The firm put out a press release way back in 2011 when announcing a “a high energy, unforgettable experience” in Orlando for some 2,400 interns and it’s been a whole thing ever since. Here’s a guy who made an 8-minute video about his experience in 2024:

It was nice while it lasted, we suppose.

The post In Case You Didn’t Hear, PwC Interns Won’t Be Swarming Disney World This Year appeared first on Going Concern.

Alright that’s it for this news brief, a bit slow out there. Email or text if you have a tip or story for us and have a great week, you.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Do More Work to Get More Work, Says PwC Leader; Can You Teach Interns to Think? | 7.27.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Offshoring

Big Four’s use of offshore auditors sparks concern from UK accounting watchdog [Financial Times]
The Financial Reporting Council said on Wednesday that accounting firms were increasingly incorporating offshore teams into UK audit work under “extended team models”. This included relying on offshore teams for work requiring “professional judgement”, it said, moving beyond the longstanding practice of using overseas staff for routine testing and administrative work.

Why the FRC is targeting offshore audit work and what your firm must do [AccountancyAge]
While the Big Four (PwC, Deloitte, EY, and KPMG) and mid-tier practices have relied on offshore hubs for years to offset UK staffing shortages, the regulator’s message is unequivocal: you can outsource the work, but you cannot outsource accountability.

The Early Career Gauntlet

Accounting’s next challenge: Guarding what AI can’t replace [CFO Dive]
Writes Trullion CEO Artie Minson:
AI is now capable of performing many of the tasks that used to occupy a staff auditor’s first two years. It reads PDFs and extracts data in seconds, not days. It tests entire populations rather than small samples. It matches records in real time instead of during the late nights of a tight audit deadline. For firms, that’s an obvious win on cost and quality. But it raises questions about the new wave of professionals. If a new accountant never spends the early years of their career understanding how transactions flow through accounting records and how different systems should and should not correlate to one another, do they still build the instinct and experience that comes from doing it the hard way?

UK CFOs cite cost as top reason for pull back on graduate hiring [CFO.com]
Sixty-four percent of the U.K. CFOs working in FTSE 100 and FTSE 250 companies surveyed by Deloitte said broader business cost-control efforts will reduce graduate hiring over the next 12 months, making it the biggest factor weighing on recruitment plans. The findings come from Deloitte’s latest CFO Survey of U.K.-based finance chiefs. The survey suggests AI is beginning to reshape workforce planning, but many organizations are still making hiring decisions primarily through tighter budgets and cost discipline. Artificial intelligence ranked as the second biggest “dampener of demand” for new graduate hires, selected by 47% of respondents, followed by outsourcing at 33%.

Audit

South Korea opens big 4 audits to mid-sized firms, tightens quality oversight [Chosun Biz]
Financial authorities will revamp the auditor designation system so that capable mid-sized accounting firms can also be designated as auditors for large listed companies. In addition, large accounting firms will be required to set up audit quality oversight committees centered on external experts, and the eligibility requirements for CEOs of listed companies’ auditors will be strengthened to raise the overall quality of audits.

Regulator flags BDO’s ‘unacceptable’ audit issues for fifth year in a row [City AM]
The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) said in its yearly audit quality report that BDO’s overall audit quality fell below expected standards and “has received unsatisfactory results from regulatory inspections” consistently for five years. The firm was found to have performed the worst among the six largest audit firms.

Federal Contracts

‘Stop feeding the beast’: Newly released data reveals Labor’s ongoing ‘addiction’ to KPMG [PS News]
Newly published biannual government data on consulting services shows the Big Four accounting firm has new contracts worth more than $2 million, and between January and July this year it held active contracts worth $51.4 million. Ironically, one of its current contracts is with the Australian Public Service Commission to teach ethics and leadership to public service leaders.

Municipal Madness

In rare Idaho state audit of a city, report finds major procedural shortcomings in Kamiah’s spending [Idaho Capital Sun]
“The level of missing documentation across all financial transactions reviewed is very concerning,” the report said. “We were unable to determine if the missing documentation was due to incompetence or fraudulent activities, but it does call into question the integrity of many transactions.”

Cary residents call for Council resignations after state audit details questionable spending [WRAL]
Calls for Cary Town Council members to resign are growing after a state audit uncovered years of questionable spending and raised concerns about the town’s financial oversight. Residents packed a Cary Town Council meeting this week, with the session lasting more than five hours. It was the first council meeting since the release of the state’s 2,600-page audit.

Milton City Council frets over lack of communication in audit crisis [Pensacola News Journal]
As the city of Milton works to dig out from a financial disaster and yet another credibility crisis, City Manager Ed Spears was called upon July 23 to explain to the City Council why they didn’t learn sooner about a “discrepancy” of approximately $590,906 existing between city financial records and bank balances.

Macquarie orders ‘integrity’ review amid questions over KPMG audit win [Financial Review]
Macquarie chairman Glenn Stevens says the investment banking and asset management giant will review the appointment of KPMG as its auditor, raising the prospect that it could ditch the firm before it starts in the role. Stevens, a former Reserve Bank of Australia governor, said the Macquarie board had already made “formal inquiries of KPMG” given a stream of departures after senior figures at the auditing firm were caught inappropriately using confidential client files to win contracts.

Private Equity

Private equity reshaping Irish accountancy as 21 deals struck in just over a year [Irish Independent]
The difference in the Irish accountancy practice of today is not just the disappearance of the ledger books and filing cabinets, long since replaced by software programmes on laptops – it’s the composition of the firms themselves. A slew of mom-and-pop firms have been bought by large conglomerates, mostly funded by private equity (PE).

India

Why a New Regulatory Framework Has Sparked One of the Biggest Battles in India’s Accounting Industry [Indian Masterminds]
India has set itself an ambitious goal of becoming a global economic powerhouse. It wants Indian companies to compete with multinational corporations, Indian professionals to lead international industries, and domestic institutions to shape global standards. Yet, amid these aspirations, one of the country’s oldest and most respected professions finds itself facing an uncomfortable question: can India truly build world-class accounting firms while its own regulatory framework continues to place domestic players at a structural disadvantage?

M&A

Doeren Mayhew Expands in Houston with Sowers & Company Acquisition [Doeren Mayhew]
DM announced two acquisitions this week:
Doeren Mayhew has acquired Houston CPA firm Sowers & Company, further building its local tax and outsourced accounting capabilities. All Sowers & Company employees joined Doeren Mayhew as of June 18, 2026, and have relocated to Doeren Mayhew’s Houston office.

Doeren Mayhew Expands Florida’s Gulf Coast Presence with Addition of McMillan, Whiteman & Associates PLLC [DM]
Doeren Mayhew, a national assurance, tax and advisory firm, has completed its acquisition of Florida-based McMillan, Whiteman & Associates PLLC (MWA), effective June 30, 2026. The MWA team now operates out of their Punta Gorda office under the Doeren Mayhew brand name. The acquisition strengthens Doeren Mayhew’s presence along Florida’s Gulf Coast, one of the state’s fastest-growing regions for privately held businesses and high-net-worth individuals.

The post Friday Footnotes: Regulators Turn Their Eye to Offshoring; Auditors Ask “Is It Incompetence or Is It Fraud?” | 7.24.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

EY provides professional tax services to a wide range of financial institutions globally. In the course of providing these tax services, EY received certain personal financial information relating to your investment holdings with [EY CUSTOMER].

You may have noticed that [EY CUSTOMER] is a placeholder. As of now, we don’t know which EY client was involved.

EY began informing affected individuals and relevant state authorities on July 13. In their notice filed with the California Attorney General, which we’ve embedded in its entirety below, they say:

EY uses a third-party information technology service management platform to help EY information technology provide support to EY teams performing tax-related work for clients. Support tickets submitted through the platform may include documents containing client tax information. On April 23, 2026, EY identified anomalous activity within that platform.

They then launched an incident response and brought in an independent cybersecurity firm.

We don’t know which third-party IT service was involved as they haven’t said. Nor have they named any hacker group involved. Clearly this article is begging for an update, hopefully soon.

The personal information affected includes “certain financial information contained in or used to prepare tax filings.” The firm says they are “not aware of any misuse or further exposure of your personal information as a result of this incident.” As is standard protocol in a data breach like this, they are offering free access to two Experian products, Identity works and Identity Restoration.

There is already a potential class action lawsuit in the works.

The post EY’s Latest Data Breach Comes With a Fun New Game: Guess the Client appeared first on Going Concern.

They didn’t get punted to Tier 2 because of years and years of worsening audit quality, they got punted to Tier 2 so they could continue to focus on audit quality and demonstrate that they belong with the big boys. As part of that effort, GT ditched a whole bunch of clients (FRC called this “de-risking its audit portfolio”), 70% of whom fell into the Public Interest Entities (PIEs) category. And this downgrade, according to a fresh FT story which says GT wants back on the top tier, led to some confusion in the market:

Despite the lesser scrutiny, the demotion became a handicap for Grant Thornton when competing for large audit mandates, according to people familiar with the matter, because prospective clients mistakenly interpreted it as a sign that the regulator viewed the firm as a lesser audit provider.

“Being placed outside the FRC’s top tier was, in practice, misread by some prospective clients as a league table position rather than a supervisory classification, which did create confusion in the market,” said Wendy Russell, UK head of audit at Grant Thornton.

In a FRC podcast released last year (thanks FT for linking this!), then-Executive Director of Supervision Sarah Rapson talked about how the tier system ended up telegraphing a signal that puts top tier audit firms above everyone else which the FRC totally didn’t see coming when they came up with tiers. “One of the areas that there is consensus over is the unintended consequences of how we currently segment the market,” she said, “So we group firms in tier, so we’ll have tier one, tier two, tier three, and every so often we might talk about tier four, which is a proxy for firms that could come into the PIE market but haven’t quite yet chosen to do so. And this has become a bit of a league table externally. Some firms have told us this actually has impacted their ability to compete, and that was never our intention. And I think it is important that, you know, the FRC isn’t in the way of a competitive market.”

I mean, they do understand the meaning of the word ‘tier’ right? The only way it could be worse is if they used letters instead of numbers.

Grant Thornton got into bed with private equity in 2024 and in the time since, they’ve been adding PIE clients to build that practice back up. Now, says FT, they think they belong back on the top of the list:

Grant Thornton has been pressing the UK accounting regulator to restore it to the top tier of audit firms, subject to the greatest regulatory scrutiny, as it attempts to repair its reputation and reverse a years-long retreat from the high-risk work.

The funniest part about this story is that the FRC might be getting rid of tiers altogether. But we suppose it’s that much more important to crawl your way back to the list before the list disappears and you’ll forever be trapped on a demoted tier that no longer exists in the minds of prospective clients.

The post Grant Thornton Wants to Get Back on the Audit A Team appeared first on Going Concern.

At a little informative gathering held at KPMG’s NYC office today, Treasury officials wagged their large, disappointed fingers at certain aggressive planning strategies that are getting popular:

The strategies under scrutiny include so-called 351 conversions, box-spread exchange-traded funds, products that offset ordinary income, and funds that avoid dividend income by flipping between other ETFs. Speaking at a Wall Street Tax Association seminar, Kevin Salinger, deputy assistant secretary for tax policy at the Treasury, and Erika Nijenhuis, senior counsel, said the department has no wish to over-engineer rules, but it cannot ignore a market developing around transactions with results Congress did not appear to intend.

“We’re not here to be over-broad or disruptive, but we are also not prepared to turn the blind eye to aggressive planning,” Salinger said. “We do not want to act in a way that rewards taxpayers or promoters who have crossed lines that should not be crossed and disadvantages taxpayers who have stayed within the lines.”

It’s not the first time Treasury has expressed concern about these kinds of transactions.

Funny enough, Wall Street Journal just wrote about the strategy the other day: The Tax Strategy for People Suffering From Stock-Market Success.

A little piece of advice based on the ERC debacle: if aggressive salesmen pitching this start blowing up your phone like they’re trying to reach you about your car’s extended warranty, beware.

The post Treasury Says Cool It on the 351 Conversions appeared first on Going Concern.

And that’s it for this Monday Morning News Brief. As always, dear reader is welcome and encouraged to reach out via email or text with any stories, tips, or general comments. Bye!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Baker Tilly Looking at Debt Markets; PwC Partners to Take Home More Than a Mil | 7.20.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

CPA Exam

Washington DC’s CPA bill advances to mayor’s desk [CFO Dive]
The Council of the District of Columbia, in a unanimous vote Tuesday, advanced bill (26-494), which will establish an alternative path to becoming a certified public accountant that requires a bachelor’s degree, two years of experience and passing the CPA exam.

AI

Exclusive: OpenAI’s CFO pitches a new way to measure AI’s value [Axios]
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar is proposing a new enterprise AI metric: “useful intelligence per dollar.” Instead of measuring AI spend by expenses or cost per token, she argues businesses should ask four questions: Is AI completing work that matters? What does each successful task cost? How often does it get the work right? Does each AI dollar produce more value as usage grows?

SEC

An SEC email address mix-up is causing confusion and threatening to disrupt its proposal to scrap quarterly reporting requirements [Fortune]
In May, the Securities and Exchange Commission proposed a new rule that would let publicly listed companies report their financial results twice a year instead of every quarter, as is currently required. The agency asked the public to weigh in and send its feedback to rule-comment@sec.gov. But the comment inbox that the SEC lists on its own instructions page—and has printed in almost every rule proposal it has issued since at least 2019—is rule-comments@sec.gov. With an “s.” The comment (or…comments) period on the semiannual reporting rule closed on July 6, but the email address confusion cropped up on Monday in a letter to the commission from nonprofit investor advocate Better Markets.

Paper Taper: Statement on Proposed Regulation E-Delivery [SEC Commissioner Hester Peirce]
Today, in a long-awaited move, the Commission proposed Regulation E-Delivery to make electronic delivery the default under the securities laws for issuers, investment advisers, investment companies, and broker-dealers. This rulemaking focuses on the default delivery method; not the content of disclosure or its format. I am happy to support what I expect will be the first step in rethinking, modernizing, and improving disclosure of information to investors. The proposal should benefit investors, issuers, and market intermediaries. By reducing printing and mailing, an e-delivery default should lower costs. A more important consequence of the shift to default e-delivery is facilitating the incorporation of technological advances to improve investor engagement with the information being delivered. I hope to see interactive and customized disclosures, something that is not possible with paper. This proposal is a great first step, but the SEC’s paper mentality is still alive and well.

Jobs

Resume orders for accounting professionals surge 800% as AI disrupts the industry, Resumeble data shows [National Law Review]
“AI” *eyeroll*
Resumeble, a professional resume writing and career services company serving job seekers across more than 80 industries, today released internal order data showing an 800% increase in resume requests from accounting professionals between January–June 2023 and the same period in 2026 — nearly ten times the growth rate of the company’s overall business.

Big 4

PwC fined $4.4M for auditing missteps in UK [CFO.com]
PwC faces a fine of about $4.4 million for alleged failings in its audit of British aerospace and defense firm Babcock International Group. That’s according to a news release and settlement document issued by the United Kingdom’s Financial Reporting Council on Thursday. In the release, the council said that PwC and audit engagement partner John Waters “admitted serious and numerous breaches” of auditing requirements related to cash pooling, financial arrangements for an overseas contract and assessment of goodwill impairment, among other matters.

Australia to boost scrutiny of Big Four accounting firms after wave of scandals [Reuters]
Australia on Thursday announced plans to increase its oversight of the Big Four accounting firms after ​a series of high-profile governance failures in the industry, ‌most recently by KPMG whose staff have been accused of misusing confidential information to win contracts. The government said it had directed the Australian Securities ​and Investments Commission (ASIC) to improve the regulation of accounting ​and auditing firms, “enhancing the accountability, transparency and oversight of ⁠the audit sector.”

Tax

Zero Paper Initiative Information Security [TIGTA (PDF)]
TIGTA issued an alert to the IRS after we identified concerns at two sites contractors are using to support the IRS’s Zero Paper Initiative (ZPI).

Top US tax lawyer forced out after White House clash over tax audits [Reuters]
The U.S. ​tax agency’s top attorney was forced from his role in recent days after refusing White House demands ‌to participate in tax audits, according to three people familiar with the matter. Ken Kies, the Internal Revenue Service’s acting chief counsel and Treasury Department assistant secretary for tax policy, told administration officials their requests would violate a law prohibiting the president, vice president and other ​White House officials from ordering the IRS to “conduct or terminate an audit or other investigation of any ​particular taxpayer,” said the people. They spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of ⁠professional reprisals.

IRS raises standard mileage rates for remainder of 2026 [Journal of Accountancy]
The revised standard mileage rates, effective July 1, are: 76 cents per mile for business, an increase from 72.5 cents, and 23.5 cents per mile for medical and moving purposes, up from 20.5 cents per mile for each. The mileage rate that applies to the deduction for charitable contributions is fixed under Sec. 170(i) of the Internal Revenue Code at 14 cents per mile.

Bellevue accountant sentenced to prison for filing false tax returns [KOMO News]
Thanjavur Manavalan, 65, owner and operator of Mano Accounting Services, was sentenced Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Seattle after a jury convicted him in March 2026 on three counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation and presentation of false tax returns, according to the U.S. Department of Justice for the Western District of Washington.

Audit

Public companies look to auditors on regulatory changes, AI disclosures [CFO Brew]
More public companies are getting proactive on regulatory changes that could impact capital markets and are more focused on AI-related risks, according to the Center for Audit Quality’s (CAQ) latest Audit Partner Pulse survey released on Wednesday. The spring survey, fielded in May, garnered 589 responses from audit partners. It found that nearly two in five (39%) respondents said their clients were “seeking guidance on expected regulatory changes,” compared with less than a quarter (23%) of respondents in the fall survey.

The post Friday Footnotes: OpenAI CFO Says Don’t Sweat Token Costs; Seems Everyone and Their Manager Is Polishing Up Resumes | 7.17.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

No bonuses for anyone, comp adjustments normally effective 8/1 will be effective 11/1, promotions not delayed but would basically be unpaid until 11/1

So promotions are still on but promotion pay is delayed until November. This tracks with what’s being said in two threads posted on r/accounting yesterday.

You’re free to discuss in the comments.

The post Bonus Watch ’26: No Bonuses at BDO? appeared first on Going Concern.

Oklahoma State Auditor & Inspector Cindy Byrd, CPA released a forensic audit report for the Town of Washington yesterday and for a town with 673 people they sure spent a lot. Well, her report alleges that more than $1 million of the approximately $3.3 million in expenditures from July 2020 to June 2024 was fraudulent. And boy did she bring receipts.

The report said it found that Susan Noel misappropriated $676,368 in Town funds. Town is capitalized in the report as in the town’s full government name Town of Washington so we’ll roll with that. There’s also the issue of people being paid more than they’re supposed to and as if that weren’t enough, from 2012 through 2019, Noel failed to submit payroll tax withholdings to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), resulting in unpaid payroll taxes, interest, and penalties totaling $176,887.

“This is the worst example of board oversight I have seen in my 29 years of government auditing experience,” Auditor Cindy Byrd said in a press release [PDF]. “The Town of Washington is a small community with limited resources. From FY2021 to FY2024, roughly one-third of the Town’s total expenditures were either fraudulently misappropriated or spent without Board authorization. The responsibility for the financial welfare of the Town ultimately rests with the Board, which failed to exercise oversight of Town finances as required by law.”

You can tell she’s annoyed with the Board based on these several paragraphs in the report:

The issues addressed in this report show that the Town suffered major financial losses at the hands of its former employees. Although these losses are the responsibility of the alleged perpetrators, the Board also bears responsibility for failing to provide the oversight needed to protect public funds.

Several trustees asserted they were unaware of the unlawful expenditures, improper employee compensation, and poor oversight of revenue collections. Even though several of the questionable transactions appeared to have been purposefully hidden from the oversight of the Board, timely review of bank statements, check registers, or monthly expenditure reports would have revealed many of the questionable transactions. If those documents and records were not routinely presented to the Board, the Board had a duty to demand them and hold employees accountable.

However, it is important to note that not all trustees responded in the same manner. Trustee Joel Siria and former Trustees Duane Branham and Kara Cook raised concerns about the Town’s financial practices and sought access to the financial documents and records of the Town. Noel and Aday resisted in providing those documents.

In a small town, the lack of limited staff can make it difficult to separate financial duties. That makes strong Board oversight even more important. Although some trustees attempted to strengthen oversight, the Board as a governing body failed to provide the level of oversight needed to protect Town assets and is ultimately responsible for safeguarding the Town’s finances. The Board bears responsibility for the financial welfare of the Town.

The Board responded on where else, Facebook:

We’ll embed the full forensic audit below but here are some highlights. First, the people involved were two longtime public servants who held the town purse:

The Town’s financial operations were primarily administered by the Town Clerk/Treasurer Susan Noel (Noel) and the Town Administrator Paul Aday (Aday). In their respective positions they exercised substantial control over the Town’s day-to-day operations. For most of the audit period, in addition to Noel and Aday, the Town employed a staff of four individuals: Noel’s daughter Kasey Lesher (K. Lesher) the utility billing clerk, Noel’s son-in-law T.R. Lesher the Town’s water operator and maintenance worker, and two police officers, Rubin Ruiz, Jr. and Larry Watts.

Bank records reflected that Noel and Aday were the sole signatories on the Town’s bank accounts from April 18, 2008, through July 18, 2024, the date Noel was terminated.

Noel served in her role as town clerk with financial oversight of the Town for approximately 17 years, from 2007 through July 2024, while Aday was employed by the Town for approximately 31 years, from 1993 through September 2024. The evidence established that Noel and Aday exercised extensive authority over Town finances.

The concentration of financial responsibilities among a small number of individuals, combined with extremely limited Board oversight created an environment in which unauthorized transactions and fraudulent expenditures occurred and remained undetected for an extended period.

And just like that, Town of Washington earned its place in a future Audit 101 textbook. The state auditor’s findings of poor internal controls are a given, it’s covered in depth around page 30-31 of the report.

Among the “Noel Expenditures” as they’re dubbed in the report are Bank of America credit card bills, almost $30,000 in Amazon purchases (which included a memory foam mattress, sectional sofa, coffee and espresso machine, a cordless vacuum cleaner, a vibration plate exercise machine, countertop ice maker, four-drawer file cabinet, and electric nail clippers for dogs), and $9,903 on the Town’s debit card for, among other things, a doodle puppy and puppy breeding rights.

Then there’s the $54,770 charged to the Town’s fuel fleet cards from January 2020 through July 2024 and $18,365 paid to local convenience store Sid’s Easy Shop from July 2020 to June 2024. Because the Town didn’t keep mileage logs or trip records, the state auditor was unable to determine the legitimacy of all these expenses. “Some fuel-related expenditures were problematic” due to their volume and frequency, the report said.

Full report is embedded below for your reading pleasure.

The post Congratulations to This Tiny 673-Person Town on Earning a Spot in Future Fraud Training Slides appeared first on Going Concern.

What Bloomberg wrote in their original story:

Several partners at PwC’s Hong Kong and mainland China affiliates say they are exploring strategies to safeguard personal assets, in case legal and regulatory challenges facing the firms ever spill over into any financial or legal burdens for themselves. One says he has even contemplated divorce as a means to shield wealth, while another is cutting education budgets for his children.

Yeah so that was a terrible idea. Talking about shielding wealth, I mean. Financial Times has some fresh scoop:

In a letter to individuals who were equity partners during the firm’s Evergrande audit from 2017 to 2020, the liquidators said that, while they expected “PwC will be able to meet in full any monetary judgment”, they warned that they would look to the partners “personally to recover any shortfall”.

The letter, which was sent on June 30 and seen by the FT, also warned partners against taking steps to “shield assets from execution of judgment, including by divorcing spouses or placing assets in the names of other family members” after reports of partners contemplating such steps.

Those Alvarez & Marsal folks sure don’t play.

The post Note to PwC Partners: Don’t Tell Reporters You Plan to Divorce Your Wife to Hide Assets After an Audit Scandal appeared first on Going Concern.

KPMG is preparing to cut hundreds of jobs and reduce partner pay by as much as 20 per cent, as the fallout from the audit leaks scandal hits the big four firm’s bottom line.

Senior leaders at the firm, which has about 9000 staff and 700 partners, are scrutinising client bookings to gauge the scale of the hit to its pipeline of work and are examining ways to offset this by cutting costs.

One of AFR’s sources said the total could reach or exceed 1,000 people. If we include partners in the calculation that’s more than 10% of their workforce.

As you likely know, KPMG is still reeling from a scandal that came to light in March in which the firm used confidential information to bid for audit contracts and dissed the whistleblower who tried to call it out. At the beginning of this month the Australian government released a 56-page paper that strongly suggests they’re looking for a comically oversized hammer with which to beat Big 4 firms into behaving. Safe to say the real punishment is yet to come, for now they are barred from bidding for government contracts through September.

KPMG Australia reported revenue of $2.315 billion AUD ($1.61 billion USD) for 2025, a 3% decline overall from prior year.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: Big Cuts Are Coming at KPMG Australia appeared first on Going Concern.

Irish Times got the scoop first:

A Workplace Relations Commission (WRC) adjudicator said senior associate, Jasch Asher was “the author of his own predicament” after finding that he intended to remain in India and wished to continue working remotely from there, despite a “clear contractual requirement” that he be based in Ireland.

Workplace Relations Commission cases are publicly available, we can find Jasch Asher’s case against PwC here (note: he originally asked to be anonymous, the WRC rejected the request as they didn’t see a reason why he needed to be). From that, we see that Asher was fired from PwC in December of 2024. His side of the story says he left Ireland for India on September 30, 2024 and continued to work as normal, with permission from his coach Mr. Des Crofton (according to LinkedIn, Crofton was a director in FS Risk and Regulatory at PwC Ireland during this period). The firm’s side of the story is that he dodged them for weeks and was eventually caught working from India without permission by his own IP address.

The case respondent, Ciara O’ Reilly in HR, outlined the firm’s “Together Anywhere” policy, which allows people to work out-of-country for up to 30 days a year with approval. Asher took one such trip in January of 2024.

On March 6 of that year, Asher’s team leader reached out to HR “seeking information regarding the Complainant’s ‘Together Anywhere’ requests and annual leave requests because the Team Leader had noticed discrepancies in the Respondent’s internal systems relating to annual leave records.”

On June 12, Asher asked for some time off to travel to India for medical appointments. Six days later, he was informed he would be put on a PIP “due to concerns regarding his performance.” According to HR, he objected to the PIP (who doesn’t) and asked to be assigned a new coach. From there the wheels start falling off:

Ms. O’Reilly [HR] states that she contacted the Complainant [Asher] on 20 June 2024 to discuss his concerns regarding the PIP. The Complainant informed her he was sick and unable to meet virtually. On 27 June 2024 she met virtually with the Complainant to discuss his concerns regarding the PIP and the development areas to be agreed. The Complainant agreed to discuss the performance objectives and PIP with Mr. Crofton and that the terms of the PIP were subsequently agreed.

On 4 October 2024 the Complainant refused to work on a particular job with a senior manager. She referred to a note made by Mr. Crofton stating:

“He has said the SM treats him badly and is unprofessional and he won’t work with him. He has made similar insinuations about the SM and other members of the team in the past (including about me), and I have repeatedly pointed him to the firm’s policies and told him that he needs to make a formal complaint if he feels that he has been treated unfairly. I’ve been very clear and supportive in telling him that I absolutely want to deal with any grievance he has and have encouraged him to pursue them but as yet, he hasn’t done that.”

His coach tried to meet with him in person in November, unbeknownst to him at the time Asher had been in India since the end of September hence why Asher kept coming up with excuses why he couldn’t come into the office:

Following the concerns raised by the Complainant, a partner and senior manager met separately and jointly with the Complainant, and the Respondent understood the matter to have been resolved. The Complainant’s PIP concluded on 1 November 2024. On 6 November 2024 Mr. Crofton invited the Complainant to an in-person meeting on 8 November 2024 at the Respondent’s office in Dublin to discuss the outcome of the PIP. On 8 November 2024 the Complainant declined the meeting approximately ten minutes before it was due to begin, stating he was not in the office. Mr. Crofton rescheduled the meeting for later that same day to allow the Complainant time to attend the office, noting that the Complainant lived approximately five to ten minutes’ walk from the office. When no response was received, Mr. Crofton telephoned the Complainant, who stated he had a cold and could not come into the office. Mr. Crofton asked whether the Complainant had attended the office earlier in the week and the Complainant replied that he had. She says that during this call the Complainant made serious allegations against Mr. Crofton and accused him of bullying him over the previous two years. Mr. Crofton denied the allegations and suggested pausing the conversation and rescheduling for the following week. Mr. Crofton then contacted HR for guidance and mentioned that he had not actually seen the Complainant in the office for some time. Following this conversation, the Respondent commenced an informal review of the Complainant’s office attendance. His access card data and IP address location data showed that the Complainant had been working from India since 30 September 2024 without the Respondent’s knowledge and contrary to his contract and the Respondent’s policies.

So his IP address told on him. This was one of Asher’s beefs before the WRC, that he was not informed his IP address data “would be used against him.” Come on, my guy.

The WRC found there was no unfair dismissal, that Asher didn’t have permission to work from India and that the firm tried to resolve this using proper internal procedures. Additionally the adjudication officer wrote:

The Complainant’s refusal to return to Ireland was not temporary or contingent upon a specific event. Rather, the evidence establishes that he intended to remain in India indefinitely and wished to continue working remotely from there notwithstanding the clear contractual requirement that he be based in Ireland. In my view, this amounted to a fundamental repudiation of an essential term of the contract of employment.

The employment relationship depends upon mutual trust and confidence. The unauthorised relocation abroad, the failure to comply with contractual attendance requirements, the misrepresentation of the Complainant’s location, and the subsequent refusal to return to Ireland when directed to do so constituted a serious breach of the employment contract. The Respondent was entitled to regard the Complainant’s conduct as demonstrating that he no longer intended to be bound by the fundamental terms of his employment.

The best line from the decision is this:

Having considered all of the evidence, I find that the Complainant was the author of his own predicament.

The post Turns Out Firms Don’t Like It When You Offshore Yourself appeared first on Going Concern.

Now That’s What I Call Modern

Wanna see a snazzy consulting firm office in Tijuana? Architizer’s got you. There’s a whole bunch of pics.

Pretty sure I have that same metal and frosted glass partition in Sims Freeplay.

That’s it for this edition of the Monday Morning Accounting News Brief. If you have a tip or story email or text anytime, I’d love to see it. I left comments open if anyone needs to sound off about anything. OK bye.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: KPMG Lets the PCAOB Know They’re in Some Trouble; Accenture Experiences an “Isolated Matter” | 7.13.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Layoff Watch

Exclusive: Big Four giant KPMG to cut more jobs [City AM]
Big Four giant KPMG is set to lay off around 10 per cent of staff in its UK group corporate services division, City AM understands. The division, which includes HR, corporate affairs, marketing, tech, and procurement, is understood to be cutting around 200 people. A KPMG UK spokesperson told City AM: “As we continue to integrate our UK and Swiss businesses to deliver on our group strategy and drive growth, we are looking at the shape of our operating model.”

Exclusive: PwC set to cut audit jobs amid market slowdown [City AM]
PwC is set to slash its headcount in its UK audit division, the latest in a series of redundancies at Big Four accountancy giants. City AM understands that those affected are senior associates and managers in the audit practice. It is understood this is due to low staff attrition in the firm’s audit practice, a result of aggressive post-pandemic hiring when audit and consulting services were booming, but the market has since plateaued, prompting firms to cut their workforce.

People

Hazleton area accountant writes book about his walk with God [Standard Speaker]
John Nonnemacher set aside 10 minutes a day to write a book. After 2½ years, he finished. “Everybody says they’re going to write a book and regrets that they didn’t. I did it,” Nonnemacher said.

Technology

MindBridge urges clearer PCAOB guidance on AI audits [IT Brief UK]
MindBridge, which develops AI tools for financial analysis in audit work, argues that the PCAOB should make AI-augmented procedures an explicit strategic priority. Its response focuses on how the regulator’s inspection, standard-setting and reporting programmes should adapt as automated analysis becomes more common in audit workflows. According to MindBridge, the audit profession still operates under standards built around sampling and manual review, while newer systems can assess entire transaction populations and assign risk scores across them. It argues that this shift has created uncertainty for firms that want to rely on technology-assisted work but are unsure how inspectors will judge the resulting evidence.

