Category: Accounting Newsletter

Today is November 24, 2021 (in case you didn’t catch the tiny little publish date in the upper left-hand corner of this post) and with yesterday’s CPA exam score release, that leaves just one more score release for 2021 before we call this year a wrap. Where the year went is beyond me, but that’s a topic for another day. With Thanksgiving tomorrow and with all of us still stuck in this weird time vortex that we were unceremoniously flung into like particles at CERN back in early 2020, I…

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At the end of the Married With Children episode, “Go For the Old,” Al Bundy says: “It’s only cheating if you get caught.” Well, KPMG got caught. The firm was busted for cheating on internal training exams. Again. Just like in the US. This time the cheating was running rampant in Australia. The PCAOB fined KPMG Australia $450,000 on Sept. 14 for training-related misconduct (i.e., violating PCAOB rules and quality control standards) from 2016 until early 2020, which involved more than 1,100 KPMG partners and staff, including more than 250…

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In early August, EisnerAmper announced a “strategic investment” in the firm courtesy of investment management firm TowerBrook Capital Partners, the first of its kind for a firm of that size. The door is now wide open for private equity to get a piece of the accounting pie. Per the press release: TowerBrook’s significant capital infusion will help drive EisnerAmper’s long-term growth initiatives, which include accelerating the evolution of service offerings, investing considerably in talent and technology, and strategically expanding via organic growth and targeted mergers and acquisitions—all directed at exponentially…

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Accounting Principals has finally released its salary guide for 2022, and the main takeaway is average base salaries for roles in public accounting are expected to increase 6.4% across the board next year. So you guys get a salary adjustment that would barely cover the current inflation rate. Hooray. For 2022’s salary guide, Accounting Principals provided salary data for employees in three tiers based on experience: Low: Zero to two years of experience in that position or one similar.Medium: Three to 10 years of experience in that position or one…

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A day after Deloitte got the Big 4 revenue boasting season rolling yesterday, EY announced today that it pulled in a “solid” $40 billion ($39,959,000,000, to be exact) in revenue for the year ending June 30, a 7.3% increase over 2020’s $37.2 billion. But aside from all the patting each other on the back for once again coming in third (probably) among the Big 4 in total revenue, the biggest news out of the EY camp today was this, courtesy of the Financial Times: EY will invest about $2bn over…

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In today’s edition of “How Much Are You Worth?” let’s take a look at public accounting salary projections for 2022 from recruitment firm Hays US. We chose four tax and four audit roles from Hays’s 2022 Salary Guide to highlight in this post. Hays provides accounting salary ranges, with the first figure indicating minimum pay and the second figure indicating maximum pay. In this particular salary guide, the salary ranges for tax and audit roles are given for eight states/regions: CaliforniaColoradoWashington, DC; Maryland; and VirginiaFloridaGeorgiaIllinoisNew YorkTexas Unfortunately many of the…

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For years we’ve been hearing how blockchain and AI will transform accounting, and this recent article from MIT Sloan School of Management (aka MIT Sloan) about the five forces remaking accounting gives them both the obligatory nod. But we’re not here to talk about blockchain. We’re here to talk about ESG. After a brief introductory paragraph about the “change bearing down on the accounting discipline,” they go directly into climate change and what that means for the bottom line: “For the longest time, the purpose of a company was to…

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If it was any other year, champions of audit quality would be throwing Deloitte a ticker-tape parade for only having two glaring errors out of 53 audits inspected in the firm’s newly released 2020 PCAOB inspection report. But it was PwC auditors who were the ones pulling ticker-tape out of their hair while Deloitte was standing on the sidelines looking like McKayla Maroney during the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. It does seem a bit fishy that PwC, after making significant mistakes in 18 of its 60 audits of public…

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Interest in the CPA credential has been down significantly since at least 2016, and we have discussed this issue to death so I don’t need to link you to the evidence (but here’s some anyway). The problem here is that talking about it isn’t solving it, thus we will continue talking about it and hope it all works out somehow. Fewer people taking the CPA exam on its own isn’t a huge problem (well, the AICPA might say it is but they’re slightly biased), especially when you consider the trend…

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Stumbled across an interesting article yesterday that I thought worth sharing with you if for no other reason than it’s been a while since we’ve instigated a pissing contest with lawyers over whose professional licensing exam is harder. The article suggests the law profession should just get rid of the bar exam completely due to poor performance in recent years because the stress and anxiety of the pandemic made it too hard to study, something to which I’m sure even the most overachieving among you can relate. While worldwide mental…

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