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Accounting News Roundup: Recruiting on Snapchat and Screwed-up Estimated Payments | 08.14.17

accounting news snapchat recruiting estimated payments

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Recruiting trends

Should you be recruiting on Snapchat? I have no earthly idea, but then again, maybe that’s where all the accounting talent is hiding? On the other hand, I’m surprised that someone would even suggest that you should consider recruiting on Snapchat. The best PwC could come up with was to follow around a stupid briefcase. What chance does your firm have?

Estimated payments

The Wall Street Journal reports that a lot of people are screwing up their estimated payments and no one seems to know why:

For reasons that aren’t clear, a growing number of people who pay taxes quarterly are getting their payments wrong and incurring penalties as a result. These taxpayers often owe estimated taxes because they have income that’s not subject to the same withholding as wages earned by employees.

According to Internal Revenue Service data, the number of filers penalized for underpaying estimated taxes rose nearly 40% between 2010 and 2015—to 10 million from 7.2 million.

In 2015, the total number of filers owing penalties may have exceeded the number filing estimated taxes, although final results aren’t out yet. This is possible because some who paid quarterly taxes may have made mistakes, and others who didn’t pay them should have.

This looks like a job for…gig CPAs? Meh. The interest rate for these underestimated payments is only 3%, so people don’t seem too worried about it. Standby.

Accountants behaving badly

David Toan Mai embezzled about $2.9 million from his former employer, Diagnos-Techs, and the details of how he spent it are a little disappointing:

The money Mai admitted he stole over six years much of it in checks is breathtaking. More than $112,000 that went to the Seattle Christian school for his children’s education. Six-hundred-seventy-two thousand dollars was so called ‘petty cash.’ He sent more than $776,000 dollars to American Express.

More than $1.2 million he transferred to family and friends. He even sent $100,000 to a bank in Singapore.

Okay, making $776k in AMEX payments over six years is pretty extravagant, but why did he have $672k of lying-around money? Was he waiting for the private school invoices to show up? A judge sentenced Mai to 100 months in prison and to repay “all but $200,000 of what he stole.” Hopefully he has some of that petty cash left.

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The featured job of the week is an Estate & Trust Tax Accountant with Kaufman Rossin in Boca Raton, Fla.

Previously, on Going Concern…

I wrote about the change coming to the PCAOB. In Open Items, a bored CPA, JD, LLM wants to know his options.

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