7 CFO risks from the high-stakes adoption of AI [CFO Dive] CFOs and technologists are prone to superlatives when describing the coming impact of artificial intelligence, labelling the technology more disruptive than — to name a few — the steam engine, telegraph and mainframe computer. “It’s become as big if not bigger than the dot-com internet boom,” Burt Chao, CFO of Nintex, a process automation provider, said in an interview, describing the pace of change as a “blur.”

AI adoption to adaptation: How a new change approach can build the human behaviors needed for AI [Deloitte]
While worker access to AI tools has expanded by 50% in a single year, according to Deloitte’s 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise report, fewer than 60% of workers with access actually use AI in their daily workflow, and 84% of organizations have not redesigned jobs or workflows around AI.1 “Too many organizations treat AI as an adoption problem without first asking how you can achieve the outcomes desired,” says Michael Ehret, chief people officer at Walmart International. “What’s really required is behavioral change.”

How leaders are rethinking tax: AI-driven transformation [EY]
Recently, Ernst & Young LLP hosted a roundtable with Fortune 500 heads of tax, including two Fortune 100 chief tax officers who are early adopters of AI. During the roundtable, these leaders shared their experiences and strategies that inspired their teams to move beyond routine compliance, unlocking new avenues for strategic impact and professional growth.

Big Four Firms Hone Crypto Advisory Services as Demand Swells [Bloomberg Tax]
Crypto? What year is it??
Deloitte, PwC, EY, and KPMG — known as the Big Four — say their client bases are expanding with crypto natives and traditional financial institutions intent on learning how to navigate the emerging regulations and evolving accounting rules surrounding the industry. “The pace of change in this space is different than anything else I’ve seen,” said Matthew Hatch, the fintech and financial services digital assets leader for EY Americas. “Every month or two, there’s new players, new capabilities, and you have to stay current when we’re investing heavily in that.”

Law & Order (and Regulation)

KPMG Ex-Manager Alleges Religion, Race Bias Over Easter Work [Bloomberg Law]
A former KPMG LLP manager is accusing the firm of religious and racial discrimination over having to work Easter weekend despite scheduling time off due to the holiday and childcare obligations. Frank Jones, who is Black, Christian and a single father with joint custody of two children, sued the Big Four accounting firm over the situation and ensuing events he said led to his firing from its Atlanta-based mergers and acquisitions services group, according to a complaint filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of Georgia.

Australia regulator reviews audit conduct complaints at Big Four after KPMG scandal [Reuters]
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said on Thursday it would examine internal ​and whistleblower complaints about audit conduct, including the misuse or sharing of confidential information, while continuing a separate investigation into specific allegations involving KPMG. “The allegations concerning KPMG are serious. ASIC will use ​the existing suite of limited powers available to us, while continuing to engage ​constructively with the government’s reform process,” ASIC Chair Sarah Court said.

Audit

PCAOB Announces Members of the Inspections Modernization Council [PCAOB]
They are: David J. Cohen, CPA, CFE, Forvis Mazars, LLP; Kyle D. Crockett, Ford Motor Company; Ashley “Ash” Dalnoot, CPA, Grant Thornton Advisors LLC; Alicia R. Damley, CFA, CPA, CA, Aarya Capital; Stacy Hammett, CPA, CA, Canadian Public Accountability Board; Angelo Poulikakos, PROTIVITI; Manuel J. Ramirez, CPA, MST, FABFA RJI International; Jen Sisson, International Corporate Governance Network; Dan G. Sunderland, Northeastern University; Huong Tran; Instacart; Brendan Whalen, CPA, S.R. Snodgrass, P.C.; Lucia M. Wind, CFE, Committee of Sponsoring Organizations.

NYC Investigation Department warns: Adams-era audit gaps raise fraud concerns within government [AMNY]
Of the 50 agencies and offices that responded to a Department of Investigation (DOI) questionnaire, 30% said they had no staff performing internal audit functions, 17 reported having fewer active audit staffers than budgeted, and 16 reported recruitment or retention challenges tied to auditing roles.

Comptroller Releases Independent Forensic Audit of Memphis Shelby County Schools [Tennessee Comptroller]
Tennessee Comptroller of the Treasury Jason Mumpower has released the results of an independent evaluation of Memphis Shelby County Schools (MSCS) that identified widespread failures in governance, internal controls, procurement, financial oversight, and accountability that developed over multiple years and exposed taxpayers to unnecessary risks. The evaluation consists of four volumes prepared by CliftonLarsonAllen LLP (CLA): an Internal Controls Assessment and IT Cybersecurity Risk Assessment, a Forensic Audit, a Whitehaven High School Herbert STEM Center Investigation, and a TennCare Evaluation. “The failures identified in these reports are unacceptable,” said Comptroller Mumpower.

Audit: State Bar missed warning signs before 2025 exam fiasco [Cal Matters]
And you thought Prometric mishaps were bad!
A new state audit says poor planning by the State Bar of California led to the exam fiasco that aspiring lawyers faced in February 2025. In an effort to save money, the cash-strapped State Bar created a way to take the exam online at home, but for test takers , who routinely take months off of work and spend thousands of dollars studying for the exam, the remote version was a nightmare. Glitches, delays and malfunctions — including repeated software crashes — brought many to tears, according to a class-action lawsuit filed against the proctor, Meazure Learning.

Education

How AI and hybrid work are reshaping the accounting profession [University of Idaho]
As the profession evolves, accounting education must evolve alongside it. Preparing future auditors now requires more than teaching technical accounting concepts alone. Students must also learn how to work with AI tools, analyze complex datasets and communicate effectively in digital environments. Hands-on learning opportunities are becoming increasingly important in accounting and business education. Coursework should expose students to real-world datasets, visualization tools such as Tableau and Power BI, and emerging AI technologies that support decision-making and business analysis.

The post Friday Footnotes: PwC Lays Off in Audit, KPMG Makes Back Office Cuts; AI Company Wants Guidance From the PCAOB | 7.10.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Two articles elsewhere — AI bills are baffling the C-suite after shift to usage-based pricing from The Register and Execs Confused and Horrified by the Huge AI Bills After Thinking They Could Replace Workers for Free on Futurism — say outright that the survey report shows leadership bugging out about big AI bills but we aren’t so sure.

Futurism wrote:

By now, it’s clear that the only way the tech industry can justify the cost of AI is if it replaces vast swaths of the human workforce with machines that run 24/7.

The bad news is that this situation has created a world-historic financial market that, by some metrics, is looking worse than the run-up to the Great Depression. The good news is that this future of an AI takeover is looking increasingly unlikely, at least at the industry’s current pace, a fact which is now dawning on some of the biggest rubes and dupes in the corporate world.

According to a new survey from “Big Four” accounting firm KPMG, a significant number of corporate executives are reeling from sticker shock over new usage-based AI pricing schemes. Though enterprises could once count on AI companies to subsidize the price of large language models via flat-rate contracts, that’s no longer a given, as the rising cost of computational power forces the entire tech sector into a defensive posture.

Nice touch there on the air quotes around Big Four. Bet you Futurism doesn’t even know why that’s funny.

Far be it from us to nitpick anyone else’s word choices but we’re not seeing leadership “reeling” in this 8-page report. Two bits from KPMG that do suggest reality is sinking in for them though:

Organizations are confronting an emerging challenge: understanding and managing the cost of operating AI at scale. While many companies have established foundational governance elements such as monitoring dashboards and approval processes, most still lack full, end-to-end visibility into AI related costs in real time.

This gap is becoming more critical as organizations shift from isolated AI use cases to coordinated, enterprise-wide agent deployments.

And:

AI has entered a new phase defined by the shift from scaling adoption to managing execution with greater discipline. Organizations realize that AI is integral to future business viability and growth: deployment is holding steady above 50%, and leaders plan to invest an average of $202 million over the next 12 months.

However, as scale increases a new challenge is emerging: Only 26% of organizations have real-time visibility into the cost of running AI. Disciplined execution is now a core constraint.

Yet, when we dig down toward the end of the survey we see the slide below. If leaders are so worried about costs and benefits, why the hell are so many of them considering toxen-maxxing? (Side note: We are horrified that “maxxing” lingo has made it so mainstream it’s now appearing in Big 4 reports after a brief stop on The New York Times. Please no.)

KPMG itself knows all about encouraging AI usage. In May we spoke to a KPMGer about how they and their colleagues are meeting arbitrary AI use requirements at the firm: “Many, including me, would just type random questions into the prompt to hit the once a day quota,” they told us.

Said KPMG in the survey report:

Employee concerns about working with AI agents are shifting with many increasingly feeling the strain of added complexity and workload. At the same time, some organizations are testing incentive models to accelerate adoption, but not all approaches are proving effective. Efforts that prioritize usage metrics over meaningful outcomes risk reinforcing the wrong behaviors.

Like asking Copilot to summarize a two sentence email because mandatory AI usage is now part of your performance rating, eh guys?

Alright, let’s cover one more item and call it a day. Funny how sustainability slipped all the way to the bottom like that. Was nice to know you, ESG.

We’ll be sure to keep an eye out for next quarter’s survey, we have a feeling the numbers will be quite different as AI companies keep turning the vice and start charging for the stuff like it’s AOL circa 1994.

The post Big 4 Firm With AI Quotas Unironically Explains Why AI Quotas Are Such a Terrible Idea in Latest Survey appeared first on Going Concern.

It says:

Reference Equity, a shareholder of CBIZ, Inc., today released a letter and accompanying presentation delivered to the Company’s Board of Directors and management, calling on CBIZ to suspend share repurchases and restart its acquisition program.

Reference Equity has strong conviction in CBIZ’s business model, culture, and management, and its proposal is designed to reinforce and extend the Company’s core strengths. M&A is a central pillar of CBIZ’s long-term strategy: acquisitions strengthen the franchise by adding scale and capabilities, create growth and advancement opportunities for employees, and drive margin expansion through corporate synergies.

“CBIZ has the corporate development capability and demonstrated integration playbook to lead consolidation in its industry. Today, however, CBIZ is constrained by its capital structure. We are asking the Board to suspend buybacks and raise equity capital to protect CBIZ’s competitive position and seed the next decade of growth,” said Ryan Bunn, Reference Equity portfolio manager.

Now for part two of Reference Equity’s efforts to cattleprod CBIZ into doing acquisitions: they built a whole website. This is from cbizflywheel.com (and also appears in the press release but this is more visually appealing):

If that’s not enough, there’s also a 24-page slide deck with plenty of bullets and numbers.

Bloomberg ran a story about this yesterday and spoke to RF:

Reference Equity’s Bunn said the firm is publicly disclosing its campaign now “out of love for the business.” CBIZ will be weaker if it continues to do buybacks as the rest of the accounting industry moves to invest in and consolidate around artificial intelligence, he said.

“Philosophically, it’s a crucial moment,” Bunn said. “They need to support their long-term business model, instead of just pursuing the highest mathematical return today.”

Well if you’re into mathematics definitely check out that slide deck, there’s all kinds of it in there. It also has Reference Equity’s June 15, 2026 letter to CBIZ CEO Jerry Grisko and Chairman Rick L. Burdick.

Thoughts or feelings may be expressed in the comment section or via the tipline if you have additional insight to add to this situation that’s best shared behind the scenes.

The post Activist Investor Tells CBIZ They Need More Acquisitions in Their Life appeared first on Going Concern.

TLDR is this: OP applied for a remote accounting job on LinkedIn, the business name checked out and the account that posted it looked legit. During the initial interview process they were sent what they thought was a meeting link that ended up being malware (yes, she realizes this is where she f’d up). From there, the scammers attempted to use their access to OP’s computer to do all kinds of naughty stuff with her and her husband’s bank accounts, Zelle, and Gmail. Those attempts were thankfully thwarted.

The craziest part is that this wasn’t some wholly made-up company, the scammers co-opted an established brand that had closed just enough to make it look like they were one in the same. Business impersonation scams have been going on for a while now but this one is pretty elaborate compared to your usual “Hello this is the government kindly send $5000 in Google Play cards immediately” scam.

The post:

This is a long story that I’m still processing but wanted to post a warning to others. I’m sure some people will think I’m stupid but I’m generally very cautious. Sorry for it being disorganized.

I got hacked by a job, to the point where they got into my husband’s and my bank accounts. It was an accounting job on LinkedIn. It was a promoted job, posted by a paid account with followers etc. It’s a legitimate business in my state and I googled them and looked them up on the secretary of state website. This is a small business so there’s no careers page. I know that’s advice a lot of people give to avoid scams but small businesses don’t usually have them.

This person/company have posted accounting jobs 4 weeks in a row, all open remotely, with different titles and salaries. For what it’s worth I’m a CPA and I saw them post bookkeeper, staff accountant, controller and CPA roles.

Anyway, later after applying I received an email from the operations manager telling me thanks for applying, they’re reviewing resumes, and here’s the website link. The link was the one I found before when searching.

Then the poster emailed me saying they wanted to set up an interview and laid out the process. 1) Schedule via their calendly link, then 2) I’d be invited to a private slack channel for final details etc. This actually matched a legitimate process I’d seen before so I didn’t see any red flags.

They sent me the link in the Slack interview to join the call. I shouldn’t have clicked on it but it didn’t feel like a suspicious link because it was from someone I had communicated with, and was expecting a link.

It downloaded something that said Zoo Google Meet [Ed. note: OP later clarified it was called Zoho Google Meet, not Zoo]. After it downloaded, my paid Malware Bytes said it was malware but it was too late. I uninstalled it but didn’t realize it had installed other crazy things that allowed it to access my computer.

I use 1password for password manager but I had a handful of passwords in Google password manager that must have been added accidentally but I think this is where they got access to two of our accounts.

They spammed me and my husband on separate days with texts (to hopefully hide the text from the bank saying that something had been changed). The MFA phone number on those two banks had been changed. I assume they were able to override it due to having access to my computer. For my husband’s account, they added a Zelle recipient. For me, they set up a bank rule in my Gmail sending all notifications from the bank to my trash.

They didn’t transfer money and my current understanding is that it often gets flagged as fraud if they do it the same day, so they try to prevent you from noticing things were changed and then go in later.

After the fact, I realized the real business had recently closed and their website no longer existed. These people had registered a new domain one month ago that showed up first in search engines when you googled them. It had an extra s in the name, let’s say XYZ constructionS.com instead of construction. But since it matched that first Google result, I wasn’t suspicious. It also was the URL in the company page on LinkedIn.

I reported the job and poster to linked in many times and they did nothing and said there was nothing suspicious but I finally got a human to review who said there was suspicious activity and removed it.

I had to spend six hours on with an IT person getting rid of the malware.

Anyway, there are obviously mistakes I made, the biggest one was clicking on the link. But again it wasn’t a “suspicious link” in the way people say – it was an expected link.

Things I learned:

Def no Google/browser password manager

Google the actual domain – copy and paste it to see when it was registered.

Check your trash email regularly.

Don’t be complacent about using unique passwords and MFA though it can be overridden.

Look up the fraud line specifically for your financial institutions and put them in your phone because it’s stressful to think of when you were already hacked.

Just because someone has a legit LinkedIn account and paid posting doesn’t mean it’s legitimate.

Even if you’re expecting a link, right click on it and run it through a URL tester (I actually did this after and it said it was safe so maybe only works on better known schemes)

Make everything as difficult to login to as possible. Don’t save login lessons even on trusted devices. It’s annoying but could protect you.

I’m sure there’s more – I’m still dealing with it two weeks later. Just wanted to share so it helps even one person learn from my mistakes. I think they’re targeting accountants hoping we have access to more logins.

Feel free to ask me anything because I know this was chaotic

ETA: They had also changed the LinkedIn company’s URL on the LinkedIn page, had a branded Calendly, and hosted email signatures.

Be careful out there, everyone. And maybe use a clean or virtual PC when job hunting just to be extra safe.

The post Beware This Hot New Scam: LinkedIn Job Hunt Takes a Sharp Detour Into Attempted Bank Emptying appeared first on Going Concern.

Alright well that was plenty for a post-holiday Monday. Email or text if you have a story or tip and stay cool, everyone!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Cool It on the Scandals, Students Are Watching; Quarterly Reporting Proposal Overwhelmingly Opposed | 7.6.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

You know who’s not aware of this? Investors. That’s according to a recent Motley Fool survey that tapped the brains of 2,000 investors. Check out these stats:

Nearly half (44%) of retail investors have never heard about the SEC’s semiannual reporting proposal before taking The Motley Fool’s survey. Among those investors who had formed an opinion, support tracks almost perfectly with how much they had already heard about it.

• Only 18% of retail investors had heard a lot about the proposal, and 38% had heard a little. A plurality (44%) had never heard of the proposal before the survey.
• Among retail investors who regularly read quarterly earnings reports — who would be most impacted by the proposal — 34% had never heard of it. Among retail investors who never read earnings reports, 79% had not heard of the SEC’s semiannual reporting proposal.
• Baby boomer investors are the least aware of the proposal — 64% of baby boomer investors had never heard of it, while 81% of Gen Z investors had heard of it at least a little.

A little chart they made dives deeper into the survey data, showing that even more than a third of respondents who review earnings every quarter hadn’t heard of the SEC’s proposal. We expect the “never reviews” category to be quite out of the loop, what’s surprising is that the regular reviewers are too:

With days left on the open comment period, you better get on it if you have something to say. You can submit a comment on S7-2026-15 here. There are, as of publication time, 77 pages of public comments already submitted. Boy are we going to have fun slogging through that.

The post The SEC’s Quarterly Reporting Proposal Is Catnip for Comment Letter Writers, Investors Not So Much appeared first on Going Concern.

Paul used to work at EY but is now out on bail after he and 25-year-old Phillip Issa allegedly accessed the private banking data of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Paul was seconded to Commonwealth Bank “as part of a contingent of consultants advising on the lender’s mortgage system,” said AFR. So they sent him to the bank to work on the mortgage program and he did…that. Allegedly.

Although this latest incident is definitely not going to help with Big 4’s current, ongoing battle with the Australian government, it’s worth noting that EY took action right away and sent Paul packing.

There were actually two EY employees rooting around in the PM’s banking info — and apparently they accessed the data of an EY senior partner as well — but only Paul has been named and it doesn’t appear the other ex-employee has been charged while Paul and Phillip were charged on May 6, the same day they allegedly accessed the data. So at least we know the post-incident mechanisms are working as they should.

Along with a charge from Australian Federal Police for viewing the private banking data of a parliamentarian (excellent word), Paul has also been hit with a charge for “using a carriage service to make available, publish or otherwise distribute information that is personal data, of one or more individuals, and engaged in that conduct in a way that reasonable persons would regard, in all the circumstances, as menacing or harassing towards those individuals.”

The reporting on this story is a bit thin, leaving us to wonder how a 21-year-old chucklehead consultant with two months on the job was able to waltz past security measures and pull up the PM’s bank account. We’re also wondering what exactly was done from there to lead to that second charge.

Was it worth it, bro?

The post EY Consultant Discovers One Weird Trick to Never Work in Banking Again, Or Big 4 For That Matter appeared first on Going Concern.

No, they need you to do this now and not later because no one over there wants to be stuffing demand letters in envelopes after the deadline passes. Stuffing envelopes? In 2026!? We’re not doing that.

They posted the following plea on Xitter earlier today:

2010: slapping this symbol on everything even though we later discovered that the mysterious tree symbol and the disclaimer that usually came with it were actually bad for the environment in their own way

2026: paper cuts bad

According to the Board, 14% of North Carolina CPAs still needed to complete their 2026–2027 license renewals as of yesterday. Maybe this post will grab an eyeball or two and get you laggards cracking.

Contact them directly with any questions, a bunch of contact info is here.

The post North Carolina Board of Certified Public Accountant Examiners Makes a Persuasive Argument Against Paper appeared first on Going Concern.

Financial Review has been doing an amazing job staying on top of the happenings with the KPMG audit leaks as they’re happening, just as they did with the PwC tax thing. AFR is where we first saw the paper we’re about to share with you, so hot off the presses that it’s dated tomorrow July 1 even though it’s still only June here.

The Guardian did a good explainer on the sitch that’ll get you caught up if you haven’t been staying abreast of

KPMG staff leaked confidential Lendlease and Optus information to colleagues who were applying for lucrative audit contracts at Westpac, Dexus and Telstra. At least three partners were involved.

The whistleblower raised alarm at colleagues’ behaviour in an email on 30 May 2024 to Julian McPherson, then the head of audit. The email alleged KPMG partners were pursuing “revenue growth at all costs”, alongside other workplace complaints, a parliamentary inquiry heard on Friday.

KPMG’s website says: “Acting with integrity is at the heart of our values and we all need to make the right decision by speaking up!!!”

The whistleblower told the inquiry that KPMG denied him a pay rise, withdrew his client work, then threatened to sack him.

Note it’s not just KPMG’s website that says that, it’s KPMG’s whistleblower landing page that says that, three exclamation points and all:

For some reason though it appears that specific reference is on KPMG Nigeria’s website. Let’s not drag them into this.

There’s obviously more to what’s going down in Australia but you get the gist. Things have gotten so bad that KPMG Australia CEO Andrew Yates resigned in May. Reminder that this was him in 2023 when the PwC tax scandal was all everyone was talking about: Finally Having Something to Roast Them About, KPMG CEO Takes This Opportunity to Talk Sh*t About PwC

The 56-page paper released by Treasury today does not mince words. It “sets out options to enhance the regulation and trust in the system and to ensure that the audit sector is accountable and that markets can continue to rely on it,” according to the intro which further reads:

In recent years, we have seen behaviour from large accounting, auditing, and consulting firms in Australia that is not fair and honest. This behaviour has had real consequences. It has undermined trust in the firms themselves and raised broader questions about the resilience of the frameworks meant to uphold market integrity.

This paper should not be confused with a similar but different paper released in 2024: Response to PwC – regulation of accounting, auditing and consulting firms in Australia. You can see why the government is getting a little irritated with Big 4 firms at this point, those long-ass tedious papers aren’t easy to write and we’re sure the government has better things to do than micromanage supposed trusted institutions.

We’ll try not to bore you with too many highlights from this July 2026 paper. There’s a discussion about partnership liability (and a shout-out to ‘Murica in it, nice):

There are no firm-level obligations imposed on audit partnerships

An unincorporated partnership does not have separate legal personality from its partners. In general partnerships, partners are jointly and severally liable for the partnership’s operations. Despite this, under the Corporations Act, an ‘audit firm’ that is a partnership (rather than the lead auditor) is often appointed as auditor by reporting entities.

Partnership law is a matter for states and territories. Under current regulatory arrangements, partnerships cannot be meaningfully sanctioned for decisions that affect audit quality. Only the lead auditor in a personal capacity is subject to the risk of deregistration and criminal penalties. As a result, legal accountability does not extend to key decision makers within a firm who influence firm-wide quality and independence decisions (see Table 2).

This approach differs from overseas jurisdictions such as the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US), which allocate responsibility to the audit partnership as the ‘auditor’ for the purposes of compliance with certain auditing standards (including quality management and ethical standards).

And discussion about quality control standards (with another shout-out to us, lookit that):

Quality management standards are not well aligned to Australia’s legislative framework

The Corporations Act requires audits to be conducted in accordance with auditing standards,11 but does not impose requirements on the general conduct of the registered company auditor (RCA) or audit firm.

As such, ASIC is limited in its ability to enforce ASQM 1 regarding firm-level management decisions affecting audit quality (for example, resourcing, training, and remuneration policies).

Despite ASQM 1 being internationally developed and representing a comprehensive standard for firm-level quality management, many of its requirements are principles-based and broadly worded, which may make it difficult for courts to determine non compliance or impose penalties.

In summary, challenges associated with the current regulatory framework include:

• a focus on conduct during individual audits, which limits the ability to address broader firm-level decisions on the systems that support audit quality or more systemic misconduct occurring outside specific audit engagements
• the key standard (ASQM 1) being drafted broadly, making it difficult to enforce, and limitations in the penalties framework resulting in a lack of alternative civil or administrative regulatory responses (see Section 5 for further detail on penalties).

By contrast, quality control standards in the US cover expectations on audit firms that are similar to ASQM 1, but contain more direct obligations, and are often used as a basis for enforcement activity (often imposing significant penalties) against audit firms by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB).

What this says to us is that the Australian government is looking for a larger hammer with which to bonk naughty firms when they step out of line.

The whole paper is below if you would like to give it a read.

The post KPMG May Have Gotten Big 4 Into Big, Big Trouble in Australia appeared first on Going Concern.

EY’s AI Avatar Gets Glazed

Forbes discusses Coach Eve, EY’s AI avatar that’s supposed to level the hiring playing field. Let’s get the intro out of the way:

EY has a numbers problem. Nearly 400,000 recent college graduates apply for jobs at the global consulting giant every year. 30,000 are selected for personal interviews. Only 5,000-8,000 are hired.

It’s a large cut. And EY knows they are missing people who could be superb employees. But how do you give that many candidates a fair chance when there is no human-scale way to evaluate each and every one?

For a long time, the honest answer was that you couldn’t. Applicants from the Ivy League and other elite schools showed up at interviews bearing impressive academic resumes. They knew how to run case studies, a critical part of the EY vetting process. And they had inside knowledge that only a well-connected alumni network can offer.

Are we seriously pretending like Big 4 recruits primarily from elite schools? Moving on, we’re here to talk about “the digital face of EY’s recruiting efforts.”

Just a few years ago, a college graduate applying for a job at EY might have received a printed booklet or been directed to a web page that tried to anticipate their questions about EY’s culture and working environment. But those materials would have been incomplete and not at all responsive.

In contrast, Coach Eve is made for interaction. Grounded in EY’s custom knowledge base, Eve leads candidates through practice questions, simulated case studies, and even addresses their concerns about dress code or what EY looks for in a new hire.

In one early test, an intern spent ten minutes asking Coach Eve about the difference between EY’s pension and 401(k). That’s the kind of practical and detailed question a nervous applicant might never ask in an interview. But the answer might also be what convinces a talented person to accept an offer—or apply in the first place. “The psychological safety piece is so important to us,” said [EY Americas Chief Talent and Culture Officer Ginnie] Carlier. “When a student or candidate comes in having had that live interaction [with Coach Eve] the conversation is much more elevated.”

We last mentioned the AI avatar in a November 2024 Monday Morning News Brief when Business Insider did a story on it.

Is it eVe or Eve? Meh who cares.

OK that’s it for this news brief. Email or text if you have a story or tip, we’re here. Have a good one!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: EY Insists Candidates Enjoy Their AI Avatar; Guy at Deloitte’s Grandma Has Something She Can Put on the Fridge | 6.29.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Private Equity

Behind the Buyouts: Houlihan’s Hughes on Accounting Firm M&A [The Deal]
On the latest episode of Behind the Buyouts, Patrick Hughes, head of accounting services at Houlihan Lokey Inc., discussed the state of accounting M&A in 2026 and the industry’s evolution from a largely untapped market to one where more than half of the top 100 accounting firms have private equity backing. Strong PE demand, long portfolio hold periods and improving macroeconomic conditions will support a significant wave of deal activity through 2027, Hughes added.

Stephano Slack Announces Strategic Growth Investment from Madison Dearborn Partners [Business Wire]
Stephano Slack, a premier accounting and advisory firm, announced a strategic growth investment from funds managed by Madison Dearborn Partners (“MDP”), a leading private equity investment firm based in Chicago, with additional participation from co-investor Norlantic Capital.

Municipal Madness

Riverhead official admitted to fabricating ‘independent’ accounting report, hearing officer finds [RiverheadLOCAL (New York)]
Riverhead’s longtime parks and recreation superintendent fabricated an “independent forensic accounting review” and falsely attributed it to an outside accounting firm in an attempt to persuade Town Board members not to eliminate his $8,000 annual stipend, according to a hearing officer’s findings obtained by RiverheadLOCAL under the Freedom of Information Law. Hearing officer Robert E. Draffin found that Coyne authored the accounting report himself, with the assistance of artificial intelligence tools, while representing it as an independent review prepared by Anthony J. Mancini, CPA, CFF, of Mancini Forensic Accounting & Advisory Group, PLLC.

Practice Management

AICPA Top Issues Survey: Firms’ focus on technology rises [Journal of Accountancy]
Change management related to technology, including the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), ranked as CPA firms’ leading issue by expected impact in the next five years, according to the latest CPA Firm Top Issues Survey.

Big 4

KPMG’s self-destruction puts Big Four on notice [Reuters]
Writes Antony Currie:
It’s so often the cover-up that gets you. Or in KPMG Australia’s case, such a botched attempt to deal with serious allegations from ​a company whistleblower that it came close to a cover-up. It’s only three months since accusations came to light that staff at the Big Four ‌accounting firm used confidential information to win business. KPMG has now lost much of its senior management Down Under, including, this week, chair of both Australia and Asia-Pacific, opens new tab Martin Sheppard. Coming so soon after a PwC scandal, it ought to prompt an urgent overhaul of the industry.

PwC board moves to keep CEO Kevin Burrowes in charge until 2028 [Financial Review]
Burrowes, who was brought in by PwC Global to take control of the scandal-hit Australian firm in 2023, was due to be replaced later this year by a local leader. “[We] have told partners that the board believes continuity of leadership is in the best interests of the firm in this environment,” said PwC’s independent chairman, John Green.

Audit

Audit firm to Gupta metals empire fined and banned for ‘egregious’ failures [The Guardian]
King & King and its managing partner Milankumar Patel have been fined a total of £378,184, received a “severe reprimand”, and hit with serious restrictions on audit work after a four-year investigation by the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). King & King, whose main office is based above a row of shops in London’s Regent Street, relied heavily on fees from GFG Alliance companies, which made up nearly 41% of its revenues in 2021.

From Compliance to Competitiveness: Why audit chairs must lead integrated governance [Deloitte]
“The Audit Chair does not run the tower and should not try to. The contribution is a trained eye for crossing flight paths, and the standing to put them on the agenda before they become incidents.”

AI

‘Strictly Business’ at Cannes Lions: Deloitte, AWS and Sony Pictures Entertainment Execs on Getting Your ‘Hands Dirty’ With New Tech Like AI: ‘Start Tackling Hard Problems’ [Variety]
Thoughts from Deloitte’s Michelle McGuire, whose title is Chief Data & AI Officer (CDAIO) for the Deloitte US Olympic and Paralympic Partnership:
“I would say don’t be scared of AI and the technology, right?” said McGuire. “Start to upskill your folks so they engage with it, they understand it, they’re getting their hands dirty and using it.” Her advice is for companies to “start tackling hard problems” — so they can not only see the benefits of optimizing existing processes, but start to apply AI to do things that weren’t possible before.

CFOs lag in AI readiness as ROI pressures rise: EY [CFO Dive]
Seventy-one percent of CFOs say traditional metrics are not sufficient to evaluate initiatives that combine people and technology, highlighting a growing mismatch between how organizations create value and how it is measured, according to the EY report.

AI cost challenges mount as agent use gets more complex: KPMG [CFO Dive]
Deployments of coordinated artificial intelligence agents are growing, a shift that raises new cost visibility challenges for organizations, according to KPMG’s latest AI Quarterly Pulse Survey. While the share of organizations deploying AI agents remained largely steady from the prior survey period (53% compared to 55%), companies are increasingly managing more complex deployments that span teams, systems and decision points, KPMG found.

Deloitte adds unified agentic AI layer to Omnia audit platform [International Accounting Bulletin]
Deloitte has introduced a new agentic intelligence network within Deloitte Omnia, its global audit and assurance platform. These agents are intended to operate collectively to carry out full audit and assurance workflows rather than working as stand-alone tools.

Tax

Gavin Newsom urges a national ‘billionaires’ tax’ while fighting one in California [The Guardian]
Newsom argued that a state-level billionaire tax would be easily dodged by wealthy people who are able to move their assets to other states. Already, several billionaires, including Google co-founder Larry Page, have either threatened to leave California or made efforts to cut ties with the state. “You may not be able to pick up and move to Texas or Florida to shelter your income from taxation, but I promise you that billionaires can, and do,” Newsom wrote. “Wealth is movable, and it shops for the state with the lowest taxes. The fight belongs at the federal level, where this broken system was created in the first place.”

