Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

Accounting News Roundup: CPA FOMO; KPMG and Rolls-Royce; A QuickBooks Phishing Scam | 01.25.17

Posted on by Caleb Newquist

CPA FOMO

AICPA President, CEO and Jean-Claude Van Damme stand-in Barry Melancon gave a speech to the Accountants Club of America on the "overall health of the profession and major issue updates." Accounting Today reports that the major topic of discussion was tax reform and that Melancon expects it to pass if members of Congress can stay off social media for five minutes: “Social media has driven us to the extremes. You can’t pass anything that has less than purity because the social media extremes go crazy.”

And while the social media straw man is an interesting theory, let's move on to a topic of a little more consequence:

The pipeline of students going into accounting remains strong, Melancon noted, but more of them are now opting for jobs in industry rather than public accounting firms. The AICPA is also seeing a continuation in the trend of young people leaving CPA firms for careers in industry. The main reason is pay, according to a recent survey by the AICPA.

There it is! People are leaving public accounting because the money is terrible. This will probably surprise no one that's been reading this site for any length of time, so it's nice to see it confirmed elsewhere. Anyway, Melancon believes that the "migration pattern" for accounting professionals is changing: 

Increasingly people are not going into public practice. They’re going into industry directly. Short term, that hurts. Long term, when it comes to hiring experienced people, I think that’s going to be the migration pattern in the future. That’s one reason why we have the strategy for connecting those people through the CGMA [Chartered Global Management Accountant credential] with the profession, but I do think a large percentage of them will find their way at some point in their careers into public accounting.

It kinda sounds like Melancon believes that people going straight into industry will suffer from CPA FOMO. And maybe that'll happen, but wouldn't that mean people would have to stop caring about money and start caring about…something else? We recently talked about how most people say that their favorite part of working in an accounting firm is "the people" and yet most accountants leave firms for better pay, better quality of life, etc. Is it likely that they'll change those perspectives and decide that "the people" is really what they want out of a job?

I suppose it's possible. But people aren't simply going to stay in a job forever because they like their co-workers. Accounting firms will have to start paying their people better and offer better working conditions, too and many firms haven't shown many signs of being willing to do that.

Clients, amirite!?!

The Daily Mail, (I know, weird) reports that the UK's Financial Reporting Council will look into KPMG's role as the auditor of Rolls-Royce amidst the company's bribery scandal that it settled last week:

That included bribing an agent in Indonesia with a Silver Spirit Rolls-Royce car and £1.8 million for help selling equipment to the national airline; bribing a Russian official through a middleman for his help in securing work on a national gas project; and bribing a China Eastern Airlines executive with a £4 million cash credits.

I don't know if KPMG auditors should have found transactions like these, but I think #AppearsReasonable suits this story nicely.

Previously, on Going Concern…

Rachel Andujar wrote about mandatory Saturdays during busy season.

In other news:

Get the Accounting News Roundup in your inbox every weekday by signing up here.

Related Posts

Accounting News Roundup: Apple and Deloitte; Audits From Hell | 09.29.16

Apple and Deloitte Apple products look nice and work pretty well, but they are also […]

Accounting News Roundup: Feel Lucky to Have a Job?; Size Matters at Deloitte; Patrick Byrne MIA from Overstock Earnings Call | 11.04.10

Do Employees Still Feel Lucky to Have Jobs? [You’re the Boss/NYT]
“Though the economists say the recession was over months ago, the small-business owners I talk to have not seen sales rebound to where they were. Some businesses haven’t rebounded at all. I have been in business for more than 30 years, and I have never seen anything like this. It’s like a normal recession but with an extra year or two thrown in. Yes, things have stabilized, and in some cases they have gotten better. On the human side, things are precarious.”

Just Say No [TaxVox]
Kim Rueben writes, “There were about a hundred ballot initiatives affecting state budgets, some increasing states’ abilities to raise revenues or determine spending levels and others curtailing them. For better or worse, in most cases the voters said no and the status quo remained.”

