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Talent
Accountant shortage forcing Long Island firms to boost pay, improve office culture [Newsday]
“Firms that are having trouble getting talent might need to look at how they phase compensation increases throughout the career pathway and raise starting salaries,” said Lisa Simpson, vice president of firm services at the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants in Durham, North Carolina. Salaries for accountants are starting to increase after lagging for years, experts said.
KPMG’s new AI bot has cut interview scheduling time by almost 60% and saved more than 1,000 hours for the talent acquisition team [Fortune]
Kai is designed for candidates to be able to ask questions after hours, and answers basic questions about benefits, hours, or details about the hiring process. In the first month, Kai handled more than 23,000 inquiries from candidates, with 33% of them coming in after 5 p.m. The bot also takes into account the person’s location, experience, and interest in roles, to suggest open positions at KPMG. Around 21.5% of those who interact with Kai in this way end up showing interest in the roles it recommends.
Hey, if your firm is hiring be sure to check out this week’s top accounting candidates from Accountingfly.
Big 4
EY Oceania to avoid merger in global restructure [Financial Review]
EY’s local leadership and structure will not change under a reorganisation of the firm, which will rationalise the number of regional divisions. But staff reporting to the overarching Asia-Pacific geographic grouping, which is being pared back significantly, are likely to be part of another round of redundancies at the consulting and accounting giant.
The rule change that could blow open US law [Financial Times]
“Large accounting firms have long coveted the legal fees that lawyers in California and elsewhere receive for serving their best clients,” the general counsels of 10 large law firms noted in a tetchy public letter arguing against liberalisation in Arizona’s neighbour in 2019. At the time, California’s state bar was considering allowing non-lawyer ownership of law firms, but that effort foundered after massive lobbying by incumbent firms. The letter, signed by representatives from Morrison Foerster, Baker McKenzie, Sidley Austin and Dentons, among others, warned that the global dominance of the accounting profession by a handful of accounting firms “is an anti-competitive model that should not be replicated in the legal profession”.
KPMG Appoints Three Leaders in the U.S. Asset Management and PE Practices [INSIDE Public Accounting]
KPMG LLP of New York has announced three new leaders for its U.S. Asset Management business: Yesenia Scheker-Izquierdo appointed U.S. sector leader for asset management; David Neuenhaus appointed tax sector leader for asset management; Matt Giordano appointed audit sector leader and audit service line leader for asset management.
CPA Licensure
Iowa passes CPA licensure legislation [CFO Dive]
Iowa Senate lawmakers passed new legislation Tuesday that will allow future certified public accountant candidates to become licensed with a bachelor’s degree that includes accounting coursework, two years of accounting work experience and passing the CPA exam, according to a press release from the Iowa Society of CPAs. The bill next goes through a certifying process before heading to Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds’ desk to be signed, according to the ISCPA, which backed the legislation.
News
Tax firm owned by Anne Arundel lawyer found liable in unjust enrichment case [Maryland Daily Record]
An accounting firm owned by Glen Frost, the founder of one of Anne Arundel County‘s largest law firms, was found liable for unjust enrichment and ordered to pay more than $680,000 after a jury trial last month. Frost, owner of Strategic Tax Planning and managing partner of Frost Law, was sued in August 2023 by three men who referred clients to Strategic Tax Planning with the understanding that they would be paid commissions.
Tesla’s top financial controller leaves [Electrek]
Tesla’s director of accounting controllership, Harsh Rungta, has left the automaker and joined eVTOL aircraft manufacturer Archer Aviation. Rungta has been at Tesla for more than 6 years. He came from PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC), Tesla’s independent registered public accounting firm, and became Tesla’s Director of Automotive Revenue & Energy Business Controller.
US plan to delist Chinese stocks may make Hong Kong great again as IPO hub, bankers say [South China Morning Post]
“These companies may consider a secondary listing or a dual-primary listing in Hong Kong to raise funds, which will boost the initial public offering (IPO) market,” said Tom Chan Pak-lam, honorary president of the Institute of Securities Dealers, an industry body for stockbrokers. A total of 286 Chinese companies were listed on the New York Stock Exchange, Nasdaq and NYSE American with a combined market capitalisation of US$1.1 trillion at the end of March, according to data from these exchanges.
Elon Musk’s DOGE Is Getting Audited [WIRED]
The Government Accountability Office (GAO) is auditing Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). The probe, which has been ongoing since March, covers DOGE’s handling of data at several cabinet-level agencies, including the Departments of Labor, Education, Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, the Treasury, and the Social Security Administration, as well as the US DOGE Service (USDS) itself, according to sources and records reviewed by WIRED.
Private Equity
According to one of our podcast listeners, CPAs at a Top 100 private equity-owned accounting firm are being told to remove the "CPA" designation from their signatures in emails and even their names on LinkedIn.
— Blake Oliver (@BlakeTOliver) April 11, 2025
AI
‘ChatGPT is going to make me end it’: Frustrated accountant vents over boss blindly trusting AI [Economic Times] ChatGPT might be a huge boon for many sectors and is most definitely a great tool to make your daily life easier, from building resumes to generating photos. But it might have certain limitations that people often tend to look past and continue to rely on it blindly, something an accountant at a company is learning the hard way.
Economic Times doesn’t say WHERE he said this…we found it on r/antiwork:
ChatGPT is going make me end it
byu/InterestingBrother31 inantiwork
Tax
The IRS is barely auditing anymore [Morning Brew]
The government’s gimme-money department has shrunk so much that it’s struggling to get up and work. IRS audits are at a record low and could plunge even further following President Trump’s cuts, the New York Times reported yesterday. According to NYT’s analysis of federal data, audit rates for personal income taxes fell from ~1% (about 1 in every 100 tax returns) in 2010 to just 0.36% in 2023 (roughly 1 in 300).
A surprisingly useful tool for this year’s tax season [Vox]
Something unexpected happened recently as I was filing my taxes: AI helped. It even caught an error that my human accountant missed. This was surprising because when I decided to test out a free tax return chatbot, I expected it to tell me to, I don’t know, write off my dog as a business expense and pay my IRS bill in magic beans.