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Accounting News Roundup: Employee Turnover and Tax Reform Delays | 05.18.17

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Employee turnover

A recent Robert Half survey found that 42% of workers are considering quitting their jobs in the next year. The number is even higher among people aged 18-34, with 68% saying they’re likely to change jobs in the next twelve months.

What’s most interesting, though, is management’s understanding — or lack thereof — of why people want to leave. The survey found that the number one reason CFOs believe people will leave was “Limited opportunities for career growth or advancement” with 27% of them citing it. Only 14% of workers chose that reason. Not surprisingly, workers said “Inadequate salary and benefits,” was the main reason, with 39% of them choosing that as the cause for people wanting to leave. What’s even more telling is that 25% of workers said “Unhappiness with management” as a reason for turnover, while only 13% of CFOs cited it.

I wonder if CFOs (or executives in general) look at results like this and then just grumble, “People focus on the wrong things,” when it seems that they’re the ones who lack the awareness to understand why they misunderstand their own people. For whatever reason, these CFOs assume most people are like them. That is, they want a path forward to continue advancing until they reach some professional summit. What’s obvious is that most people aren’t like them.

Most people don’t necessarily want to be in charge or feel the need to be consistently moving up in the world. They simply want to be compensated well, and they want management to listen to their concerns. And management doesn’t appear to understand that.

How’s tax reform coming along?

Not well! Back in February Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said they wanted to have something done by August, and then he kinda backed off on that timeline last month. And now we’re here:

“I think people are beginning to settle in and come to the realization that this is going to be a long ride,” said Ken Spain, a former National Republican Congressional Committee spokesman who lobbies for businesses on tax issues. “The hope was to get something done by the end of 2017, but this could slip to 2018.”

Members of Congress have quietly started to modulate their ambitions. Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the majority leader, said on Tuesday that passing tax cuts “this Congress” was more likely than revamping the tax code this year. Representative Kevin Brady, Republican of Texas and the chairman of the Ways and Means Committee, who still hopes to get something passed in 2017, has stopped publicly setting monthly goals.

Of course, 2018 is a mid-term election year and, ugh.

Elsewhere in tax reform fantasy: Trump Tax Plan, if It Emerges Intact, Would Dull Munis’ Allure

Accountants behaving badly

I’m always fascinated by the timeline of embezzlement schemes, especially those when the perpetrator doesn’t waste any time. Here’s a story out of New Orleans, La. about Angie Cambre, who has been accused of stealing $940,336 in less than five years from a printing company.

Cambre was hired in August 2011 by the company, which specializes in printing fliers, manuals and other materials geared toward the automotive industry.

Between November 2011 and June 2016, Cambre embezzled the money via a series of about 3,300 wire transfers made without the company’s knowledge or authorization, according to court documents.

Through the transactions, Cambre moved payments from company bank accounts to accounts under her control, taking the money for personal use, the indictment alleges.

Based on this, Cambre took about three months to get the lay of the land and then spent the next four years and [counting on fingers] eight months making 3,300 wire transfers to accounts she controlled. That’s a pretty impressive run given the prep time she had.

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Previously, on Going Concern…

I asked if any of you were suffering under your own version of Donald Trump at your job.

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