage appeared first on Going Concern.

The thread:

694 comments. Do you think partners who scan Reddit to see how the serfs are feeling will read all of them? I’ll save them some time: your people do not want to go back. The ones who do — exhausted parents who need a break, for one — are already doing so. The ones who are not are not some client needing to be won over, they have made their decision.

Well if partners speed read past most of the comments they’ll be interested in this one for sure. Here we have OP, a manager with an extremely high Blood Kool-aid Concentration of 0.30%, which can be fatal and requires immediate medical attention.

You know what makes people quit their jobs? Their jobs. Being shoved back into carpet-lined cubicles and forced to interact with people you never really liked anyway when you could be doing the same thing in your comfiest sweats from the comfort of home is not going to get people to stay. As evidenced by those 694 comments and nearly three years of people saying “I will quit if I ever have to go back to the office,” the opposite will happen.

So what do you think? Does remote work make you think this is just work for a paycheck (which it literally is so what’s the issue)? Would being in the office more foster that sense of community and belonging that you crave so much in your life and can’t get from people you get a say in choosing such as friends and your spouse? Do you miss being crammed in a closet at the client site with your colleagues, inhaling the human fumes?

Has OP tried pizza for the team? I heard that works.

The post Accountants Will Not Be Motivated to Get Back to the Office appeared first on Going Concern.

Steve is what happens when you combine Jason Staats (@JStaatsCPA) and ChatGPT (happy now, Brandon? ChatGPT has officially been mentioned on GC). Like any good employer in this sector, Jason threw poor Steve straight into the deep end with minimal onboarding.

I just hired a new team member to my firm

His name is Steve

I have a couple basic projects to throw his way, let’s see how he does: pic.twitter.com/TAlhmez20j

— Jason Staats (@JStaatsCPA) December 6, 2022

Because Twitter annoyingly crops out big ass images in embeds we had a human (me) save each image in the tweet chain and manually upload each one, Jason’s tweets are linked in the captions. This website is too cheap to hire some script to do this for me. Yay job security!

Steve is asked what he hopes to get out of this jr accountant job and answers like any new hire should.

IMO the “strong relationships” thing is a bit much, comments like that make HR jumpy. You do you, Steve.

Jason assigns Steve a simple project. “A client needs an income statement for their banker. They just sent over an excel of their business transactions. Don’t spend more than an hour on this.”

This is what Steve provides:

This is probably the point where Steve starts posting on Reddit about how he is overwhelmed on his first day and wondering if he made a poor career choice. Alas, he obliges.

Why is this image so tiny? You know what, I don’t care. Steve receives another review note. He’s crying in the robot equivalent of a bathroom now.

Jason’s faith is wavering but like any good leader, he urges Steve on. Come on, Steve, you can do this.

Steve quickly Googles “passive aggressive messaging for business” and responds to Jason with this. He passes the bag back to Jason which is an effective tactic in the field assuming one did not actually receive the CSV file in question.

Bonus points to Steve for using “hope this helps,” I’ve used that in place of “go fuck yourself” many times in my professional career. This kid will go far.

Are you kidding? Steve is perfect for this profession. Plus with the shortage and all we can’t really be choosy, any warm body wi–oh, wait. He’s not a body. Well whatever, he’s doing his best OK.

Steve, no one would fault you if you walk out right now. But if you’re going to hack it in this profession, you need to learn to internalize your frustration and mask it with feigned helpfulness. We believe in you.

LOL atta boy.

In the end, Jason decided to let Steve go. It’s probably for the best. Steve would probably be a better fit on Replika or as a T-shirt bot on Reddit.

The lesson:

AI isn’t ready for the fast-paced environment of public accounting

But I’ve made worse hires pic.twitter.com/XKvItTCfAj

— Jason Staats (@JStaatsCPA) December 6, 2022

Good luck to you in your future endeavors, Steve. Follow @JStaatsCPA for more AI harassment ChatGPT experiments. We joke that this thing isn’t taking your job any time soon but it’s a whole helluva lot smarter than it was even five years ago. Might want to bookmark that University of Phoenix internet marketing degree page just in case.

The post Here’s What Happens When You Hire AI to Do Accounting appeared first on Going Concern.

And at the top seven largest public accounting firms in the U.S., that big promotion came with a sizable pay bump in 2022. Based on our analysis of individual firms’ 2022 comp threads on r/accounting, here is the average percentage of how much base pay increased for a few common promotions: second-year associate to senior; and second-year/third-year senior to manager:

A2->S1

• Deloitte: 22.4%
• PwC: 36.1%
• EY: 27.6%
• KPMG: 25.2%
• RSM US: 19.1%
• BDO USA: 15.6%
• Grant Thornton: 19.9%

S2->M1

• Deloitte: N/A
• PwC: 38.8%
• EY: 30.9%
• KPMG: 25.6% (only one entry)
• RSM US: 14%
• BDO USA: 17.1%
• Grant Thornton: N/A

S3->M1

• Deloitte: 20.1%
• PwC: 13.6% (only one entry)
• EY: 28.1%
• KPMG: 21.3%
• RSM US: N/A
• BDO USA: N/A
• Grant Thornton: N/A

So keep your nose to the grindstone, capital market servants, because good things likely await you in 2023. At the very least a pizza party or two.

The post Maybe 2023 Will Be the Year You Get That Big Promotion appeared first on Going Concern.

From the moment you chose accounting as a major you have been relentlessly teased and taunted. “Why not law?” screeched your mother. “Haha BORING,” said your little brother. “So does this mean you can do my taxes?” teased your uncle who continues to ask you to do his taxes even though you’re now an audit manager. You watched as your classmates who went into tech bragged about the buckets of money they were making fresh out of school while you contemplated if the $3.99 Instacart delivery fee was truly prudent given your financial condition. Friends, no more. No, today you are justified in your choices at last.

ABC7 in San Francisco is tracking Bay Area tech layoffs and you’ll see some familiar names: Meta (13% of the workforce just got cut), Lyft, Twitter. Most of them have said the layoffs are driven by cost-cutting measures, in Meta’s case the company’s operating income dropped 46% from the previous year while costs and expenses rose 19% to $22.1 billion. It doesn’t take an accountant to figure out some adjustments needed to be made.

Is accounting truly recession-proof? Well, we watched accounting firms cut pay and staff at the beginning of the pandemic only to report record-breaking revenue by that fall so no, the profession is as susceptible to economic hiccups as anyone. There will no doubt be cuts should the economy get worse but staff levels are so low right now there isn’t much to cut. Non-client facing staff will be the canary in the coal mine here, if we start seeing admin and recruiters go en masse then low performers on the professional side are probably next. We’d also expect to see firms pull back on recruiting which has yet to happen, if anything firms are more aggressively hiring now than they were a few years ago. PwC has a few years left on The New Equation and as far as we know they haven’t filled those 100,000 new jobs they’ve planned. Across the pond, EY brought a record 1,473 students into its UK business this year — up 35% compared to 2021 — and made sure to put out press releases about it. The smaller firms are going merge-crazy and some are entertaining private equity as a way to compete in the talent war. For now at least, this train isn’t slowing.

So gloat away. You’ve earned it. It’s not like you get to do it very often.

The post At Least We Aren’t in Tech, Boast Smug Accountants Who Didn’t Get Laid Off Today appeared first on Going Concern.

UPDATE: Twitter’s chief accounting officer is rumored to have been “walked out” of the building and his Slack appears deactivated, a day after he was thanked by workers for a Slack post sharing long-awaited details about the stock payouts they’re owed. https://t.co/Mn21Ko9CqM pic.twitter.com/mCXmUHT0m5

— Will Oremus (@WillOremus) November 3, 2022

Robert Kaiden spent 14 years at Deloitte and made it all the way to partner before moving on to greener grass. Brown grass now, maybe?

We can glean more about him and the gig from a Twitter 8-K filed in June 2015:

Effective June 1, 2015, Twitter, Inc. (“Twitter” or the “Company”) appointed Robert Kaiden, 48, as its Chief Accounting Officer. From 1989 to May 2015, Mr. Kaiden served in several roles at Deloitte & Touche LLP, a national auditing firm, including as Audit Partner from 2000 to May 2015. Mr. Kaiden is a certified public accountant and holds a B.A. in Political Science from Hamilton College, an M.S. in Professional Accounting from the University of Hartford and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. Following Mr. Kaiden’s appointment, Gordon Lee, Twitter’s Controller and Interim Chief Accounting Officer, will continue to serve as Twitter’s Controller.

The Company entered into a letter agreement with Mr. Kaiden, dated April 24, 2015 (the “Offer Letter”), establishing his compensation as Chief Accounting Officer. Pursuant to terms of the Offer Letter, Mr. Kaiden’s base salary will be $350,000 and Mr. Kaiden will be eligible for an annual discretionary performance bonus of up to 100% of his base salary. Mr. Kaiden will be granted a restricted stock unit award covering 120,000 shares of Twitter common stock that will vest over 4 years as described in the Offer Letter and subject to the terms of the Company’s 2013 Equity Incentive Plan.

Kaiden sold $208k worth of stock at $37.04 per share earlier this year.

Supposedly Twitter employees will be hearing about layoffs today. If we hear any numbers coming out of accounting and finance (no pun) we’ll let you know.

The post Twitter’s Chief Accounting Officer Is Rumored to Have Left the Building (Literally) appeared first on Going Concern.

AND IT ISN’T EVEN AN 8×10! Larry Hogan will want to hear about this.

The post Newly-Minted CPA Outraged That Their State is Too Cheap to Send a Paper License Certificate appeared first on Going Concern.

Believe it or not, the survey revealed that more than half of accounting professionals say they are happy with their pay (if this survey was conducted on r/accounting or on Fishbowl, the results would likely be different):

The workers who are the most unhappy about their pay are educators (39%), entrepreneurs (41%), and social service workers (43%).

Keep in mind, this survey was conducted before KPMG held compensation discussions with employees. Had Klynveldians taken this survey, that 52% for accountants probably would have dropped a percentage point or two.

The post Accountants Don’t Bitch About Their Pay as Much as Workers in Other Professions Do appeared first on Going Concern.

Financial Times wrote about Accounting+ recently which is how it got on our radar. Read:

Its website emphasises how technology and artificial intelligence has automated many old accounting tasks, opening up avenues for more creative work such as data analysis, advising on business decisions and hunting down fraud. (The site also offers quizzes and astrological advice on which type of accountant youngsters may want to become. Gemini, Libra and Aquarius are the “thinkers, communicators and doers of the zodiac” who “analyse, synthesise, and probe” and “would thrive in a forensic accounting internship program”, for example.)

The Accounting+ campaign echoes Warren Buffett in calling accounting “the language of business”.

“We believe this is a tie for students of colour, that it is the language of business and provides a pathway to entrepreneurship,” said Liz Barentzen, vice-president at the CAQ. The group believes that increasing the numbers coming into the profession depends on widening its appeal to diverse communities.

“There is a generation coming up that places a premium on a diverse and inclusive workforce, but we do not have that story to tell yet,” Barentzen said.

Perhaps we are just bitter elderly millennials (I am) to find this whatever the opposite of effective is but is this the best we can do? What Kind of Accountant Should You Be quizlets?