Deloitte Ranked Largest Forensics and Dispute Advisory Practice [PR Newswire]
“Deloitte’s performance validates the depth, breadth and quality of forensic and dispute services that we offer our clients,” said Greg Swinehart, partner and leader of the forensic and dispute services practice of Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP. “The combination of deep technical experience, proprietary leading-edge technology and analytical tools, and access to the global network of DTTL member firms and their affiliates, allows us to quickly deploy experienced teams virtually anywhere around the world to help address our clients’ complex needs.”

Qantas Grounds Airbus A380 Fleet After Emergency Landing [Bloomberg]
An engine exploded. Nothing major.

NetSuite to buy Sage? [AccMan]
Just kicking some ideas around.

The Big Four Accounting Firms Are Down to Critical Mass: Says the Financial Times – So It Must Be Official [Re:Balance]
Jim Peterson reacts to the recent Financial Times article on the Big 4 stranglehold.


TIGTA Releases FY 2011 Audit Plan [TaxProf Blog]
An approximate outline of the IRS nagging schedule.

Accounting Day, 2010 [The Summa]
Next Wednesday. Mark your calendars.

Patrick Byrne Absent From Third Quarter Earnings Call [White Collar Fraud]
Sam speculates as to the cause of PB being MIA: “Back in the Crazy Eddie days, it was known as ‘SEC induced sudden illness syndrome’ or by the short acronym SIS. Common symptoms include panic attacks, headaches, nausea, cold sweats, trembling, stomach pains, vomiting, and worst of all, diarrhea. At least the weight loss isn’t so bad. However, the SEC commonly refers to anyone suffering from SIS as a SISsy.”

Accounting News Roundup: AICPA vs. IRS on Uncertain Tax Positions; Accountants Involved in Haiti Recovery; Taxing Pot Could Yield $400k for D.C. | 06.02.10

AICPA Protests Disclosures of Uncertain Tax Positions [Web CPA]
The AICPA has come out against the IRS’ uncertain tax positions proposal, saying “it should withdraw its proposed rule that would require companies with more than $10 million in total assets to disclose uncertain tax positions on a new schedule.”

The AICPA is not so hot on the idea of the IRS wading into the financial reporting waters, “We understand that the UTP proposal does not change the underlying rules for financial reporting, but believe overlaying a tax disclosure construct on the financial reporting system introduces a dynamic which could work at cross purposes with the original and fundamental purpose of the financial reporting rules.”


Haitian recovery needs accountants [Accountancy Age]
Nearly five months after the Earthquake in Haiti things are recovering slowly. Financial records for the government and private business have had two considerably different experiences:

[T]he finance ministry’s financial controls and systems are now being restored after its headquarters were destroyed. The World Bank has helped this critical process, placing accounting experts with the ministry.

As for the private sector, Laforest said many companies’ financial systems had survived thanks to accounting software packages, whose data had been uploaded to cloud computing remote data sumps on the internet. But bills, receipts and other paper records vital for making tax returns had been lost where offices collapsed.

And creating proper controls around the donations process has been crucial for organizing those funds. According to one volunteer, “[W]ithout proper controls, the money that you and your friends and your government have given might as well be left in a big bucket in the middle of the market with a sign saying ‘biggest at the front, smallest at the back.’”

Pot could bring in $400K for D.C. [Post Now/WaPo]
The District’s Council is expected to vote on June 15th on a provision that would levy a 6% sales tax on ganj sold there. At an approximate price of $350 an ounce, each bag would yield $21 for DC and would be expected to raise $400k in the next 5 years.

Tweedie replacement must juggle dual roles [Accountancy Age]
The candidates for the IASB chair are dwindling but most people seem to agree that having the role split into “Chair” and “CEO” roles might benefit the Board. “Richard Sexton, head of audit at PwC, suggested the role should be split.” And BDO’s sometime blogger and International CEO Jeremy Newman chimes in, “It’s unrealistic to expect one person to cover both.”

Also, whoever fills the big chair can’t be a über double-entry geek or just a crafty political type to heavy one way or the other. Most think that it needs to be a balance of both, although the preference of which is more important is debatable, including one Deloitte partner’s point of view, “If you don’t understand the accounting, you won’t be able to do the diplomacy around the debate,” versus Grant Thornton, “At this stage in the IASB’s life, we would place political awareness ahead of technical [knowledge] for the chair, but of course the chair must be technically astute.”