Trump threatens 100% tariff on any country that imposes digital services tax [Reuters]
“Numerous European Countries have ​been discussing the imminent implementation of a Digital Services Tax on American Companies,” Trump ⁠said in a social media post. “Some of these Countries are close to actually doing this. Please let this ​statement serve to represent that any Country that imposes such a Tax will immediately be met with a ​100% TARIFF on any and all Goods sent to the United States of America.”

DOJ Civil Tax to Hire Attorneys After Losing a Third of Staff [Bloomberg Tax]
The civil tax branch of the Justice Department is hiring again after losing more than a third of its staff amid the Trump administration’s effort to downsize the federal government and revamp the department. The Tax Litigation Branch of the Civil Division now has 189 full-time employees, said Joshua Wu, deputy assistant attorney general overseeing civil tax, during a Friday panel at the New York University Tax Controversy Forum in New York.

The post Friday Footnotes: Amateur Forensic Accounting Not Appreciated By Local Parks Department; KPMG Getting Dogged | 6.26.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

It’s a fairly decent document full of warnings and specific Circular 230 citations, like this one:

3. § 10.35 – Competence: “A practitioner must possess the necessary competence to engage in practice before the Internal Revenue Service. Competent practice requires the appropriate level of knowledge, skill, thoroughness, and preparation necessary for the matter for which the practitioner is engaged.”

Practitioners must understand both the law and the technology used in their representation of clients before the IRS, including AI systems’ operational mechanics, limitations, and risks.

They must understand how AI develops content, recognize the potential for bias or errors, and be able to evaluate whether AI outputs are suitable for use in IRS matters. Lack of technological competence could lead to improper advice or flawed filings.

In other words, they’re telling you straight up that “I didn’t think the AI would lie” is not an appropriate defense should AI lead you astray.

But let’s talk about this section. You’ll notice they use GAI to mean “generative artificial intelligence,” an acronym we really hope doesn’t catch on.

Real-World Consequences of Improper AI Use

Courts have increasingly sanctioned lawyers for improper use of GAI, mainly due to fake citations or other hallucinations contained in legal filings. Typical penalties imposed in these cases have included financial sanctions—often amounting to several thousand dollars; public censure; required completion of legal ethics or professional responsibility courses; default judgments entered against the responsible party; removal from representation of a party to the matter; and disciplinary referrals to state bar authorities.

These sanctions stem from violations of duties of candor and competence, and they often entail reputational harm as attorneys must notify clients and affected judges about the court-ordered sanctions. The consequences emphasize the need for tax practitioners to act with care and precision when using AI tools, reinforcing the importance of diligent human oversight.

While the legal profession has seen the most public court sanctions, they serve as a warning for other tax professionals. Cases imposing sanctions against other types of tax professionals are slowly emerging. For example, the Australian government published a 230-plus page report on its website in July 2025 that Deloitte Australia had prepared for it. The report contained invented quotes attributable to a judge, references to non-existent reports, and books ascribed to the wrong author, all produced apparently by GAI. Deloitte Australia reportedly resolved the matter directly with the Australian government by agreeing to partially refund a portion of the fee it received from the government.

“A partial refund looks like a partial apology for substandard work,” said Labor senator Deborah O’Neill to AFR in October. “Deloitte has a human intelligence problem,” she said, sharpening her tongue on Deloitte’s incompetence. “This would be laughable if it wasn’t so lamentable … too often, as our parliamentary inquiries have shown, these consulting firms win contracts by promising their expertise, and then when the deal is signed, they give you whatever [staff] costs them the least.”

Anyway, go read the bulletin and then do some homework on how LLMs work if you need to.

The post In New AI Guidelines, IRS Politely Suggests You Not Make Up Sources Like Deloitte Did appeared first on Going Concern.

Accounting firm Eide Bailly agreed to sell a stake to Reverence Capital Partners, a move to implement artificial intelligence at a faster pace for itself and its clients.

Reverence and co-investors will collectively take a majority stake in the Minneapolis-based firm, in a deal valuing it at about $1.8 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

Eide Bailly and Reverence said they expect the deal to close in the third quarter.

Andy Spillum, Eide Bailly’s chief operating officer, said he expects the firm’s revenue to double in the next three or four years as it expands its capabilities and operations. The firm said it reported about $840 million in revenue for the year ended in April, up from $780 million a year earlier.

Meanwhile, let’s check in with the man on the street and see what he has to say about this development:

Skepticism and cynicism, as expected.

When do the sales start in earnest? Private equity is still buying but when do they start selling?

The post Top 20 Firm Eide Bailly Gets on the Private Equity Train appeared first on Going Concern.

We saw this article “The great power shift inside accounting firms” on Canadian Accountant but it was first published here by Queens University in Ontario. The relevant bit:

We tend to view changes in corporate culture through the lens of leadership or organizational behaviour. But, often, shifts in the labour market, societal shocks or disruptive technology can play an even greater role in shaping the rules and quirks of a workplace.

The accounting profession provides an excellent case study. Big accounting firms — like Deloitte, PwC, EY or KPMG in Canada — have long been considered finishing schools that don’t just employ people but fundamentally reshape them into a particular type of professional. Sure, the hours are intense, the hierarchy is structured and the culture carries high expectations of performance. In return, though, you earn a pathway to partnership and a credential that opens doors.

But the conditions that enable this system are eroding, says Bertrand Malsch, PWC/Tom O’Neill Professor of Accounting at Smith School of Business. “Accounting firms are increasingly seen less as elite, all-consuming career destinations, and more as comparable to other large organizations — offering solid opportunities but without the same expectation of personal sacrifice,” he says.

There is a lot in the 24-page paper “Losing Control: The Erosion of Disciplinary and Pastoral Power in Accounting Firms” authored by Malsch, Oriane Couchoux, and Laurence Daoust. We know you guys barely have the patience to slog through 700 words so we’ll pull just two juicy sections. First, this one on how auditors effectively brainwash themselves and each other:

The literature to date has clearly established that becoming an auditor, and more specifically, entering the professional environment of large accounting firms, is not simply a career choice for individuals but also involves a profound transformation of the self. This transformation has been conceptualized through the Foucauldian lens as a disciplinary process exerted on auditors through various technologies of power, such as performance measures, norms of conduct, and hierarchical judgments. Together, these disciplinary mechanisms shape the professional auditor early in their career, fostering a commitment to prioritizing professional goals over personal life (Covaleski et al. 1998).

Auditors internalize overwork as the norm as a result of socialization and repeated exposure to excessive workloads, which solidifies the belief that long hours and unwavering commitment are essential for professional success (Coffey 1994; Anderson-Gough et al. 2001; Lupu and Empson 2015). First, the collective nature of audit work means that individual time is not entirely personal—it is a shared resource dedicated to serving the team and the firm (Lupu and Rokka 2022).

Deserting one’s colleagues during critical periods is perceived as a serious breach of professional ethics. This perception reinforces a culture in which auditors practice self-abnegation in service to the organization and accept long, grueling hours as an unavoidable norm (Beau and Jerman 2022). Second, auditors are expected to maintain constant visibility, both in the workplace and at firm-sponsored social events. This presenteeism imperative means that leisure and personal time are severely compressed, as auditors are expected not only to work excessive hours but also to actively participate in firm-organized gatherings (Anderson-Gough et al. 2001). The blurring of professional and personal boundaries further entrenches the overwork culture, making resistance or disengagement by auditors both professionally and socially risky.

What is remarkable about this transformative disciplinary process is that it is not explicitly articulated through rules or regulations as formal obligations. Instead, the above behavioral standards are implicitly communicated to auditors through a variety of discourses, practices, and reward mechanisms (Dirsmith et al. 2015). These mechanisms include time management tools (Coffey 1994), billing arrangements (Anderson-Gough et al. 2001; Ladva and Andrew 2014), and promotion systems (Beau 2018; Kornberger et al. 2011). Firms’ disciplinary power is thus not explicitly, coercively imposed on individuals but is instead adopted by auditors, who apply themselves to meet moral and social obligations that align with firms’ professional expectations (McPhail 1999). Notably, this process can begin while auditors are still students, before they are even formally employed by the firms (Daoust 2020; Gebreiter 2020).

Perhaps sending 60-70% of the audit offshore is part of the reason why this system of peer pressure and personal responsibility is crumbling? Or maybe it’s the rescinding perks you swore would be forever and constant rounds of layoffs? Expecting manager-level performance out of college kids the minute they walk through the door?

Alright, second and last section. This one discusses recruiting. Keep in mind they submitted this paper back in 2023, right as attrition started to climb due to the job market and people started sticking around longer because they couldn’t or didn’t want to jump:

First, a dominant theme in our interviews is the apparent shift in the balance of power within recruitment processes. While firms traditionally had the advantage of carefully selecting individuals from a large pool of candidates (Daoust 2020; Gebreiter 2020), they now struggle to attract and filter top talent.

One partner described this shift as follows:

You used to have 300 applications, you’d pick 60. Now you probably have 100 applications, and you need 60. And sometimes you can go to a university where you really want to have about eight people and you have nine applications. The demand isn’t there anymore, so by default there’s definitely a lot less skimming. (Partner 7)

With fewer candidates to choose from, the traditional process of “skimming” for top recruits is disappearing, forcing firms to hire nearly all applicants just to meet their staffing needs, regardless of how these candidates were evaluated and ranked during the recruitment process: “Before, it was like you had to have this, this, and this [on your resume]—you had to meet all the criteria and check all the boxes. But now … judging by the staff we’re getting, it seems like we’ve removed three or four boxes to hire more people” (Staff 12). By eliminating some of these required “boxes,” the auditors entering firms today are, from the outset, less aligned with the traditional ideal candidate profile.

This shift in recruitment dynamics appears to be a recent development. While historically, Big 4 firms were considered
employers of choice, the prestige associated with a Big 4 job seems to have faded:

We’re so short on people that it seems like anyone can join [the firm]. … It’s not as glamorous as it used to be … so they hire anybody, so there’s less of a barrier to entry, so you feel less special being here. (Manager 1)

The Big 4, when I was going through recruiting my first year, it seemed like people wanted to go there. Now on campus it seems like they’re having a hard time recruiting, they’re making offers to more people. And pay-wise there’s clearly a gap with any other job in any field. So, it definitely builds up a bad rep[utation]. (Staff 3)

The above quotes collectively illustrate how the default auditor emerges as a consequence of declining selectivity and shifting perceptions of Big 4 employment. These trends not only alter the composition of the workforce but also affect how auditors perceive their own professional identity, seeing themselves less as members of an elite institution and more as employees in a firm that is struggling to attract talent.

Beyond the recruitment challenges faced by accounting firms, retaining auditors has also become increasingly difficult. While high turnover rates in the profession are well documented (Nouri and Parker 2020), our participants emphasized that the situation has worsened: “People leave even faster than they were leaving before” (Manager 6). As a consequence, P&Ms are struggling to maintain the carefully structured pyramid that underpins the firm’s business model. With accelerated departures, the once solid pyramid now resembles “a sick Christmas tree” (Partner 6)—a metaphor that captures the thinning of key talent at various levels and the growing imbalance in workforce distribution.

If you made it this far, I’m so proud of you. If you want to keep going, check out “Losing Control: The Erosion of Disciplinary and Pastoral Power in Accounting Firms” here.

The post The Big 4 Model Might Be Cooked appeared first on Going Concern.

And that’s it for this news brief, I know you have work to get to. Email or text if you have a tip or story for us and at least try to enjoy your week OK?

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: PwC Gave Us a Reason to Mention GTA 6; The Bad KPMG Anecdotes Are Adding Up | 6.22.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Big 4

KPMG accessed rival audit bids, contradicting firm’s defence [Financial Review]
A KPMG partner accessed confidential Lendlease board papers evaluating audit pitches by rivals EY and PwC, contradicting claims that the data was not sensitive and did not help it win any new business. The content of the documents may have given KPMG insight into its competitors’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as the mindset of the Lendlease board.

Deloitte UK to Shed Up To 175 Auditors in Voluntary Job Cuts [Bloomberg Tax]
Deloitte UK is planning voluntary job cuts across its audit business as the firm has grappled with low levels of attrition and stagnant revenue. The firm is offering voluntary redundancy packages to a number of staffers in a response to low levels of staff attrition in its audit practice, a spokesperson for Deloitte said in an emailed statement.

PwC UK boss Marco Amitrano wins bigger role in international shake-up [Financial Times]
PwC’s UK boss Marco Amitrano has won a larger role inside the Big Four consultancy’s global network, after a clearout of international executives designed to centralise decision-making across the 364,000-person firm. The changes, due to go into effect on July 1, include axing the global role historically held by the head of PwC’s German member firm and replacing some international executives with partners from the UK and the US businesses.

AI

Private equity bosses warn of AI threat to bets on law and accountancy [Financial Times]
Law and accountancy are among the businesses most vulnerable to AI disruption, top private capital executives have warned, adding to the worries of buyout groups that have invested heavily in professional services. “Apologies to the lawyers, accountants, consultants in the room,” Apollo Global Management executive Scott Kleinman told SuperReturn delegates. “You’re going to see a lot of pressure.”

Hesitancy over AI still affecting accounting firms [CFO Brew]
Said HubSync CEO John McGowan to CFO Brew when asked “With private equity, is it more of a push or a pull toward AI? Do firms want to partner with PE so they can invest in AI, or are PE backers investing in AI for the firms they’ve bought into?”:
I think it’s mutual…There’s definitely a push coming from PE, but I do think the reasons why, at least the firms we’ve talked to, are doing this is, number one, obviously the capital to grow and scale…And there’s also been this desire for a long time, especially at the upper end of the market, [to] start to compete against the Big Four…

AI is eroding trust. Accounting and finance professionals can rebuild it [CFO.com]
Writes Mike DePrisco, president and CEO at The Institute of Management Accountants:
AI and advanced technologies are a growing concern for accounting and finance professionals — and are changing the role they must play in their organizations.

SMBs are acting on financial advice from AI chatbots — before talking to their accountant, as experts warn ‘that pressure is only going to grow’ [TechRadar]
Nearly three-quarters (70%) of UK SMEs say they often or always act on AI-generated financial, tax or business advice before they consult their accountant, according to a new report of 500 UK SMEs commissioned by Ravical. Conversely, only 5% rarely or never do this, highlighting just how widespread AI adoption is when it comes to seeking advice. Answering tax questions, responding to financial planning queries, serving up business strategies and triaging day-to-day accounting issues are among the most common use cases, with accountants instead being used to validate AI-generated advice as a secondary layer.

EY Hanyoung and UBC Embark on Joint Development of Humanoid Robots [The Asia Business Daily]
Global accounting and consulting firm EY Hanyoung has embarked on the development of humanoid robots in collaboration with an artificial intelligence transformation (AX) company. On June 16, EY Hanyoung announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with UBC, a company specializing in digital twin-based manufacturing AX solutions, to jointly develop autonomous manufacturing technology for humanoid robots using physical artificial intelligence (AI) based on NVIDIA Omniverse.

Careers

Entry-level work didn’t disappear, PwC finds with ‘seniorization.’ It just morphed into something young workers can’t get [Fortune]
In the most AI-exposed occupations, 52% of new skills appearing in entry-level job postings were skills traditionally associated with experienced workers. In the least AI-exposed occupations, that figure was 7%. PwC calls this “seniorization,” and the numbers around it are stark. Job openings for these redrawn entry-level roles—the ones that now ask a 22-year-old to demonstrate capabilities a 35-year-old would have—have grown 35% since 2019. Traditional entry-level openings, in the same period, shrank 10%.

Tax

Advisory panel urges sustained IRS funding, expanded AI, tax simplification [Journal of Accountancy]
The IRS’s outside technology advisory panel called on Congress to provide stable, multiyear funding; expand the use of artificial intelligence; and simplify tax administration. It also warned that resource constraints and complexity risk undermining recent modernization gains. In its 2026 Annual Report to Congress issued Wednesday, the Electronic Tax Administration Advisory Committee outlined a broad set of recommendations aimed at modernizing the tax system, improving compliance, and strengthening taxpayer service. Central to the report is a warning that sustained funding is critical to maintaining progress on technology upgrades and meeting growing demands on the agency.

Coca-Cola, IRS Face Off in Tax Appeal With Huge Stakes for Both [Bloomberg Tax]
A lot is on the line in Coca-Cola Co.’s big court battle against the IRS. For the company: as much as $20 billion. For the IRS: how much leeway it will have in pursuing multinational companies. The beverage giant and the government will square off in oral arguments next week before the US Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit in Miami. Coca-Cola is appealing US Tax Court rulings that side with the IRS over the company’s transfer pricing—how it priced transactions with its own foreign affiliates. “We’re talking about truly massive dollars, almost unprecedented in the transfer pricing context,” Chad Martin, a principal at Eide Bailly, said. The case is “the Super Bowl of transfer pricing controversy.”

IRS live chat apps have room for improvement, watchdog finds [FedScoop]
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that the IRS hasn’t analyzed its chat apps, nor does it have reliable metrics around their use. The agency piloted live chat functionality in 2017 and launched automated chatbots in 2021. In conducting its audit, TIGTA reviewed statistical reports that didn’t add up. One showed a live assistor handling up to 603 live chats simultaneously — a stat the IRS admitted was incorrect due to an internal cap for the number of concurrent chats set at three.

Tax Controversy Lawyer Is in Line for Top Counsel Job at IRS [Bloomberg Law]
Private-sector lawyer Jim Gadwood is being vetted to become IRS Chief Counsel, according to a person familiar with the process. If confirmed, he would be the fourth person in the role since President Donald Trump took office. His nomination could be sent to the Senate next week, the person said. Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in an interview Thursday he was aware of Gadwood’s nomination, but did not know him personally.

Audit

CT secretary of the state’s office failed to withhold employee’s Social Security taxes, audit finds [CT Insider]
The Office of the Secretary of the State failed to withhold more than $12,000 in Social Security and Medicare taxes for one employee, a new state audit found. “It appears a clerical error led to this employee being placed in a FICA-exempt status upon hire,” auditors wrote in the report. The Secretary of the State’s Office was also criticized for not keeping track of inventory, improperly handling purchase card transactions and not fully documenting sales of various publications.

Audit finds VA automation glitch ruined 98% of veteran survivors’ benefits claims [WHQR]
“VA OIG, the Office of Inspector General, included a review of 8,100 cases of these automated DIC decisions and found that in 8,000 of them there were errors. So, this is essentially every case,” said Claire Hillan Sosa, a Senior Disability Attorney with Deuterman Law Group, which has offices in Greenville. She said the mishandled DIC cases contained legal or procedural errors, causing a wave of incorrect notification letters, missing evidence summaries, and millions in improper financial distributions. “I think technically some of them are AI, some of them are not,” Hillan Sosa explained.

Here’s how much financial aid ‘ghost students’ stole from Utah’s public colleges and universities, auditors found [The Salt Lake Tribune]
So-called “ghost students” stole about $500,000 in financial aid from Utah’s public colleges and universities over the last academic year, according to a state audit released Tuesday. That’s only counting the confirmed losses. Schools reported another roughly $334,000 in “potential” losses that are still being assessed, plus more that might remain “undetected,” landing the total somewhere near a potential $1 million that’s irrecoverable.

Firm tapped for audit of Mecklenburg school system finances [Mecklenburg Sun (Virginia)]
The Mecklenburg County School Board has tapped a Raleigh-based accounting firm to conduct a forensic audit of the school division’s books in the wake of a financial scandal that led to the ouster of two top administrators. At its monthly meeting Monday in Boydton, trustees approved a contract with Keiter CPAs of Raleigh, N.C. to conduct the deep-dive review of the division’s finances. The board’s decision comes on the heels of allegations that former assistant superintendent Christy Peffer and former finance director Amber Barbour used school funds to make unauthorized personal purchases.

Florida CFO flags ‘troubling irregularities’ involving Kissimmee mayor, refers case to FDLE [Spectrum News 13]
Florida’s Chief Financial Officer Blaise Ingoglia and his office shared that their office has raised concerns involving Kissimmee Mayor Jackie Espinosa and a grant program. “The CFO’s office regularly conducts various audits. Recently, the auditing team found some troubling irregularities concerning the Kissimmee mayor and a grant program that we’ve now referred to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement’s Public Corruption Unit and the appropriate state and local ethics authorities,” Communications Director Sydney Booker from the Office of Chief Financial Officer Ingoglia said. “Our office will work with them to ensure they receive all necessary support during an investigation.”

The post Friday Footnotes: Deloitte UK Asks Nearly 200 Auditors to Please F Off; AI Chatbots Favored Over Actual Accountants | 6.19.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Pretty brutal to get let go before you’ve even found your footing at the firm. OP theorizes, as they should, that it’s not AI that’ll be picking up their work:

Elsewhere:

According to EY’s 2025 audit quality report, they had 13,804 people total in audit in fiscal 2025; that’s 1,443 partners and managing directors, 3,357 senior managers and managers, and 9,004 seniors and staff. They say they hired 2,350 audit professionals from college and university campuses in fiscal 2025.

Meanwhile, the firm just announced the opening of a 40,000 square feet AI center at EY GDS in Bengaluru, India. They’re calling it the “ey.ai Center for Reimagination.”

Anyone affected is welcome to reach out via email or text to vent.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: EY Trims Some Newbies in Audit appeared first on Going Concern.

Seriously, go watch this movie, it’s terrible in the best way. Jeremy Irons is in it.

Anyway. If you like the idea of a human-like computerized entity guiding you through information like a librarian you’re going to love what Deloitte has set up at Shinnecock Hills Golf Club for the U.S. Open Championship.

I’m sorry but is this terrifying to anyone else? A seven-foot man trapped into a box whose only purpose is answering golf questions?

Deloitte had this to say about their little project with the United States Golf Association (USGA):

The USGA’s Rules team and Deloitte identified and advanced an opportunity to use AI to create a scalable way for the organization to convey the official rules of golf to the tens of millions who play the game. As the organizations discussed potential solutions, it became clear they could leverage each other’s highly specialized knowledge and unique assets. Beyond having a firm understanding of the AI market edge, Deloitte brought to the project advanced tech capabilities that could render the organizations’ shared vision into a tangible reality. The USGA had a team of subject-matter experts with an unparalleled understanding of the rules of golf, coupled with a proprietary database of years and years of past rules inquiries from golfers across the country.

USGA Rules team members realized almost immediately that while off-the-shelf AI engines might be able to provide a response to golfers’ questions, they couldn’t answer those questions with a level of accuracy equal to or greater than their own rules experts. Together, the USGA and Deloitte created a Rules AI tool, a bespoke query-and-response tool for users to ask a rules question and have confidence they were receiving the correct answer because it was based only on trusted, timely and verified USGA data.

Honestly seems like a good use of AI. Not the seven-foot guy, he can go. But the tool seems cool.

The post Deloitte Made the Creepy Digital Librarian From The Time Machine But For Golf appeared first on Going Concern.

Then Georgia Senators Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff along with Representative Henry C. “Hank” Johnson, Jr. wrote a strongly worded letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano asking them to address this matter expediently and allow IRS staff from the affected office to telework in the meantime. Not a huge ask really, I think we all agree working among rodents is an unacceptable working condition.

The good news is the IRS listened. The bad news, according to the most recent information from NTEU, is that the new facility also sucks. Fun.

IRS’s solution? Move some employees from one rat-infested office to another—plus, the facility is also known for water leaks, mold, roaches and water bugs.

Are roaches and water bugs not the same thing? Nevermind, immaterial.

WSB2 is on it again:

President Trump issued an ironclad return-to-office mandate for federal employees in January of 2025. As far as we know, the IRS still allows for temporary 90-day telework arrangements in cases of significant hardship if approved by their overlords of human capital. To be clear, the IRS’s idea of significant hardship is escaping domestic violence or recovering from an organ transplant (that’s not hyperbole, those are actual examples they gave).

BTW what happened with that hantavirus outbreak? Should we be paying attention to that?

The post The IRS Moves Atlanta Employees to an Office That Makes the Rat-Infested Office Look Pretty Good appeared first on Going Concern.

The headline of their blog post mentions only Okta Verify as the “required” MFA platform they want you to use from now on but drilling down into the details we see they’re also allowing Google Authenticator. What they aren’t allowing anymore are one-time passcodes (OTP) via SMS or phone call. NASBA states they’re making this change because these are “more secure authentication methods.”

There are links to setup either Okta Verify or Google Authenticator on your devices over on NASBA’s blog and you are encouraged to do this as soon as possible. The extra cybersecure among you may elect to do your own research on the tool before blindly slapping it on your phone just to be safe, as you should do with anything you put on your devices.

Happy MFAing!

The post As of Tomorrow NASBA Will No Longer Text One-Time Passcodes appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s the gist of their latest research:

This investigation analyzes a KPMG report from October 2025 on customer experience and agentic AI. The report, titled Total Experience: Redefining Excellence in the Age of Agentic AI, summarizes the results of an annual study on consumer experience around the world. Of the 45 citations in the report, only five accurately point to real sources. Another 28 citations provide paraphrased titles and/or fake components for a real source. The final 12 are too vague or flawed to accurately determine if a source exists. Additionally, around half of the claims evidenced by the 45 citations appear to be fake or misattributed — likely the result of an AI research tool over-complying with a request to find examples of “agentic AI” in the wild.

This is where it gets a little tricky. Whereas the EY report had clearly fake sources pulled out of AI’s virtual ass, this one is a tad more complicated. Explains GPTZero:

Consulting firms use a condensed citation style that makes source matching difficult. In line with industry norms, the citations in Total Experience are formatted as endnotes and generally provide a title, container (publisher or website name), and a year. Many of the citations also include an author, but the given author overlaps so frequently with the container or title that it is usually redundant. Because the citations are incomplete (lacking “real” authors, URLs, and other identifiers), finding the “real” matching can involve extensive detective work and require certain assumptions about the report’s authors.

The task of citation verification is made even more challenging by citation titles: 40 of 45 are fake. In most cases, the titles seem to be paraphrases that loosely match real sources (as corroborated by context and other citation components). However, between the paraphrased titles, garbled authors, and missing URLs, 12 citations are too ambiguous for either our tool or in-house expert to determine a confident source match.

They then proceed to list all 45 citations. We’ll grab the first 10 of them to give you an example:

#	Citation Text	Verdict	Justification	Potential Match
1	Salesforce. C-suite AI Priorities in 2025: YouGov Research. Salesforce, February 2025.	Hallucination	Title is wrong. Report was produced by YouGov for Salesforce.	Salesforce x YouGov ANZ AI C-suite Research_Report_ANZ_Final (February 2025).pptx
2	Intellihub. Zelora: Home Electrification Made Accessible with Smart Technology. Intellihub, September 2024.	Hallucination	Title and date are wrong.	Intellihub and Bunnings Launch Zelora: A Game-Changer for Home Electrification in Australia
3	AUSTRIACARD. GaiaB Agentic AI Platform Press Release. February 2025.	Unsure	Title is wrong.	New Agentic AI Platform from AUSTRIACARD HOLDINGS
4	RBI. Digital Services Overview: ELBA Business Hub. RBI, 2024.	Unable to determine	This citation doesn’t provide enough detail.	Funktionen und Vorteile von Mein ELBA
5	Verbund. Qurrent: AI-driven Renewable Energy Systems. Verbund, July 2025.	Unsure	Title is wrong.	VERBUND X Ventures invests in AI start-up Qurrent for energy solutions
6	Česká Spořitelna. George Internet Banking. 2025.	Unable to determine	This citation doesn’t provide enough detail.	Internet banking | Česká spořitelna
7	Škoda Auto. Laura: In-Car Experience with ChatGPT. Škoda Storyboard, 2025.	Hallucination	Title and date are wrong.	Škoda’s voice assistant Laura now enhanced with ChatGPT capabilities
8	Alza.cz. AI-enhanced Retail Logistics. 2025.	Unable to determine	This citation doesn’t provide enough detail.	Alza
9	BNP Paribas. AI Integration: Transforming Financial Journeys. The Banking Scene, 2025.	Hallucination	Wrong author and wrong title.	BNP Paribas Accelerates AI Integration: What This Means in Practice
10	Doctolib. Enhancing Healthcare Navigation Through AI. Doctolib, 2025.	Hallucination	Wrong title and year.	How Doctolib uses AI to empower healthcare practitioners

GPTZero goes on to explain how all of this is a big problem because the report gets laundered through the wider web and then ingested by LLMs, thus perpetuating the cycle of made-up or sketchy sources:

Publications by prestigious consulting firms that are hosted on high-traffic websites rank highly in search algorithms and AI research queries. It’s therefore no surprise that the claims and statistics included in KPMG’s Total Experience are seeping across the internet and surfacing in news reports, blog posts, and conversations with LLMs. Since publication, the report has been covered by industry publications like CXM, CX Dive, and Mi3, as well as a major Czech newspaper. In these stories, claims, including the 55% statistic mentioned above, have been repeated and recycled.

KPMG’s report is also being cited by LLMs, which can strip claims of context and make them more difficult to corroborate.

KPMG ended up pulling the report after Financial Times wrote this up a few days ago. They told FT that KPMG International “takes the accuracy and integrity of its published content seriously” and that they’ll investigate how this got published in the first place. “We expect all our people to follow our guidelines on the responsible use of AI, including human oversight to validate content and verify independent sources,” said a spokesperson.

OK so guess that confirms that there’s something to these accusations.

GPTZero gives their best guess as to what exactly happened:

The problems caused by these vibe citations are compounded by a relentless series of fake or misattributed claims. It seems likely that an LLM research tool was prompted to find suitable case studies of companies using agentic AI in different markets. This tool seems to have conflated sources, exaggerated claims, and injected references to agentic AI that were copied into the final report without verification. We suspect no human at KPMG double-checked the citations, the claims, or the sources before Total Experience was published.

If Big 4 firms want a piece of the AI consulting market they really need to step up their game.

The post KPMG Redefines Excellence in the Age of AI By Using AI to Pump Out Dubious Citations in This Now-Removed Report appeared first on Going Concern.

Here’s a heckuva headline to start things off: IRS employees protest rat infestation at Chamblee campus; agency announces telework option: “We looked at each other. It screamed, I screamed.”

Several employees at the Internal Revenue Service’s Atlanta campus in Chamblee say they are frustrated with what they describe as ongoing rodent infestations and deteriorating working conditions inside the facility.

Current and former employees, along with union representatives, gathered outside the campus Thursday afternoon to protest the conditions and call for expanded remote work options.

Some current employees told CBS News Atlanta they did not attend the demonstration because they feared retaliation from management.

Thank you, NTEU Chapter 284 for speaking out about the unsafe working conditions at the IRS Atlanta Campus. IRS has now announced they will allow some employees to telework, but we'll keep making our voices heard until ALL employees have a safe workplace: https://t.co/tk3813Hr45 pic.twitter.com/DSH5XEjMyJ

— NTEU News (@NTEUNews) June 12, 2026

Hey that rat looks familiar…

The IRS Phone Bank Pays HOW Much!?

In other IRS news, the inspector general has issued an unsurprising report that says skilled employees were slumming it on low level work while still pulling their skilled salaries:

Still other employees were “involuntarily detailed” to other jobs within the agency, including supervisors and high-skilled techs who make $100,000 or more, but were pressed into duty answering the phones — a job that can pay as little as $35,000.

They’re still getting paid their full salary and benefits, however, the inspector general said.

“Positions at these grade levels often include senior, supervisory, and highly specialized technical employees. However, the positions to which they are detailed are at lower GS grade levels,” the report said.

Can we talk about how they’re paying $35,000 to answer phones or nah?

Getting Divorced Over an Audit Failure

As you may have heard, PwC is going to have to pay a pound of flesh for Evergrande. And some partners are taking drastic measures to protect their wealth:

The liquidation of China Evergrande Group, the collapsed property developer, is raising concerns among some partners at its former auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers China about the potential impact on their own finances.

Several partners at PwC’s Hong Kong and mainland China affiliates say they are exploring strategies to safeguard personal assets, in case legal and regulatory challenges facing the firms ever spill over into any financial or legal burdens for themselves. One says he has even contemplated divorce as a means to shield wealth, while another is cutting education budgets for his children.

For Those Who Like Tax Policy

ICYMI: Deloitte published their 2026 Global Tax Policy Survey, a survey of 1,010 tax and finance leaders across 28 jurisdictions. A takeaway:

A majority of respondents (85%) now expect AI-based tax compliance software to deliver positive impacts ranging from improved accuracy to reduced compliance costs, while 15% remain more negative, expecting the main impact to be increased implementation costs.