Anyway I guess this is what we’re doing now. Accounting may be the language of business but starting salaries tell us that accounting isn’t very fluent which is why analytics, finance, and tech are winning the competition for young talent thus far. Hey, at least there’s job security.

The post We’re Going to Solve the Accounting Pipeline Shortage With 2013 Buzzfeed Quiz Results, You Guys appeared first on Going Concern.

Oh my.

Apparently up until this weekend the official AICPA score release website said that if your scores were received by October 1 your target score release date would be October 11 which means a bunch of people scheduled exams for Saturday the 1st thinking they’d make the cutoff for the release on the 11th. And then in the dead of night (I’m being dramatic, it probably wasn’t really in the dead of night) the AICPA up and changed the date for no discernible reason. Presumably because they are hollow, scornful souls whose only joy comes from messing with the future CPAs of America.

I’m not entirely sure why someone plugged the score release page into the Wayback Machine on September 18 but they did and it clearly says the cutoff is (was) October 1.

At some point over the weekend the October 11 score release disappeared completely which led to even more freaking out. I feel bad for whichever AICPA IT person was on call for this.

Not to mention this was all happening as a Category 4 hurricane was pounding the southeast.

From what I can gather, the AICPA told candidates that the original date of October 1 was an error per discussion in this thread and it was always supposed to be September 30. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.

Lawsuit anyone?

With CPA candidate numbers down hopefully this didn’t lead to too many emails in ole Barry’s inbox.

NGL “I hope Barry Melancon’s C suite AC/Heater is broken until November 8th” made me laugh.

Anyhoo, now you’re caught up. If you are an affected candidate you are welcome to email us with all the expletives you need to share your story. We’ll keep you posted if any of these poor people get their scores on October 11 like they were expecting to.

The post Angry CPA Exam Candidates Blew Up Barry Melancon’s Email All Weekend, Here’s Why appeared first on Going Concern.

Anyone gotten anything good at events lately? Or are we still doing fat highlighters and Post-it flags?

The post Someone at Eide Bailly Has a Thing For Feet appeared first on Going Concern.

Helping a buddy make his estimated tax payment I see this on IRS Direct pay. Seriously IRS?! You chose the submission deadline to run planned outages?! This is a prime example of how inefficient the IRS is. So damn infuriating! pic.twitter.com/ahDpdsPgRN

— Albert J. Campo, CPA, MBA (@ajthecpa1226) September 16, 2022

It’s not the first time it’s happened on a critical deadline day.

The post The IRS Scheduled a Website Outage on September 15, Can’t Figure Out Why People Hate Them appeared first on Going Concern.

Surely you guys can come up with a better photo caption than James did on LinkedIn, and you all can definitely come up with something WAY more creative than we could.

The post Caption This: One of These People is Not Like the Others appeared first on Going Concern.

Let’s talk about starting salaries in public accounting.

Let’s assume a student has an undergraduate accounting degree, a MAcc degree, and has passed all 4 sections of CPA exam.

What do we think is a fair starting salary? #Accounting

— Dr. Josh McGowan, CPA (@Jmcgowan3838) September 19, 2022

Starting salaries in #accounting have gone from B school leaders to laggards. 1st year auditors today barely make more than an auditor who started in 2011 in nominal dollars and less in real dollars. The daily hours + 30 more credits + CPA demand fair compensation. $55K isn’t it. https://t.co/9Lc2hzELev

— Jack Castonguay, PhD, CPA (@profjackc) September 19, 2022

Well? Throw some numbers out. Original Twitter thread here.

The post How Much Should Public Accounting Starting Salaries Be to Make Public Accounting Starting Salaries Less Awful? appeared first on Going Concern.

I didn’t realize Barry Melancon moved from the AICPA to higher education.

While the topic of foregoing the CPA exam and potentially ruining your entire career is a worthy subject on its own, we’re just going to skip right past that and get to these comments.

SHOTS FIRED. You hear that, oldies? You kids had it so easy back in the day. You push the CPA exam as the only option because back in your day it was a breeze (or something).

Actually, it is fact that the content of the exam has grown over the years as the breadth of knowledge an entry level CPA is expected to possess has expanded (source: just trust me bro). That isn’t to say the modern CPA exam is harder, just more. Moving on…

Here’s some ancient data I unearthed from a treasure chest beneath NASBA headquarters on candidate numbers over the years, “the years” being 1950-1990:

Wow that’s a real relic, isn’t it? Actually it has no relevance to this conversation I just thought it was cool. Really, when was the last time you saw a 31-year-old, hand-scanned PDF? This is a real piece of history here.

What were we talking about? Oh right, whether or not the CPA exam is harder now or was harder back in the day. No discussion of CPA exam difficulty would be complete without the obligatory mention of the 150-hour rule. Fact: requiring a fifth year of education adds difficulty. Unless you really, really like school and student loans.

Did you know: 40 years ago there was no 150-rule? In 1983, Florida became the first state to require 150 units for licensure. As talk of a critical accountant shortage increases, expect to see states seriously consider softening the requirement. Illinois has already done this; effective January 1, 2023, you can sit for the CPA exam in the state of Illinois with 120 units (it’s still 150 for licensure, sorry).

This old timer reminds us that while yes, the “old” exam was difficult, so too is the current one and both for different reasons.

Adding to the above comment, they didn’t even have calculators back in the day. Calculators were added to the CPA exam in 1994, ten years before the exam was computerized.

A 1998 Journal of Accountancy article touches on some of the changes that happened to the CPA exam in the 90s:

During 1996, 122,000 candidates sat for the Uniform CPA Examination, but it was markedly different from the exam CPAs have been taking for 80 years. Because the exam is the gateway all CPAs must pass through, modifications in its content and administration affect the entire profession. Since 1990, the exam has undergone major changes: Candidates can now use calculators in some sections, certain essay questions are graded on writing skills, the time allotted to take the exam has decreased, new objective answer formats have been added and the exam has become nondisclosed.

Note: “nondisclosed” in this context means they stopped releasing exam questions so the questions could be reused. The practice questions released by the AICPA now do not appear on the exam.

Harder? Not harder? One OG from back in the day argues their case:

Can we all just agree the exam is hard? It was hard then and it’s hard now. /thread.

The post Reddit is Bickering Over the CPA Exam Getting Harder (or Not) Over the Years appeared first on Going Concern.

You’ve probably seen similar scams all over Twitter, usually involving Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos or some other tech giant figurehead who has suddenly decided to give away free crypto for no reason whatsoever because that’s what you do when you wipe your ass with hundred dollar bills I guess. A couple years back even the AICPA got compromised and their timeline suddenly blown up by bots claiming free money was to be had. Like this:

Anyway, it’s over now. Looks like @PwC_Venezuela is back to normal and all is right with the world once again.

Scammers Hack PwC Venezuela Twitter & Promote XRP Giveaway [The Crypto Times]

The post For a Brief Time This Past Weekend, a PwC Twitter Account Was Promoting Crypto Scams appeared first on Going Concern.

That polar bear’s name? Albert Einstein.

Related articles:
We Get It Lady, You Work For Deloitte
What’s Up With Deloitters and the LinkedIn Cult Mentality?
Everyone Knows 11-Year-Olds Can’t Wait to Work at Deloitte

The post Deloitte is Out Here Being Cringey on LinkedIn Again appeared first on Going Concern.

Writes News.com.au:

Since Saturday morning, staff at EY have complained of being left in the lurch.

News.com.au understands that since Saturday morning’s tragedy, staff have only received one email which stated that a team member had died at the Sydney building over the weekend.

During a pre-scheduled firmwide meeting on Wednesday, employees say the woman’s death was not addressed.

“They brushed over the incident at the start of the call and then went on to talk about the EY demerger for the remaining 50 minutes,” one employee told the anonymous social media page, Aussie Corporate.

Another current staffer said: “There’s a black cloud looming over us at EY and it has been so odd because people are skirting around the event. They’re either saying ‘it’s so sad’, or just aren’t addressing it at all.”

News.com.au understands that even financial auditors at the Sydney office are unaware of the identity of the woman.

On Reddit, one Sydney employee said they were shocked no flowers had been left at the building.

“I do care deeply that I walked into the office this week and not even a single bunch of flowers acknowledged the deeply tragic events of the weekend,” wrote one Reddit user.

Police are continuing to investigate, foul play is not suspected.

If you or someone you care about is struggling with mental health, the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) maintains a list of resources you may find helpful. If you are in immediate crisis, dial 988 for 24/7, free and confidential support (United States). Please reach out if you need someone to talk to.

The post EY Staffers Feel Left in the Dark After Death of Their Colleague Last Weekend appeared first on Going Concern.

First, Shabooya for the unfamiliar (TW: cringing, unnecessary enthusiasm):

PwC, you will never live this down. And now the contender for the title of Even Worse Than Shabooya:

The comments go on to describe equally horrifying team building events that include choreographed dances, singing, and weirdly classist chili cook-offs.

Remember when flash mobs were a thing? If you don’t, boy do we have a treat for you.

How about solving low morale by allowing the team to spend one hour every three months playing board games? One whole hour? So, assuming 50 hour weeks times four weeks a month times three months is 0.166666667% of your time allotted to something fun. Neat.

Sweet tap dancing Christ, I don’t know if I can get through this whole thread. Must. Soldier. On.

I refuse to believe this is a thing that actually happened.

You know what, I’m tapping out. I can’t. Maybe pizza parties aren’t so bad after all.

Worst corporate team bonding or training event you had to endure? I have one that can top the PwC shabooya dance [Reddit]

The post Is There a Such Thing as Corporate Bonding Exercises That AREN’T Objectively Terrible? appeared first on Going Concern.

Thankfully someone pointed out how bizarre it is for someone to have worked at Big 4, a small firm, and GT, BDO, and RSM. OP clarified that they only worked for Grant Thornton — which they called “awful and primitive” — and lumped similar size firms together as an example of the type of firm they had experience working for.

The comments were disappointingly tame and lacking elitism of any kind.

What’s so elite about Big4? [Fishbowl]

The post Why Are People at Big 4 Firms So Elitist? A Rant appeared first on Going Concern.

Putting an emoji at the end doesn’t make your dysfunctional, underpaid workplace charming FYI

Any takers?

The post No Wonder Your Accounting Manager Quit, You Clown appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s the TikTok that inspired such dramatics:

@gowokegobrokeaus Tell me how it makes sense #big4 #deloitte #fyp #graduate #work #commentator #corporatelife #corporate ♬ original sound – Go Woke Go Broke

“So graduates apparently earn around $65,000 a year which is a fine graduate salary for a normal job but working at a big four consulting firm is not a normal job. They demand to basically devote your life to them,” she says. “They make their graduates work 12-14 hours a day and they’re paying them what, $65,000? It’s an absolute joke. It’s modern day slavery. They bill these graduates out at $200, $300 an hour and how much do they pay them, $20 an hour? Tell me, how it makes sense? This is why I hate big business and why people are flocking away from large corporations in record numbers because they’ve realize they are getting absolutely rorted.”

Maybe it’s because I’m old (or American?) but I had to look ‘rorted‘ up. No shame.

Ah, I get it.

As of publication, there are more than 2000 comments on her original TikTok.

