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Accounting News Roundup: Theranos’s Missing Audit Report; PwC’s Carillion Fees; Tax Planning Games | 03.21.18

The investors duped by the Theranos fraud never asked for one important thing [MW]
Francine McKenna reports that that thing was a set of audited financial statements. So, did they not get them because a) the “smart money” isn’t so smart or b) they don’t believe an auditor’s opinion is worth anything?

PwC charges more than £20m for first eight weeks of Carillion collapse [The Guardian]
U.K. MPs call the fees PwC is charging for “salvaging money” for Carillion creditors “superhuman.” The firm told a committee that it wouldn’t know what the total cost will be until June.

‘That’s the game’: Tax planners look for loopholes amid uncertainty over new law [WaPo]
Everyone wants in on the 20 percent pass-through deduction. “The doctors are going berserk. The lawyers are trying to figure out everything they can. Clients are calling right and left. It’s a planning frenzy,” says one tax advisor. “Trying to get this is a no-brainer,” says another. And even if the Treasury and IRS come out and ruin everything, another tax planner says it’s worth it and “[W]e’ll figure out something else.”

New Accounting Rule Moves Moody’s to Reevaluate Leases [WSJ]
The credit rater will start using companies’ calculation for operating lease obligations since the new lease accounting rule “will furnish a more precise calculation.”

Previously, on Going Concern…

Megan Lewczyk wrote about voluntold assignments.

In Open Items, someone is “looking for insight from anyone who has worked in transaction services at a Big 4 firm.”

From the archives: Life After Public Accounting: How One Woman Chose Porn Over Spreadsheets. See also: Deloitte Employee Suing Bar for Kicking Him Out Over His Ugly Hat

In other news:

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