When it comes to the question “What is the biggest challenge for tax leaders in 2026?” Deloitte says:

The biggest challenge comes from the rising tide of complexity in the tax system. While some of it can be attributed to sources such as Pillar Two and the EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, a lot of complexity also comes from inconsistent domestic implementation of international regimes. The volume of public tax transparency disclosures stemming from a combination of regulatory requirements and voluntary disclosures, adds further pressure and is expected to increase in coming years.

EY Doesn’t Want Companies to Focus Solely on AI Cost-Cutting

A Business Insider article that sounds like a pitch for EY’s AI services more than anything: EY’s AI leader says companies are too focused on AI cost-cutting

Wall Street tends to reward CEOs who slash jobs in the name of efficiency.

However, those companies are leaning into an area with the “smallest level of return,” Dan Diasio, EY’s global consulting AI leader, told Business Insider.

“There’s a very clear limit to the amount of value you can create by just focusing on productivity and cost reduction,” said Diasio, who also serves as EY’s Americas consulting CTO.

He said AI may be able to shrink the time spent on a task, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate the job around it. If cost reduction is the main strategy, those companies are effectively asking AI to pay for itself by reducing headcount.

Meanwhile, AFR published this: How AI threatens the giants of consulting

God Forbid We Train Anyone Anymore

Over at PwC, they analyzed global job ads and found employers want senior-level skills even in newbies:

Employers in AI-exposed fields are increasingly looking for entry-level workers to have the skills that they previously expected from senior workers, including emotional intelligence, judgment, and leadership.

The findings come from PwC’s 2026 AI jobs barometer, released on June 15th, which analyzed over 1 billion job advertisements globally.

Analysis of 2.4 million entry-level roles in the US found that AI-exposed roles are seven times more likely to list “traditionally senior” skills than they were in 2019.

The skills now expected of less experienced staff include motivational leadership, team building, people and stakeholder management, process management, mentorship, and data-driven decision-making.

PwC themselves lists some of these qualities as desirable in candidates:

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Oh Rats! The IRS Is Infested; PwC Partners Will Divorce If It Spares Their Cash | 6.15.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Rumor of a partner RIF at RSM across all lines. This comes weeks after the audit RIF.

The audit RIF went down the first week of May, The Times later reported it was about 300 assurance professionals let go in that round.

Another tipster who’s been super reliable in the past tells us they’re hearing it’s about 60 partners across all lines; RSM US had 1,182 partners and principals as of FY25 so that’d be an approximately 5% reduction if accurate. They add:

The firm has been very hush hush about it.

From where we’re sitting it sounds like this approach is only encouraging speculation and buzz amongst the proles.

We’re told the firm’s biennial partner meeting is this week in Las Vegas and that US professionals have been invited to listen in on the opening session, perhaps they’re holding off on saying anything official until the meeting. Odds they were going to mention partner separations during that session are slight but not nil, said one of our tipsters.

If you have info you’d like to share with the class reach out via email or text the tipline, anonymously and bathed in our gratitude. As always, we’ll update if and when we hear more.

The post Rumor Has It RSM Asked Some Partners to Dip Out appeared first on Going Concern.

Big 4

Chartered Accountants to probe big four over data leaks [Financial Review]
Chartered Accountants ANZ has launched an investigation into how big audit firms handle confidential information, widening the potential fallout from a mishandled whistleblower complaint at KPMG Australia. The “quality practice review”, ordered by the industry body’s chief executive Ainslie van Onselen, will also examine ethical practices at KPMG, Deloitte, EY, PwC and four other large firms.

AI

EY GDS launches AI centre in Bengaluru [New Indian Express]
EY Global Delivery Services (GDS) has launched the ey.ai Centre for Reimagination in Bengaluru to help organisations explore the use of artificial intelligence and other technologies in business operations and decision-making. The facility, spread across 40,000 sq ft at the EY GDS campus in Bengaluru, was launched on June 11. According to the company, the centre is intended to bring together AI, sector expertise and design capabilities to help enterprises move from experimentation to implementation.

Accounting firms’ AI investments moving beyond ‘just clerical tasks’ [Accountants Daily]
Read these results carefully. “The accounting profession expects…”
The Access Group’s State of AI in Accounting Report 2026, conducted by Agile Market Intelligence, surveyed 434 accountants, bookkeepers, and other accounting professionals between mid-September and mid-November last year across Australia, about their experiences of AI in their practices, including their near-, medium-, and long-term AI integration trajectories. The report found that, by the end of this year and onwards, accounting firms across the board anticipate the successful implementation of AI in higher-stakes use cases. Agile Market Intelligence director Michael Johnson said that, by late 2026, the accounting profession expects AI to take on more work that impacts critical outcomes, “not just clerical tasks”.

Pentagon turns to AI in push for clean financial audit by 2028 [Stars and Stripes]
The Pentagon has awarded a nearly $49 million contract for an artificial intelligence platform designed to help agencies prepare for annual financial audits as the department works toward a congressionally mandated clean audit by 2028. Army Contracting Command on Monday awarded the contract to Groundswell Corp. for its Agentic Auditor platform, according to contract documents. The contract is in effect until June 8, 2031.

Audit

Majority of Brokerage Audits Flagged for Faults, Watchdog Says [Bloomberg Tax]
Two-thirds of audits of brokerage firms picked by the industry’s watchdog for inspection failed to meet US standards, according to results released Thursday. Staff with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board found faults with 66% of brokerage firm audits selected for inspection in 2025, the annual report showed. That is down from the more than 75% of audits found to have deficiencies in 2024.

Tax

AICPA recommends improvements to CP53E notice process [Journal of Accountancy]
Your dues money hard at work (that is not a sarcastic statement)
The IRS should provide additional guidance on CP53E notices, the AICPA said, after the agency sent the notices to 3 million taxpayers, seeking bank account information and prompting widespread concern. “Implementing our recommendations and increasing public outreach will help to reduce confusion and protect taxpayers who are exempt from the electronic fund requirement,” the AICPA said in a June 9 letter to Ken Corbin, the IRS chief of Taxpayer Services.

Private Equity

One of Philly’s last independent accounting firms was just acquired amid ‘unprecedented’ spree of deals [The Philadelphia Inquirer]
Every week for the last five or six years, Scott Isdaner got another call: Are you ready to sell? As managing partner of one of the last remaining larger independent public accounting firms in the Philadelphia region, Isdaner, 67, had watched many of his competitors — “our brethren” — get acquired by national companies, in many cases because they needed to do so to survive. Last week, Isdaner finally joined their ranks — but from a position of strength, he says. Bala Cynwyd-based Isdaner & Co., one of the 20 biggest accounting firms in the region, announced it had been acquired by Atlanta’s Aprio, one of the 25 biggest accounting firms in the country with $485 million in net revenue last year. “We felt that we were in a position as a firm that if we chose to remain independent and continue down that path, that we would be able to succeed and do so,” said Isdaner, whose firm counts 70 employees, including 10 partners.

Accounting Firm Crowe to Sell Stake to KKR in Nearly $3 Billion Deal [Wall Street Journal]
Accounting firm Crowe agreed to sell a stake to KKR, the latest in a wave of private-equity investments across the industry as firms seek capital to speed up their AI adoption and expansion efforts. KKR and co-investors will collectively take a majority stake in the Chicago-based firm, with Crowe partners retaining a minority stake, in a deal valued at nearly $3 billion, people familiar with the matter said. Crowe and KKR said they expect the deal to close in the third quarter, but declined to comment on the valuation and stake size.

Smith + Howard Announces Significant Investment from TPG [TPG]
Smith + Howard, a nationally recognized assurance, tax, advisory and wealth management firm, today announced that TPG, a leading global alternative asset management firm, has signed a definitive agreement to make a significant investment in Smith + Howard. TPG will invest in Smith + Howard through TPG Growth, the firm’s middle market and growth equity platform. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Municipal Madness

Fall River CFO says $218K ‘isn’t missing’ as accountant explains audit [The Herald News (Massachusetts)]
A 69-page audit by an outside accounting firm includes $218,000 that’s unaccounted for
The city’s chief financial officer said a $218,000 discrepancy found in an audit of the city’s fiscal 2025 books does not mean that cash is gone. It means the city’s financial ledgers are not yet balanced, said city CFO Emily Arpke. “It’s not material enough to say that the financial statements were materially misstated,” said Roselli, Clark & Associates partner Terenzio Volpicelli. “Otherwise we would’ve had to book an adjustment. But it was just significant enough that I needed to report it to this organization.”

Kronenwetter audit finds control weaknesses, but village avoids modified opinion [Wausau Pilot & Review (Wisconsin)]
Representatives from CliftonLarsonAllen LLP presented the audit during the June 8 Village Board meeting. The audit covered the year that ended Dec. 31, 2024, and came before the board nearly 18 months after the close of that year. The delay, auditors said, was tied in part to additional work needed before they could issue an unmodified opinion. An unmodified opinion means the financial statements fairly present the village’s financial position and are not materially misleading.

Milton CFO is out as questions swirl around annual audit findings [Pensacola News Journal (Florida)]
One thing is certain, longtime Milton employee Curtis Krebs is out as the city’s chief financial officer. It’s whether he’s permanently out or temporarily out while an investigation into his work keeping the city’s books is conducted that has been left open to speculation.

Audits reveal $1.2B in questionable Maryland state spending [The Baltimore Sun]
Maryland’s state government is hemorrhaging taxpayer money, with recent audits uncovering more than $1.2 billion in questionable spending, improper payments and financial irregularities. That figure, detailed across multiple state agencies, has ignited a debate in the state capital over a systemic inability to fix long-standing financial failures. As the same problems appear in audit report after audit report, lawmakers and taxpayer advocates are now demanding to know whether the state is capable of doing more than just identifying the problems.

Law & Order

Man accused of stealing $7K from accounting firm in Brooklyn: NYPD [PIX11]
According to authorities, around 1:58 p.m., an unidentified individual entered Idris and Sons Accounting and Business Taxation, removed approximately $7,000 in cash from a 64-year-old male victim’s unattended desk, and left.

People

Alphabet taps company veteran for principal accounting post [CFO Dive]
Marsida Saraci, 47, has worked for Google’s parent for about 15 years, most recently serving as vice president, finance – deputy controller. Prior to joining the company in 2011 she worked at Big Four firm KPMG for more than eight years.

The post Friday Footnotes: Great, KPMG Got the Whole Big 4 in Trouble; Pentagon Brings in Agentic AI to Address Their Audit Problems | 6.12.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

We received a tip this morning:

Crowe just got a firmwide email from the chairmen of the board and CEO that Crowe is “in explorative stages” of outside investment. WSJ is expected to post something in the coming days

“In the coming days” ended up being 13 minutes after the firm-wide communication was sent and this is the article: The Accounting Firm Weighing Private-Equity Ownership After Years of Ignoring Calls

Kinda funny how WSJ made it sound like Crowe has been beating off private equity with a stick for a long time when this private equity thing didn’t even start until 2021, a mere four years ago. Technically correct, we suppose, but still a funny way to frame it.

Here’s what Crowe CEO Steven Strammello told WSJ:

Crowe held to its view that it didn’t need to sell to private equity as many of its peers struck deals. That position has now changed in that the firm is now open to it. Outside investment could help speed up Crowe’s efforts to adopt artificial intelligence across its business lines and market the expansion of its services, Strammello said.

“Our capital structure hasn’t materially changed in 80-plus years,” Strammello said. “There’s just been more of an open-mindedness to really step back and reflect and re-evaluate that.”

Crowe is in the early stages of evaluating whether it would sell a minority or majority stake to one or multiple private-equity investors, or do nothing at all, Strammello said. The firm isn’t interested in a merger of equals or being acquired by a larger firm due to concerns it would have to sacrifice its brand or strategy, he said.

Call us skeptical but it seems strange to go straight to Wall Street Journal and inform all your people about something that may or may not actually happen. Sort of like announcing a pregnancy when you’re only three weeks along. Perhaps they’ve done it to fire up some kind of bidding war and court big private equity suitors, who even knows anymore.

Chicago-based Crowe is currently #12 on the INSIDE Public Accounting Top 100 with approximately $1.28 billion in revenue.

Update: Oh hey we forgot about this being in the works. Eight months later it’s official: Accounting Firm Crowe to Sell Stake to KKR in Nearly $3 Billion Deal

The post Crowe Told Its People Private Equity Might Be Coming So They Didn’t Have to Find Out Through a WSJ Article (UPDATE) appeared first on Going Concern.

The Internal Revenue Service today [Ed. note: June 4] announced a series of hiring events to take place across the country through July. The events are aimed at recruiting talented individuals for key seasonal roles, including customer service representatives and tax examining technicians.

“These hiring events are an important step in strengthening our workforce and improving the taxpayer experience,” said IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano. “We are looking for individuals who want to make a meaningful impact while building a rewarding career in public service.”

These hiring events support the IRS’s ongoing efforts to ensure the efficient processing of tax returns and compliance activities. The agency is seeking candidates who are committed to public service, detail-oriented, and ready to assist taxpayers with professionalism and integrity.

Here are the roles they’re looking to fill. The IRS notes that these are entry-level positions and do not require prior tax experience:

• Customer service representatives: Research multiple computer-based programs and resources to provide tax-related assistance to taxpayers over the phone.
• Tax examining technicians: Analyze and resolve tax processing problems, adjust taxpayer accounts, and respond to taxpayer inquiries regarding preparation of a variety of tax returns and related schedules.

Evidently they’re also hiring for clerks but didn’t include that in this particular news release.

So it sounds like they’ll be shuffling IT people who were on the front lines for Filing Season ’26 back to the server rooms and quiet cubicles where they belong. Good.

They strongly recommend that anyone interested apply via USAJOBS before attending events as they’ll be making “on-the-spot job offers” to those who pre-qualified.

We’re a bit late on this as the Jacksonville, FL event happened today. But there are a few more:

Covington, KY | June 16 & 17
Contact Representatives
Tax Examiners

Ogden, UT | June 22 & 23
Clerks
Tax Examiners

Austin, TX | June 25 & 26
Clerks
Tax Examiners

Kansas City | July 14 & 15
Clerks
Tax Examiners

The post The IRS Is Holding a Few In-Person Hiring Events appeared first on Going Concern.

In Madison County, Iowa (yes, as in The Bridges of fame), they’ve been dealing with a tumultuous couple of years and were having some trouble getting their 2023 and 2024 audits done. To be fair, it wasn’t 100% their fault. As of last year it was in the state auditor’s hands but the state auditor had been unable to get the audits done in a timely fashion. Let’s find out why, shall we? This is local news WHO13 on December 10, 2025:

Auditor Rob Sand’s office previously said the delays are due, in part, to the complexity created by recent government turmoil in the county. The former county treasurer is scheduled to go on trial next week on criminal charges, including misconduct in office, fraud, tampering with records, and theft, while the county has also had multiple Auditors cycle through over the past couple of years, including one who reportedly stopped coming into work.

Yeah, that’ll do it.

Then there’s the issue of who will do the 2025, 2026, and 2027 audits. The Board of Supervisors had to decide if they wanted to leave it up to the state auditor or bring in an outside firm. They chose the outside firm route and only one firm answered the call: Mauldin & Jenkins Certified Public Accountants of Atlanta (#59 on the IPA Top 100 with $120,643,461 in revenue).

The WHO13 article explains why the county supervisors picked an outside firm:

“The pricing was the biggest factor for me,” said supervisor Heather Stancil during the meeting’s discussion on the issue. “And, the fact they’ll have a bigger team working on this, based on what they quoted versus what the State Auditor quoted.”

Supervisor Diane Fitch’s opposition was rooted in the fact that she believes the state had an advantage with its understanding of the county’s current complex challenges.

“I am not comfortable with this,” she said. “I think the state might be slow, but they are in the weeds with us right now. They know what mess we’re in, and I think we should stay with them.”

Mauldin & Jenkins quoted Madison County $70,000 for the 2025 audit, $72,000 for 2026, and $75,000 for 2027 while the state auditor estimated $102,150 for 2025, $107,250 for 2026, and $112,350 for 2027. I mean, who doesn’t want a bargain right?

Last week, State Auditor Rob Sand hit the news conference podium to discuss the release of Madison County’s 2023 and 2024 audits (finally!) and, as you can imagine based solely on the fact that there was a fucking news conference about it, it wasn’t great. He emphasized to those who may not know the parlance that a qualified opinion from his office is both rare and bad.

In a completely predictable turn of events, Mauldin & Jenkins has yoinked their engagement letter. In a very nice letter addressed to county auditor Michelle Brant the firm says that their quote was based on what they knew from the 2022 audit, which did not have a giant qualified opinion slapped on it.

After careful consideration, we have concluded that it would not be in the best interests of either the County or our firm for Mauldin & Jenkins to proceed as the independent auditor for the fiscal year 2025 financial statement audit. Accordingly, we are withdrawing from the engagement pursuant to the client acceptance provisions contained in our Engagement Letter.

This decision was not made lightly. We recognize the importance of a stable audit relationship and appreciate the confidence the County placed in our firm. However, we believe it is important to be transparent regarding our professional assessment of the current circumstances and our ability to effectively serve the County under the assumptions upon which our proposal was originally based.

Given the extensive involvement of the Iowa Auditor of State’s Office in the fiscal year 2023 and 2024 audits, we believe the County should strongly consider continuing with the Iowa Auditor of State for the fiscal year 2025 audit. Their team has already developed substantial institutional knowledge regarding the County’s financial reporting processes, internal control environment, and outstanding findings. As a result, they are uniquely positioned to provide continuity and efficiency in addressing the matters identified during the prior audits and evaluating the County’s progress toward remediation.

Bet Diane Fitch is feeling awfully smug right now. As she should.

The best part of their letter is this pitch:

Although we will not be serving as the County’s independent auditor, we remain interested in assisting the County in a consulting capacity. Specifically, we believe the County could benefit from professional assistance in developing and implementing corrective action plans, strengthening internal controls, improving financial reporting processes, preparing audit-ready schedules and supporting documentation, and addressing the findings identified during the recent audits. Such assistance could help position the County for a more efficient and successful audit process in future years.

“We want nothing to do with auditing that dumpster fire you’ve got over there but we’ll help you clean it up if you pay us enough!” Get that bag, Mauldin.

Props to WHO13 for their diligent reporting on this. It’s boring stuff to most people but it affects everyone in the county.

The post The One Firm Willing to Audit Madison County’s Books Just Said “On Second Thought, Hell Nah” appeared first on Going Concern.

Baker Tilly announced this morning that they’re acquiring Anchin, Block & Anchin LLP. Seeing as Anchin is “only” in the top 50 with a mere $150,733,000 in revenue this is sort of a minor happening…except it’s not.

From the press release:

The agreement brings together two firms known for deep industry specialization, long-standing client relationships and a shared commitment to serving middle-market clients with high-quality advisory, tax and assurance services. Reflecting the growing importance of New York to its clients and business strategy, Baker Tilly will establish New York City as the firm’s headquarters.

“New York is one of the most important markets for our clients and for the future of our firm,” said Eric Miles, chief executive officer of Baker Tilly. “Anchin strengthens our presence in a market that is central to many of the industries, entrepreneurs and businesses we serve. Establishing New York as our headquarters reflects our long-term commitment to this market and our continued investment in the talent, expertise and capabilities our clients need to succeed.”

Well fuck you, Chicago. The acquisition itself feels secondary to the decision to move into the newly conquered lands, doesn’t it?

Anchin managing partner Russell Shinsky, who will be movin’ on up to Baker Tilly’s New York managing principal after the transaction closes, had this to say about the acquisition: “Over the last several years, we had many conversations with firms and investors exploring different paths forward for Anchin. We were fortunate to be in a position of strength and could be selective about what would best serve our clients and our people for the long term. Baker Tilly stood out because of its commitment to the middle market, its investment in innovation and talent, and the respect it showed for the culture, leadership and reputation we have built over the last 103 years. We believe this combination allows us to build on what has made Anchin successful while creating new opportunities for our clients and team members.”

Let’s head to the water cooler to see what the plebs have to say about the merger:

Alrighty then. Gotta say, “PE will push AI harder than Peter Thiel at a robot sex convention” is an excellent use of the English language.

And probably not wrong.

The post It Appears Baker Tilly Bought a 103-Year-Old Firm Just to Get a Better Address appeared first on Going Concern.

We haven’t written about WH Smith here at GC except for a few fleeting mentions of happenings in our Monday or Friday newswraps so let’s get a little quick and dirty backstory down here.

Last August, the retail company’s shares fell 42% after they announced an accounting error, discovered when they were preparing their year-end, that caused North America profits to be overstated by a modest £30 million ($40 million USD). The Guardian explained that error thus:

The mistake relates to arrangements it has with suppliers, which offer rebates if the retailer hits sales targets on certain items and payments for marketing and promotions. It is understood, however, that income should have been logged in accounts for the next financial year rather than for the 12 months to 31 August.

PwC audited WH Smith since 2015. Funny enough, they didn’t flag the overstatement until after the company had already disclosed it.

A few months later, Deloitte came in to do an independent review of fiscal years 2023-2025 [PDF] and found the following:

• the accounting treatment for supplier income adopted by the North America division was not consistent with the Group’s stated accounting policy and consequently was not consistent with the requirements of the relevant accounting standards;
• supplier income recognition has been overstated in North America. As a result of this finding, the Company expects prior year adjustments to be recorded;
• the overstatement of supplier income identified in the North America division is substantially a timing rather than an existence issue, and relates to the application of accounting standards; and
• the methodology and conclusion of the Internal Audit review of supplier income for FY25 across the UK and ROW Travel divisions is appropriate and supplier income has been appropriately recognised in these divisions.

Additionally, Deloitte said that the North America supplier income issue had “arisen against a backdrop of a target-driven
performance culture and decentralised divisional structure combined with a limited level of Group oversight of the finance processes in North America” as well as “weaknesses in the composition of the finance team” and “insufficient systems, controls and review procedures for supplier income across commercial and finance functions.”

Should be an easy one for the FRC, the homework is half done already.

The post FRC To Determine Whether Missing a £30 Million Overstatement Was, In Fact, Bad Auditing appeared first on Going Concern.

Hey Knicks Fans, Know Your KPMG History

Jarrett Kalish and Nicholas Combs of Kalish Law LLC discuss the skybox at Madison Square Garden and how Peat Marwick Main & Co fought for its tax treatment in Bloomberg Tax:

As the New York Knicks prepare to square off at home for Game 3 of the NBA Finals, quietly standing in the background is another one of the city’s most enduring institutions: the commercial rent tax, or CRT.

Following the Knicks’ last championship victory in 1973, accounting firm Peat Marwick Main & Co.—a predecessor to what is now KPMG—entered into a series of agreements with Madison Square Garden that entitled the firm to use a luxury skybox suite for all ticketed events held at the arena.

The New York City Department of Finance in 1987 determined that the firm owed the city’s CRT on the payments that it made to MSG to use the suite. Peat Marwick challenged the city’s application of the tax and won [PDF], allowing firms today to host events at MSG without the need to file a tax return.

What appeared to be a straightforward agreement to entertain clients ultimately produced one of the most important CRT decisions ever issued. The case serves as a reminder that tax outcomes often turn not simply on the activities engaged in, but on how those activities are characterized under the law.

AI Compute Taxes: The Hot New Debate

The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) argues the case against taxing AI compute in “Taxing AI Compute Would Be a Mistake“

The article’s four main points:

• First, a compute tax would slow the productivity gains AI can deliver.
• Second, a compute tax would push investment and innovation abroad, weakening U.S. AI leadership.
• Third, a compute tax would do little to preserve the tax base.
• Fourth and finally, a compute tax would not help solve a mass unemployment problem AI is unlikely to create.

WSJ wrote a pretty in-depth piece about AI compute taxes and why the idea is gaining popularity in some circles on May 6:

Advocates support an AI tax to make up for potentially massive job loss and to slow AI’s extreme growth rate.
“We’re at a point now where we need to try and preserve jobs,” says Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate and a co-chair of the Forward Party. “AI is going to gut white-collar employment and then by the way, it’s going to proceed to truck driving and a lot of other very common jobs.” Yang has long supported a so-called universal basic income.

“If you look at the taxes that are being paid by the biggest AI companies, they’re nowhere near commensurate to the value that AI is going to end up both generating and soaking up,” he adds.

Volunteer Tax Prep Loses a Real One

The local news profiled a wonderful woman in Mahomet, Illinois who spent almost three decades as a volunteer tax preparer:

Brenda Farney is as comfortable with numbers as fish are with water.

So much so, that every job she ever worked always calculated numbers, and when she saw a newspaper ad seeking a volunteer tax worker, she jumped at the chance — but she is venturing into different bluer waters having retired from being an AARP tax volunteer local coordinator for the last 28 years at the Mahomet Public Library.

“I enjoy numbers, that’s the bottom line,” she said.

“I always seem to gravitate toward things that involve numbers.”

That CPA Pathways Thing Really Took Off Didn’t It

Vermont, Missouri and Louisiana are close to having new CPA pathways, soon to join the more than 40 states that have already passed legislation.

MNCPA’s map, last updated a few days ago:

One of Us, One of Us

ICYMI: PCAOB chairman Jim Logothetis delivered some remarks at the USC SEC Financial Reporting Conference on Thursday. He started things out by repping the CPA squad:

I am proud to serve as the first permanent Chairman of the PCAOB who has public company audit experience, and I place a great deal of importance in the CPA designation. In fact, two-thirds of the professional staff in my office are CPAs.

Under this Board, the PCAOB will value and consider the experience of the professionals who intimately understand this work and the responsibility because they have lived it.

I spent more than four decades in the audit profession. I dedicated my entire career to it. So, I understand the pressures, the judgment calls, the complexity, and the stakes. The work of leading the PCAOB requires someone who can challenge the status quo while also respecting those in the profession who appropriately view their role as aligned with our own—protecting investors.

I bring that balance to this role, and that is why I believe the PCAOB is ready for its next chapter.

Can we trust this brings an end to the PCAOB fining European firms for sharing answers on internal training when there are surely better things to do?

This is For the Two of You in the Audience Who Care About This Stuff

Treasury and the IRS have issued a notice regarding tax-exempt organization executive compensation:

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service today issued Notice 2026-36 [PDF] announcing intent to issue proposed regulations addressing the tax on excessive compensation and excess parachute payments to employees of tax-exempt organizations under the One, Big, Beautiful Bill.

“The new law strengthens the accountability of tax-exempt organizations by expanding tax compliance requirements for certain organizations paying excessive compensation and excess parachute payments to their executives,” said IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano. “It broadens the scope of tax from a limited group of executives to potentially any highly compensated employee.”

Guy Forces Himself to Be Retired From Tax Prep in the Worst Way Possible

In Accountants Behaving Badly news, we have one guy who’ll never work in this town again:

A veteran Southern California accountant has admitted to running a massive, years-long tax fraud scheme that fabricated thousands of business losses, charitable donations, and green energy credits to land illegal refunds for his clients.

Oladapo Olagbemi, 72, pleaded guilty in federal court to four counts of aiding and assisting in the preparation of false tax returns. As the owner and manager of San Diego-based D.A.O. Accounting, Consulting, and Taxation, Olagbemi manufactured more than $5 million in improper deductions and credits between the 2019 and 2023 tax years, according to prosecutors.

The longtime certified public accountant signed his plea agreement shortly before Tax Day, on April 15, 2026. He now faces a permanent ban from the tax profession and a looming prison sentence.

He evidently was a big fan of Form 2106.

K that’s the end of that. Should you have a story or tip for us, please email or text anytime. Tipsters are anonymous (and appreciated), always. Go forth and account.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: What’s KPMG Got to Do With the NBA Finals; PCAOB Chairman Is Just One of the Guys | 6.8.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Note that there is also a dedicated thread for USI this year, where India colleagues share their numbers separately.

GPS — that is, Government & Public Services — seems to be coming in lowest at a quick glance which is not too much of a surprise given Deloitte’s government practice was slaughtered by DOGE last year. Some figures:

GPS

Consultant: 1.0% raise, 1.3% bonus (AIP in Deloitte-speak); 3% raise, 5% bonus; 2% raise, 2.8% bonus; 2% raise, 2.1% bonus

Consultant -> Senior Consultant: 14.3% raise, 13.5% bonus

Manager 1 -> Manager 2: 4.8% raise, 18.3% bonus

Other numbers from across service lines:

Audit

A2 -> S1: 20.7% raise; 14.7% raise, 0% bonus

Staff -> Senior: ⁠13.7% raise, 0% bonus

S1 -> S2: 15.15% raise, 5.5% bonus; 4.4% bonus, 1.6% raise

Senior Manager 3 -> Senior Manager 4: 5.6% raise, $40,000 AIP

Tax

Senior 1 -> Senior 2: 13% raise, 8.6% bonus

M1 > M2: 21% raise, 17.8% bonus

SC-> SC: 12.6% raise, 13.4% bonus

Note for April 2025 to April 2026, Consumer Price Index inflation was up 3.81 percent while energy rose 17.87 percent.

While you’re thinking about it, be sure to share updated numbers with Big4Transparency so they can update their database with the most recent salary data.

And remember, if your raise and/or bonus sucks they probably want you to quit.

The post Compensation Watch ’26: Deloitte Salary Numbers Are Out and Some People Are Salty appeared first on Going Concern.

Big 4

Big Four stronger than ever as UK audit clampdown eases [Financial Times Opinion]
Regulation is in retreat on both sides of the Atlantic. Long-promised legislation to beef up the UK audit regulator and dilute the oligopoly of the Big Four accounting firms — Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC — has been abandoned after almost a decade of lobbying. Meanwhile, the regulator, the Financial Reporting Council, is trumpeting an “evolved” approach that will mean less direct scrutiny of individual audits, in favour of a greater focus on firms’ systems. This easing of pressure has left some at the Big Four sounding gleeful. It’s great to “get rid of some of this stupid regulation”, says one partner.

KPMG UK Scraps Covid-Era Policy Letting Staff Leave Early [Bloomberg]
KPMG’s UK arm has told staff that they can no longer finish early on Fridays over the summer, in a reversal of a Covid-era policy, according to a spokesperson. “Every year we review our summer ‘jump start’ program to make sure we are considering market conditions and business needs,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement, referring to the policy.

PwC cuts partner payouts in China Evergrande fallout [Financial Times]
Proceeds from the 2022 sale of a business unit, which were due to be distributed to people who were members of the partnership at the time, will instead be kept for the “operations and investments” of the firm, PwC told retired partners in an email seen by the FT.

Deloitte to Debut Primary Livery with Arrow McLaren at World Wide Technology Raceway [McLaren]
McLaren Racing has partnered with Deloitte since 2017 and is the Official Transformation Partner of McLaren Racing across the organization’s racing portfolio.

AI

This Common ‘Negative Perception’ Is Holding Back New Graduates, Says a Top Deloitte Executive [Entrepreneur]
Deloitte Asia-Pacific CEO Rob Hillard says many colleges are falling short in preparing students for an AI-driven workplace because they are teaching graduates to see AI as cheating rather than a useful tool. In a Bloomberg interview this week, Hillard said many recent graduates enter the workforce with a “negative perception” of AI because they were taught in college to see it as a form of cheating. “We have to change that,” he said.

AI cited as top reason for US job cuts for third straight month [CFO Dive]
For the year, employers have cited AI in 87,714 planned layoffs, representing 22% of all announced job cuts in 2026. The total has already surpassed the 54,836 AI-related cuts recorded during all of 2025.

AI’s Billion Dollar Tax Breaks: Data Center Incentives Fuel Backlash [Bloomberg Tax]
The AI boom has kicked data center construction into overdrive, pitting states against each other in a competition for jobs and economic growth. Across the country, states have forgone billions of dollars in tax revenue to attract companies like Meta, Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Now, lawmakers in several states are beginning to reconsider whether those tax breaks still make sense.

Accountants ‘don’t want to be left behind’ in the age of AI [Accountants Daily]
Recently, on an episode of Under The Hood, Michael DePrisco, president and chief executive of the Institute of Management Accountants (IMA), discussed how accounting and finance professions can begin adopting AI.