The post Word Hits TikTok That Big 4 Firms Are Cheap Bastards, “It’s Modern Day Slavery” appeared first on Going Concern.

Thanks for doing your part to feed the pipeline, ma’am.

The post Everyone Knows 11-Year-Olds Can’t Wait to Work at Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

Now this may be blasphemy to say this around these parts but he’s mostly right. Exercise? Hell yeah, great for you. Healthy eating? Also great for you, those takeout dinners can really take a toll on your health. Passion projects? Super important to find fulfillment in the otherwise boring and meaningless modern human existence.

#3 though. #3. #3 great sounds good on paper — or rather, typed out on LinkedIn — but how practical is it in real world application? How can you pass work off on your team when they have just as much to do as you and you’re already short several people? Is a guy who flew straight from Davos to his son’s basketball game taking his own advice?

Does this mean everyone is logging off at 4pm this afternoon?

The post A Senior Partner Who Has Probably Been Burned Out Since 1997 Gives Tips on Avoiding Burnout appeared first on Going Concern.

Twelve years ago my esteemed former colleague Caleb Newquist got clowned for calling six resignations at KPMG NYC an exodus so we’ll refrain from warnings about skies falling down for now.

The post Mass Exodus at KPMG or Just a Day Ending in Y? appeared first on Going Concern.

Hopefully this is just an isolated incident of interns not paying attention and not representative of the fundamentals of audit crumbling before our eyes. The CAQ will no doubt want to monitor the situation.

The post Crisis in the Profession: Interns Aren’t Learning SALY?!? appeared first on Going Concern.

This is almost as bad as the time Moss Adams boasted about how this one guy would be working on dual monitors at the pool all weekend because flexibility.

Update: We received the following this morning, thought we’d share.

Nice try with the hate toward someone and their family. This guy is possibly the most family oriented person I know. If you did anything besides blow smoke up peoples ass with your weak headlines you would know this is his 4th vacation and his work allows him to enjoy being present with his family along with working remotely. Keep pumping fake news for clicks, ass clowns.

Since the comment section is getting visited by PwC shills let’s add some choice Reddit comments that aren’t bought and paid for by the firm:

You mean like people making Anonymous comments on shitty accounting blogs defending this crap? Yeah, probably.

I’m sure this director is a perfectly lovely guy — in fact I know he is — but that isn’t the point, this isn’t an attack on him. STOP NORMALIZING THIS SHIT. Leaving mean comments trying to discredit the prevailing view that this is demented isn’t going to change the fact that people see right through this and are fed up with it, hence why every Big 4 firm is bleeding talent. No amount of insulting me will change that. Cope harder.

The post PwC Director Lets His Family Know He Probably Won’t See Much of Them on Their Family Beach Vacation (UPDATED) appeared first on Going Concern.

Text of the original post transcribed below:

I’m a Manager, a Sr. Manager is leaving me profanity / border line insulting review comments – what to do.

First time working with this guy and i am getting review comments like “this is fucking garbage” – referring to a sentence. Or things like “JFC how many times are we going to mention XXX”, and multiple f bombs or things insulting my work, or implying i am making a huge error when its just completely overblown.

This seems unneeded and almost hostile. I am pretty confused on what to do, should i just ask him to stop? should i go to our boss? he has been a pretty big dick to me the entire time for really no reason.

Also i am 7 months into this firm, hes been there 6 years now (spent 5 as a manager before finally being promoted to Sr. Manager, so i suspect our bosses know hes not the best).

Guys, I know we yammer on all the time about how desperate firms are and I did say “you could probably take a dump on the senior manager’s office right now if you wanted” and won’t get fired because that’s how desperate they are but come on, let’s be professionals here.

Then again…apparently making workpapers look like the text chat of a heated Overwatch lobby is not a fireable offense according to OP’s edit/update so hey, dump away I guess.

The post Senior Managers Out of F*cks to Give Are Acting Up in Review Comments appeared first on Going Concern.

Insider has the details:

Shah said that before giving up her corporate job, managing a side hustle felt like having a double life. She became aware that past managers were viewing her posts and that made her cautious. “It felt like I was Hannah Montana coming back from working and doing something completely opposite but I am multifaceted.”

From what we can piece together without spending all day creeping on LinkedIn she started with PwC in 2016 as a Banking and Capital Markets Associate, was promoted to Senior Associate after three years, then left in 2021 to work for KPMG an Assistant management consultant manager for a year [sauce: this website].

It doesn’t appear that she’s making a ton of money from this, then again she wasn’t making that much before either.

“The goal has been to match my salary of £3,000 ($3,600) a month. Fees for a post starts from £200 ($242) but sometimes a large brand will opt for a content package, such as an Instagram reel and a TikTok video. The biggest deal has been £1,500 ($1819) for one brand that wanted three pieces of content.”

The real motivator according to her was better mental health. “When I am working for myself as a creator I can manage my mental health by setting boundaries,” she told Insider. “If I decide for a week that I can’t work I won’t be out of pocket because of last month’s earnings.”

In a YouTube video about why she quit Big 4, she specifically mentions her last busy season pushing her over the edge. “I’ve done a couple of busy seasons before this and I’ve always felt like the hours were long but they were manageable however this time I truly truly felt like these hours were no longer manageable,” she said [4:45].

Before she started putting more effort into her content she had a modest 5,000 followers on Instagram. That doubled to 10,000 early on in the pandemic and now she’s sitting at 38,000 followers on Instagram and about 70,000 on TikTok. Only 3.7K subscribers on YouTube but whatever.

So there you have it. Who needs six figure industry offers when you’ve got Instagram? Just remember to ignore the haters.

This post brought to you by RAID: Shadow Legends, one of the biggest mobile role-playing games of 2019 and it’s tota–oh wait, never mind, wrong post.

This 26-year-old influencer quit her corporate job at a Big Four accounting firm to become a full-time content creator [Insider]

The post Exit Opportunities: Quit Auditing and Start Influencing appeared first on Going Concern.

To any firm leaders plotting your next “how can we get people back into the office” campaign who may be reading this, pay attention.

I’m not sure how the message could be any clearer.

According to the NYT article the above photo is lifted from, suburban office parks like this have been dead for some time:

Suburban offices built between the 1960s and 1980s were already struggling before the pandemic, with their aging mechanical systems and the changing tastes of millennials. A younger generation wants more urban offices, real estate developers say, [press X to doubt] or at least suburban offices that feel more urban, with sidewalks and somewhere different to eat lunch every day. But now layer on remote work, “and this might finish it off,” landscape architecture scholar Louise Mozingo said.

The verdict is in: no one wants to work at your stupid, ugly office park. Next.

The post Attn Firm Leaders: No One Wants to Work at Your Stupid, Ugly Office Park appeared first on Going Concern.

Anyway, thought the back and forth was worth sharing.

Here’s the tweet that started it:

There’s a lot of shit talk about the Big 4 recently, but I’d like to say that almost all of the super smart people I’ve worked with in my career were at my B4 firm, and other B4 firms I’ve worked with since I’ve been in private industry. @going_concern

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

Almost all of the dumbest and/or laziest people I’ve met have been in private industry (usually not in accounting). @going_concern

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

Before we get to responses I’d like to make one thing clear: I don’t think anyone is doubting the intelligence of people who work for Big 4 firms. Not around here, anyway. Though we have been relentlessly ragging on these firms for well over a decade, those criticisms are aimed squarely at the firms themselves — self-serving press releases, abuse of business jargon, questionable ethics, treating their people like emotionless robots who require little sleep, and of course the beloved low-pay-but-record-revenue model — and not the people who work there. Unless the people do something stupid, then yeah, sure. But mainly it’s the firms.

Without further ado as I’ve ado’d enough already, here are some good takes from yesterday’s discussion. I’ve done my best to organize them by microdiscussion.

I agree, the problems throughout public accounting aren’t due to a lack of intelligence. You have to be smart to make it to the top, especially at the B4. The problems are primarily due to profit incentives that lead to poor decisions, IMO..

— Lisa Hemann (@LisamarieHemann) June 30, 2022

I agree. There will always be problems with the concept of an independent audit when the auditors are being paid by the auditee.

But I assert that there’s nowhere better to start an accounting career than at a Big 4 firm. Nowhere. And that ain’t changing anytime soon.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

He’s not wrong however his last point is part of the problem. Big 4 firms aren’t incentivized to improve their model because, much like Fallout 76, it just works. Moving on…

I’ve seen extremes of talent at the Big 4, ex-Big 4 and never Big 4.

All I can conclude is that smart people thrive anywhere and rotten apples also turn up anywhere. Don’t let a firm that’s on (or not on) your CV define you as a business adviser.

— Shona C Barker (@ShonaCBarker) June 30, 2022

The best 3rd year staff I had was in industry, and he never worked in public. And I had some pretty notable staff in public.

— ᴛᴏɴʏ ᴡᴜᴇɴᴄʜ (@twuench) June 30, 2022

And a bit of bickering here:

My experience is the same. But it’s not the point.

The complaints about B4 are legitimate.

Sure the best ppl from school typically go B4 but that’s partially due to “prestige” and intense recruiting.

The key though is that the best ppl leave B4 bc they can do better elsewhere.

— Abir, unCPA (@AbirCPA) June 30, 2022

I disagree. The best people make partner Big 4.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

NEVER. EVER. TRUE.

I write comedy and I am ROFL reading this!

— C.P. Aiden (@CPAiden1) June 30, 2022

It depends on how you define “best”. I’m not defining it as a good person. For purposes of my tweet above, I am defining best as “smart”.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

The people who THINK they are the smartest, maybe. The smartest got out as staff.

…oh, and all the ones who have no idea what they want to do when they grow up so they hang around long enough and end up being partners. (this was 1/2 the partners in my last EY office)

— C.P. Aiden (@CPAiden1) June 30, 2022

This is my point.

Stay = Best at memorizing audit standards. Filling checklists. Tolerating bs + politics.

If you’re actually an intelligent person who likes to drive value, think outside the box, and solve challenging problems you GTFO from audit!

— Abir, unCPA (@AbirCPA) June 30, 2022

A reasonable person could argue that it takes quite a bit of intelligence to play the politics required the further you go up the Big 4 ladder. Perhaps more social intelligence than book-learnin’ but intelligence nonetheless.

How about this one: is becoming a partner nowadays much harder than it was in the 90s? And does the partner track appeal to an entirely different caliber of person than it did back then?

I suppose this comes down to anecdotal experience but I’d strongly disagree there.

The older partners were definitely special people. But they became partners like 30 years ago. Different time.

The people who stay to partner nowadays. Not impressive.

— Abir, unCPA (@AbirCPA) June 30, 2022

I don’t know if there are any studies out there, but I’d like to see a companion of the average partner’s GPA, SAT scores, extracurricular activities, etc. today versus 30 years ago. At a minimum, it’s a lot more competitive to make partner now, and there are fewer of them.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

The firms aren’t admitting as many partners as they used to, and it takes more years to make partner than it used to. And the technical accounting and auditing standards are more complex and stringent now.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) June 30, 2022

I agree there – I look back at when I left the audit side 10 years ago compared to the technical chops needed now, including data, complex standards, etc – and it’s night and day. Sure in any firm you’ll have some duds who get through but most who make partner are very smart.

