This past February, the PCAOB released KPMG’s 2022 inspection report but inexplicably redacted the firm’s deficiency rate. To say this was very strange would be minimizing the situation, something we aren’t generally known to do. VERY strange. CAPS exclamation points Confused Nick Young meme strange. This isn’t something we’d ever seen, certainly not in a Big 4 inspection. Why Did the PCAOB Redact KPMG’s Audit Failure Rate? Jeffrey Johanns, associate professor at The University of Texas at Austin McCombs School of Business and regular audit industry commentator, wrote a really good LinkedIn Pu ..read more

It’s been a while since we have covered horrible buzzwords and phrases floating around the business sphere. It seems business, the publications that cover business, and the consultants who bill them were too occupied the last few years coming up with new ways to brand “a bunch of people quitting their jobs at the same time” and “people phoning it in because their job sucks” to focus their efforts on lame transformation words. No longer! “How businesses can embrace a phygital future with digital avatars,” an EY press release we wish didn’t exist. “Phygital” sounds like something my cat does on ..read more

As of April 11 of this year, if a foreigner wants a Skilled Worker visa to work in the UK they must earn a minimum of £38,700 (about $48k USD), up from the prior minimum of £26,200, unless the work falls under a small category of jobs on the shortage occupation list like health and care workers, graphic designers (take that, Canva), and veterinarians. But not accountants. For accountants under some categories — Chartered and certified accountants Accountant (qualified), Auditor (qualified), Chartered accountant, Company accountant, Cost accountant (qualified), Financial controller (qualified a ..read more

With tax season behind us, clients now have a whole year to work on finding a new tax preparer if theirs dipped out on them in the past year or two. You see, firms finally got the “charge what you’re worth” memo and have been shedding bad clients to free up scarce resources for the good ones. And that’s a good thing. God I hate when trash websites use “and that’s a good thing.” Sorry. But it is. Among the #TaxTwitter trends we’ve witnessed of late — like enforcing proper onboarding and not proceeding with the relationship if the prospective client can’t bother to complete it — a new one is eme ..read more

Deloitte released its fourth annual Women @ Work report today and things are so bad for women they couldn’t even spin it for the press release’s title: Deloitte’s Women @ Work report shows stagnating progress in and outside the workplace for women Your report takeaways from the survey of 5,000 women in 10 countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Germany, India, Japan, South Africa, United Kingdom, United States) are: Half of women say their stress levels have increased since last year, and despite some progress, they are still not receiving adequate mental health support in the workplace ..read more

Last week PwC announced it is “aligning its organizational structure across three lines of service— Assurance, Tax and Advisory—to better serve client needs, their buying patterns and the market” and now Wall Street Journal is saying the incoming consulting partner class will be much smaller than last year’s. Should we be worried? WSJ: PricewaterhouseCoopers is looking to shrink its new class of U.S. consulting partners by more than 50% compared with last year as demand for advisory services continues to slow and the firm reorganizes its business lines. The Big Four accounting firm is conside ..read more

Reported on Friday, Sky News was tipped to a situation at EY UK that could not have been received well by the firm’s 930 equity partners: They won’t be getting record-smashing payouts this year. Stuart Gregory, EY UK & Ireland Managing Partner, Finance and Transformation, supposedly gave a presentation informing fellow partners that profit-per-partner could go down as much as 15 percent for this fiscal year ending June 30. Last year, partner profits at EY took a hit for the first time in three years, dipping from £803,000 (approx. $999k USD) to £761,000 (~$947k USD). So if they take a 15 ..read more

Ed. note: By “salty” I mean in the experienced sailor/pirate way, not the modern definition of someone who’s just mad because they suck. Industry OG and commentator Gene Marks has written an opinion piece for The Hill about what audits actually are that is less opinion and more brutal fact: Why you should be very skeptical of that auditor’s report. Those of us who’ve worked or even simply seen behind the curtain of audit know the things he points out to be true — assurance is reasonable not absolute, financial statements are the responsibility of management not auditors, “finding fraud” is not ..read more

Hey. I trust everyone had a nice weekend. I shall dispense with the filler small talk and get right to the news. Sunday Times did a whole big piece on how EY’s failed break-up caused a year of resentment: After five tumultuous years as the global head of EY, Carmine Di Sibio is finally having some fun. Last week, the retiring Italian-born American jetted off to the firm’s towering Tokyo offices as part of his farewell tour. While there, the 61-year-old was treated to a Ken-shibu, a traditional Japanese sword ritual carried out by a highly skilled martial artist. “A retirement celebration that ..read more

With April 15 come and gone I figured now would be a good time to ask you how it went. I’ll tell you what I saw from my perspective (I stalk all of you on social media but it’s my job so it’s not creepy). Some time last year I noticed more and more practitioners and firm owners on #TaxTwitter expressing a desire to take a step back and sort out the problem clients before filing season hits. We observed many of them raising prices, implementing thorough onboarding procedures that would immediately eliminate the pain in the ass clients who can’t fill out basic paperwork in a timely manner, and b ..read more