Tax

IRS Audits, Extra Tax Collected Dipped After Workforce Shakeup [Bloomberg Tax]
The IRS closed fewer tax return audits and collected billions of dollars less in additional taxes following the fallout of workforce losses last year. In 2025, the IRS closed 497,621 tax return audits which resulted in $26.8 billion in recommended additional tax, according to the agency’s data book released Friday. It’s a drop from 2024 when the IRS closed 505,514 tax return audits, resulting in over $29 billion.

Audit

Texas now requires cities to do an audit before raising property taxes. Some small towns can’t afford it. [Texas Tribune]
Some cities have seen staffing churn and difficulty courting qualified finance staff to move to a small town to replace them. In a small town, it can be difficult to find a replacement if a key executive like a city manager or finance director leaves, officials said. Alpine, a West Texas town about 25 miles east of Marfa, was two years behind on its audits when Henry Arredondo became city manager in January, he said. Alpine’s last city manager had previously been the finance director, so when they left last year, they took their know-how of the city’s books with them, Arredondo said. Arredondo saw something similar when he worked as Dilley’s city manager. That city advertised for a finance director for four years but could never hire one, he said.

Firm Watch

Armanino names Anthony Sciarra as head of tax practice [Consulting.us]
Based in New York, Sciarra brings more than 20 years of tax leadership experience, with expertise in tax strategy, organizational transformation, and client service.

Aprio Acquires Boston’s Waldron H. Rand & Co., Adding a Century of Client Service to Its Greater Boston Presence [PR Newswire]
Aprio, the 20th largest business advisory and accounting firm in the U.S., announces its acquisition of Waldron H. Rand & Company, P.C. (Waldron Rand), a Dedham, Massachusetts firm with more than 110 years of history serving New England’s businesses and families.

The post Friday Footnotes: Big 4 Partner Thinks Regulation Is Stupid; KPMGers No Longer Get to Go Home Early on Summer Fridays | 6.5.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Well they’ve announced the winners of the esteemed Elijah Watt Sells Award for 2025 and of the more than 87,000 people who sat for the CPA exam last year, only these six have earned bragging rights as top scorers. SIX. I remember when it was like 70.

To get the award, a candidate must score at least 95.50 across the four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination, pass on the first try, and, in the case of this particular award, have finished testing in 2025.

Something really interesting about the 2025 results, small number of winners aside, is how only one of them works for a Big 4 firm. Used to be I’d waste a good hour of my time physically writing out ticks on a piece of paper counting up the awards scattered across firms to declare a winner of winners, like in 2020 when Deloitte and EY tied at 14 each.

Anyway, your 2025 Elijah Watt Sells Award winners, in alphabetical order:

• William Baker (Kansas), a graduate of The University of Kansas with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and Business Analytics, is employed with Wendling Noe Nelson & Johnson LLC in Topeka, Kan.
• Lauren Dever (North Carolina), a graduate of Dickinson College with a Bachelor of Arts in International Business and Management and a Master of Accounting from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, is employed with HealthEdge in Boston.
• Stephanie Guei (Texas), a graduate of the University of Houston with a Bachelor of Science in Kinesiology and a Master of Science in Accountancy, is employed with Weaver and Tidwell, LLP in Houston.
• Allison Hinaman (Texas), a graduate of the University of Florida with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and a Master of Accounting, is employed with the Financial Accounting Standards Board in Norwalk, Conn.
• Sophie Kapler (Michigan), a graduate of Oakland University with a Bachelor of Science in Accounting, is employed with Ally in Detroit.
• Xin Jie Yu (California), a graduate of Washington University in St. Louis with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting, is employed with KPMG in Santa Clara, Calif.

Obligatory quotes: “The Elijah Watt Sells Award represents one of the highest honors in the CPA profession, and this year’s recipients have demonstrated extraordinary commitment, intellect and discipline,” said Susan Coffey, CPA, CGMA, CEO of public accounting at the AICPA. “These individuals exemplify the highest standards of achievement and are well positioned to help shape the future of the profession with integrity, innovation and a strong sense of purpose.”

“The Elijah Watt Sells Award recognizes not only technical excellence but also a deep commitment to the accounting profession’s highest standards,” said NASBA President and CEO Daniel J. Dustin, CPA. “On behalf of NASBA and our member Boards of Accountancy, we congratulate this year’s recipients on their outstanding accomplishment. Their performance on the CPA Exam places them among the top candidates nationwide and reflects both their dedication to personal achievement and their future contributions to the profession.”

Fun fact: Up until 2011 the award was capped at 10 people per year, sometimes a few more in the case of a tie. The Powers That Be then decided to “standardize the score at an extremely high level (95.50)” so that it wasn’t so dependent on how other people performed in a given year and the number of winners per year naturally increased. So much so that in 2013, I asked “when tf did we get so many Elijah Watt Sells Award winners?” and the AICPA responded with a very informative email answering my semi-rhetorical question.

Does this small number of winners say something about the exam? About the caliber of candidate? Hard to say for sure. All we know for sure is that these six people should feel proud.

The post Everything is Shrinkflating These Days, Even the Number of Elijah Watt Sells Award Winners appeared first on Going Concern.

The exchange, for your reading pleasure:

“You are the acting IRS commissioner, correct?” Cortez Masto asked at the hearing on the Treasury Department budget.

“That is incorrect,” Bessent replied.

When Cortez Masto asked what his position was with the IRS, Bessent said, “My term expired,” but added that the IRS is a bureau within Treasury and that “when there is no commissioner, those duties flow up to me.”

Cortez Masto pushed back, asking whether that meant there was no commissioner and Bessent was acting commissioner.

“No, that’s incorrect,” Bessent said.

Asked again to clarify his role “for the purposes of public and transparency,” Bessent said: “I am performing the duties of the commissioner.”

Timestamped below:

In a publication dated March 13, the IRS offered this update on the IRS Commissioner position:

Consistent with applicable law and longstanding practice, the Secretary of the Treasury oversees the operations of all Treasury offices and bureaus, including the Internal Revenue Service. Secretary Scott Bessent’s service as Acting Commissioner of the IRS under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act has expired, and he has not served in that capacity since that time.

In accordance with the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, the Secretary retains the authority and responsibility to perform the functions and duties of vacant Treasury offices that are not filled on an acting basis. The IRS continues to operate without interruption, with Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano successfully leading day-to-day operations and reporting directly to the Secretary.

For the record, that CEO position doesn’t sit right with a certain group of senators who called it a “a fake job that Congress has never authorized.”

In the meantime, most tax practitioners on the ground couldn’t care less and just want someone helpful to pick up the practitioner hotline. Who do we need to speak to about that?

The post So Do We Or Don’t We Have an IRS Commissioner? appeared first on Going Concern.

The other day — and by the other day we mean like more than a week ago — we received a text on the tipline that read “KPMG US to get rid of the federal audit practice by not renewing their clients contracts.”

That is pretty big news so we tried to substantiate it with something, anything other than just the tip (believe it or not that’s a thing we do), a quest which left us empty-handed. Well now we can write it up because Financial Times was able to confirm it and dig up more info:

KPMG is shutting its federal government audit business and shifting more than 450 US staff to other roles after losing a $60mn-a-year contract with the Pentagon.

The Big Four firm had audited the US Army for almost a decade but the defence department plans to use a new accounting firm to oversee a larger proportion of the military’s accounts, as political pressure mounts to get a grip on its chaotic finances.

Current federal audit clients at KPMG include the Departments of Justice, Labor, Transportation, and Energy as well as the Treasury. All will be wound down by the time the last contract expires in 2030. Said KPMG in a statement to FT: “Over the past few years, KPMG has prioritised advisory services for the federal government, We are transitioning out of federal audit roles through an orderly, multiyear process, meeting all client and regulatory obligations. As demand continues to grow across both audit and advisory, we will be redeploying our talented federal audit professionals across the firm to meet client needs.”

Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a Department of War video posted on YouTube yesterday that “the era of excuses is over” and promised a clean audit opinion by 2028. Show don’t tell, bro.

Do we think they’ll go over to EY since EY was the firm that was able to give the Marines something no other military branch had ever gotten before (that is to say, a clean audit opinion)?

And do we think Deloitte is busy schmoozing it up in Washington to get back some of the federal money they lost when they got DOGE’d hard last year?

While we’re at it, do we think anyone else with a decent federal practice is going to try to slide in there and get a piece of this?

And the most important question of all: do we think the Pentagon can actually get a clean opinion?

Related: Report: Pentagon will likely fail audits through 2028

Update: Well that’s one way to find out KPMG’s federal audit practice is being shuttered. OP says their internship was set for 2027:

The post The Department of War Broke Up with KPMG, KPMG Gives Up Federal Audits Altogether (UPDATED) appeared first on Going Concern.

The post Much Like You, The SEC’s Top Accountant Never Really Wanted to Be an Accountant Either appeared first on Going Concern.

“NASBA Sucks!”

A friend of mine reminded me last night via text message that I need to write up the stuff that’s happening with Blake Oliver and NASBA. If you’re not in the loop, check out his blog post: NASBA Told Me to Stop Criticizing Them. So I’m Writing This Blog Post.

See, this is why we’ve always liked him.

Blake thinks “the traditional model of CPE course development is backward” and has said as much, specifically at the AICPA Learning and Development Symposium. NASBA took issue with this and threatened to pull Earmark’s CPE sponsorship via snippy demand letter.

He writes:

NASBA’s director of compliance pointed to a clause in the sponsor agreement requiring sponsors to act in a manner that is “professional, appropriate,” and “reflects favorably on NASBA.”

On that basis, they’re asking me to “immediately cease making any unfavorable, unprofessional, or inappropriate comments” about them — or lose Earmark’s sponsorship.

NASBA hasn’t defined any of those terms. In practice, that means NASBA gets to decide which speech from CPE sponsors is acceptable.

Here’s the discussion on The Accounting Podcast, timestamped:

My friend’s 2 cents:

Comments are closed on the news brief by default but if you have comments about this you can email or text.

And that’s that for this news brief. As always, email or text if you have a tip or story, comment or complaint. Now go out there and have a lovely week, you.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Five State Societies Merge Into One Regional; What’s NASBA’s Beef? | 6.1.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Audit

PCAOB works to form Inspections Modernization Council [Journal of Accountancy]
The PCAOB is seeking public accounting firm practitioners to join a new advisory group focused on the board’s future approach to inspections. The Inspections Modernization Council, according to a news release, will work to help “modernize PCAOB inspections so they remain relevant and resilient.”

BDO fined £2mn for ‘pervasive breaches’ in audit of collapsed NMCN [Financial Times]
The accountancy regulator has fined BDO £2mn for “pervasive breaches” in its audit of the collapsed construction company NMCN. The Financial Reporting Council said on Thursday that mistakes in NMCN’s 2019 audit — the company’s final set of accounts before it filed for administration — were “significant and serious”, and highlighted “numerous and pervasive breaches that were fundamental to BDO’s audit work”.

Former Audit Regulator Helps Set Up Accounting Firm Targeting 80% Automation [Wall Street Journal]
Christina Ho, a dissenting voice on the U.S. audit regulator’s board in recent years, is helping form a new venture-backed accounting firm. Ho, who left the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board in January, recently joined Oath, a new firm that aims to automate 80% of its work by 2030 as it integrates artificial-intelligence tools. She serves as chief assurance officer at the firm, which will provide auditing and advisory services, but not tax services. “The audit approach is still built around human limitation and so in order to truly realize the benefit of technology, you have to build an audit methodology that is not human-centric but machine-centric,” Ho said.

AI

Uber’s finance team overtaken by engineering in AI use [CFO Dive]
The engineering team at Uber Technologies has overtaken finance as the company’s leading adopter of artificial intelligence, a senior finance executive said Thursday, amid reports the ride-hailing company is grappling with high costs from AI tools used to automate software coding.

KPMG scouts Silicon Valley start-ups in bid to head off AI disruption [Financial Times]
KPMG’s US bosses are touring Silicon Valley in search of AI start-ups that the Big Four firm can work with before they become large enough to threaten its business. KPMG could sign partnerships or take equity stakes in the start-ups to seal access to their technology, US chief executive Tim Walsh told the FT in an interview.

AI can mass-produce finance research papers indistinguishable from human work, reports study [Phys.org]
Artificial intelligence (AI) and large language models (LLMs) tools are capable of mass-producing academic finance papers that are nearly indistinguishable from human-authored research, according to a new study published in the Journal of Economic Literature.

Amazon says it shut down a token leaderboard: ‘Don’t use AI just to use AI’ [Business Insider]
Amazon is looking to minimize “tokenmaxxing.” The company is shutting down an employee-made leaderboard that tracked AI token use because it encouraged some staff to perform tasks that didn’t necessarily solve problems, just so they could climb the ranks. “Please don’t use AI just for the sake of using AI,” Dave Treadwell, an Amazon senior vice president, told staff earlier this week. “Use AI to help you solve customer problems, to help you solve business problems, to innovate.” [Related: KPMGers Are Maliciously Complying With The Firm’s AI Usage Requirements By Generating Fluff]

Big 4

KPMG CEO quits as audit leaks scandal spreads to Telstra, Optus [Financial Review]
A sprawling KPMG Australia leaks scandal has forced the resignation of its chief executive, as Telstra and Optus were added to the list of major Australian companies whose confidential data was allegedly misused by the firm. The accounting giant’s Andrew Yates had spent weeks downplaying whistleblower claims that personnel misused confidential client data to win work, but in a dramatic escalation on Friday he and audit head Julian McPherson resigned.

The big accounting firms don’t walk the walk [The West Australian Opinion] KPMG’s last annual report insisted the firm was committed to “acting transparently, with accountability and integrity” as Australia’s consulting and audit industry digested the reputational fallout from rival PwC’s tax leaks scandal. “Our role in restoring, preserving and maintaining trust goes hand in hand with being able to demonstrate responsible business practices and how we act lawfully, ethically and in the public interest,” it pontificated. Turns out KPMG should have been getting its own house in order.

Deloitte UK promotes over 6,000 people and increases equity partners to a record high [Deloitte]
Deloitte in the UK will promote over 6,000 of its people on 1 June 2026, including 48 new partners, as it continues to invest in its future leadership. Alongside these 6,000 promotions (up from approximately 5,600 in 2025), as part of the firm’s commitment to competitively reward skills and experience, average salaries in-grade will rise by an average of 4.2% (up from 2.9% in 2025). In addition, following a very strong financial performance in FY26 the bonus pool will increase by 14% across the business.

Tax

IRS cleared potentially ineligible providers for e-file program [FedScoop]
In reviewing a sample of the 116,000 e-file provider applications submitted to the IRS from January 2022 to March 2025, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration discovered “programming errors, procedural updates, and unaddressed suitability issues” that led to the approval of applicants that may have been ineligible for the program.

IRS to Revamp Consolidated Return Rules for Insurance Companies [Bloomberg Tax]
The IRS is planning a revamp of regulations related to how an affiliated group of companies can file consolidated tax returns that include both life and non-life insurance businesses. The change likely will come out later this year, said Ken Kies, assistant Treasury secretary for tax policy, during a Thursday speech at the Federal Bar Association’s Insurance Tax Seminar in Washington, DC.

Trump Clears Way for Corporate Tax Dodge Hidden in the Fine Print [New York Times]
A New York Times review of securities filings from nearly 500 companies showed that they avoided taxes by attributing hundreds of billions of dollars in earnings to low- or no-tax foreign locales like Cyprus, Bermuda, Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. Often, corporations funneled the profits through subsidiaries in places where they had no employees, offices or customers.

Sport Clips Challenges IRS Tax Bill Over Insurance Premiums [Bloomberg Tax]
The men’s barber chain Sport Clips Inc. sued the IRS over a nearly $260,000 tax bill because it says the agency shouldn’t have disallowed deductions for insurance premiums. The Texas-based firm filed a petition with the US Tax Court May 26 to negate this bill, which includes penalties and interest. Sport Clips said the agency erroneously found that its premiums didn’t have “economic substance” and, as a result, the company’s income in 2020 was inappropriate inflated by over $1 million.

Practice Management

‘Survive and Thrive’ and Other Lessons from Accounting Growth Conference [INSIDE Public Accounting]
At the Association for Accounting Marketing’s (AAM) 2026 Summit in Palm Springs, Calif., firm marketers, business developers, and growth leaders repeatedly returned to the same message: Firms that thrive in the years ahead will be those willing to embrace change today, by building deeper client relationships, adopting more disciplined growth strategies, and adapting quickly to the accelerating influence of AI and private equity.

CFOs

Mid-market CFOs confront growing execution strain [CFO.com]
Mid-market CFOs entered 2026 focused heavily on artificial intelligence implementation and long-term transformation planning. By the second quarter, finance leaders were increasingly focused on execution pressure and whether their organizations could realistically keep pace with continuous operational change.

The post Friday Footnotes: Fresh Scandal Forces KPMG CEO to Quit; Deloitte UK is Doing OK | 5.29.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

But we’re here to talk about KPMG’s AI dashboard. More specifically, how the firm is requiring AI usage. Let’s start with an excerpt from the Business Insider article:

The firm said it hopes the dashboard, which came online late last year, encourages more “frequent and sophisticated” AI use among the division’s 10,000 workers.

“Our data shows regular AI users produce higher-quality work, feel less stressed, and spend more time on strategic work,” Russ Grote, a spokesperson for the firm, told Business Insider. “These benefits help people progress faster in their careers. They can also better serve our clients who are going through their own transformation programs.”

KPMG says more than 90% of its US employees use AI weekly.

So, about that. Because public accountants do best when you give them actual instructions rather than setting them loose and hoping for the best, the firm is requiring its people to use AI in their day-to-day. Specifically, according to multiple tipsters we’ve spoken to and the BI article itself, they’re expected to have at least one prompt in the firm’s AI tools 75% of working days.

The dashboard tracks some of these tools, as well as external tools like Microsoft 365 Copilot. Many employees are expected to hit a 75% usage target — meaning they’ve used AI on three-quarters of the business days.

One tipster explained to us how they and many of their colleagues are hitting that metric:

Many, including me, would just type random questions into the prompt to hit the once a day quota.

We were also sent a couple posts from Fishbowl where KPMGers react to the rule and explain their own tactics to hit this metric which, as we understand it, is loosely tracked so for all intents and purposes, asking the AI a stupid question or having it go through the motions of summarizing an email you already read is compliance.

Always a good sign when your staff think a rule is a meme.

Funny enough, some staff were already happily using AI and love the stuff but even they find the required metrics silly:

Regardless how you feel about AI and integrating it into your work, I think we can all agree mandatory usage like this is quite silly and a waste of compute.

The post KPMGers Are Maliciously Complying With The Firm’s AI Usage Requirements By Generating Fluff appeared first on Going Concern.

Gahhhh we got a tip about this last week and didn’t get around to publishing a story, now CFO Dive has beaten us to the punch. Ah well, so it goes in the fast-paced world of accounting news and an editorial staff riddled with ADHD.

The details:

PricewaterhouseCoopers is doubling to $10,000 the “CPA bonus” it gives entry-level hires who complete all four parts of the certified public accountant exam before joining or within their first year at the Big Four firm, according to a company spokesperson. The change is effective June 1.

We especially liked this part from the article:

The bonus comes amid an accounting industry push to remove or provide alternatives to the 150 college credit hour requirement that was seen by many as a costly and time-consuming barrier to getting a CPA license. Since early last year dozens of states have changed rules governing accounting licensure to enable candidates to substitute an extra year of professional experience for a fifth year of college.

The initiative was driven by a push to address an accounting labor shortage that now appears to be easing. [emphasis ours]

Huh. Weird how that accountant shortage thing just kinda went away so suddenly isn’t it? Weeeeeeird. I guess we’ll never know (yes we do).

EY announced in March they’d be doubling their CPA exam bonus, that change is also effective for those coming in after June 1 and requires new hires to complete all four parts within a year. Resident GC comment section curmudgeon Big4Veteran wasn’t having it:

In 2019, PwC stopped requiring its auditors to be CPA licensed before promotion to senior though they still encouraged hungry associates to chase it anyway if so inclined. We assume this bump in bonus is somewhat related to EY doing it but also related to a pile-up of unlicensed seniors. Turns out when you don’t make associates do something they just…don’t do it.

Will Deloitte and KPMG follow suit? Will B4V also complain about this? Stay tuned.

The post CPA Exam Bonuses Get Bigger at PwC appeared first on Going Concern.

In “AI killing offshore accounting? Nope…Citrin Cooperman just tripled India hiring,” Executive Managing Director of Citrin Cooperman India Vishal Agarwal writes confidently:

India is one of the top two priorities for our Board. (And I’m seeing the same trend across the industry.)

Then explains how, in his view, the model is changing:

Earlier, the focus was largely on getting the low-hanging fruit done in India. Today, we’re not just preparing.

• We’re reviewing.
• We’re signing off on deliverables.
• We’re communicating with clients.

In many cases, work is being completed end-to-end in India without needing US intervention.
And we’re building much deeper industry specialisation—financial services, automotive, and more.

Then he explains the plan, as he sees it:

AI is already automating parts of what junior professionals do today.

Say a task needs five people today. AI brings that down to two. The other three aren’t redundant; they’re available. So we pull more work from the U.S. into India.

That frees up the U.S. team to focus on what drives real revenue: client work, advisory, and growth.

Every rung moves up…if they’re willing to.

Sorry for the obnoxious LinkedIn Lunatic spacing on those quotes, we kept it to how it’s formatted on the original post.

For the second article, we have “Offshore US CPA Firms’ new AI reality: No panic firing, but no lazy hiring” which taps Armanino Managing Director Shrenik Shah, PKF O’ Connor Davies India Tax Practice Leader Ishita Doshi, and Vishal the Citrin Cooperman guy from the first article for quotes. We’ll get the quote with him first:

Not a single Indian leader we spoke to believes AI will wipe out the offshore accounting model.

And no! It’s not because they are being optimistic…But because it’s structurally impossible.

As Vishal Agarwal, Executive MD at Citrin Cooperman India ($985Mn in revenue in 2025), puts it:

“If everything gets done by AI, then not only India, but even the U.S. firms would be wiped out. Clients would go straight to AI.”

Then they explain that AI is already doing quite a bit:

The ‘repetitive layer of offshore work’ is being automated faster than expected.

As Ishita Doshi, India Tax Practice Leader at PKF O’ Connor Davies, explains: “Earlier, we handled a large volume of individual tax returns. Now, all of them are automated. Even junior-level professionals are now expected to think critically.”

Vishal sees the same shift in data work. AI is reducing manual effort in mapping, transformation, and tax research.

Shrenik is blunt: “If today there are five people involved in one project, there may be three in three years.”

Ishita’s team already lives this reality. K-1 data entry, historically an hours-long seasonal nightmare, now takes minutes.

The whole article is worth a read honestly because it’s pretty blunt about what’s happening over there from their perspective. For example:

In tax specifically, Ishita notes a clear shift: “As automation removes preparer-level work, firms are hiring seniors, supervisors, and managers who can review work, interpret regulations, and support US partners directly.

And:

As Ishita puts it: “There wouldn’t be any difference between the onshore and offshore teams in the near future.” Shrenik and Vishal echo the same view.

India doesn’t become irrelevant…India becomes the team.

You are free to discuss in the comments as always.

The post AI Won’t Wipe Out Offshore Talent, Say Firm Leaders in India appeared first on Going Concern.

AI in Big 4 May Be Bigger Than It Appears

There was a thread on r/Big4 over the weekend that I found really interesting. OP set it up to roast Big 4 about their AI naivete but it ended up being a bunch of people across the industry talking about how they’re actually using AI right now.

Post text:

Would you agree that Big4 pretends to be using AI internally but instead are far behind in terms of usage ?

Doing little prompt for emails and getting comments on a slide deck is most of what people do.

Almost no one is using Claude Cowork or anything, but they still pretend to be using it and leveraging it.

I don’t think anyone actually believes Big 4 is on the cutting edge of AI, that’s sort of besides the point. But here’s one specific example of someone getting utility out of these tools:

And another, with a bonus dig at Reddit’s strongly anti-AI attitude:

Just make sure you’re checking and double-checking those outputs, y’all.

And here’s a related post that went up yesterday: Claude is already doing all of everyone’s work, how much longer will a consultant be needed in the loop?. Like the first post, the opinions on that vary from “lmao” to “Anyone who thinks this won’t majorly affect the big 4 model has got their head in the sand.”

The conversation would be very different if the Big 4 model hadn’t already been disrupted by offshoring years ago.

KPMG Making an Exit?

KPMG may be leaving Bangladesh, Egypt, and Pakistan. I say “may” because this picture of a screen posted to r/ACCA is a bit sketchy.

There’s a news article too, though admittedly I am not a longtime subscriber to Financial Express so can’t speak to its reliability:

Big Four accounting firm KPMG is set to exit Bangladesh after nearly 60 years of operations in the country.

The firm has also decided to withdraw from Egypt and Pakistan as part of a broader global restructuring of its operations.

In Bangladesh, KPMG has long operated through its local affiliate, Rahman Rahman Huq (RRH).

The KPMG Global Board has already approved the separation process, which is expected to be completed by September 30, sources say.

Guess we’ll have to see if FT picks it up to know for sure. Or just wait until September. KPMG will probably have to make an announcement soon to quell any buzz, clients hate rumors flying around.

That’s enough news for this holiday Monday. If you have a tip or story for us, email or text anytime, I’d love to see it. Text is best, my inbox is a trash fire of shitty press releases (many of which aren’t even remotely related to what we cover). Now be sure to get outside some this week OK? Bye.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Is AI in Big 4 a Big Deal?; Consulting Isn’t For Everyone, Or Most People Really | 5.25.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Audit

It’s almost June. When will the PCAOB publish another Canadian audit inspection report? [Canadian Accountant]
The last inspection reports of Canadian accounting firms published by the US audit agency were released in November 2025. The PCAOB published inspection reports for PricewaterhouseCoopers and Raymond Chabot Grant Thornton for audits that occurred in 2024. Significantly, under the stewardship of former PCAOB Chair Erica Y. Williams, the PCAOB had improved its processes to the point that it was publishing reports less than one year after audit inspections has completed.

Dozens of school districts are missing financial audits. Some are years late [Daily Journal (Mississippi)]
State education leaders have said the factors driving missing audits include school administrative turnover, too few district business managers, auditor staffing shortages and the burdensome federal funding portion of the audits. Some districts are having problems finding accounting firms that have the capacity or ability to complete these audits.

Meanwhile, in India

AI isn’t killing offshore accounting…This CPA firm just tripled hiring in India [The Finance Story]
Writes Vishal Agarwal, Executive Managing Director of Citrin Cooperman India:
Citrin Cooperman established its first-ever India office in 2016. It operated largely out of Ahmedabad. For the next eight years, the growth was modest. Then, in late 2024, the firm opened its second India office in Hyderabad. At that time, we had around 300 employees…Today, we’re over 1,000 people strong. Our fully remote workforce is expanding. Citrin Cooperman U.S. hit $985 million in revenue in 2025. Needless to say, Citrin Cooperman India was a significant contributor to that growth.

Fake call centres duping US citizens by impersonating a prominent American accounting firm busted in Bengaluru by Cyber Command Centre officials two arrested [Country and Politics]
It was actually QuickBooks they were impersonating, not a firm. Tons of pics of the operation at that link.
Investigations revealed that the accused had allegedly floated a company named “Circle Square LLC”and used multiple shell companies to siphon off large sums of money obtained from U.S. citizens. According to Pranob Mohanty,the accused were running the scam through a registered firm named Reckoning Service Private Limited. Though the company claimed to offer IT-related solutions, the accused allegedly impersonated employees of US-based tax consulting firm QuickBooks and cheated American citizens by offering fake tax consultation services.

Firm Watch

Baker Tilly admits 52 new principals [Business Wire]
“This year’s principal class reflects the strength we are building as one firm,” said Baker Tilly CEO Eric Miles. “They bring together diverse perspectives and expertise that are already helping us operate in a more connected way — delivering greater insight for our clients and creating more opportunity for our people.”

Deloitte announces bigger bonuses and more promotions after beating targets [Financial Times]
Deloitte boss Richard Houston said on Tuesday that the firm’s bonus pool would increase by 14 per cent, in an email to staff seen by the FT. Salaries will rise by an average of 4.2 per cent, up from a 2.9 per cent increase last year, while a larger proportion of staff will receive promotions.

AI

EY and Microsoft to invest over $1bn in enterprise AI transformation [International Accounting Bulletin]
The programme will see Microsoft’s Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) and EY’s industry teams working together. In a statement, EY said that the move is an “important milestone” in the long-standing EY-Microsoft alliance across tax, assurance, consulting and EY-Parthenon.

KPMG integrates Claude across its core business and workforce of more than 276,000 in strategic alliance [Anthropic]
As part of this alliance, KPMG is embedding Claude inside Digital Gateway, the software KPMG’s people and clients use to do the actual work—starting with new tools for tax and legal clients. And every one of KPMG’s 276,000+ employees globally will gain access to Claude. Anthropic is also naming KPMG a preferred partner for private equity, and the two companies will build new Claude-powered products together for PE portfolio companies.

Intuit to lay off over 3,000 employees to refocus on AI [TechCrunch]
In its fiscal second quarter ended January, Intuit reported revenue of $4.65 billion, a 17% increase, and net profit of $693 million, a 48% improvement compared to a year earlier. (Related and funny: Intuit Suffers Worst Plunge Since 2003 After Announcing Job Cuts)

Executive Assistants Making $100,000 a Year Are Losing Jobs to AI [Bloomberg]
Executive assistants at professional-services firms manage partners’ diaries, handle expenses and book travel in one of the few remaining white-collar roles that doesn’t require elite credentials. They can earn more than $100,000 a year for their trouble, with incentives and bonuses for the highest-ranking. That career path is disappearing as firms like PwC and McKinsey & Co. cut or relocate thousands of support roles to save money and make way for artificial intelligence to take on more work. Slowing demand for some professional services, a drive to increase profitability and the rise of AI are fueling cuts, although some former staff at various firms said they believed protecting partner pay was also a factor.

Tax

Tax world gawks at Trump audit agreement: ‘Never seen anything like this’ [POLITICO]
Astonishment is rippling through tax world at a settlement that goes far beyond the specifics of Trump’s suit — he sought billions of dollars as compensation for some of his tax records being leaked to the news media — to instead provide him, his family and his businesses sweeping protections against government scrutiny of his taxes. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Steve Rosenthal, a former longtime senior fellow at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.

People

IBM’s global CFO: ‘There I was, top of my class. And I had no job’ [Irish Times]
The 1987 stock market crash was swift and brutal, hitting not only US stock markets but global ones, with an estimated impact of $1.7 trillion. In the US, it wiped $500 million off the markets, caused the Dow Jones to fall by 22.6 per cent – a record for a single day’s trading. Despite fears of an economic impact to rival the Great Depression of the 1920s, the effect of Black Monday was limited – for the stock markets at least. For Kavanaugh, it had wider repercussions. “Within 48 hours, my offers were rescinded,” he says. “There I was, top of my class. And I had no job.” Looking back, he says the setback was another opportunity. He landed a job at National Cash Register, working in accounts receivable. It was a low-level, low-paying job, he says, but it taught him some tough lessons.

The post Friday Footnotes: Supposedly AI Isn’t Killing Offshore Hiring Yet; KPMG Cozies Up to Claude | 5.22.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

In an exclusive published yesterday, Reuters says that Starbucks is scrapping its automated inventory count tool — which they so appropriately named Automated Counting — after a nine-month deployment in its North American stores.

The tool was part of CEO Brian Niccol’s efforts to fix the coffee chain’s persistent product shortages that he has blamed for hurting sales. The app – designed to improve Starbucks’ visibility into shortages at stores – frequently miscounted and mislabeled items, such as confusing similar milk types or ​missing them altogether, Reuters reported in February.

In that February story, Reuters wrote that the AI app’s provider NomadGo claimed 99% accuracy. “What NomadGo set out to do is modernize inventory counting to make it faster and less burdensome while providing timely, actionable data on product availability,” the company told Reuters in a statement.

Here’s NomadGO CEO David Greschler and Strategy Manager of Inventory AI at Starbucks (that’s a mouthful) Kevin Summers discussing it at FSTEC 2025 in a September 2025 YouTube video:

Preservetube link to that video in case it gets yoinked. After doing this for 17 years we’ve learned that you have to archive this stuff. It appears Starbucks has already deleted the app’s announcement off its blog as this link is dead though not yet fallen off from Google search.