— Pat ‘4 Putt Champion’ Sheridan (@accountingninja) June 30, 2022

And an aside to the “back in my day” discussion:

Big 4 has been getting watered down since mid-90s w/technology. Started seeing crap partners when I was a staff in mid-2000s. I’d say the best accountants probably don’t make partner anymore.

— ᴛᴏɴʏ ᴡᴜᴇɴᴄʜ (@twuench) June 30, 2022

I would be interested to know how you’re determining if a partner is crap or not. As someone with 12 years (and counting) in b4 the newer partners are often more impressive and better than the old guard, especially if audit quality is your barometer.

— Ryan Gruver (@rgruver) June 30, 2022

Join the discussion on Twitter or let loose in the comments below if you’d like. Keep in mind comments are lightly moderated to prevent spam so it may take a moment for your comment to appear.

The post Who’s Smarter, Big 4 Accountants or Industry Accountants? A Debate appeared first on Going Concern.

Digging around a bit for shits and gigs I found this, which was posted on Fishbowl five years ago:

I know you’re just dying to hear what the Kool-Aid chugger EY6 said. Here you go:

LOL.

Full discussion on Fishbowl here.

Related:
EY Auditors Cheated on Ethics Exams and Tried to Cover It Up, Will Pay a Record Fine for Naughtiness
How Exactly Did EY Auditors Cheat on CPE Exams? Details From the SEC Order

The post This 5 Year Old Fishbowl Thread About EY WBLs Aged Badly appeared first on Going Concern.

Well Reddit certainly didn’t miss the story. Good luck to any incoming interns/first years trying to get serious answers to their career questions for the foreseeable future. It was bad enough they already had the waffle and pancake jokes to deal with. Saw this last night:

The question itself is normal and gets posted to r/Big4 and r/accounting on the daily. Reddit being Reddit however, they took this as an opportunity to share some newly-acquired wisdom.

Oof. Our advice to EY new hires: maybe keep a low profile for a bit and just Google it for now. Yes, even those of you in Europe. This isn’t going away any time soon. Hell, the waffles and pancakes thing was three years ago and people are still making jokes about it.

The post EY New Hires Are Gonna Have a Tough Time Getting Straight Answers From Reddit For the Time Being appeared first on Going Concern.

That very edition — published in 2008 — is going for $50 used on Amazon and people have left reviews for it as recently as last year. This find could be a score for the right person!

Is leaving accounting textbooks a nefarious plot to scare even more people away from accounting? Hmmm…

The post Would Whoever Is Leaving Accounting Textbooks in the Little Free Library Please Stop Immediately? appeared first on Going Concern.

At the IRS in Austin, cafeteria is overrun with paper returns awaiting processing by campus’s dedicated employees who will *keystroke* line items into the IRS’s database

Investing in the IRS essential to overhaul this manual system, so agency can serve taxpayers way they deserve pic.twitter.com/jDZsz01uv4

— Natasha Sarin (@NatashaRSarin) June 11, 2022

We knew the stacks upon stacks upon stacks of unprocessed paper tax returns at the IRS was bad. National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins blogged about how bad it really is last March, writing that the backlog stood at nearly 15 million returns as of March 18, and recommended a way to fix the clog of paper returns. But you don’t realize the magnitude of it all until you see that photo above of an IRS employee cafeteria, not some warehouse or basement, engulfed in tons of paper.

Related article:

Busy Season Problems: Somebody Please Get the IRS a Damn Scanner

The post One IRS Cafeteria Is Serving Musty Tax Documents For Lunch appeared first on Going Concern.

ICYMI, here’s Lord Sugar’s tweet regarding PwC’s summer Fridays policy:

This is a bloody joke. The lazy gits make me sick. Call me old fashioned but all this work from home BS is a total joke. There is no way people work as hard or productive as when they had to turn up at a work location. The pandemic has had long lasting negative effect. pic.twitter.com/MvS2cX9K8C

— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) May 5, 2022

And he doubled-down on his hatred of the current work-from-home culture, and PwC’s summer Fridays policy, in a column he wrote for The Daily Mail yesterday:

Covid has had many devastating consequences but — as far as business goes — the most damaging, in my view, is the secondary plague it has unleashed: Working From Home.

Last week, accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers offered their 22,000 UK staff Friday afternoons off during the summer months — assuming they have got their work done by lunchtime that day.

But what about their colleagues and clients around the world? Let’s hope they’re not trying to complete a project that involves PwC’s UK staff on Friday afternoons!

It smacks of an initiative dreamed up by some 30-something exec, who thinks they’re being modern and inclusive.

Well, it isn’t. It’s divisive. What about the security guards, post-room workers, canteen staff and others who have to come into work? They will lose their jobs if this carries on.

Yet an increasing number of large corporations are trying to ingratiate themselves with both their staff and new recruits by promising them ‘hybrid’ working’ — which allows them to work from home for part of the week — or full-on WFH.

It’s unfair towards small businesses who rely on people multi-tasking — filling in here and there — something that’s impossible to do from home. How can they compete?

A lot of old, white businessmen feel the same way about WFH as Lord Sugar. They just don’t rant about it on social media or in a well-known publication. There are old, white executives at my wife’s employer who hate WFH but have acquiesced through gritted teeth to a hybrid work policy because:

1. They want to retain as many of their employees as possible. People have already left the company when it didn’t adopt a hybrid work policy fast enough for competitors that did.
2. They know potential new hires are going to ask about it and want it.

Hell, even my dad who is a retired white guy in his 70s isn’t a fan of employees working from home. He spent most of his career at a company that makes specialty coatings, lubricants, and adhesives for the automobile, steel, and manufacturing industries. Just the other day he told me, “You can’t make adhesives and the other products we sell to customers at home; the employees have to come to work to do that. There’s no other way.” Well, obviously. There are exceptions, depending on the industry. But it has been proven since the start of the pandemic that accountants and other non-client-facing employees in other professions CAN do their jobs at home or remotely without having to go to an office. What Lord Sugar and my dad don’t get is that WFH and hybrid work policies are being done in the name of retention and recruiting. My dad had no idea what the Great Resignation was.

Anyhoo, back to the PwCers in the UK who fired back on LinkedIn this week at Lord Sugar calling them “lazy gits” and PwC’s summer Fridays policy “a bloody joke”:

We’ll update this post if PwC UK or Chairman Kevin Ellis throw shade at Lord Sugar too.

Related article:

QOTD: Back In My Day, Accountants Had to Walk Uphill Both Ways In the Hot Sun to Get to Work, Says Crotchety Old British Guy

The post Things Are Getting Spicy Between PwC UK Employees and Lord Sugar appeared first on Going Concern.

This is a bloody joke. The lazy gits make me sick. Call me old fashioned but all this work from home BS is a total joke. There is no way people work as hard or productive as when they had to turn up at a work location. The pandemic has had long lasting negative effect. pic.twitter.com/MvS2cX9K8C

— Lord Sugar (@Lord_Sugar) May 5, 2022

PwC cuts back staff summer hours to retain talent [The Telegraph]

The post Back In My Day, Accountants Had to Walk Uphill Both Ways In the Hot Sun to Get to Work, Says Crotchety Old British Guy appeared first on Going Concern.

And EY responded to his post!

Now that EY deleted its stupid social media post, was Hall done making fun of them? Nope! He posted this on LinkedIn yesterday:

But today’s LinkedIn post from Hall was the coup de grâce:

He’s a snarky jerk after our own heart.

Related article:

The Thing Workers Want Most Is Not Better Pay But Empathetic Employers Says Employer Unwilling to Pay You More

The post Former EY Consultant Won LinkedIn Today appeared first on Going Concern.

We're in the final stretch of the #taxseason. Our Fort Lauderdale office took a much needed break and gathered for happy hour while enjoying pizza and beer. #marcumeverywhere #funatwork pic.twitter.com/QJx0VBxD2R

— Marcum LLP (@MarcumLLP) April 5, 2022

It looks like everyone is having the time of their lives.

The post Marcum Leads Public Accounting In Posting Awkward Busy Season Pizza Party Photos on Social Media appeared first on Going Concern.

So is now-retired Deloitte partner Paul Gibbons the real superhero here?

Related articles:

Even a Marvel Superhero Knows How Horrible Working at a Big 4 Firm Can Be
Accounting Endgame: Who Would Survive Thanos’s Snap?

The post Simu Liu Thanks Deloitte Canada For Canning Him 10 Years Ago Today appeared first on Going Concern.

I bring this up because whenever I read an article about how automation will put accountants out of a job I think about that episode. Jim Cutler might have liked to lighten the firm’s payroll by letting the computer do the work of dozens of people but really the computer’s purpose was as a complement to the various cogs in the advertising machine. A computer — especially a 60s-era one filling up an entire room — could not replace creative. At best, it could maybe spit out some figures that could then be flung at clients to justify the firm’s fees. Nifty, sure, but humans still needed to service that end of things.

Here we are 60 years later (AGAIN, where has the time gone??) and for all the fancy things our now-pocket sized computers can do, they still can’t replace corporeal flesh and blood judgment (you, that refers to you). I do some AI work on the side when I’m not writing drivel for this esteemed website and let me tell you, for as smart as it is, it’s pretty dumb a lot of the time. Just visit r/aifreakout and you can see what I mean. Here are a few recent examples:

West Virginia moai family relaxing on their deep woods couch (colorized 2022)

I’m sorry I should have put a trigger warning on that.

Oh hey isn’t that a meme?

Sure, some AI is pretty damn good. Especially the stuff us plebs don’t get to use. But still, someone — a person, that is — has to make it that way. For now, we haven’t gotten to the point where the AI makes the AI and then all hell breaks loose. OH WAIT…actually… you know what, never mind.

Over the years we here at Going Concern are as guilty as anyone of stoking the fires of the accounting industry robot panic, as recently as last year actually. The consensus for the moment seems to be that while automation has replaced some busy work, it is not putting any of you out of a job any time soon. If it could, firms would not be screaming about talent shortages while Barry Melancon runs back and forth with his hair on fire crying about how no one wants to be a CPA anymore.

So that’s why when I saw this comment making the rounds in accounting spaces (OK, it was Reddit), I figured it worthwhile to dust off the ole robot scare and acknowledge just how wrong this person is.

I’m imagining their faces as we speak and I assure you, sir or ma’am, it is the same emotionless stare it has always been. Like this aptly-named Neutral Face emoji:

Trust me, if firms could replace you, they would. As reluctant as the accounting profession is to embrace technology and do anything other than what they did last year, I have no doubt that if there were a feasible way to swap out humans with all their salaries and sick days and inability to work 168 hours a week (ugh lazy millennials amirite) with automation they would do it in a heartbeat. They would react to the talent problem with indifference at best and contempt at worst, seeing resignations as a relief rather than a burden since every leaver means less salary, no severance, not bothering with pre-firing PiPs, and not having to have those awkward “you’re fired” conversations. The profession’s constant anxiety over the talent problem tells us that they simply don’t have the option to replace the people they are so desperately trying to recruit and retain.

It’s funny, for years “they” (Firm leaders? Profession authorities? Drivel-spewing accounting blog writers? Idk who exactly “they” is but whatever) have been threatening that you will get automated out of a job, and yet here we are watching firms scramble to keep the talent they have and secure the fresh talent they can while fewer and fewer people are even considering accounting as a major. I’d say your job is pretty safe for now. If you want to continue doing it, that is. And if you don’t, well, I guess firms are going to make serious investments in technology that might eventually come close to doing whatever it is you do.

Consider this your yearly update on where we’re at with that whole automation thing. See you again in a year when we write the same article about how this isn’t happening any time soon just with different words unless the content robots get good enough to write it for us in the meantime.

Photo by Tara Winstead

The post Automation Will Replace Accountants Who Don’t Even Want Their Jobs, Says Guy appeared first on Going Concern.

Anyhoo, based on all of the posts from butt-kissing Green Dotters (or not), Deloitte is one of LinkedIn’s top 50 companies in the US:

In honor of being named a LinkedIn Top Company , we want to know what has made Deloitte a great place to build your career?

— Life at Deloitte US (@lifeatdeloitte) April 6, 2022

Big D came in at No. 11, the highest among the Big 4 firms. EY was ranked the 22nd best company in the US, followed by PwC at No. 32. And poor KPMG didn’t make the list. KPMGers gotta up their cringey LinkedIn post game.

Related articles:

We Get It Lady, You Work For Deloitte
What’s Up With Deloitters and the LinkedIn Cult Mentality?

The post LinkedIn Must Have Noticed All of Those Cringey Posts About How Great It Is to Work At Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

And in an article posted over the weekend about the trip, the Financial Times hinted that it probably wasn’t cheap (EY revives the big-budget corporate shindig with Florida theme park trip):

EY this week flew more than 2,000 staff and their companions to Florida for a shindig at a Universal Studios theme park, in a sign that big-budget corporate bonding events are coming back after the pandemic.

Pictures shared by the Big Four accounting firm’s newly promoted partners on social media showed them enjoying a fireworks display, a gala dinner at the Marriott Hotel and rollercoaster rides such as Escape from Gringotts, modelled on the goblin-run bank in Harry Potter.

Making partner at EY is a HUGE professional accomplishment, no doubt, and it should be celebrated. And EY has been hosting these global new partner get-togethers for years but not the last two because of the pandemic. So for the first time, the firm celebrated two new global partner classes—2020 and 2021—at one weekend event. The event included training sessions, business updates, and keynote speeches by the firm’s leaders and external speakers, FT reported.

The thing is, sending its new Americas partners to this weekend retreat while being the only Big 4 firm in the US not to give their employees at least a small spike in pay before the holidays or right after is a bad look for EY and leaves a bad taste in the mouths of EY employees, like this person who posted on r/accounting yesterday:

So nice that they decided to send the new partners (and last year’s partners who missed out) as well as their entire families to Orlando for their milestone.

Meanwhile, the firm continues to fall behind in paying employees anywhere near the increasing market rates in a red-hot job market, and as a result they keep bleeding employees causing chronic understaffing and burnout for those who remain. Oh, and still no word about reinstating or making it up to employees who missed out on their milestone trips (manager and senior manager promotees from the last two years, and those who received offers as interns).

And have you seen some of the posts on LinkedIn and Instagram from the new EY US partners who went to Florida? They would make the most ardent EY Kool-Aid drinker gag in their mouth a little bit.

(CONT’D)

(CONT’D)

Remember when EY said not paying out employees’ accrued vacation and going all PTO, all the time would save the firm $36 million annually? And EY US is already a multibillion business (nearly $16.2 billion in revenue for FY 2021, according to Accounting Today). So couldn’t EY pay for this trip for new Americas partners AND throw the rest of its US employees a bone? Yep.

EY revives the big-budget corporate shindig with Florida theme park trip [Financial Times]

The post This Might Be the Reason Why EY Employees Did Not Get a Mid-Year Salary Adjustment appeared first on Going Concern.

When you get a 5% raise but remember inflation is 7.9% pic.twitter.com/lgGtd96xvq

— Not Jerome Powell (@alifarhat79) March 28, 2022

Related articles:

PwC Briefcases Look Absolutely Stunning On the Oscars Red Carpet
Happy Fifth Anniversary of PwC F*cking Up the Oscars

The post Tweet of the Day: Raises, Inflation, and Will Smith appeared first on Going Concern.

Knowing there had to be a No. 3 on his list of things he hates, I took the bait and clicked to read his entire post. Does he also hate famine? Poverty? The pandemic? Cancer? Nope.

I hate to break it to you, Soufyan, but in these turbulent times, there won’t be peace on Earth, there won’t be goodwill to all men and women, and people won’t stop using merged cells in Excel.

The post War and Racism Are the Only Things Worse Than This, Says Guy appeared first on Going Concern.

This afternoon I did a search of our archive spanning 13 years and 15,000 posts to see just how many times we’ve ragged on buzzwords over the years. And because I was blackout drunk for most of 2013, I completely forgot about this gem:

Oof.

Not all buzzwords and jargon are bad. Case in point, Use Sparingly on Tumblr. Like much of the rest of Tumblr it hasn’t been updated in years but its robust archive remains and in it, Use Sparingly gives you the meaning behind the buzz.

And every now and then you encounter a word that isn’t thrown around nearly as much as it should be. Today, that word is spuddle. While this may be directed specifically at #TaxTwitter, I’m fairly certain most of us have been there.

I wish all of #TaxTwitter a spuddle free day!!! pic.twitter.com/R77l9TFRUK

— Jeff Breeden (@CPAJeff) March 24, 2022

This definition of spuddle is under debate at Wiktionary so it’s unclear if the original tweet is at all accurate but surely it must be because people never make things up on the internet. Let’s just go with it.

Verb
spuddle (third-person singular simple present spuddles, present participle spuddling, simple past and past participle spuddled)

1. To loosen and dig up stubble and weeds left after a harvest with a broadshare or similar device.
2. (by extension, chiefly dialect) To shallowly dig or stir up in an unsystematic manner.
3. (obsolete, Southern England) To make a lot of fuss about trivial things, as if they were important[1]
4. (Can we verify(+) this sense?) (obsolete) To work ineffectively; to work hard but achieve nothing

The third definition appears in 1907’s The English Dialect Dictionary so at least that one is for sure legit. I also found this definition which might be the most appropriate of all:

to work feebly and ineffectively, because your mind is elsewhere or you haven’t quite woken up yet.

Is it still spuddling if you woke up 8 hours ago yet still work feebly and ineffectively?

So there you are, you’ve learned a new word today. Now go forth and spuddle the rest of your day away. I know I have.

Photo by JÉSHOOTS

The post Feeling Like There Aren’t Enough Hours In the Day? You Might Be a Spuddler appeared first on Going Concern.

Do you guys smell that? Smells like REVOLT to me. Not sure how helpful HR will be on this (remember: they exist to help the firm not you), but hey, put some heat on ’em anyway.

The post We’re Snitching Out Managers Who Expect You to Answer Emails After Hours Now appeared first on Going Concern.

Here is a screenshot of what Tretyak wrote on LinkedIn. A 29-second video recording of the damage accompanies his post:

In another post on LinkedIn last Thursday, Tretyak wrote that PwC Russia “keeps numb and silent” about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and is a firm “where a number of my fellow Ukrainians work, the colleagues with whom we used to cooperate on multiple projects and initiatives, the people with whom we used to have lots of fun.”

He asked his PwC colleagues and the firm’s leadership in Russia to “go out loud and stand up together with all of us to help protect and safeguard our freedom and democracy from the #Russianaggression—for the sake of #Ukraine, #Russia, the #EU and the whole civilized World. Together we’ll stop this war and emerge even stronger as never before. Get the urge to raise your voice and break the chains of this #Russianterror.”

PwC yesterday announced its firm in Russia was leaving the PwC network. That was followed later Sunday and today by KPMG, EY, and Deloitte also saying they were divorcing themselves from their affiliates in Russia. Tretyak said on LinkedIn that PwC pulling out of Russia was a “truly brave and right step demonstrating our firm’s values and purpose in action and supporting freedom and democracy” and added that he hoped PwC would also end its affiliation with its firm in Belarus. While PwC’s official statement doesn’t mention Belarus, the Financial Times reported yesterday that PwC Belarus was also leaving the firm’s network.

Tretyak continued: “Now it’s crucial to keep focusing as much as we can on helping the people of Ukraine (including PwC employees/partners) and other peoples of the planet who have been devastated by this Russian terrorist war (supported by Belarus).”

Related article:

Reports: PwC Is Withdrawing From Russia and Belarus

The post PwC Ukraine’s Forensic Leader OK After His Home Was Hit By a Russian Missile appeared first on Going Concern.

Three of the Big 4’s biggest consulting rivals—Accenture, McKinsey, and Boston Consulting Group—said yesterday they are severing ties with Russia. The Financial Times reported:

Accenture axed its entire 2,300-person business in Russia on Thursday while McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group moved to suspend all client work there, as the world’s largest professional services groups join western companies’ flight from the country.

Days after Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, McKinsey and BCG had said they would not work for Russian government entities but had stopped short of dropping other clients, including state-owned groups.

McKinsey said on Thursday it would immediately cease work for state-owned entities in the country and would suspend all client work there once its other projects ended. The firm has more than 400 consultants in Russia.

BCG, which also employs about 400 people in the country, said on Thursday it was suspending its work with Russian clients but would keep staff based there on. They would be offered the chance to relocate outside Russia or to work on internal projects or for non-Russian clients, said one person briefed on the matter.

Deloitte is so far the only Big 4 firm that is considering pulling out of Russia, saying in a statement on Wednesday the firm “is currently reviewing our business and presence in Russia. We are mindful of our professional obligations and the changing circumstances as we undertake this review. We will continue to comply with all applicable sanctions; Deloitte does not serve any entities of Russia’s Central Government.”

FT reported yesterday that a source said another Big 4 firm “could be ready to announce its exit within days. However, an insider at another firm said it could take them weeks or even months before it could sever its ties to its Russian member firm.” That’s because some Big 4 firms “have encountered contractual and other legal problems that were delaying their ability to remove their Russian member firms from their global alliances,” according to FT.

Grant Thornton became the first large global accounting firm to dump its Russian affiliate after saying on Tuesday that “FBK, the Grant Thornton member firm in Russia, is leaving the network with immediate effect.”

Related articles:

Big 4 Firms Condemn Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, But Will They Sever Relationships With Any Russian Clients?
Grant Thornton Drops Its Russian Affiliate Over Conflict In Ukraine

The post Ex-Big 4 Partner On Why the Big 4 Firms Should Pull Out of Russia: ‘It’s the Right Thing to Do and You Know It’ appeared first on Going Concern.

The Accounting Today links lend legitimacy as no self-respecting troll would go to the trouble of signing up for an AT account just to find some relevant links. Pretty sure not anyway.

The screenshot has been transcribed below, my commentary in brackets:

I hope things are well for you and yours. I wanted to reach out to you as your work with [redacted] is so…so…dreamy! …>Sigh<… Such SOX. Much GAAP. Aaaand I wanted to see if you might consider Grant Thornton as your next move.

Hold on. It’s too bad I gave up alcohol because DAMN do I need a drink if I’m going to get through this entire transcription. Alright, I’m going back in.