Back to current day:

“Starting today, Automated Counting will be retired,” read an internal company newsletter dated Monday that Reuters reviewed and verified ​with two employees. “Beverage components and milk will now be counted the same way you count other inventory categories in your coffeehouse.”

Starbucks shared some employee feedback with Reuters that included one employee saying “Thanks for discontinuing Automatic Counting! The thought behind it was great, but the execution was proving difficult.”

You can also find employees celebrating the end of Automated Counting in their subreddit. This comment gives us a look into why it may have failed, which is that this stuff only works if you give it excellent data (but you’re all smart professionals, you knew that):

We joke about looming automation threats and acknowledge they are indeed real as the tech is advancing quickly but I think we can safely say that plenty of you will still be doing manual inventory counts come December. And probably the next December. And the December after that one…

The post Starbucks Kills Off Its Automated Counting AI Tool After Just 9 Months Because It Sucked at Counting Beans appeared first on Going Concern.

CBIZ suspends employee stock purchase program

Thanks, tipster. We followed up to get more details but haven’t heard back. That’s fine.

CBIZ stock is down 36.89% year-to-date. Because they’re a public company, we’ll resist the urge to speculate wildly about why they ended the program and wait for further information.

CBIZ is one of those huge firms we don’t hear much about. That usually means either people are generally happy about working there (relatively speaking that is, it’s still public accounting) or there aren’t really any happenings worthy of the accounting industry gossip pages. CBIZ peeps past or present are always welcome to reach out via email or text with any petty grievances or even praises of their home firm. Believe it or not we like hearing the good stuff too.

The post CBIZ Ends Its Employee Stock Purchase Program appeared first on Going Concern.

Seeing several posts about layoffs at Deloitte, specifically in audit. Among the newly laid off this week are senior managers which, genuinely, wtf?

A&A Bloodbath
by u/im-gonna-lose-my-job in deloitte

A comment:

I was one of the people hit by this today. Received the invite last night at 9:30 pm. Luckily I didn’t see it until this morning. I am a Senior Manager. I have 2 weeks transition time, but one of those I was already scheduled for PTO so I’m basically done at the end of the week.

getting 9 weeks severance, and they did say they would pay out AIP bonus.

Honestly, I was getting the feeling that leadership wanted to slim down or even possibly eliminate my team. It still hurts a little and I was a bit surprised as I am the SME on my team on certain projects and they’ll likely lose some steam and abilities with me gone, but I can’t help that.

The annoying thing about all this is how impersonal it felt. My manager was clearly reading from a script on her screen, didn’t even say anything personal to me, say sorry, none of that. Knowing they had a lot of these meetings to do today makes that part make sense, they just have to churn through them.

Is it possible that layoffs are random though? Or does each team/each leader get a quota to hit and then they have the decision of who to layoff?

Imagine if layoffs were random. With the way these firms have been cutting and replacing people with offshore staff these past few years we might get there.

The lesson here is don’t do any of that shit because they’ll let you go anyway for the crime of pulling a higher salary than someone thousands of miles away.

More threads here, here, and here. Let’s throw in a comment from that last thread:

Bonuses are supposed to be paid out at the end of this month, they should still be getting those no?

Condolences to everyone swept up in this. Reach out via email or text if you wanna talk about it.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: Deloitte Auditors Got Bad News This Week appeared first on Going Concern.

If you’re a long-time GC reader you know that this is the kind of stuff we used to run all the time. Stupid, tedious, and most importantly harmless gripes like this are hilarious. It seems obvious to me as an OG of the internet that by tagging Deloitte, this person doesn’t actually expect them to track down the offender and write them up, it’s just a funny vent. Right? Right??

Evidently that’s not how it went down in the wes’s replies, which were quickly turned off.

Guys please I beg you, stop taking everything so serious. Now, can we talk about how lame it is to wear company branded gear to the gym? And how unsurprising it is that it’s Deloitte gear specifically?

The post Someone at Deloitte’s Atlanta Office Doesn’t Rerack the Gym Equipment appeared first on Going Concern.

In 2024, the China Securities Regulatory Commission fined PwC China 325 million yuan ($45.8 million USD at the time). But it was the China Ministry of Finance that really hit them hard: 116 million yuan ($16.35 million USD) in fines and a six month ban. Against 2022 revenue of about $1.1 billion, the fines alone ate up 5.6% of revenue. At the time, PwC Global Chair Mohamed Kande said that “the work performed by PwC Zhong Tian’s Hengda audit team fell well below our high expectations and was completely unacceptable” and that it is “not representative of what we stand for as a network and there is no room for this at PwC.”

Cue the late great Billy Mays here: “BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!”

As reported by Reuters yesterday and briefly covered in the Monday Morning Accounting News Brief, Evergrande Group liquidators want 57 billion yuan ($8.4 billion). PwC International maintains that it wasn’t their client and therefore they shouldn’t even be dragged into this:

The total claim by liquidators, Edward Middleton ⁠and Tiffany Wong of Alvarez & Marsal, was made against PwC International, PwC HK and PwC’s China arm, while ​the maximum amount that PwC International could be liable for is 38 billion yuan ($5.8 billion USD).

Monday’s hearing was focused on how ​much responsibility PwC International should bear.

Richard Handyside, a lawyer representing PwC International, argued that the firm should not be a party to the case as the Big Four company consists of several firms and the Hong Kong and China entities were not ​its subsidiaries.

There were no communications between PwC International and Evergrande, and it did not have a “duty of care” ​with respect to the developer’s financial audits, he argued.

But a lawyer for the liquidators, Adrian Beltrami, argued that PwC International sits ‌at the ⁠top of the group and is responsible for maintaining the standards of member firms.

A judgment is expected in a few months. Pretty dangerous precedent if the global bodies start getting dragged into lawsuits every time one of the locals screws up.

Earlier:

The post Evergrande Liquidators Want to Take an Extra Grande Bite Out of PwC’s Whole Pocket appeared first on Going Concern.

My Thoughts on the Entry Level Job Market

r/accounting has been on fire all weekend, I think more than a few people got into the mind-opening chemicals this weekend. First, someone realizes that the accountant shortage was bullshit and then you have this:

I have been sitting with this thought for a while and I need to put it somewhere.

AI is doing the transactional work now. Bank recs, invoice matching, journal entry coding, cash reconciliations, basic variance analysis. Tools are handling all of it faster and cheaper than any of us ever could. Offshoring took the first wave and AI is just finishing the job

That “low value” transactional work wasn’t just busywork. It was how we learned. You did the recs, you lived in the numbers, you started noticing things that didn’t add up. That’s how junior accountants built the intuition that eventually made them good at the hard stuff. Technical accounting, SOX, complex close work, none of that makes sense if you’ve never actually gotten your hands dirty at the foundation.

People always bring up how the profession survived before. Spreadsheets were supposed to wipe out bookkeepers. They didn’t, bookkeepers just evolved. ERPs were supposed to make controllers obsolete. Also didn’t happen, controllers just moved up the value chain. Every time, accounting adapted and found its footing.

Tbh tho, AI is not giving junior accountants a chance to evolve into something new. It’s just removing the floor entirely.

So yeah, accounting will probably survive. But I keep thinking about who is going to be doing the senior work in 10 years, and how exactly they learned it, if the bottom of the ladder just doesn’t exist anymore.

You also have someone asking about bathroom breaks at Big 4 as if you can’t just get up and use the bathroom when you need to so, you know, they can’t all be bangers.

K we’re done here. Want to give a shout-out to our tipsters last week who filled our inbox with all sorts of good stuff, you guys are the best. If you have a story or tip, send it over! Reach us via email or text anytime, tipsters are always anonymous and greatly appreciated.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: How About That Entry Level Job Market!; The Failed Client That Could Cost PwC $8 Billion | 5.18.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Audit

US audit regulator weighs deep staff cuts to unit overseeing accounting firms [Financial Times]
The US audit regulator is considering deep cuts to the number of staff inspecting accounting firms, in a downsizing of the Enron-era watchdog designed to align it with Trump administration priorities. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is also examining cuts to its enforcement division and other restructuring options as it takes a less confrontational approach to its dealings with audit firms, according to people familiar with the matter.

Crunching the Numbers: The Impact of GenAI and Agentic AI in Auditing [Bipartisan Policy Center]
Use of generative and agentic artificial intelligence is spreading rapidly through the economy, impacting many office-based jobs. An example of this transformation can be seen with financial auditors, a role once defined by painstaking manual review that is now at the frontier of an AI-driven transformation. The Bipartisan Policy Center examines the role of public company auditors and their use of AI to understand how it might shape their roles and work. We are grateful to the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ), which represents the public company audit profession, for input and assistance.

Two ex-Carillion finance directors fined by accountancy regulator [Financial Times]
The Financial Reporting Council fined Richard Adam and Zafar Khan a combined £282,000 for acting “recklessly” in preparing the construction group’s accounts, eight years after it collapsed.

DoD faces mounting pressure to pass clean audit for the first time [Military Times]
House lawmakers and government watchdogs expressed skepticism Wednesday about the Defense Department’s ability to produce a clean financial audit by a Dec. 31, 2028, statutory deadline. The House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform held a hearing on the DoD years-long struggle to produce a clean financial audit despite claiming around half of the government’s discretionary spending.

Tax

Taxpayers advised they can ignore CP53E notice — after verifying error [Journal of Accountancy]
Taxpayers who aren’t due a refund but received a CP53E notice anyway can ignore the notice after they confirm its validity online, the Taxpayer Advocate Service (TAS) said. Most IRS notices are sent automatically, meaning a processing error or an adjustment to a taxpayer’s return could have caused a taxpayer to receive the notice, according to a TAS news release.

Firm Watch

Forvis Mazars adds Chinese and Japanese desks to support US MNEs [International Accounting Bulletin]
In a statement, the professional services company said the new desks will provide a single point of contact and strengthen coordination between Forvis Mazars’ US teams and professionals based in China and Japan.

Fraud, Alleged or Otherwise

Billionaire Gautam Adani and nephew agree to pay $18 million in SEC settlement over fraud allegations [CNBC]
The Securities and Exchange Commission had alleged that the two men misled investors as part of a bribery and fraud scheme tied to solar contracts in India. Under the settlement, Gautam Adani will pay a $6 million penalty, while Sagar Adani will pay $12 million. Both men have consented to “entry of the final judgment without admitting or denying the allegations made in the civil complaint,” and payment of penalties, Indian renewable energy firm Adani Green said in a filing to the Indian stock exchanges.

Big 4

KPMG admits partner used confidential Lendlease files in Westpac pitch [Financial Review]
KPMG Australia has admitted a senior audit partner improperly accessed and displayed confidential board documents from longtime client Lendlease when the firm was pitching for a major Westpac contract. The admission followed claims, aired in parliament by Labor senator Deborah O’Neill in March, that senior executives misused confidential client information and leveraged conflicted contacts to secure work.

Why Deloitte Cut Benefits For Some Workers But Not Others [Forbes]
When Deloitte announced cuts to family leave and fertility-related benefits for some of its U.S. employees, critics framed the move as anti-women, short-sighted and damaging to retention. Those criticisms may be valid. But they miss the larger signal. The word “some” is doing a lot of work in that announcement. The cuts do not apply to Deloitte’s entire U.S. workforce of roughly 181,000 people. They apply specifically to employees classified under what the firm calls its “Center” talent model, a segment that broadly covers internal support functions such as administration, IT support and finance. These cuts are not really about paid parental leave policy. They are about the future of work in an AI economy.

Anthropic and PwC Expand Alliance, Driving Impact Across Client Work and the Firm [PwC]
PwC will roll out Claude Code and Cowork starting with U.S. teams and expanding toward a global workforce of hundreds of thousands of professionals, establish a joint Center of Excellence, and train and certify 30,000 PwC professionals on Claude.

The post Friday Footnotes: PCAOB Plans to Take It Easy; Just Ignore Those CP53E Notices, Probably | 5.15.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

The investigation found that the 2025 EY Canada report titled “Points of Attack: Uncovering Cyber Threats and Fraud in Loyalty Systems” was stuffed with hallucinations: 16 out of 27 citations to be exact. “While credited to three employees, including two partners and a senior manager, the report is a collage of misattributions, inaccurate statistics, and AI-written text,” said the email we got. “For example, research citations to Forbes, McKinsey, Gartner, TechCrunch and WIRED were either broken URLs or never existed in the first place.”

In a blog post, GPTZero explains their process:

EY Canada’s report doesn’t use footnotes or normal academic citations. Instead, it references sources directly in the text and/or includes them in a resources table (p. 41-43). This table provides a source title, description, and URL for all sources, as well as the publisher and date in certain cases. Almost all of the URLs are broken or fake, and more than half of the titles don’t correspond to real sources.

GPTZero uses a very specific definition of vibe citation because of the potential reputational cost (to both us and the report’s authors) of false positives. One of our team members manually verified Hallucination Check’s results to ensure their accuracy.

And includes specific references:

In one instance, GPTZero researchers tracked down the source of the McKinsey citation to a single “low quality” blog:

We planned to download the EY report and do some independent checking of our own for the purposes of this article before publication but by the time we got around to it, EY’s report had been removed from their website and Financial Times had covered it: EY retracts study after researchers discover AI hallucinations.

Wrote FT:

EY said it had removed the loyalty scheme report from its website and was “reviewing the circumstances that led to this article’s publication”, adding the study was not connected to work for any EY client.

“EY Canada takes the accuracy of all the content we publish seriously and we have an organisation-wide commitment to the responsible use of AI,” EY said.

Oof. How many times does this have to happen before firms stop trusting AI to spit out info?

Chasing the Hallucinations [GPTZero investigation]

The post EY Gets Busted and Yeets Report Littered With AI Hallucinations appeared first on Going Concern.

The person who wrote this says they are (or were) an S3 in audit and utilization wasn’t an issue.

Grant Thornton Layoffs
by u/No-Couple-9881 in Accounting

As usual with these things, no one below the decision makers seems to have an understanding of how decisions were made. This is a good way to breed resentment and anxiety within the firm so if that’s what they’re going for, good job there.

GT’s only halfway through their fiscal year so this doesn’t appear to be year-end cleanup. It could be related to their acquisition spree, the most recent to-be-assimilated entity being Grant Thornton Australia. According to AFR, it’s estimated that one-third of GT Australia’s 1600 staff are in audit which is a lot of bodies pulling onshore salaries. You know the drill.

We’ll update if we get some numbers. If you were affected feel free to reach out via email or text. Tipsters are anonymous blah blah.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: Grant Thornton Making Some Cuts This Week appeared first on Going Concern.

The Times reports:

Profits at Grant Thornton UK fell by almost 80 per cent in the accounting group’s first year under private equity ownership.

One-off bonus awards linked to Cinven’s buy-out just over a year ago, plus fees related to the deal and an enduring slowdown in the consulting market all ate into Grant Thornton’s profits last year.

Newly filed accounts show that revenues at Britain’s sixth-largest audit firm rose 4 per cent to £787.1 million last year, up from £759 million in 2024. However, pre-tax profits declined 78 per cent to £32 million, from £143.6 million.

GT UK’s “one-off” profit bites included £156.4 million ($211 million USD) in “exceptional bonuses” and £26.2 million ($35 million) in fees paid to the lawyers and bankers who made the Cinven deal happen. You can see it all laid out here in the detailed financial statements report [PDF]:

For 2025, average partner comp at GT UK was £686k ($927k USD) per, up from £682k the prior year.

In the news release announcing their 2025 financial results, Grant Thornton UK patted themselves on the back for making the bold decision to sell a 60% stake to private equity, as if that’s a unique thing 1,000 accounting firms haven’t already done:

In 2025, Grant Thornton UK chose momentum over convention.

At a time when much of the professional services market stood still, the firm made a deliberate, defining decision: to build the business that its clients and its people need today and in the future. The result is a new chapter of growth, investment and ambition, powered by bold choices and long-term thinking.

The most significant of those choices was the firm’s partnership with Cinven. Becoming the largest UK professional services firm to take external investment marked the start of a fundamental transformation, reshaping how Grant Thornton grows, invests and competes.

Part of this competition strategy has evidently involved gobbling up Grant Thorntons across the globe before their US cousins are able to do it first. So far GT US appears to be winning that fight, mathematically speaking anyway.

The post Private Equity Took a Big Bite Out of Grant Thornton UK Profits appeared first on Going Concern.

Grant Thornton Pay Day

Grant Thornton Australia partners are due a fat payout when the deal with Grant Thornton US goes through, reports Financial Review:

Grant Thornton Australia’s almost 200 partners will vote on a $1 billion buyout by its parent entity, which is likely to deliver an average of $5 million to each of them.

The deal’s value was disclosed by the firm on Monday and was higher than the previously speculated $800 million. It follows board approval to sell the audit and advisory firm to Grant Thornton Advisors; the latter parent entity is majority-owned by the New York-headquartered private equity group New Mountain Capital.

GT Australia reported revenue of $392 million last year.

Does It Really Matter As Long As Someone’s Doing It?

Is the SEC trying to elbow out the PCAOB? That’s the question set up in this Bloomberg Tax piece:

The SEC’s plan to dedicate more staff to investigate audit lapses has triggered fresh uncertainty over the role of the industry’s embattled watchdog.

Through a series of job postings and a few public statements, the US Securities and Exchange Commission has promised to create a specialized unit to put extra power behind its auditor oversight, targeting what one official described as “fundamental” failures.

Investor advocates said they fear the move could hollow out the enforcement capabilities of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, which Congress stood up to ensure investors could rely on corporate financial reporting after the collapse of Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. in the early 2000s.

The Second Time an Accountant Has Been on TMZ in a Month

Nick Cannon’s accountant was allegedly wild ‘n out and stole a bunch of money:

Nick Cannon’s ex-money manager managed his money, alright — treating Nick’s bank account like his personal piggy bank, and then disappearing with $2 million … according to the feds.

Sources with direct knowledge tell TMZ … Frank Musoke — a former account manager at a high-end Beverly Hills management and tax firm — is accused of spending several years siphoning cash from the “Wild ‘n Out” creator.

The DoJ put out a press release with some more info: Former Account Manager at Beverly Hills Business Management Firm Charged with Embezzling More Than $2 Million from Celebrity Client

From December 2019 to June 2023, Musoke gained unauthorized access to debit cards and the associated personal identification numbers (PINs) connected to Individual A’s business bank account. Without Individual A’s knowledge or consent, Musoke – in breach of his fiduciary duty – fraudulently used Individual A’s debit cards to withdraw approximately $1,733,688 at a bank’s ATMs, spend $165,270 on Amazon purchases, incur $191,543 in personal travel expenses, and spend more than $160,000 on other personal expenses.

And they’re extra mad because he didn’t report these alleged ill-gotten gains as income:

From May 2021 to May 2023, Musoke filed false federal income tax returns in which he failed to report a total of approximately $1,766,367 in income he embezzled through the unauthorized use of debit cards.

They think he’s fled to Uganda.

Andersen Makes a Move in Africa

Speaking of Africa, Andersen has a little foothold there now. We’ve been saying for years to keep your eyes on Africa, that’s where the big firms are headed next. Always nice when our crackpot hunches get a little confirmation:

American business advisory company Andersen Global has launched in Namibia following a merger with Windhoek Taxation and Advisory to form Andersen Namibia.

The launch took place on Friday evening.

One of the world’s largest independent tax and advisory organisations with more than 16,000 professionals across 170 countries worldwide, Andersen Global operates in 450 locations with an 87% global presence and an 89% Africa coverage.

Deloitte Benefit Cuts Still Earning Headlines

New York Times covers Deloitte’s recent benefit cuts:

At least two large companies, Deloitte and Zoom, recently said they were cutting back the level of family leave they offered. At Deloitte, the cuts apply to people in certain administrative roles, and it is also reducing vacation time and eliminating financial support for adoption, surrogacy and I.V.F. for those employees.

The move could particularly affect female workers, analysts said, because paid family leave has been shown to help them stay employed.

Because Deloitte’s cuts are for support staff, as opposed to accountants and consultants, they also target jobs that generally pay less and that are predominantly done by women, noted Joan Williams, founding director of the Equality Action Center at U.C. Law San Francisco.

Although cutbacks to family leave don’t seem to be widespread, it’s part of a larger trend of scaling back from what one human resources publication called the golden age of benefits, at least at certain employers. Cuts have included nice-to-have perks, like laundry or snacks, and policies that helped caregivers juggle family demands and work, like remote work.

Wrapping up here. If you have a tip or story, you are always welcome to reach out via email or text. Tipsters are anonymous blah blah. Have a great week!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Big Payout for Grant Thornton; Is the SEC Elbowing Out the PCAOB? | 5.11.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Big 4

KPMG faces staff uproar as job cuts expose communication breakdown [City AM]
Big Four audit firm KPMG is facing something of an internal comms meltdown, City AM understands, amid complaints of a lack of communication during a ‘mismanaged’ redundancy round. One source within the scope of the consultation told City AM that there was initially a lack of internal communication about the cuts. “We only got [news of] the advisory side, so when the news came out that it was 600 jobs…oh, audit has been hit as well.” They added that KPMG “didn’t do like a firm‑wide email being like ‘this is what’s happening with the firm’.”

Offshoring

Global Tax Returns Now Have A Gujarat Stopover [Times of India] Somewhere in an office block in Ahmedabad, a chartered accountant is preparing the tax return of one of the most famous basketball players who ever lived. Down the corridor, a colleague is sorting out the finances of a talk show host whose name is known in every English-speaking household on the planet. The names stay off the record. The work, however, is real. The clients are as A-list as it gets, and the people handling their finances are based in Gujarat. While the city’s reputation rests on its industrial heritage and a certain brand of Gujarati entrepreneurial instinct, a second economy has been growing in its office spaces — one built not on goods, but on numbers, and on serving foreign clients.

Audit

U.S. Audit Watchdog Should Rescind Its Independence Rules, SEC Official Says [Wall Street Journal]
The U.S. audit watchdog should rescind its rules around conflicts of interest for auditors and their clients and follow the Securities and Exchange Commission’s rules, which the securities regulator may change, an SEC official said. The SEC plans to weigh revising auditor independence rules over the next year, starting with releasing informal, nonbinding guidance based on companies’ recurring questions, Chief Accountant Kurt Hohl said backstage at a conference Thursday.

Grant Thornton launches new audit platform in US [International Accounting Bulletin]
Grant Thornton’s US member business, Grant Thornton LLP, has rolled out a new technology platform, gtap, aimed at reshaping how the company conducts audits. The system – short for Grant Thornton Analytics and Automation Platform – integrates analytics, automation and AI into each phase of the audit cycle.

AI

A new dashboard tracks how much KPMG workers use AI. They say it’s easy to game the system. [Business Insider]
Business Insider reviewed screenshots of KPMG’s dashboard and spoke about it with two employees, who asked that their names not be used because they did not have permission to speak to the media. These employees said that while the dashboard is designed to incentivize AI adoption, it’s easy to manipulate and may not accurately reflect the true extent of AI use in their day-to-day work.

Pentagon to lean on AI to achieve audit goals [DefenseScoop]
“We’ve got a mandate. Congress passed a law that says that we need to get a clean opinion by our FY28 agency-wide financial statements. If not, they’re going to start taking money from us, significant amounts of money,” Tom Harker, deputy CFO in the Department of Defense comptroller’s office, said Tuesday at the UiPath Fusion conference, presented by FedScoop. “Substantive test work is onerous, painful. It’s pulling data, it’s doing large sampling across the enterprise. It takes a lot of work. It’s non-value-added work in that it only helps you with regards to auditing, and doesn’t give you better insights, doesn’t give you better information to make decisions,” he said. “What we’re adding into it is AI [and] automation.”

Education

Three Students, Similar Paths [CPA Journal]
Sustainability accounting and reporting (SAR) is reshaping how students view the accounting profession, broadening the accountant’s role to guide an organization’s sustainability initiatives and communicate their outcomes. In this article, three college students reflect on how sustainability concepts have influenced their emerging professional goals and identities.

Firm Watch

Forvis Mazars UK CEO: We have what others are trying to buy [City AM]
The UK boss pushed back on the idea that AI is the primary driver of pressure in the professional services sector, stating that he sees geopolitics and macro‑economics as the bigger drivers. “Part of me thinks that narrative is used as a rationale to explain why results aren’t where they should be when there are different reasons.” He added: “I would put [slower growth] much more down to geopolitics, economic uncertainty as a whole”.

Large accounting firm will open new KC office at H&R Block’s downtown HQ [Kansas City Business Journal]
RubinBrown recently leased new Kansas City office space in H&R Block’s world headquarters, keeping the accounting and consulting firm in the Central Business District.

Tax

CP53E notice tied to paper-check transition causes confusion [Journal of Accountancy]
Fraudulent or legitimate? In error or correct? Those are among the questions taxpayers and tax professionals are asking after the IRS sent over a million CP53E notices to taxpayers advising them to update their bank information within 30 days for a direct deposit. Some are skeptical because the notices include a QR code, and some practitioners say their clients owe money and are not due a refund.

The tax treatment of tariff refunds for inventory [JD Supra]
Following the Supreme Court of the United States’ decision invalidating most tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, many companies expect to receive tariff refunds with respect to inventory. Companies that receive refunds must determine how these refunds are treated for tax purposes, which depends on whether the underlying tariff costs already have reduced the company’s income through cost of goods sold.

States move to shut door on startup tax break expanded under Trump’s OBBBA [InvestmentNews]
A federal tax incentive long favored by venture capitalists and startup founders is drawing fresh fire from state governments, tax policy analysts, and critics who argue it overwhelmingly benefits the ultra-wealthy while adding unnecessary bloat to the tax code.

Taxing Advertising Would Modernize State Sales Tax Bases for the Information Age [Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy]
Advertising is an example of a service that has long been exempt from nearly every state’s sales tax. In the last two decades, however, the entire field of advertising has changed, with profound impacts on consumers, so it is worth reconsidering whether this exemption is still sound policy (if it ever was). The big change is that most advertising today is delivered to individual consumers based on data about their characteristics, behaviors, or interests, rather than showing the same ad to everyone. Such targeted advertising has not only displaced most traditional advertising, but it is also one of the fastest-growing segments of the economy.

You May Be Owed a Tax Refund From the Covid Era [New York Times]
The regular 2026 tax filing season ended last month, and many taxpayers have already received their refunds. But tens of millions of Americans may also be due refunds of a different sort — on tax penalties and interest charged during the Covid-19 pandemic. The refunds aren’t guaranteed, because they result from a court decision that the government may still appeal, according to Erin M. Collins, the national taxpayer advocate. She heads a group within the Internal Revenue Service that works on behalf of taxpayers. But to preserve your eligibility should the court ruling stand, you must file refund claims with the I.R.S. by July 10, Ms. Collins said in blog posts aimed at making people aware of the situation. “At the center of this issue are taxpayers who may be entitled to refunds but will never claim them,” she said in an email.

The post Friday Footnotes: KPMG Staff Not Happy With How Layoffs Were Handled; SEC Says PCAOB Should Toss Independence Rules | 5.8.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Earlier coverage to get you caught up:

• The AICPA Gets the “Professional” Validation They Wanted, Early Career Pipeline Still on Fire (February 3, 2026)
• Accountants Inexplicably Deemed “Not Professional” Under OBBBA Student Loan Rules (November 21, 2025)

Due to receiving a ton of backlash from excluded professions — namely nursing but we’ll say the AICPA’s strongly worded letter may have had some effect as well — the Dept of Ed conceded that exclusion from the professional degrees list is not intended to imply that excluded professions are not professional. Which any reasonable person would have concluded from the beginning but whatever. They put this in the Federal Register in February:

The department notes that the term ‘professional student’ as used in this [NPRM] is intended solely to distinguish those programs that we propose would be eligible for higher loan limits, as required by [the One Big Beautiful Bill Act]. The designation, or lack thereof, of a program as ‘professional’ does not reflect a value judgment by the department regarding whether a borrower graduating from the program is considered a ‘professional.’ This NPRM only interprets the phrase ‘professional student’ as used in the context of the loan limits established by [OBBBA].

The final rule, which is effective July 1, describes the breadth of comments the Department of Education received specifically regarding accounting:

A subset of commenters urged the Department to treat accounting pathways, particularly those intended to prepare students for CPA licensure, like other included professional programs. These commenters emphasized public protection responsibilities, ethical obligations, State licensure requirements, and the central role of CPAs in attestation, auditing, tax, and financial reporting. Several State CPA societies argued that graduate accounting programs remain a critical and widely used route to CPA licensure, even where States now provide more than one educational pathway. For example, commenters emphasized that their State allows either a bachelor’s degree plus two years of experience, or a master’s degree plus one year of experience, both coupled with the passage of the Uniform CPA Examination and satisfaction of ethics and competency standards as pathways to licensure.

Other commenters argued that even where a master’s degree is not universally required, accounting should still qualify, as graduate study is often the practical route to meet the 150-credit hour expectation, the profession is heavily regulated, and the work implicates public trust and economic stability. Some commenters also urged the Department to either include accounting expressly or to retain non-exclusive phrasing that would preserve flexibility for inclusion of accounting and similarly situated programs.

Here’s their reply to that:

The Department also disagrees with commenters that advanced accounting degrees beyond the baccalaureate level should be considered professional degrees. As the commenters themselves concede, these master’s degrees are not required, in general, to become a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). Even though students must have completed 150-credit hours or 225 quarter hours to sit for the Uniform CPA Examination, there is no specific requirement to earn a master’s degree. In other words, the master’s degree does not signify the beginning of practice in a given profession, because earning 150 credit hours is the primary determinate. In general, undergraduate accounting students can take all of the requisite coursework required to sit for the exam as part of their baccalaureate coursework, although the Department acknowledges that most institutions require less than 150 credit hours to graduate.

Feel free to discuss in the comments or we can just move on from this and focus on things that actually matter, such as the same people who complained about this actively watering down the value of the profession. See comments on the last post:

The post In a Final Rule, Dept of Education Is Unswayed By the AICPA’s Strongly Worded Letters About the Meaning of Words appeared first on Going Concern.

Plante Moran, one of the nation’s largest and most reputable audit, tax, consulting, and wealth management firms, announces Mexico-based JA Del Río will join the firm July 1. The milestone represents Plante Moran’s largest international expansion to date, part of a strategy to enhance its global presence across Latin America, Asia-Pacific and Europe.

Founded in 1988 in Guadalajara, Mexico, JA Del Río is known for its substantial experience in audit, tax, and consulting services. Serving clients across five continents, the firm helps global businesses navigate international trade, tax, risk, and business growth with certainty and clarity.

JA Del Río has staff operating out of Mexico, Colombia and Costa Rica.

“After having a presence in Mexico for nearly 20 years, we’re excited to expand Plante Moran’s presence in Latin America by welcoming JA Del Río into our firm,” said Plante Moran managing partner Jason Drake in the obligatory press release quote. “The firm’s values align with ours, with a focus on delivering high-quality client service, technical excellence, and deep expertise across industries and borders. JA Del Río has been a trusted collaborator of ours for years, and their addition marks an important step forward in our international growth.”

The union is effective July 1.

The post Plante Moran Goes South of the Border to Acquire a Firm in Mexico appeared first on Going Concern.

To all of you at RSM getting a “business update” today
by u/elk33dp in Accounting

No numbers or specifics yet except that they seem to have cut a bunch of people who only started last year. We’ll dig around for more and in the meantime, if you have some info we’ll love you forever if you get in touch via email or text.

On the plus side, now some of you can have a proper post-busy season rest. Hang in there.

Update: It ended up being about 300 people, or 2% according to The Times. An RSM spokesperson had this to say about it: “We continually assess our business to ensure alignment with market demand and evolving client needs. As part of this process, we have made the difficult decision to reduce certain roles in our assurance practice and several corporate functions. We are grateful for the contributions of our colleagues, and we are providing severance and career transition support.”

The post Layoff Watch ’26: RSM Trims Down in Audit appeared first on Going Concern.

• President Trump’s Latest Shower Thought Is to Eliminate Quarterly Reporting (September 16, 2025)
• Oh So We’re Actually Going to Get Rid of Quarterly Reporting After All Huh (March 18, 2026)

The SEC today has proposed a change-up to the rules that would allow companies to nix quarterly reporting. Question is, who’s gonna fight for it and who’s gonna applaud its demise?