We need someone with the kind of experience you exude! [yo, exude is for things like body odor and confidence, not experience] ….Cause we’re kinda desperate. [LOL we know] We need a blue ton [someone’s been checking out Urban Dictionary!] of Accountants who are unafraid of the squirrely forest of IT, Process and Compliance risk challenges our mob of new customers seem to generate…constantly. HELP! [Dude, we cannot help you. You’re beyond assistance]

We’ll even pay, we promise! [Why does this feel like a known pathological liar telling you “it’s the truth, I swear” while their shifty eyes dart back and forth? I’m disappointed they didn’t end this sentence with “no cap.”]

OK, OK, let’s go there — yes, we hear you, we are not one of the “Big Four”. Rub our noses in it, why don’t you. <Hmmmph!> [for fuck’s sake why do you keep abusing angle brackets like this? <Uggghhh!>] We prefer to think ourselves as one of the “Big Six” — how’s that for Creative Accounting?

Quick side note here. When I Slacked this to my esteemed colleague Bramwell last night, he was quick to point out that GT isn’t even top 6 in the US. “BDO hopped over them,” he wrote with utter savagery. So not only does this person abuse angle brackets, capital letters, and reason, they also straight-up lied about being part of a thing that doesn’t even exist. There is no Big 6 but if there was, GT would not be in it. That’s not just creative accounting, it’s a material misstatement.

Moving on. God please tell me I’m almost done transcribing this.

But more seriously, we are proud of our focus on work-life balance, which, if you dig into reviews of us [don’t mind if I do!], is consistently considered better than our larger peers. [Didn’t you literally just complain about the “mob” of clients generating problems that you desperately — your word — need HELP! with? Are you managing the workload or not? <HUH??>] We are including “Employees First” in our approach to growing GT:

[Accounting Today link]

while steadily increasing our revenue and reach:

[another Accounting Today link]

The screenshot cuts off there THANK CTHULHU because I couldn’t handle much more than that without having to call my sponsor. It’s funny how they came out of the gate strong with the memes at the beginning then slowly but surely let the absurdity of their own email crush their soul and abandoned the memey quips, as any reasonable person would.

This isn’t quite as embarrassing as the time GT stole repurposed a slogan from Friedrich Nietzsche’s The Antichrist but it certainly ranks up there. Whichever book this recruiter read on how to recruit the youfs should be burned immediately and never spoken of again.

Full Reddit discussion is worth a view, it’s at 262 comments and counting. Is the email real? I’ll say this, it’s not the worst recruiting message we’ve ever seen. If this were Snopes, this one would earn a solid Mixture rating. Some truth, some falsehoods, and mostly impossible to prove because there’s no way anyone at GT is going to admit to writing this.

The post If This Is How Grant Thornton Recruiters Talk No Wonder They Can’t Find People to Work For Them appeared first on Going Concern.

From Reddit (of course):

The screenshot reads:

A message from [redacted] and [redacted] | February 9, 2022

On behalf of the NYFS Audit partners and MDs, we would like to thank you for all your efforts and perseverance. This Sunday, in honor of the Super Bowl, please take a pause and treat yourself to a beverage or a snack — you deserve it!

• The budget is $10 per person (no receipt required)
• Please use the charge code [charge code] and note Audit Busy Season Thank You as the business purpose

***Please also be sure to take fun photos during your Super Bowl celebration and submit them to the Talent Energy Team by February 18th. We will be awarding prizes to the top three submissions.***

We thank you for your hard work!

Regards,
[redacted]
New York Financial Services Audit
Business Unit Partner in Charge

Soooo ten bucks in the costliest city in the United States? Wow. Don’t spend it all in one place now! Here are some ideas for those lucky KPMGers with a whole Hamilton burning a hole in their pocket:

This comment pretty much sums up the expected reaction to this generous endowment:

wE tHAnK yOU fOr yOuR hArd WoRK!

The post Bonus Watch ’22: KPMG Generously Gifted 1/5th of a Grubhub Order to Industrious Staff Working Through the Super Bowl appeared first on Going Concern.

While some #TaxValentines offer tax advice in a hokey way, others creatively gripe about their busy season problems. More accurately, creatively gripe about schedules K-2 and K-3:

Roses are red
Your tax pro’s blue
Ruing the debut of
Schedules K3 and K2 #TaxValentines

— Phyllis Jo Kubey (@PKubeyEA) February 14, 2022

Roses are red,
With thorns you can see,
I’d rather be pricked ‘til I bleed,
Than deal with Schedules K-2 and K-3. #TaxValentines

— Justin Miller (@justinmilleresq) February 11, 2022

New Schedule K2
If you have foreign affairs
Feds are watching you#TaxHaiku #TaxValentines pic.twitter.com/iYuPoDpr9U

— Jeremy Stephens (@J_Stephens_CPA) February 11, 2022

Instructions are read
For K-3 and K-2
Extensions for all
'Til we know what to do.#TaxValentines

— Jeanne (@JLWCPA2) February 10, 2022

Returns aren’t filed, We are feeling blue, But if there is no 1116, You can skip the K2.#TaxValentines #TaxTwitter @TaxNotes

— Jeff Kristoff (@jckristoff) February 12, 2022

Roses are red
Form 1065 is no fun
When you formed a partnership
And didn’t intend to be one#TaxValentines

— Sierra Williams (@SierraWilliams) February 11, 2022

Roses are Red.
Pansies are pale.
Can IRS please.
Open the mail?
‘#TaxValentines #Taxtwitter

— Lafayette Ket (@Lafayette_Ket) February 13, 2022

Roses are red
And so is my pen
Which is lonely now that
Review notes are typed instead#TaxValentines

— Jesica Abella EA, ABA (@Jesella) February 11, 2022

Roses are red
Your accountant might be blue
If you want to make them happy
Don’t send your documentation after it is due#TaxValentines

— Justin Miller (@justinmilleresq) February 10, 2022

On second thought, guys, don’t quit your day job. Jk. XOXO.

Related articles:

#TaxTwitter Has Absolutely Had It With Clients’ Sh*t
Busy Season Problems: ‘This Is My Last One, I Swear;’ K-2/K-3 Is Not OK; Shadowy JPEGS

The post Tax Preparers Use Valentine’s Poetry to Express Their Busy Season Problems appeared first on Going Concern.

Went to @going_concern’s website today to see if they’d have anything clever to say about the big Mazars story, but if course there is nothing. Of course.

— Big4Veteran (@Big4Veteran) February 14, 2022

Here ya go, big guy. We’re about to cut out for the day, but feel free to read these until your cold black heart is content:

Accounting Firm Cuts Ties With Trump and Retracts Financial Statements [New York Times]
Tax firm Mazars fires Trump Organization as client, says former president’s financial statements are unreliable [CNBC]
Accounting Firm Drops Trump Organization Over Dubious Financial Docs [Daily Beast]

AG James’ office has submitted a court filing Re Trump case that includes a letter from his company’s accounting firm saying nearly a decade worth of financial statements can no longer be relied upon. pic.twitter.com/sDUcDF1BEd

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) February 14, 2022

XOXOXO, Jason and Adrienne.

The post Lonely Old Man Chides Going Concern Writers For Having a Life on Valentine’s Day appeared first on Going Concern.

Well … there’s the new schedules K-2/K-3 requirements for pass-through entities (see Michael Rapaport’s article for Bloomberg Tax on the new IRS foreign income reporting requirements for partnerships), which is driving tax pros completely out of their minds:

This K2/K3 nonsense has me seriously thinking about switching careers. #TaxTwitter

— Nicole Davis (@wifemomcpa100) February 10, 2022

This is horseshit. The pile of returns sitting on my desk on February 8th because I am/or was waiting for K2/K3 guidance, Rev. Proc. 2021-48 stmt., forms to be finalized. pic.twitter.com/y5ianLlPXi

— StevenFCPA (@stevenfcpa) February 8, 2022

The whole K2/K3 fiasco is a going to make a lot of competent and dedicated tax preparers quit, but the ones who break the rules and don't know what they're doing/missing will continue unabated.

— Matt Foreman (@ForemanTaxLaw) February 7, 2022

The k2/k3 "crisis" is sad. I truly think the IRS will revise their guidance because there is no reason for a PTE to have any effect on a form 1116 filed on a 1040. On top of that few PTE returns will be preoared with a k2/k3 this year no matter what the IRS does.#taxtwitter

— Mike Sylvester, CPA (@MikeSyl36625988) February 7, 2022

Do you know what made me cry just now?

Thinking about me figuring out how to do K2/K3 reporting.#DonutTwitter

— Jeff Breeden (@CPAJeff) February 4, 2022

The answer is SIMPLE for this K2/K3 issue. This filing requirement has to be delayed at least a year.

The IRS isn’t even ready to handle this. Can’t file forms until AFTER the due date?

This is crippling to taxpayers and our industry. @AICPA help!!! #TaxTwitter

— Kyle Rehnstrom (@KyleRehnstrom) February 4, 2022

And here are some we’ll file under “Miscellaneous”:

I love the smell of tax season – it’s despair mixed with the burning smell from an overused scanner

— Andrea Carr CPA (@andreacpa0) February 10, 2022

Every time. #TaxTwitter pic.twitter.com/ENBkOMrGoU

— Matthew J. Cordes, EA (@cordes_tax) February 10, 2022

"Can I just email you my tax forms?"

#taxtwitter #fintwit #accountantsoftwitter pic.twitter.com/Ilf2dOtodY

— JarynT (@TrinkiesM) February 10, 2022

In almost every case..

I will 100% be willing to discuss lowering my fee..

If you will only..

STOP RUNNING EVERY TRANSACTION IMAGINABLE THROUGH PAYPAL!! #TaxTwitter

— Garrett Alexander, CPA (@YourLocalTaxGuy) February 9, 2022

Related article:

#TaxTwitter Has Absolutely Had It With Clients’ Sh*t

The post Busy Season Problems: K-2/K-3 Is Not OK; Weird Smells; Shadowy JPEGS appeared first on Going Concern.

 

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“please see attached for the excel file”

attachment: 2021sales.jpeg pic.twitter.com/IFqQOuxY64

— memes.xlsx (@ExcelHumor) February 3, 2022

when you open the client’s payroll support pic.twitter.com/JIoD8OXNOW

— TB4A.eth (@TheBig4Tweets) February 6, 2022

 

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That’s all we’ve got. It’s Monday, after all, wouldn’t want to overdo it. Have a great week out there, everyone.

The post It’s Monday, Here Are the Memes You Deserve to Start Your Week appeared first on Going Concern.

How do you respond?

Alright, so getting laid off from an accounting firm isn’t the same as finding your own bare ass on a porn site. But the concept is the same for the purposes of me fully conveying how disrespectful it is to fire someone then beg for them to come back. You weren’t good enough to justify the firm paying your salary when you were together, but now that things are desperate, here they are saying how much they’ve missed you despite having done you wrong.

We were tipped to this Reddit post claiming BDO did exactly that to OP (not the revenge porn part, the trying to hire them back part, obvs):

Fired me during pandemic saying “low performance” when I was at the firm for a couple of years and did great work. They cut peoples pay and said they wouldn’t fire anyone. They fired so many people in the admin side as well. I was in audit. Now there [sic] calling me to come back for more money? Should I even consider it? At another company and happy. The environment is super toxic there. Partners will put pressure on you to sign off on stuff even when support isn’t all there; you can pay them for your audit reports opinion basically.

It goes without saying the above is alleged because believe it or not people do sometimes lie on the internet and especially so on Reddit, but it’s worth discussing the hypothetical because we do know that firms are desperate for talent (true, not at all alleged) and that when that happens they start doing desperate things like reaching out to people who left years ago and are no doubt much happier now.

For the first half of 2020, we tracked COVID-related layoffs and pay cuts, and one thing we learned was that some firms were upfront about layoffs while others hid behind “performance” as an excuse for letting people go (looking at you, EY). Here’s the damage for BDO:

• 5% to 10% pay cut for staff from May 1 until Aug. 1 (May 16 until Aug. 1 in St. Louis).
• Raises and promotions deferred until Nov. 1 at the latest.
• 3% of BDO USA Advisory workforce let go the week of July 13.
• Pay cuts officially ended with employees’ Aug. 14 paychecks.
• Employees to receive their pay that was cut from May 1 to Aug. 1 as of Dec. 15.

When Advisory cut 3% of the workforce in July 2020, we were told by a tipster that they were told the 3% were “low performers,” but the firm also mentioned “it was due to economic conditions.” Six of one, half a dozen of the other. By November of that year, BDO announced they hit $10 billion in global revenue for the first time ever, a 7.3% increase from 2019’s $9.6 billion. So yay, guess slicing that 3% and cutting everyone’s pay really paid off (pun intended).

And then The Great Resignation happened. Firms purposely maintain staffing levels that mean plenty of work for everyone and no one standing around twiddling their thumbs because borrowing from staff mental health to pay for higher revenue is pretty much the crux of the public accounting business model; they could staff enough people to somewhat mitigate 70-hour workweeks, they just don’t. But then everyone started leaving and firms were no longer the ones in control of these skeleton crews, they legitimately didn’t have the people they need to get the work done.

So that’s when the firms start going through their phones to see who they can hit up at 2 a.m. Just like the jackass in your past who isn’t getting Tinder matches because their profile sucks and prospective dates can smell the scumbag from 12 miles away. Or however far they have their Tinder proximity set to.

Don’t let firms that did you dirty booty call you when things get rough for them. They proved they have no problem letting you go at the first sign of trouble and will turn around six months later to tell the world they made more money than they ever have in history. What happens the next time the economy takes a dump (which it will) or there’s a gnarly Rona variant that sends everyone back inside or some guy decides to hump a pangolin and a zoonotic jump shuts the whole thing down again? Will the firm feel some sense of loyalty toward you because they did you wrong once before? NOPE. BYE. SORRY! It’s not you, it’s us!

Your entire career you’ve been told don’t burn bridges. Leave on good terms. Don’t write farewell emails accusing your managers of being petty sycophants with no regard for their underlings’ mental health. Don’t badmouth the firm even anonymously on some lame accounting blog (hey) because you never know when you might need a reference. Stay in line because a $120.6 billion a year industry of 1.28 million people is “small” and people will talk. Blah blah blah. Does anyone hold firms to these same standards? Like don’t cut people’s already cheap pay because some global phenomenon might reduce your record-breaking profits by a couple million? Or don’t fire people and call it a performance problem because you’re too cowardly to admit you are guarding revenue like Smaug atop a bed of checks from clients? What about those bridges?

F that. Have some self-respect. Just like you’d do with a sex pest in your DMs, block, delete, and move on with your life. Problem solved.
Photo by lalesh aldarwish from Pexels

The post What Would You Do If Your Firm Fired You Early In the Pandemic Then Begged You to Come Back Two Years Later? appeared first on Going Concern.

Wait, I was going somewhere with that thought. Oh, right. To outside observers, accounting is a recession-proof, respected, well-paid white-collar industry where people who love math thrive, gleefully crunching numbers and doing taxes. You, I, and probably even my cat know that’s far from the reality. Although there is no shortage of publicly-available testimony on the reality of working in public accounting (Reddit, Fishbowl, niche accounting industry gossip websites with open comment sections *ahem*), civilians really have no idea what it’s like for those in the trenches. Perhaps they don’t care. I mean why would some truck driver in Nebraska download Fishbowl to find out what’s going on behind the scenes at a Big 4 firm? The mainstream remains woefully — and perhaps deliberately — ignorant of your struggles. Until now.

Elizabeth Lopatto at The Verge recently jumped into the murky depths of our little corner of the professional services pool and has officially put everything out there. I mean everything.

Her investigation began as all good investigations of the early 21st century do — by asking Reddit for their input:

Hello, numerate friends! I am a reporter with The Verge named Elizabeth Lopatto, and I’ve been lurking in your subreddit for a minute. I’ve seen a lot of frustration and burnout here, people posting about quitting their jobs or wanting to quit. I’d love to talk with you about it — one of my big interests is the relationship between real-world money and the internet. I’d like to know if what’s going on here is representative for accounting at large, how the job market is treating you, and what the scale of accounting’s Great Resignation is. I also wonder what that means for your busy season.

The resulting article is more than 2,000 words of brutal honesty. Something tells me the firms won’t be co-opting any of these quotes for shiny recruitment brochures anytime soon.

Browsing r/Accounting, two things become apparent: first, we are entering what accountants call “busy season,” and second, a lot of public accountants are triumphantly quitting. In one recent post, titled “Put in my notice, I am fleeing public accounting baby!!,” commenters congratulate the poster on their escape. “I think I am about to be done,” reads another post. “When is the best time to bail from PA?” asks a third.

The Great Resignation has come for accounting, and public accountants — people who help many clients prepare documents, as opposed to the internal accountants at a specific firm who work only on that firm’s financials — have been feeling the pain. In a normal pre-pandemic year, about 15 percent of staff leaves public accounting firms below the Big Four, which are Ernst & Young (EY), PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), Deloitte, and KPMG. While there isn’t yet any hard data, turnover seems higher, says Michael Platt of Inside Public Accounting, who is in the middle of doing surveys for the 2021 calendar year. “Everybody we’ve talked to said that their turnover rates in the last couple of months have been significantly different than in previous years,” Platt says.

Public accounting has always been a difficult job. Many young accountants are recruited as undergraduates. They go into the field understanding that they will work long hours during “busy season,” when most companies and people file their taxes, which begins in January and ends in April. (There is a secondary busy season in the fall when there’s another tax deadline.) Some of the accountants I spoke to explained that 70- or 80-hour weeks were the norm during the busy season. Those hours strain people’s mental health and relationships.

And look! She even snagged some memes!

Sadly r/accounting’s beloved black tar heroin joke did not get a mention, though the often-necessary pharmaceutical uppers sure did:

On r/Accounting, users are already posting memes about busy season. Some users swapped tips about what to bring to the office to make the late nights comfortable if the heat shuts off: blankets, space heaters, electric heating pads. There are several posts with a general theme of “wow, you guys were not exaggerating about busy season.” In response to an inquiry about how to stay in shape during busy season, one person wrote about a diet of Adderall, water, and junk food, while another chimed in, “Vyvanse and protein shakes.” A third suggested busy season was the best time to be on a diet; a fourth said they were too stressed to eat.

There’s also some good post-publication discussion of the piece over at — you guessed it — Reddit.

If you don’t keep up with media other than AICPA press releases and your favorite unprofessional accounting rag (*cough*), The Verge is a Vox publication with massive reach, so it’s safe to say public accounting’s dirty little secret is no longer limited to closets audit rooms at the client site and the bathroom stalls of fancy downtown office buildings in which early-career public accountants do their crying (or did before the pandemic, anyway).

I suggest giving the whole thing a read and forwarding to the nearest non-accountant friend who complains that you never seem to have any time to hang out next time they try to berate you for never being around. Maybe they’ll finally understand. Probably not but hey, you tried.

OVERTAXED Busy season is here — but some public accountants aren’t [The Verge]

Photo by Hasan Albari from Pexels

The post Congratulations, Public Accountants, the Reality of Your Miserable Career Made the Mainstream appeared first on Going Concern.

It seems many practitioners are raising fees these days, and who can blame them? I don’t need to explain to you that inflation hasn’t been this high since 1982 which is longer than many of you — and almost even my old ass — have been alive. Think about that for a minute. Most of us have never seen prices steadily rising like they are now. Granted, all of us have been victims of shrinkflation for most of our lives, though that’s more companies being cheap and gross and greedy than a direct byproduct of trillions of dollars being pumped into the economy. You know what … nevermind, this is off topic. Point being, prices are rising so it stands to reason freelance professionals and firms would quite reasonably raise their fees to reflect the ever-shrinking value of a dollar. As expected, clients are not happy about this. Whatever though, fuck ’em.

We also have the usual foot-dragging ahead of deadlines, poor record keeping, and just general dicking around by clients who think they’re the main character and that their accountant exists for the sole purpose of serving them. You know the ones.

Just updated my home page. It now says I’m not accepting discovery calls for new entity clients. This after booking stating “accountant retired, I have an S-corp, looking for a new affordable accountant.” #TaxTwitter 1/3

— Amber Gray-Fenner, EA (@taxtherapist505) January 25, 2022

I do what I can to communicate what most #taxpros would consider reasonable expectations for doing business as widely and as publicly as I can. #TaxTwitter 2/3

— Amber Gray-Fenner, EA (@taxtherapist505) January 25, 2022

It never ceases to amaze me that small businesses with entity returns due on 3/15 think late January is still plenty of time to find “an affordable accountant.” #TaxTwitter 3/3

— Amber Gray-Fenner, EA (@taxtherapist505) January 25, 2022

And this reply:

Thing is, I AM affordable. But when they say affordable it’s a clear indicator that they don’t really want to pay for professional level work at all.

— Amber Gray-Fenner, EA (@taxtherapist505) January 26, 2022

Protip to clients: telling an accountant you are trying to hire that you are looking for an “affordable” accountant is not going to score you a deal. Who wants to bet the prospective client below can’t get a call back because all their voicemails start with “I am looking for a new tax accountant because my current one has raised their fees”?

Todays market & demand is not even close to what I envisioned when I started down this path 12 years ago with the intention of learning a skill set that would make me recession proof.

Every new client: “You’re the only office that would even call me back.”#TaxTwitter

— William Holtsman, CPA (@W_Holtsman) January 19, 2022

Here’s an idea: if your clients complain about high fees, send ’em Lorilyn’s way (OK don’t actually do that):

Providing a new subscription service to my fellow tax preparers – if anyone says your fees are too high, refer them to me and I’ll quote them 2x your price. #TaxTwitter

— Lorilyn Wilson, CPA (@LorilynWilson) December 28, 2021

Clients trying to squeeze you? Just send ’em packing. Seriously.

Client emails berating me because I won’t lower her fees compared to last year since she was a returning customer. Simple email reply:

Mrs. X,

I’m sorry you feel this way. Best of luck in your search for a new accountant.

Cam

Ain’t nobody got time for this. #taxtwitter

— Cam Matheny (@CamMatheny) January 19, 2022

Speaking of new accountants, is there anything more satisfying than clients ditching you because they’re butthurt about fees only for them to discover that “you get what you pay for” isn’t just for fashion and quirky crap from China advertised to you on Instagram?