From the press release:

Public companies, subject to Exchange Act Section 13(a) or 15(d), are currently required to file quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. The proposed amendments, if adopted, would allow these public companies to elect to file semiannual reports on new Form 10-S instead of quarterly reports on Form 10-Q. As a result, companies that elect to file semiannual reports would file one semiannual report and one annual report for each fiscal year in lieu of three quarterly reports and one annual report. The flexibility provided under proposed amendments would enable public companies to choose the interim reporting frequency that would best serve the company and its investors.

“Public companies have an obligation under the federal securities laws to provide information that is material to investors. Yet, the rigidity of the SEC’s rules has prevented companies and their investors from determining for themselves the interim reporting frequency that best serves their business needs and investors. Today’s proposed amendments, if ultimately adopted, would provide companies with increased regulatory flexibility in this regard,” said SEC Chairman Paul S. Atkins in a statement.

Uh huh.

Under the proposal, the filing deadline for semiannual reports on Form 10-S would be 40 or 45 days, depending on the company’s filer status, after the end of the first semiannual period of the fiscal year. The proposal also would amend Regulation S-X, which governs the financial statement requirements for periodic reports, registration statements, and proxy statements, to reflect the new semiannual reporting option and simplify the existing financial statement requirements.

Semiannual public reporting comments are open here for 60 days. We can’t wait to read them!

If you’re into this stuff, Chairman Atkins’ whole statement is worth a read. It talks about the burden of quarterly reporting and how lifting said burden could really do some public companies a solid. We’ll include the important bits below to save you a click. Note how he says FASB should evaluate their own standards while we’re at it:

In determining a company’s reporting cadence, a company might consider factors such as the costs and management time of preparing quarterly reports versus semiannual reports, expectations of its investors, potential effects on its cost of capital, the stage of its business development, the nature of its business model, other avenues of disclosure including earnings calls and current reports on Form 8-K, and prospects of increased research coverage, all without undermining fundamental investor protections. Ultimately, this flexibility might reduce some of the burdens of being a public company and potentially influence a company’s decision to become or remain public. The proposal seeks public input on the optional semiannual reporting framework, and I look forward to the public feedback.

Of course, the frequency of regulatory reporting is only part of the equation for incentivizing companies to go and stay public. Another significant part is ensuring that the disclosure—both financial and non-financial—mandated in interim reports, whether filed quarterly or semiannually, is guided by materiality as the north star. At the SEC, the Commission staff is well underway in exploring potential amendments to Regulation S-K, generally and including the parts implicated by interim reports. With respect to the financial statements required in interim reports, I also encourage the Financial Accounting Standards Board to evaluate potential amendments to its accounting standards, with the same goal of eliciting disclosure of material information and avoid compelling the disclosure of immaterial information.

Today’s proposal is just the first step of the larger, comprehensive effort to review and reshape the current SEC rules governing public companies with respect to their ongoing reporting obligations and their ability to raise capital in the public markets. Over the next few months, I expect that the Commission will be considering a series of proposals that, if adopted, will not only redefine what it means to be a public company, but will make being public attractive again.

A whole series? Oh my.

The post SEC Says “What If We Just… Didn’t” on Quarterly Reporting appeared first on Going Concern.

That’s a Lot of Words to Say Big 4 Sucks

Here’s something lovely from The Telegraph to brighten your Monday: The end of the accountancy gravy train. Look at this graphic they used lol

The (long) article talks about how Big 4 partnership is no longer as illustrious as it once was (was it though?). A few quotes:

Prof Laura Empson, a former board member at KPMG, says the big four model increasingly looks like the “worst of both worlds”, involving all the “complex bureaucracy” that comes with the federalised structure, without the “partnership ethos”.
Some have been left feeling demoralised.

And this:

One former Deloitte partner says the “relentless focus on profit per partner” has caused the firms to become “a lot more short-term,” as partners have pivoted “towards maximising their personal take over a shorter time frame”.

This short-sightedness has limited “their ability to respond to market change” as partners aim for quick gains over long-term growth, he said.

The prioritisation of profits instead of “impact for society” has also taken a psychological toll on many partners in the big four, he says, adding that some have lost faith in the value in their work, as “public perception” has started to turn against the firms too.

When was Big 4 ever about “impact for society” over profits? Someone drank the spiked Kool-Aid.

That’s it for today’s news brief. If you have a tip or story for us, get in touch via email or text and I shall attend to it immediately. K love you bye.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Claude Starts a Turf War With Consulting; An Article About How Much Big 4 Sucks | 5.4.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Law & Order

First Brands Creditor Sues Auditor BDO Over Missed Red Flags [Bloomberg]
A lender that owns First Brands Corp. debt sued auditor BDO USA P.C., alleging it failed to detect problems at the auto parts supplier before it collapsed into bankruptcy and federal prosecutors accused founder Patrick James of fraud. Funds managed by Black Diamond Capital Management said in an April 29 lawsuit that BDO’s audits did not comply with generally accepted auditing standards because they missed “numerous” risk factors, including First Brands’ extensive use of factoring and hundreds of millions of dollars in transfers to James’ personal trust.

Livermore accounting firm seized over alleged unlicensed law practice [Pleasanton Weekly]
The California State Bar announced last week that it had taken over a downtown Livermore business whose owner allegedly provided unlicensed legal services and advice on immigration filings that led one client to risk removal from the country and separation from his family for up to 22 years. When contacted by investigators with the state bar looking into the complaint that was submitted in 2024, owner Irene Raygoza said that she had not meant any harm to the family and acknowledged that she was not a licensed attorney or an “accredited representative.” She admitted to preparing a form for the family, but said that she is not an authorized immigration consultant, and denied advertising immigration services, according to state bar officials.

Deloitte Can’t Escape Trade Secrets Suit Over Vaccine Software [Bloomberg Law]
Deep Dive without paywall here.
Deloitte Consulting LLP failed to convince a federal judge to dismiss the bulk of a trade secrets lawsuit accusing the company of stealing vaccine-tracking technology that generated at least $80 million in payments from the US Centers for Disease Control.

Deloitte Consulting Charged with Discriminating Against Employees Who Take Parental Leave [Lawyers & Settlements]
On April 9, Joanne Barela brought a class action lawsuit against Deloitte Consulting LLP alleging violations of federal and California labor law. Joanne Barela v. Deloitte Consulting LLP accuses Deloitte of discriminating against workers who took parental leave. The discrimination, however, is buried in a formula that affects wage, promotion, and retention decisions for all employees.

Marshall County tax assessor indicted in connection with federal fraud [FOX13 Memphis]
Federal attorneys accuse Barbara Belfoure of “executing and attempting to execute part of a scheme to defraud the United Small Business Administration” by submitting a “false and fraudulent” PPP application, according to documents obtained by FOX13.

Financial Reporting

Refunds on Trump Tariffs Pose Accounting Dilemmas for Companies [Bloomberg Tax]
Nike has paid $1 billion in International Emergency Economic Powers Act tariffs invalidated by the Supreme Court, though potential refunds remain “highly uncertain,” the footwear maker said in its latest quarterly report filed April 1. Meanwhile, Levi Strauss & Co. told investors it would recognize a refund related to $80 million in IEEPA tariffs it paid when accounting rules are met relating to contingencies, or situations with uncertain outcomes that will be resolved in the future.

Tax

Tax committee considers 100% tax on money acquired by fraud [Minnesota House of Representatives]
They’re calling it “The Take It Back Act.” So said Rep. Patti Anderson (R-Dellwood) of HF5040, a bill she sponsors that, as amended, would impose a tax on a person or organization convicted of fraud in a state or federal court. The tax would be equal to 100% of the amount of money acquired by fraud of a public program.

Fifth Circuit reverses Tax Court on ‘limited partner’ definition [Journal of Accountancy]
The Fifth Circuit vacated and remanded a Tax Court decision, holding that the limited partner exception from net earnings from self-employment under Sec. 1402(a)(13) applies to a partner in a limited partnership with limited liability. The court rejected the IRS’s and Tax Court’s “passive-investor” definition of limited partner for purposes of the Sec. 1402(a)(13) exception.

IRS offers extension option for taxpayers facing ERC claim deadlines [Journal of Accountancy]
The taxpayers must (1) be waiting for the IRS to consider the taxpayer’s response to the notice of disallowance on Letter 105-C or 106-C and (2) have six months or less remaining before the two-year period to resolve their claim administratively or to file a refund suit expires.

Stevens introduces bill requiring members of Congress to publicly release tax returns [WLNS]
U.S. Rep. Haley Stevens, D-Birmingham, introduced legislation Thursday that would require all members of Congress and congressional candidates to publicly disclose their federal tax returns each year. Stevens says it’s a challenge to a culture of financial secrecy in Washington. The bill comes days after Stevens voluntarily released her tax return ahead of Tax Day. Her return showed an adjusted gross income of $169,970, a standard deduction of $22,272, and a total tax liability of $28,249. The return showed that she earned no income outside her congressional salary.

HR

‘Resign or be fired’ ultimatum costs Auckland firm $7,000 [Human Resources Director]
Courtney Jansen started at the small Auckland firm on 4 November 2024 under an employment agreement containing a valid 90-day trial provision. By early December, cracks were showing. After a colleague resigned, she found herself managing five inboxes and juggling 44 of the 130 tasks on the firm’s administrative master-list, while still learning the ropes.

Deloitte, Zoom benefit cuts threaten employee trust and retention, experts say [HR Dive]
Erin McAuley, chief people officer at Springline Advisory, an accounting and advisory services firm, said the changes aren’t surprising. “Firms are definitely under real pressure right now between cost structure and our workforce models, client expectations,” she said. But she urged caution. “Benefits aren’t perks, really; they’re signals to people,” McAuley said. “When you think about them as signals — and signals [of] how people translate their value — you have to be very cautious about the different decisions that you’re making.”

Firm Watch

Grant Thornton US to buy Australian sister firm as part of global spree [Financial Times]
Haha FT used the words “sold out” in this article.
Grant Thornton’s private equity-backed US business has announced plans to buy its sister firm in Australia, the latest move in a race with its UK sister firm to consolidate the world’s seventh-largest accounting network. The Australian business will follow Grant Thornton member firms in France, Spain, the United Arab Emirates and a host of others that have already sold out to the US business, which is majority owned by New Mountain Capital.

Grant Thornton CEO rejects private equity quality fears [Financial Review]
Grant Thornton Australia chief executive Said Jahani declined to indicate how much the deal would be worth. But people close to the negotiations, who requested anonymity to speak freely, say the business was worth more than $800 million, or about two times current revenue. “Private equity does not mean that it’s mutually exclusive with quality … [our US colleagues] only want to invest in high-quality firms. They don’t want to invest in high-risk businesses.”

Sikich Acquires Jefferson Wells U.S. [Business Wire]
Sikich, a professional services company specializing in consulting, technology and compliance today announced it has acquired Milwaukee-based Jefferson Wells and their 300+ employees in the U.S. from ManpowerGroup. Jefferson Wells delivers solutions in risk & compliance, finance & accounting, and tax – across a diverse range of industries, including to public and highly regulated companies – through project consulting, integrated resourcing and executive search.

PwC accused of ignoring risk signals during Corporate Travel audits [Financial Review]
PwC appears to have ignored risk signals and failed to exercise sufficient professional scepticism during its long tenure auditing Corporate Travel Management, an accounting expert says. Professor Gary Monroe said PwC should have asked management tougher questions and obtained direct confirmation from the British authorities, given the complexity of the travel company’s government contracts and the scale of the overcharging at the time.

AI

Over 1 in 2 firms have AI privacy concerns: Intuit [Accounting Times]
Cost and time barriers remain key challenges for AI transformation, with many accounting firms expressing concerns about client information privacy and the reliability of these tools, according to Intuit QuickBooks research.

The post Friday Footnotes: Maybe Deloitte Doesn’t Need Employee Trust and Retention; Minnesota Wants to Tax Fraud at 100 Percent | 5.1.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Let’s start with a tip we received yesterday:

Heard from a friend who works in KPMG consulting there was an RIF today. 9am/12pm EST emails went out to people being laid off and if you didn’t get one you were safe.

According to this post on r/KPMG, the meeting invite said “Important Operational Update for Consulting” and it seemed pretty obvious right away what it was since there were 300-400 people on the invite (which everyone on the invite could see).

And the WSJ article:

KPMG is laying off about 4% of its U.S. advisory business in response to weaker demand for regulatory and other services, people familiar with the matter said.

The Big Four accounting firm informed staff Wednesday that it would be primarily letting go of consultants who specialize in regulatory risk advisory, customer operations and financial services, the people said. About half of the cuts were lower-performing consultants and no partners were affected.

Per WSJ, consulting has (had) 10,000 people so about 400 people in this RIF confirmed.

Then you’ve got this poor shlub who was on PTO without their work phone when this all went down:

On PTO abroad during company-wide RIF…will they wait until I’m back or contact me while on PTO?
by u/Feeling-Entrance143 in KPMG

Oof:

Last week it was reported that KPMG told 10% of its audit partners to leave after attempts to gently urge them to retire had failed.

Feel free to reach out via email or text if you want to share more info or just vent, whether you were in this batch or made it out job intact we’re always here with an ear.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: KPMG Cuts 4% From Consulting appeared first on Going Concern.

WSJ:

The firm informed affected staff last week it would be letting go of roughly 250 people, or 3% of its U.S. workforce totaling more than 7,700, the people familiar said. Audit, tax and advisory personnel were affected.

“We regularly evaluate our current business demand to ensure we are positioned to deliver exceptional service to our clients while maintaining a strong talent pipeline,” Forvis Mazars said in a statement. “This assessment sometimes results in targeted workforce adjustments to align our staffing levels with business needs.”

It’s been about three years now that firms across the board have been citing this lower-than-expected attrition, starting with former EY CEO Carmine Di Sibio throwing out a number on a CNBC appearance in May 2023: “It really has nothing to do with ChatGPT…YET,” he said on Squawk on the Street. “It has to do with the fact that many companies were hiring based on attrition rates that were much higher a year ago, a year and a half ago post-Covid, you know, people were leaving, The Great Resignation. Those attrition rates, for example for ourselves, went from 20, over 20 percent, down to 12, pretty suddenly.”

Accountant shortage who?

Comments on r/accounting back this claim up, FWIW:

It seems public accounting is in a nasty holding pattern at the moment. Job market sucks so people don’t want to leave, firms need them to leave because they aren’t making the kind of money they were just a few years ago and need to replace more US salaries with offshore ones, you get the idea. Now we’ve got AI investment in the mix too, they’re going to have to start showing some kind of ROI for all the money they’re throwing at that.

The layoffs will continue until morale attrition improves.

If you were affected by this layoff and want to share your experience, get in touch via email or text. Hang in there, everyone.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: Forvis Mazars Cuts 3% of the Workforce in Unusual Post-Busy Season Culling appeared first on Going Concern.

OK let’s wrap this here. If you have a tip, link, or opinion that you want to share with the class, you are always welcome to reach out via email or text. Tipsters are always anonymous and appreciated.

Oh, and DEI comment guy if you see this can you please give yourself a nickname in the comment section? If you don’t pick one I will and trust me, it’s better if you do.

Have a good week!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: 990s to Get a Facelift; DOJ Gets Busy Busting Fraud | 4.27.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Private Equity

Before and after one CPA firm’s PE ‘flip’ [CFO Brew]
Top 100 CPA firm Schellman was an early adopter of private equity, striking a deal with Lightyear Capital in October 2021. In March 2026, it became one of the first CPA firms to “flip” from one majority private equity owner to another, accepting an investment from Goldman Sachs Alternatives. (Lightyear Capital stayed on as a minority investor.) Schellman’s CEO, Avani Desai, spoke with CFO Brew about how PE has transformed the firm, and what her plans are post-flip.

Big 4

PwC fined $166mn by Hong Kong regulators over Evergrande audit [Financial Times]
The Securities and Futures Commission said on Thursday that the Big Four accounting firm committed “serious breaches of auditors’ professional duties” during its audits of Evergrande in 2019 and 2020. Hong Kong’s accounting regulator said in a separate announcement that it had banned PwC from working for new clients for six months, calling the accounting failures “egregious”.

KPMG and EY demote partners in end of job-for-life model [Financial Times]
Winning promotion to the partnership of a Big Four firm was once a golden ticket to a lucrative job for life. But accountancy firms have begun quietly demoting partners in the UK as they move to concentrate profits among top performers. KPMG and EY have removed members of their equity partnership — the senior practitioners who own the firm and share its profits — and instead offered them “salaried partner” roles, several people with knowledge of the matter told the FT.

Rhode Island finalizes multimillion-dollar settlement with Deloitte after data breach [WJAR]
Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee announced that the state has finalized a multimillion-dollar settlement with Deloitte after the RIBridges data breach in 2024. “This agreement reflects a deliberate effort to protect Rhode Island taxpayers while ensuring the State has the resources needed to move forward,” McKee said. “During the cybersecurity incident, my administration worked diligently to ensure Rhode Islanders maintained access to their benefits. Our focus remains on supporting Rhode Islanders who rely on these critical benefits.”

Big Four accounting faces a talent reckoning — they’re choosing AI over humans, cutting benefits and hiring [The Street]
“AI.” Wait until the guy who wrote this finds out about offshoring.
The number of junior positions has been drying up as firms push into AI, a trend which is observable across white collar fields. In accounting specifically, new grad hiring fell by up to 29% in recent years.

Tax

Feds Announce Marijuana Industry Tax Guidance Is Coming As Rescheduling Takes Effect [Marijuana Moment]
Federal officials said they plan to issue new tax guidance for the marijuana industry following a move by the Trump administration to reclassify cannabis that was announced on Thursday. The U.S. Department of the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) said they “expect DOJ’s action to have significant positive tax consequences for businesses in the medical marijuana industry, and Treasury and the IRS plan to issue guidance to address the principal federal tax issues stemming from” the move.

People

Rethinking skills-based talent models: 4 paths to business value [Deloitte]
Organizations are increasingly focusing on what people can do—their skills—rather than relying on traditional proxies such as job titles. More than half (55%) of 2,300 business leaders in a 2024 Workday survey said they had already begun the transition to a skills-based talent model, with an additional 23% planning to start within the next 12 months. And 81% believe that adopting a skills-based approach increases an organization’s potential for economic growth. But recent Deloitte research shows that many organizations are struggling to realize tangible value from their skills-based approaches.

AI

Facing cost pressures, CFOs turn to AI and automation [Journal of Accountancy]
Savings could be around the corner for CFOs who invest more of their budgets in technology upgrades, the results of a new survey suggest. Deloitte’s Q1 2026 North American CFO Signals survey identified cost management as the top internal risk facing 200 CFOs polled from organizations with at least $1 billion in annual revenues. The CFOs voted for “automation or technology upgrades” as the lever that has proved to be most effective for controlling costs.

The best AI model still fails 1 in 5 accounting tasks [CFO.com]
Writes Woosung Chun, CFO at DualEntry:
We ran 19 leading AI models through 101 real accounting workflows. Not trivia. Not a “what is accounts payable” multiple choice. Actual accounting scenarios: Classify this transaction, create a journal entry for this scenario, reconcile this bank statement and close the month. The kind of work that sits in every finance team’s queue every single day. The best model we tested scored 79.2% accuracy. That was Claude Opus 4.7. Second place was OpenAI GPT-5.4 at 77.3%. GPT-4 scored 39.8% on the same tasks. Whatever you think about AI, that trajectory is hard to ignore.

Majority of US business leaders not confident they could pass AI audit – study [Global Legal Post]
Almost eight in 10 business leaders in the US are unsure whether they could pass an independent AI governance audit if it were imposed within the next 90 days, according to a Grant Thornton report. The 2026 AI Impact Survey found that 78% of executives lack strong confidence that they could pass such an audit, with as many as 48% of organisations’ boards failing to set any AI governance expectations despite the significant investment going into AI tools (three-quarters of boards have approved major AI investments).

Research shows AI can catch financial errors before they cost millions [Phys.org]
What if auditors could predict when errors are more likely to occur in financial reporting? Instead of simply improving techniques for detecting errors, they could focus on how to stop them from happening. This is the focus of work by Chanyuan (Abigail) Zhang Parker, assistant professor of accounting in the UT San Antonio Carlos Alvarez College of Business. Parker’s paper, “Predicting Material Misstatements Using Machine Learning,” was published in The Accounting Review.

Audit

What Is Audit Quality? [CPA Journal]
What is audit quality? This is not meant as a philosophical question, but rather as one that can be answered through definitions and evidence drawn from practice, audit committees, regulators, and academics. Because each stakeholder has different incentives and priorities, agreeing on a definition has been difficult. Regulators focus on compliance and consistency, audit firms emphasize efficiency and reputation, investors value reliability and transparency, and academics seek measurable constructs. Understanding and measuring audit quality requires connecting these diverse perspectives into conceptual ideals and observable behaviors that can be evaluated, compared, and improved.

HKICPA: High-quality auditing vital for capital market integrity [China Daily]
The Hong Kong Institute of Certified Public Accountants (HKICPA) has said high-quality auditing is the cornerstone that can maintain market confidence and integrity of the city’s capital market. The accounting profession’s statutory body was responding to the Securities and Futures Commission’s (SFC) Thursday announcement that it has reached an agreement with PricewaterhouseCoopers Hong Kong (PwC HK) for the auditor to set aside HK$1 billion ($128 million) to compensate independent minority shareholders of Chinese mainland developer China Evergrande Group.

The post Friday Footnotes: Partners Taking Ls; PwC Eats a Big Ol’ Fine; A Post 4/20 IRS Surprise | 4.24.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

To be clear, shit is in fact bad. But there’s a lot of pertinent information underneath that headline that paints a different picture. Like this, for example:

KPMG is cutting about 10 per cent of its US audit partners, after years of failed attempts to urge more of them to retire early to improve productivity at the accounting firm.

The firm revealed the cull in a meeting on Wednesday where attendees were told that the action was needed because the size of the partnership was bloated relative to business, according to people familiar with the matter.

Bloomberg Tax wrote this in their story:

KPMG will slash the number of partners running its US assurance business in a bid to boost the unit’s productivity and better align its staffing with market demands.

The reductions come after KPMG LLP had offered early retirement packages to entice partners to leave the practice over the past few years, the Big Four accounting and consulting firm said.

OK so the partnership is fat, profits are small, and these boomers (in spirit if not entirely in age) wouldn’t go quietly into that good night. It’s never a good sign for the proletariat when the partners start dropping like flies but we don’t think this is worth panicking about either.

Pour one out for the departing partners and cross your fingers that one is angry enough about it to get in touch with us to talk about what happened.

The post KPMG Shoves 10% of Its Audit Partners Out the Door appeared first on Going Concern.

Fast-forward to 2026 and now they’re calling remote tax people into the office, according to an email we’ve seen. An email that reads:

Team,

I’m reaching out with an update on how we’ll continue working together across the Tax practice.

Effective July 1, 2026, Tax will move to a consistent hybrid model. Professionals will be expected to work from a PwC office or client site at least three days per week, and the virtual Way of Working profile will be sunset as we enter the new fiscal year.

You are receiving this note because you are currently in the virtual profile and will be updated to hybrid effective July 1. We recognize this will be an adjustment, and we’re committed to supporting you through the transition.

As we continue investing in our apprenticeship model, time together in person strengthens our culture and supports learning and development through real-time coaching, observation, and feedback. It also increases collaboration, visibility, and connection across teams—helping us serve clients and grow our practice.

We also know flexibility matters, and some personal circumstances or locations may warrant a conversation. Please work with your engagement teams and connect with your Development Leader to discuss your situation, available support, and what this means for you.

Partners and engagement teams will share additional guidance and best practices for in-office expectations. Please reach out to your Development Leader or engagement leaders with questions, feedback, or support needs.

Thank you for all that you do for our clients, and for each other. Your contributions continue to make a meaningful impact across our Tax practice.

As far as we’re aware PwC has been hybrid-ish for some time now. The firm announced a soft RTO around this time in 2023 with staff in the “Virtual” profile like our tipster expected to show their face in the office or at a client site a few times a month as needed. To be clear, PwC called these “expectations and not mandates” just so this story they got Reuters to write in 2021 didn’t look like a fucking lie:

What this latest decision says to us is that they’re hoping to trim headcount without the unfortunate layoff headlines that tend to accompany such a move because making your remote people come in tends to lead to at least some of them deciding the commute isn’t worth it.

Sure was nice while it lasted, eh?

The post PwC Tells Remote Tax Staff to Get Their Butts Into the Office appeared first on Going Concern.

Accounting firms are scaling back the role of human auditors in routine testing of things like payroll and revenue contracts, long a critical part of their work, amid a greater reliance on AI agents.

KPMG said it plans to remove humans from routine testing so they can focus on more complicated tasks, while “orchestration agents”—which autonomously manage several agents, potentially more than 20—handle testing duties. That switch will start with a pilot program this summer, with plans for full AI agent deployment on certain tests next year.

While human auditors won’t perform routine testing, they will still review it, work on data collection and do risk assessment. Of these four areas of the audit, only routine testing was listed as having no human audit team associated with it within two to three years, according to a presentation in a KPMG briefing.

What this confirms for us is something we’ve been saying for a while now: offshore staff are the ones most at risk from automation. They’re the ones doing this kind of work after all. So what happens after their tasks are pushed off on AI? Do firms keep them around and push higher level work on them until it’s just US-based partners in empty offices, a staff of AI-reviewers offshore, and an army of agents doing the grunt work in a server somewhere?

And the most important question of all: who is ultimately responsible when things go wrong as they surely will?

To revisit a quote from Firms Tell the PCAOB There’s an Offshoring Brain Drain (published December 12, 2024):

“Our staff now will never see cash testing, as it is done offshore. We are going to see the impact of that when they are managers.”

Here we haven’t even seen the full effect of mass offshoring and they’re already speedrunning AI.

Note to any clients reading this: be sure to ask for a discount.

The post KPMG Plans to Hand Routine Testing Off to AI appeared first on Going Concern.

OK let’s call this news brief done. If you have a comment on anything here, or a tip for us, reach out via email or text anytime. Find us on the former bird app @going_concern. Have a great week, you.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: AI Boom Investor Fraud Off to a Strong Start; Do We Even Need Tax Pros? | 4.20.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Law & Order

Former EY employee sues firm over dismissal after viral Israel speech [Financial Times]
Cecilia Culver, who was hired as an assistant economist by EY last year, claims her dismissal following her address last May breached her civil rights. Culver had used the speech at her George Washington University graduation ceremony to call on the school to disclose its financial investments and divest from companies she said were profiting from “genocide” in Gaza. An intense reaction online, with commentators variously praising her eloquence and bravery or dubbing her antisemitic, quickly drew attention to her five-month-old job at EY, which she landed after an internship the previous summer.

AI

AI-Focused Accounting Is Hindered by State CPA Licensing Laws [Bloomberg Tax]
Jack Castonguay writes:
The US’ antiquated licensure laws, which vary by state, haven’t kept pace with the changing nature of the profession. Take the state I am licensed in—New York. To be a licensed CPA in New York, you need 33 semesters hours of collegiate accounting credit, 18 of which must be in upper-level classes, and another 36 hours in business credits. So, a firm could hire a brilliant AI engineer or computer scientist with a master’s degree in their field, train them to become an expert in US generally accepted accounting principles, and yet that person would never be able to sign an audit opinion because they wouldn’t be CPA-eligible.

Firm Watch

Grant Thornton sale rounds the finish line [Financial Review]
It’s down to the short strokes for the sale of Grant Thornton Australia, Australia’s eighth-largest accounting firm by revenue, as 182 partners hold their breath. Street Talk reported in March that the firm’s American counterpart, Grant Thornton US, had begun active due diligence to acquire the Australian operation. Grant Thornton US is partly owned by New York’s $US60 billion ($85.3 billion) New Mountain Capital.

CBIZ names former Marcum exec chief information officer [Crain’s Cleveland Business]
A longtime Marcum executive who joined CBIZ Inc. through an acquisition has been named as the accounting giant’s new chief information officer. CBIZ announced it has promoted Peter Scavuzzo to the role of senior vice president, chief information and technology officer, effective May 1. He will succeed current CIO John Fleischer, who is retiring.

PwC partner income rises to $814,000 due to AI adoption, fewer staff [Financial Review]
PwC Australia increased average partner income to $814,000 in 2025, up 6 per cent on the previous year despite the accounting firm’s profit dipping 2 per cent to $608 million, as the rollout of artificial intelligence capability boosted efficiency. The result, the second consecutive year of pay growth for partners amid falling earnings, reflects a shift in the firm’s operating model as increased use of AI and a reduced partner and staff headcount help increase margins.

BDO to reduce senior partners clearing path for younger staff [Consulting.uk]
While the firm is still looking to push ahead with its own technological innovation programme, it is also planning to cut around 6% of its total partner headcount. As reported by the Financial Times, the firm is set to cut 31 partners – many of them senior members, who were expected to retire soon, or were hires from rivals – as it looks to make room for younger staff.

Audit

Martinsville ex-city manager used taxpayer funds for lavish travel, meals [ABC13 (Virginia)]
Martinsville’s government is facing renewed scrutiny after a forensic audit found the former city manager used taxpayer money on what auditors described as lavish hotels, dinners and transportation — including high-dollar meals and hotel stays that lacked clear justification. The audit by Brown Edwards reviewed 307 purchases made by former city manager Aretha Ferrell Benavides using the city’s purchasing card. Auditors found 22 percent of those purchases had no review by anyone other than Benavides.

SEC Chief Enforcement Accountant Confirms SEC to Staff New Enforcement Group Targeting Auditors and SOX Compliance [JD Supra]
The SEC has announced the creation of a new enforcement team focused on auditing-related misconduct, signaling heightened scrutiny of auditors and potential SOX violations. The new unit—referred to as the “SOX Group”—will sit within the SEC’s Enforcement Division and is intended to investigate and litigate violations of SOX auditing standards and related provisions. The SEC has begun openly recruiting enforcement personnel for the group, signaling that this initiative is intended to play a sustained and meaningful role in the Commission’s enforcement program. Speaking on a Practicing Law Institute (PLI) panel titled “Audit Committees, Special Committees, and Internal Investigations 2026,” Ryan Wolfe, chief accountant, Division of Enforcement, noted that the SOX Group was seeking to hire accountants and attorneys with specialized knowledge of auditing standards and other relevant securities laws.

PCAOB changes could reshape accounting malpractice risk [Reuters]
QC 1000 is likely to have significant implications for auditor malpractice claims, but it is not yet in force.

Tax

IRS Builds Awareness to Encourage Whistleblower Reports [Tax Notes]
The Internal Revenue Service today issued a Whistleblower Alert highlighting an area of concern about misuse, diversion or fraudulent use of federal funds by tax-exempt organizations, individuals and businesses, and urged the public to provide information. “Whistleblower Alerts are a new way for the IRS to spotlight high-risk areas and reach people who may have direct knowledge of noncompliance,” said IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano. “We are expanding how we identify potential fraud, and these alerts will help connect us with individuals who can provide credible, timely information.”

IRS launches online tool to help taxpayers manage tax debt [Journal of Accountancy]
The Tax Debt Help tool debuted Thursday, the day after the end of the filing season. It’s designed to provide businesses and individuals with an easy way to research payment options and find what they should do next, the IRS said in a news release. The tool “shows the transformation underway at the IRS and the progress the agency has already made to deliver more user-friendly, digital-first services to taxpayers,” IRS CEO Frank Bisignano said in the release.

IRS Releases Rules for Enrolled Agent Exam Fee Reduction [Bloomberg Tax]
The Treasury Department and IRS released an interim final rule and proposed rule related to reduced fees for the special enrollment examinations for enrolled agents. The fee per part is dropping from $99 to $66, according to the rules.

The post Friday Footnotes: PwC Partners Are Doing Great These Days; IRS Encourages Whistleblowing | 4.17.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Some bad news from BI, Deloitte is cutting benefits for non-client-facing staff. Gee these belts are getting a bit too tight these days.

Deloitte plans to pare back several core benefits for some of its employees, according to internal documents and a meeting recording seen by Business Insider.

Parental leave, annual PTO, a pension plan, and IVF funding will be cut for a group of employees who fall under the “Center” talent model, which broadly refers to employees in internal support roles, such as admin, IT support, and finance.

BI added that the cuts will affect some people in the Enterprise Solutions team who are categorized in this “Center” bracket.

The change, which takes effect on January 1, 2027, will cut parental leave from 16 weeks to eight and will eliminate the $50,000 adoption/surrogacy/IVF benefit. PTO will be trimmed down to 18-25 days, depending on seniority.

The quote the firm gave might as well read ‘Cause fuck ’em, that’s why: “Deloitte US is modernizing its talent architecture to provide a more tailored experience reflective of our professionals’ broad range of skills and the work they do serving our clients. Benefits are regularly updated and will be tailored for a small subset of professionals to better align with the marketplace,” the spokesperson said.

Deloitte is cutting down PTO, parental leave, and other benefits for some US workers [Business Insider]

The post Deloitte to Slash Benefits For Non Client-Facing Staff appeared first on Going Concern.

Anyway, here’s what he had to say:

The IRS worked for months to ensure the agency and taxpayers were ready for the 2026 tax filing season. We estimate that more than 140 million individual tax returns for tax year 2025 will have been filed by the tax deadline.

The annual filing season is the IRS’s most visible operational mission. Success depends on providing taxpayers and tax professionals with accessible filing options, a modern digital experience, secure and timely processing, and responsive assistance when help is needed. I am pleased to report the filing season opened successfully on January 26 and has run smoothly in terms of return processing and the performance of our IT systems. To give you an idea of how well our systems have performed: at the peak on that first day, our systems enabled us to successfully receive 1,200 submissions per second and send 600 acknowledgements per second.

As noted above, the IRS workforce navigated preparation for the 2026 filing season while implementing major tax changes in the WFTC [The Working Families Tax Cuts] designed to help working families across America. This situation challenged our ability to make the necessary annual changes for the filing season. Nonetheless, as a result of the ongoing efforts of our employees, the IRS has delivered a smooth filing season again this year.

Anecdotally, we did see fewer complaints about the IRS itself coming from tax pros on Xitter this year. That could be because they were too busy complaining about the increased numbers of insane, entitled, and otherwise difficult clients.

VITA, or more specifically the volunteers who power it, also put in a helluva lot of work this year. Those of you who gave your time and expertise this year deserve a hearty pat on the back for your service.

Expanding access to filing and payments options increases voluntary compliance and reduces burden on taxpayers, particularly those with low and moderate incomes. Multiple free and low-cost options to file such as the IRS Free File program, which have an almost 3% increase over prior year, or our VITA program which has filed over 2M returns through March 2026. IRS is working with tax industry to provide a wholistic count of total free returns, such as last year the combined efforts of industry and IRS resulted in 30M free returns.

Feel free to share your Tax Season 2026 highs and lows in the comments if you’re so inclined.

The post The IRS Delivered a Smooth Filing Season Again This Year, Says IRS appeared first on Going Concern.

Financial Times reports that their birdies are pointing to an overhaul in consulting at PwC, one that will lead to even more use of offshore services:

PwC plans to overhaul its global consulting business in a bid to eliminate the sometimes disjointed service when its national firms work together, which bosses view as a disadvantage against more tightly integrated rivals.

A blueprint being drawn up by international leaders is designed to standardise PwC’s services across the globe and increase the use of shared staff in locations such as India, according to five people familiar with the effort.

The planning has been given a new urgency by the rise of AI and the threat of major upheaval across the consulting industry, the people said.

Global advisory revenue was $24.3 billion USD for 2025, an increase of just 4.5% over 2024. So they’re struggling a bit for sure.

You know, if you’re wanting more consulting work and are worried about clients choosing AI over your expensive services, relying heavily on shared service centers to do what work you do have isn’t the way to make things work out in your favor long-term. But what do we know, we’re not global PwC leadership.

Meanwhile, and possibly related to this, a US-based tipster informs us that there are changes to health benefits coming. Evidently the people team is already anticipating some griping about whatever these changes are. We, and PwCers, should have more details later this week.

The race to the bottom continues!

The post Uh Oh, PwC Is Up to Something appeared first on Going Concern.

Having mercy on the empty wallets of aspiring CPAs, a few years ago Becker launched the Newt D. Becker CPA Exam Review Course Scholarship Program for candidates who don’t have the luxury of getting their course paid for by their firm. This year’s scholarship was supposed to give 130 future CPAs a completely free $2,499 course (for those doing the math at home, that’s $324,870) and those who applied earlier this year were supposed to find out last Tuesday if they would be among the lucky winners.

Emails started going out on Tuesday as expected. Except, and this is where the boo-boo comes in, people who hadn’t actually won were advised that they’d won and prompted to complete the next steps to receive the scholarship.

This is from “Becker told me I won a scholarship, took my SSN via W-9… then said it was a mistake” on r/CPA:

Brutal. The reader’s first instinct seeing this is *scam!* but honestly, that would be a pretty advanced scam to impersonate Becker and send out emails on the actual day applicants were expecting to hear back about the scholarship just to get someone’s SSN. It wasn’t a scam, Becker confirmed as much:

As the kids say: yikes. Almost makes you wish it was a scam eh?

At this point people are naturally getting worked up about it — you would be too if you were told you had just been handed $2500 in free money for something you need only for it to get snatched away just as quickly as it arrived — and Becker was going to have to do something about it. Which they did.

Here’s what Becker had to say on r/CPA a few days ago. TLDR They messed up and they know it so they’re going to honor the erroneous scholarship offers.

On April 7, we made a big mistake and sent out incorrect emails to applicants for the Newt D. Becker scholarships, mistakenly informing them that they had won. This was 100% our fault – someone on the team made the error and no one else caught it. We’re human.

But that doesn’t excuse it. We know anyone affected felt disappointed, confused, frustrated, and probably even pretty mad.

So, we’re working to right this wrong. Everyone who received the congratulatory email will receive the full scholarship (free Advantage Exam Review) to help you on your journey towards earning your CPA license. To redeem your scholarship, or for questions or concerns, reach out to our customer service team at 877.272.3926 or a member of our team will contact you within 3–5 business days.

And we also know some of you are still waiting in limbo to hear. If you haven’t gotten any email or notification at all, reach out to us at beckercustomerservice@becker.com

Thanks for holding us accountable and being patient with us while we get this worked out.

This response is why I love you guys:

So what did we learn? Well, life is cruel (but we knew that). We also learned that it’s never a bad idea to check email headers just in case so you aren’t flippantly throwing your SSN around and Becker learned to quadruple check the congratulations spreadsheet before sending out emails. Unless Becker publicizes this, and I can’t see why they would, we won’t know just how many people ended up getting free courses but it’s safe to say this was a costly mistake for them. Fortunately for them it doesn’t actually cost them $2500 per candidate.

Are we satisfied with this resolution?

The post Faced With PR Nightmare Due to Email Mistake, Becker Chooses the “Fine, Everyone Wins” Option appeared first on Going Concern.

I Should Have Gone to Trade School

The local news in Wichita made finance and accounting the theme for their job of the day, this is the job:

Not sure why they had to drag accounting into this. That’s a bank teller is it not?

K I’m done. Get in touch via email or text if you have something for me, be it a story, tip, or pithy observation. Find us on Xitter at @going_concern. Bye!

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: Tax Day Used to Be a Big Party; A Tale of Two PwCs | 4.13.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

A Love Letter to Spreadsheets

“The spreadsheet will become irrelevant”

No. The spreadsheet is eternal. The spreadsheet paradigm IS capitalism. The two are irrevocably intertwined.

We were using spreadsheets 3,000 years ago to trade oxen. We will still use them in 3,000 years

Long live the spreadsheet https://t.co/V4wZw149Qs pic.twitter.com/FyN4bTexn9

— BuccoCapital Bloke (@buccocapital) April 9, 2026

Audit

ICAS opens accelerated route to UK AQ for overseas auditors [The Accountant Online]
The Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) has launched a new pathway for experienced overseas auditors to obtain UK Audit Qualification (AQ) and move more swiftly to ICAS membership and chartered accountant status. The scheme, which has received approval from the Financial Reporting Council (FRC), is aimed at senior members of a range of internationally recognised professional accountancy bodies.

UK accounting watchdog to probe PwC’s audit of investment trust Digital 9 [Reuters]
Britain’s accounting ‌watchdog on Thursday opened a probe into PricewaterhouseCoopers’ financial audit of UK-based investment ​trust Digital 9 Infrastructure (DGI9.L), opens new tab for the ​fiscal year ended December 2023. “We will cooperate fully with the FRC in its ​enquiries. Audit quality is of ​paramount importance and we are committed to delivering ‌high-quality ⁠audits,” a PwC spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters.

AI

In This Critical Part of Audits, the Accountant’s Role Is Shrinking Fast [Wall Street Journal]
Accounting firms are scaling back the role of human auditors in routine testing of things like payroll and revenue contracts, long a critical part of their work, amid a greater reliance on AI agents. KPMG said it plans to remove humans from routine testing so they can focus on more complicated tasks, while “orchestration agents”—which autonomously manage several agents, potentially more than 20—handle testing duties. That switch will start with a pilot program this summer, with plans for full AI agent deployment on certain tests next year.

EY’s talent chief says AI is changing the entire employee lifecycle, from talent development to promotions [Business Insider]
“Undoubtedly, AI is changing how work is done,” Ginnie Carlier, EY Americas’ chief talent and culture officer, told Business Insider in an interview. “The traditional organizational pyramid is giving way to more flexible career portfolios, where impact matters more than title or tenure. Managers’ roles are evolving quickly,” she added. “They’re increasingly responsible for cultivating a psychologically safe environment where people can experiment, fail forward and learn from AI; coaching and developing others; and leading teams comprised of both humans and agents.”

Accounting Firms Navigate Compensation as AI Tools Upend Work [Bloomberg Podcasts]
Artificial intelligence is putting accounting firm leaders on alert for workers well-versed in using and managing the new tools as the industry invests heavily in modernizing workflows.

Tax

New U.S. Postal Service Rules Could Affect Whether Your Tax Filing Is Considered On Time [National Taxpayer Advocate]
The USPS adopted new rules governing postmarks, effective December 24, 2025. Instead of reflecting the date when you drop your mail in a mailbox or hand it to a carrier, a postmark may reflect when the mail is first processed at a USPS facility. While these changes are intended to improve mail processing efficiency at limited post offices, they may have unintended consequences for taxpayers who rely on the mail to file returns or send payments, depending on how the USPS implements its new procedures.

What bothers Americans most about taxes? Feeling that some corporations, wealthy people don’t pay their fair share [Pew Research Center]
A Pew Research Center survey, conducted Jan. 20-26 among 8,512 U.S. adults, also finds that: 51% of Americans say the complexity of the federal tax system bothers them a lot. That’s roughly on par with past years; 41% are bothered a lot by the amount they personally pay in taxes. That share has grown steadily over the last several years; Only 12% say a sense that lower-income people don’t pay their fair share bothers them a lot.

IRS CEO, in Brooklyn, promotes tax breaks and refunds alongside GOP House member [POLITICO]
“We have issued 70 million refunds,” IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank Bisignano said. “We have processed over 100 million tax returns. And the refunds are totaling $242 billion. That’s an average of $3,400 and 11 percent higher than last year.”

Whitehall tax collector charged with harassing owners of homeless nonprofit [NBC Philadelphia]
A former Republican mayoral candidate and tax collector for Whitehall Township is facing charges of harassment and official oppression after, law enforcement officials allege, she intentionally lied to harass the owners of The Caring Place nonprofit organization.

12 years in prison for NJ man in $170M COVID-19 tax relief fraud case [New Jersey Monitor]
A Teaneck tax preparer was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison for orchestrating what prosecutors say is the largest COVID-19 tax relief fraud case tried to date in the nation, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey announced Wednesday. “Pandemic relief programs were created to support Americans during a national crisis, but Haynes — a tax preparer entrusted to help people comply with the law — treated those programs as a personal cash machine,” U.S. Attorney Robert Frazer said in a statement. “Our office will continue to pursue those who exploit emergency relief programs and hold them accountable for stealing from the American people.”

The post Friday Footnotes: Feds Get a Tax Preparer in Their Biggest Pandemic Relief Bust Yet; AI Is Coming For Offshore Busy Work | 4.10.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

The case is still open before the WRC. It’s unclear to us as ignorant Yanks what will even happen with her constructive dismissal case from here, WRC cases have only been public for the last few years. Here’s one of their recent decisions to give you an idea:

In all seriousness, here’s a good outline of other constructive dismissal cases that have gone before the WRC, as explained by actual lawyers in Ireland.

We’ll keep you posted.

The post Apparently Shouting “Promote Me! Promote Me!” in a Partner’s Face Can Get You Promoted at Deloitte appeared first on Going Concern.

From EY’s press release:

EY launches enterprise-scale agentic AI to redefine the audit experience for the AI era

EY is directly embedding a new multi-agent framework, integrated with Microsoft Azure, Microsoft Foundry and Microsoft Fabric, into EY Canvas — the single, global Assurance technology platform that processes more than 1.4 trillion lines of journal entry data per year. Encompassing the daily workflows of 130,000 Assurance professionals across 160,000 audit engagements and more than 150 countries and territories, these capabilities will help audit teams orchestrate complex tasks, processes and technologies, and address risks more dynamically, while accessing continuously updated auditing and accounting guidance — at unprecedented scale and speed.

This overall agentic integration immediately embeds AI in all phases of the audit globally through the EY Canvas platform. This follows a sustained period of extensive and successful testing and piloting. It is expected to support all end-to-end audit activities by 2028.

This all sounds great on paper — or in this case, words on a screen — but what does this mean practically? Answer: no one knows yet. They can’t just set AI loose and put it to work.

Our prediction is that if this does actually result in significant benefit to hours worked at some point that benefit will show in offshore staffing levels (at last count, EY has about 74,000 Global Delivery Services people). They’re the ones most at risk from automation, the people previously at risk (early career grunts) having been replaced already by offshore staff. If firms stop announcing that they’re building large global delivery facilities (see this example from last year: EY Opens Up a New 22,000 Sq Ft Offshore Office in India), then we’ll know the AI is paying off.

Until then, regulators better hurry up and do more than just issue loose guidance about this stuff. And have we figured out how to train up the next generation of managers in this global, tech-forward nightmare future yet?

The post AI Will Be EY Auditors’ New BFF, According to EY appeared first on Going Concern.

As for the four biggest accounting firms in the world, partners and accounting students with intern offers who constantly name drop their firm will be happy to hear all four made the list. Deloitte made it the highest this year, taking that distinction back from PwC who topped 2025’s list at #20.

Wow PwC’s got a little dark for a second there didn’t it?

Other notable entries on the list, in numerical order:

In case you’re wondering how these rankings are calculated, give the methodology a look. TLDR Great Place To Work collects and analyzes employee surveys.

Using our proprietary Trust Index survey, we measure the core of what we know creates great workplaces — key behaviors that drive trust in management, connection with colleagues, and loyalty to the company.

The survey enables employees to share confidential quantitative and qualitative feedback about their organization’s culture by responding to 60 statements on a five-point scale and answering two open-ended questions.

Employees tell us whether leaders are accessible, communicate honestly and clearly, and if their actions match their words. They tell us whether they feel respected as individuals, if they receive training benefits, appreciation, support for their well-being and opportunities to contribute. They tell us whether they believe their company is fair related to pay, profits, promotions, recognition, favoritism and opportunities. They tell us if they are proud of their work, their team, and their company and if they feel they make a difference, and their work is meaningful. And they tell us whether they enjoy the people they work with, feel cared for and can be themselves.

List rankings are based on this employee feedback, which we analyze to determine the extent to which this experience is shared by the full workforce. Great Place To Work measures the differences in survey responses across demographic groups and roles within each organization to assess both the quality and consistency of the employee experience. Statements are weighted according to their relevance in describing the most important aspects of an equitable workplace.

Now that you’ve read that, give their privacy policy a quick look. Surveys are supposed to be anonymous, just don’t go writing a bunch of bad stuff that can be traced back to you in those open-ended questions.

For those of you who’ve taken these surveys, are you honest?

The post Once Again, a Mid-Tier Firm Beat Out Big 4 on This ‘Best Companies’ List appeared first on Going Concern.

Yeah let’s wrap this up here. If you have a tip, a story, or a grip you’d like to share with the class feel free to reach out via email or text and we’ll chat. Love you byyyyye.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: You Can’t Spell Audit Without AI; An Elaborate Scheme to Defraud the Air Force | 4.6.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Big 4

EY Tells US Tax Staff to Work From Office Three Days a Week [Bloomberg]
EY has told US tax staff they need to be in the office an average of three days a week, in a tightening of the firm’s hybrid working policy. Staff in the accounting and consulting firm’s US tax business will be required to work on the premises or at a client site 12 days a month from July 1, according to people familiar with the situation.

AI

Accounting firms increasingly embrace AI tools [Virginia Business]
“Security is paramount, but accuracy is probably the biggest challenge,” Wallace says. While Microsoft Excel changed how accountants did their work beginning in the 1980s, the technology didn’t necessarily make the job any easier or simpler, says Gary Wallace, managing partner at Keiter. “That’s how we’re looking at AI: How do we best use these tools to help our team be able to work better but also help our clients reach better decisions?”

KPMG sees ’10x consultant’ potential as its tax pros start building their own tools [Business Insider]
In January and February, the company completed a six-week pilot involving about 30 tax experts working in small teams with engineers to vibe code workable software prototypes. Many of the participants, who included associates and managers, didn’t have deep technical backgrounds, Brad Brown, the company’s chief digital officer for tax, told Business Insider. “By the end of six weeks, they were vibe coding solutions,” he said. “Right before your eyes, you’re starting to see the evolution of how they were going to deliver services.”

Three out of four global leaders will prioritize AI investment despite economic uncertainty, KPMG Global AI Pulse survey finds [KPMG]
The findings show that global enthusiasm for AI is unwavering, but only a few are scaling fast enough to turn that spend into real business value. Leaders plan to invest a weighted global average of US$186 million in AI over the next 12 months, and 74 percent say AI will remain a top investment priority even in the event of a recession. While most organizations (64 percent) cite AI as already delivering meaningful business outcomes, they face growing challenges — from measuring and quantifying value, to adapting governance models at the required speed, managing data privacy and cyber risks, and addressing workforce resistance. These risks and challenges are keeping many global organizations in the experimentation and piloting stage of AI implementation, while a meaningful minority (11 percent) are gaining edge through AI agent deployment, scaling across functions and beginning to coordinate them across workflows.

Here’s where HR and finance aren’t in lockstep, according to Deloitte data [HR Executive]
Deloitte’s CFO Guide to Tech Trends 2026 describes a workforce in which agentic AI and humans work in tandem to execute finance work, and frames the core human competencies of critical thinking, curiosity and ethics as things that must be actively balanced against new technologies. Deloitte’s 2026 Global Human Capital Trends report makes the same argument in a different language, warning that most organizations are still designing work for people and technology separately, rather than designing for both together. It finds that only 14% of leaders say they are “adept” at shaping human-AI interactions.

Tax

Tax Filing Relief Granted to DHS Personnel: An Analysis for Practitioners [Current Federal Tax Developments]
On April 1, 2026, the U.S. Department of the Treasury issued a news release titled “Treasury and IRS Announce Tax Filing Relief to DHS Personnel”. This official Treasury guidance, issued in coordination with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), establishes formal administrative relief for a specific class of taxpayers currently impacted by a lapse in government appropriations. For CPAs and EAs representing federal employees, understanding the exact parameters of this relief is essential for proper tax planning and compliance during the current filing season.

Lawsuit Aims to Block Chicago’s New Social Media Tax. Here’s What to Know [WTTW]
NetChoice, a trade association representing the tech industry, filed a lawsuit in Cook County on March 13 to block the Social Media Amusement Tax included in Chicago’s 2026 spending plan. Crafted by Mayor Brandon Johnson, the measure forces social media companies to pay a tax of 50 cents per month for every active user after the first 100,000 users, under the city’s amusement tax authority, officials said. NetChoice in a statement said the tax violates “free speech rights, unfairly discriminates against digital publications, violates federal law and harms Chicago residents and their businesses.”

Georgia legislature passes income tax cut, increase standard deductions including on tips [WABE]
The Georgia legislature passed a bill Thursday to reduce the flat personal income tax rate to 3.99% for tax year 2028 and increase standard deductions, including on tips, sending it to Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk to sign into law.

Miami-Dade tax collector’s clerk accused of secretly renewing licenses, officials say [NBC 6]
Police said Waldersee Oge would get paid to secretly renew people’s licenses. An arrest report states that his own supervisor was shocked when she noticed him scanning documents into the state’s database without any customers in front of him—which is illegal in Florida. Oge was allegedly caught using his position to get into the state’s data base to then clear people’s suspended licenses. Authorities said he would also issue temporary driving permits for customers without them being physically present.

Audit

Halifax County town at risk of losing control of finances after not submitting audits for 5 years [CBS17]
A small Halifax County town is at risk of having its finances taken over by the state after not submitting its audit for the past five years, the North Carolina Department of the State Treasurer said.

Utah State Auditor identified nearly half a billion dollars in diverted Medicaid funds [Utah Policy]
“It is deeply concerning that over half of the funds intended to support medicaid patients in skilled nursing facilities didn’t reach the intended recipients,” said State Auditor Tina M. Cannon. “These are not just numbers on a spreadsheet, this is about ensuring that this type of Medicaid funding is used for its intended purpose – to provide direct care and improve the quality of life for patients in nursing facilities.”

Wipfli extends partnership with the Philadelphia Eagles [Wipfli]
Through the renewed agreement, Wipfli will continue serving as the independent auditor for the Eagles, providing objective insight that supports transparency, accountability and long‑term organizational strength.

O Canada

CPA Canada welcomes new board under governance model driven by individual CPAs [CPA Canada]
The appointments coincide with CPA Canada’s transition to a more modern governance model—effective April 1 strengthening accountability to members and reinforcing CPA Canada’s role as a national body focused on serving and advancing the profession.

KPMG Faces Allegations of Blown Audit in Private Credit Collapse [Bloomberg]
Canada’s top securities regulator alleged that KPMG LLP, the auditor for four funds managed by collapsed private lender Bridging Finance Inc., failed to properly value the loans held within the funds, harming investors. The Ontario Securities Commission claimed in a filing on Tuesday that KPMG falsely represented the quality of the audits it conducted for the 2019 and 2020 fiscal years, and fell short by “failing to consistently challenge and validate audit evidence it gathered.” When KPMG found loans that were overstated, it wrongly assumed the findings were isolated to those loans, the regulator said.

The post Friday Footnotes: EY Tells Tax to Get Back in the Office; Associates Are Vibe Coding Now | 4.3.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Their article, like all CPA Journal articles, is long and filled with tons of references. Since I know that sort of deep dive doesn’t do well here, I’m going to focus instead on a single paper referred to within and, more specifically, a single chart from that single paper.

The paper is Attracting Millennials: Legitimacy management and bottom-up socialization processes within accounting firms, authored by Sylvain Durocher, Merridee Bujaki and François Brouard and published in Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 2016, vol. 39, issue C, 1-24. You, like us, may have missed this one when it dropped ten years ago. They really should publish these things in convenient back-of-the-toilet reading basket form like grandma’s old Reader’s Digests, they might get some more eyeballs on them.

So as you can see, the researchers looked at accounting firm recruiting from the firms’ own websites, specifically the careers sections. And although the paper completely acknowledges that work-life balance and pay are critically important to millennials, what they found was that Big 4 and “Next 4” firms in Canada highlighted other factors a whole lot more.

CPA Journal made a chart but it was kind of dull and just screenshotting it seemed a little lazy so here’s ours below (theirs is the Exhibit 2 referenced in the article snip above). What it shows is how often these topics appeared on Big 4 career pages analyzed by the researchers, meaning “meaningful work experience” got a ton more lip service than the important ones like pay and work-life balance. And we wonder why interest in the profession has been waning.

Remember, this isn’t “32% of millennials care about meaningful work experience when considering which Big 4 firm to work for,” it’s “this is how frequently Big 4 firms (in Canada) mentioned these factors on their careers pages.”

I really wish there were some screenshots in the original paper, I would love to see how Big 4 firms in Canada addressed “quality of coworkers” in 2016. I’m sure what I’m imagining in my head is way funnier than what it actually looked like.

Naturally, this eagerness on the part of public accountants to share their salaries with each other because firms weren’t putting it out there then led to these communities becoming a virtual watercooler around which public accountants could discuss more than just money. Work-life balance. Expectations. Gossip. Perhaps this would have happened regardless of whether or not firms put salary info out there, who can say. But we do know that salary was the linchpin that united accountants across experience levels and service lines, and that part of that early eagerness to share this information amongst themselves sprung from frustration with the lack of salary transparency on the part of firms.

And you know what? The Powers That Be hate that they’re no longer in charge of the narrative. See also: Quote of the Day: ‘The Message Conveyed is That Firms Will Work You to Death with Minimal Pay Increases’

Maybe they should have just been upfront about it from the beginning.

The post That Time Researchers Discovered Accounting Firms Would Rather Die Than Publish Salaries appeared first on Going Concern.

Although there are no Information Technology positions currently listed on the IRS jobs website, Federal News Network is reporting that the nation’s tax collector plans to bring in some permanent tech employees. Soon.

The IRS tech shop is back in hiring mode, after losing more than 40% of its workforce under the Trump administration.

At an IRS IT all-hands meeting earlier this month, Chief Information Officer Kaschit Pandya told staff that his office plans to hire up to 175 additional technical employees.

FNN goes on to remind readers that 1,200 IRS IT people were shuffled into key filing season, frontline roles in December, a hopefully temporary stint after which who knows what will happen. One person inside the IRS made it sound pretty unlikely the temporary staff will get shuffled back to where they were hired to be:

Another individual familiar with the IRS staffing shakeup said employees on 120-day details are currently enrolled in eight hours of daily training for the next few months. These employees, the individual said, must remain on camera for the duration of these virtual training sessions, and if they turn off their cameras, they’ll get a message to turn them back on.

“This whole experience has been so gut-wrenching. We honestly don’t think they will stop at four months — because what’s the point of training someone for four months to not have them do the work they were trained for,” the individual said.

Information Technology has 7,135 people as of October 2025, down from 8,504 in October of 2024, according to the TIGTA readiness report released this past January [PDF].

There are, as of publication time, just six IRS positions listed on USAJobs: Law Clerk (Tax) – Honors Attorney Program (2026), Deputy Associate Chief Counsel (Guidance), Income Tax and Accounting Division, Chief Legislative and Regulatory Affairs, Operations Coordinator, and Accounts Management Field Director. If you are eager to run to the comment section and say AcKsHuALLLLyYY that’s five jobs you innumerate morons, you’ll note that the law clerk job is posted twice as one is GS-11 and the other is GS-12.

We’ll keep an eye on the IRS jobs site and let you know if we spot any roles popping up.

The post The IRS Is Supposedly Hiring Again appeared first on Going Concern.

We first saw this on Reddit a few days ago:

KPMG UK Audit layoffs
by u/Educational-West4131 in Big4

You may remember PwC UK doing a similar round of “voluntary” separations in 2023. Very similar, actually: PwC needed 600 people to leave and the firm blamed low attrition for the move. Here we are three years later and KPMG UK is making the same ask of hundreds of auditors.

Bloomberg had this to say in their story on Friday:

KPMG UK has told nearly 600 staffers in its audit business that their jobs are at risk, according to people familiar with the matter.

Impacted employees were informed that they could be laid off, subject to a redundancy consultation, according to a memo to staff seen by Bloomberg News. The company ultimately expects as many as 440 people will leave the business if the proposal goes ahead following that consultation process, according to one of the people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named discussing non-public information.

Said the firm in a statement to Bberg: “Current market conditions mean our attrition rates are very low within certain parts of our audit population, which is why we are proposing to right size those areas. This isn’t a decision we take lightly.”

KPMG UK’s total headcount is 16,739 as of October 2025. 600 people is about 6% of the audit workforce.

The post Layoff Watch ’26: The King’s KPMG Kindly Asks 600 Auditors to GTFO appeared first on Going Concern.

Well that was depressing. Sorry. Get in touch via email or text if you have a tip, a story, or just need to unload some sorrows. Be good, you.

The post Monday Morning Accounting News Brief: KPMG Asks Hundreds of People to Go; One Big Beautiful Bill Equals Billable Hours | 3.30.26 appeared first on Going Concern.

Know Something We Don’t?

EY sets aside record £188mn for fines and legal claims [Financial Times]
The figure is almost seven times the average amount that EY has set aside for claims annually since the firm began reporting the figures in 2002, according to FT analysis.

Careers

Gen Z will give up $5,000 in pay to log off at 5—but still expects a corner office [Fortune]
The average Gen Z professional today wants the freedom to log off at 5, and a C-suite title. At least, they do at the Big Blue of the Big 4: consulting giant KPMG. According to the professional firm’s Winter Intern Pulse Survey, Gen Z will sacrifice on average $5,000 of their salary to achieve a better work-life balance. At the same time, a staggering 92% expressed at least some interest in achieving a C-suite or senior executive role.

I quit my job at KPMG and moved to India to become a poet. I was sick of only getting to live life on weekends. [Business Insider]
Namrata Yadav has always loved creative writing and poetry. She said law school, research, and finally consulting at KPMG failed to bring her fulfillment. So she quit her job, moved back to India, and is now trying to establish herself as a spoken-word poet.

In a more automated world, how do CFOs think about succession planning? [CFO.com]
Without a robust pipeline of eager young workers, finance teams may one day find themselves with no one to take over their jobs. With all that in mind, CFO.com recently posed this question to several finance chiefs: At a time when entry-level jobs are being increasingly automated, how are you thinking about succession planning? Their answers reveal a range of strategies for a complex problem.

Technology

AI robots could cost $13,000 by 2035: Here’s what that means for CFOs [Fortune]
One tech trend on the rise is AI-enabled robotics. AI is no longer confined to dashboards and copilots. “Physical AI,” which is the convergence of AI with robotics, sensors, and real-world systems, marks a turning point. As Deloitte notes, intelligence is becoming “embodied” in factories, warehouses, and supply chains, where autonomous systems can optimize operations in real time. For example, BMW is testing humanoid robots to handle tasks that traditional industrial robots cannot perform, according to Deloitte. Meanwhile, the Bank of America Institute projects that the material costs of a humanoid robot could fall from $35,000 in 2025 to between $13,000 and $17,000 by 2035.

Australia Faces ‘Sliding Doors’ Moment on AI Push, Deloitte Says [Bloomberg]
Australia has a narrow window to position itself as a regional hub for artificial intelligence infrastructure, but risks falling behind unless investment and policy action accelerate, according to Deloitte Access Economics. “This is a sliding doors moment for Australia,” lead author John O’Mahony said Wednesday, estimating the country needs about A$52 billion ($36 billion) in digital infrastructure investment by 2030 to capture the opportunity.

EY study: Cybersecurity leaders investing in AI and agentic defenses to combat escalating AI-enabled threats [EY]
Cybersecurity leaders are at a critical crossroads as artificial intelligence (AI) redefines both the threat landscape and defensive capabilities, according to findings from the new EY Cybersecurity Roadmap Study of 500 senior corporate security leaders. The study uncovered that a staggering 96% of senior security leaders say AI-enabled cybersecurity attacks are a significant threat to their organization, with about half (48%) estimating that of all the cybersecurity incidents their organization had experienced in the past year, at least a quarter were enabled by AI.

Audit

KPMG allegedly misused Lendlease data to win audit work [Financial Review]
KPMG Australia has been accused of misusing confidential information from its client Lendlease to win external audit work for Westpac and Dexus, while allegedly failing to act on a whistleblower complaint.

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Funds’ 2025 and 2024 Financial Statements [US Government Accountability Office]
The GAO shares some good news about their recent FDIC audit:
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation insures over $10 trillion in deposits and protects your money if your FDIC-insured bank fails. We audit and issue opinions annually on financial statements of FDIC’s insurance funds and on related internal controls (e.g., processes to reasonably assure that transactions are properly authorized and recorded). We found the statements were reliable and controls over financial reporting were effective in 2025.

The post Friday Footnotes: EY Socks Away a Bunch of Money For Future Fines; Can You Leave at 5 and Still Make Partner? | 3.27.26 appeared first on Going Concern.