I feel bad for the firms that take on the two clients we “felt would be happier elsewhere” recently. Complete messes, no online access, late in paying the IRS, PITA calls all the time. Wanted lower pricing and didn’t want monthly billing anymore. Byeeee #TaxTwitter #Accounting

— Craig Hausz, CPA CFP (@CPATaxTeam) January 26, 2022

Client: Your price increases are too much. I’m going to do my own books and taxes this year.
Us: Ok
Client: But before I get started, can I sit down with someone there to ask some questions?
Us: Yes, for the price we sent you previously.#TaxTwitter

— Craig Hausz, CPA CFP (@CPATaxTeam) January 25, 2022

Oh come on. They just want to “pick your brain.” For free. And they also need you to walk you through their return in excruciating detail. Also for free.

Here’s your word of the day: boundaries. Set reasonable expectations for clients and remember that no matter what you’re charging, at the end of the day you are allowed to — and should — set boundaries.

And to further expand after some thought I think all of us #TaxTwitter are passionate about good service. The complaints come from those clients who don’t pay or don’t pay enough. All of which we can control and should be cognizant of in our pricing and boundaries.

— Josh Youngblood, E.A. (@JoshYoungblood) January 23, 2022

We’ll end this wrap-up of #TaxTwitter happenings with a a bit of clients behaving badly.

What are some of the most “interesting” reasons you have fired clients for? 1. Kept coming in and flirting with two employees. 2. A female client who insisted she only deal with males in our office since they know more and client was rude to other females. #taxtwitter

— Mike Sylvester, CPA (@MikeSyl36625988) January 27, 2022

Hang in there, everyone, you’re doing great. Well, everyone except cheap clients that is. Clients, y’all have been warned. Your accountants are mad as hell and they’re not gonna take this anymore.

Photo by Moose Photos from Pexels

The post #TaxTwitter Has Absolutely Had It With Clients’ Sh*t appeared first on Going Concern.

OK, first of all… no, you know what, never mind. I’m recalling something my mother told me once 33 years ago about not having anything nice to say.

Who exactly was this for? Did he pass it to his manager on his last day? Will it end up proudly displayed in said managers cube next to the macaroni hearts his kids make for him on Valentine’s Day?

This one isn’t nearly as bad as the #veteran, #militaryspouse, #secondgeneration Deloitte-er, #mother, #firstgeneration college graduate, #firstgeneration master degree graduate #woman who made up a story about getting hassled by some creepy Boomer just to flex about her Deloitte jacket on LinkedIn but it’s surely up there.

Why? Why do people do this? Just say “thanks for the opportunity” and walk away.

Photo by Linda Eller-Shein from Pexels

The post What’s Up With Deloitters and the LinkedIn Cult Mentality? appeared first on Going Concern.

Either this guy is really, really serious about his job OR — and more likely — just really bad at figuring out how to get 16 hours of work done in 10.

If Reddit existed 20 years ago, the comment section on that post would likely be filled with similarly-minded weirdos who consider abandoning any hope of a personal life some kind of twisted badge of honor. Thankfully we live in current day where this kind of behavior is called out for what it is: lunacy.

This is not the flex you think it is, my guy. Go touch grass. Quick, before climate change turns it all to dust and sadness.

The post We Did It Guys, We Found the World’s Most Insufferable Accountant appeared first on Going Concern.

But from our perch on the fringes of the accounting profession, what we were waiting for was how the largest public accounting firms in the land would address Rona vaccines and whether they would put any type of mandate in place for employees to go back into the office or to client sites.

Sure enough, starting in late August, new vaccine policies starting trickling out at the Big 4—first at Deloitte, then at KPMG, PwC, and EY. At KPMG, management told employees that the firm would require proof of vaccination or a negative COVID-19 PCR test administered within 72 hours prior in order to enter a KPMG US office, effective Oct. 4.

Then the Biden administration yelled from the mountaintops that businesses with 100 or more employees had until Jan. 4, 2022 to make sure their staff are either vaccinated against COVID, or submit a negative test weekly before entering the workplace, according to CNBC. Unvaccinated employees were supposed to begin wearing masks indoors at the workplace on Dec. 5.

But OSHA put the breaks on enforcement and implementation of the requirements last month, after the US Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit halted the policy pending review, according to CNBC. Judge Kurt D. Engelhardt, in an opinion for a three-judge panel, said the requirements were “fatally flawed” and raise “serious constitutional concerns.”

While this all plays out in court, one KPMG director in Houston had to get something off his chest about the firm’s vaccine policy. In a post on LinkedIn Dec. 3, Casey Hinson wrote that during a recent webcast, “our CEO [Paul Knopp] said that our firm wants to be the most inclusive place to work, where everyone feels welcome. He then explained (and I am paraphrasing) that we have to discriminate against certain people because the federal government told us to, implying that we make too much money from them to not comply.”

He also wrote that “my firm has instructed me (through countless hours of ethics and integrity training) to speak up with courage when something does not align to our values.” The vaccine policy obviously isn’t something Hinson agrees with, as he continued: “My advice to my leadership is to follow the values you state you have. Do not comply or even say you will comply. Maybe you are playing a game of chicken, thinking the rules will die out in the courts, but in the meantime you are causing people duress and hardship in their personal lives and sending a message to younger generations that it is ok to be unethical if you make enough money and you can blame it on someone else.”

Hinson’s full post is below. And he hasn’t deleted it:

Whether you like or don’t like what he wrote, I think we can all agree that the dude’s got some balls calling out his employer in a public forum like LinkedIn.

The post KPMG Director’s Thoughts On Firm’s ‘Unethical’ Vaccine Policy Will Be Loved By Some and Hated By Others appeared first on Going Concern.

via r/linkedinlunatics

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Featured Photo by Monstera from Pexels

The post The Most Terrifying Halloween Costume You’ll Ever See (If You’re a CPA) appeared first on Going Concern.

Y’all know what I mean. The long, rambling posts littered with hashtags — often written by recruiters or various “coaches” — that are supposed to impart some kind of life lesson about the value of persistence or hard work or the tenacity of job-seekers/homeless people/single mothers. There’s a whole subreddit chronicling these self-serving tales, and chances are if you’re connected to more than a dozen people on LinkedIn, you’ve seen at least one.

r/LinkedInLunatics is where I first saw the following post, and there’s also a good teardown at r/Big4:

Here’s the image transcription (hashtags and reckless commas included):

ITS ME, NOT HIM…

I proudly wore my Deloitte jacket at my son’s baseball game tonight. While at the game, I was approached by an older gentleman and he noticed my jacket… MY “green dot”.

He then asks me if my husband works at the firm.

I’m speechless. I’m stunned. I’m a little confused.

I finally understand what he is trying to ask. I politely exclaim I work at Deloitte, not my husband.

I am sitting here justifying to myself that I earned that “green dot”. That, I challenged myself to find stimulating and impactful work. That I am enough. Sadly, this is not the first time that an individual has assumed a role or position. When I was an active duty #Marine, people always identified my husband as the service member. My sweet husband, regularly would speak up for me and share that I was an a Marine too.

I am a #woman that works at Deloitte
I am a #veteran that works at Deloitte
I am a #militaryspouse that works at Deloitte
I am a #secondgeneration Deloitte-er
I am a #mother that works at Deloitte
I am a #firstgeneration college graduate that works at Deloitte
I am a #firstgeneration master degree graduate that works at Deloitte

I. Am. Enough.

With the support of friends and family along the way, I was able to find a home at Deloitte. I proudly am the one that works at Deloitte.

Hmm I wonder where she works.

In what kind of back-assward Stepford swamp hole does this woman live where random old guys start hassling women over their jackets? And what’s she doing at a baseball game anyway, shouldn’t she be at home working?

The odds of this exchange actually happening are practically nil. No one gives a shit about your Deloitte jacket except you. And what civilian would recognize a Deloitte logo in the wild, anyway? If he did, then we can assume he either worked at Deloitte or was a client, in which case surely he interacted with at least one woman employed by Deloitte since that’s a thing that has existed since at least 1923. Lastly, as a female Marine she should be more than used to people making assumptions about her capability as a woman and therefore anything but speechless, stunned, and confused when some wrinkle-balled weirdo comes up to her babbling about how women belong in the kitchen and not the boardroom.

Grow up, lady.

Photo by Andrea Piacquadio from Pexels

The post We Get It Lady, You Work For Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

I realized I forgot to file an extension for my brother’s return how is everyone else doing today

— Lorilyn Wilson, CPA, PFS (@LorilynWilson) October 14, 2021

Got up yesterday at 7:30am.

What time did I go to bed? I'll let you know when that happens.

Yep, this tax season is the worst. #TaxTwitter

— Zbylut on Taxes (@TaxHacker) October 14, 2021

12 hours yesterday, 6.5 hours detail reviewing k-1 inputs on a single return, starting to die a little inside. how is #TaxTwitter doing today?

— Tex (anti-hero) (@ItsLilTex) October 14, 2021

Tired. I should go for a walk or just go outside before working on this last nearly-done return. But I do worry if I leave, I may not come back.

I would like some chocolate though. #taxtwitter

— Otterly Magnificent (@OhMalarkey) October 14, 2021

https://twitter.com/Niero_Mk2/status/1448718408187465758

https://twitter.com/Jarmstrong2147/status/1448633489453092866

https://twitter.com/irene76mv/status/1448738421543997441

“I’ll bring my stuff by Friday afternoon. You can still get it done right?” pic.twitter.com/rp5dfip4aK

— Josh Youngblood, EA (@JoshYoungblood) October 13, 2021

Wonder how many clients are getting fired on 10/16. #TaxTwitter

— Sam Crahan, CPA (@SamCrahan) October 14, 2021

One of the accountants associations that I receive emails from, just sent a reminder to renew your PTIN. On October 14th. Way to know your audience. #TaxTwitter

— StevenFCPA (@stevenfcpa) October 14, 2021

If a return is still left at 10/14, it's probably messy, client doesn't care, they owe and don't want to pay, or some other way it or they suck. There's a reason this week is so hard.
Explained this to new staff yesterday and I could see the relief on their face. #Taxtwitter

— Stephanie S (@SNS92569093) October 14, 2021

If you want to prepare a return for a client that sends in their stuff late, great!

Just don't put your physical and mental health at risk if your plate is already full.

— Logan Graf (@LoganGrafTax) October 14, 2021

“Married but we each file HOH” #TaxTwitter

— Ryan the Real Estate CPA (@LearnLikeaCPA) October 14, 2021

Ma’am, I hear you but you cannot take a deduction for unpaid rent. #TaxTwitter

— Nicole Davis (@wifemomcpa100) October 11, 2021

#TaxTwitter
Me searching for my family and friends when tomorrow’s Oct 15 deadline passes: pic.twitter.com/wLtkkGlhJ6

— Robert Gambardella, CPA (@ConciergeTax) October 14, 2021

Is it October 16 yet?!?! #TaxTwitter

— Peters CPA (@peterscpa) October 14, 2021

Hang in there, friends, the finish line is within sight. We wish you nothing but the joys of getting to know your family again, taking long naps, drinking your favorite adult beverage(s) of choice, and firing deadbeat clients.

The post How Is #TaxTwitter Holding Up Before the Oct. 15 Deadline? appeared first on Going Concern.