Good morning! Hope you didn’t have to waste too much time yesterday setting all your antiquated manual clocks forward like I did. Care for some news?
This post from r/CPA popped up when I was scrolling over the weekend, the turnaround gave me a chuckle.
OP: FAR isn't that hard you guys! You can do it!
— Going Concern (@going_concern) March 9, 2025
OP 9 hours later: Just kidding I was drunk when I said that, it's hard. pic.twitter.com/BnwbIRzXEM
If you missed this earlier post, FAR pass rates are in the toilet and candidates who’ve sat recently are practically in tears when they walk out. See more:
The next score release date is March 18.
New York Times tells the story of an industry accountant turned IRS auditor in Stalled Audits and a Skeleton Staff: Inside Trump’s War on the I.R.S.:
Beth Crowell was proud to work for the Internal Revenue Service.
She had spent much of her career as an accountant for large corporations, gaining intimate knowledge about how they do — and sometimes don’t — pay the taxes they owe. Working for the I.R.S. in Colorado, she hoped to put her skills to a new use. She wanted to help collect more money for the federal government.
Not long after joining last July, she had her chance. Ms. Crowell, 64, joined a team that had started an audit of a company earning roughly $3 billion a year. The I.R.S. had never examined the firm before, Ms. Crowell said, because the agency hadn’t had enough employees with the skills for such complex cases. “They’re a large multinational company, and it is not a normal thing to not have been examined,” she said, declining to name the firm.
By hiring Ms. Crowell and thousands of other experienced tax professionals like her last year, the I.R.S. was trying to fill those gaps and rebuild its ability to enforce tax laws after years of decay. The effort was expected to help the United States recoup billions in additional tax revenue.
Then the layoffs started.
Including Beth and five of the nine people doing this one audit. With less than a year on the job, she was high on the list of people likely to get cut in the recent IRS layoffs.
Meanwhile, an agent on r/accounting is on notice:
Yet another IRS agent about to be laid off post
byu/Unlikely_Breath_3768 inAccounting
For some time now we’ve been keeping an eye on breakdowns at the municipal level across the country, a phenomenon that’s being blamed on staffing shortages (but we know there’s more to the picture). It’s getting worse.
In Oregon, delinquent filers are piling up. This is from Oregon Secretary of State Tobias Read:
Persistent issues around staffing and resources caused a record number of municipal corporations to delay filing required reports to Oregon’s Municipal Audit Program, according to summary report released by the Secretary of State.
“This year’s report identifies a concerning trend,” said Read. “Auditors noted 106 municipal corporations are more than a year late in filing their audit reports — the highest number of non-filers since 2017, when this summary report was first published; only 19 entities were delinquent then.”
Auditors note a major reason for the delinquent filings is a lack of adequate resources. Staffing is one of the most commonly cited reasons by local governments for filing late audit reports. The number of available certified auditors is also declining due to firm mergers, retirements, and firms leaving the government auditing space.
Related story: There Are Only Two Firms in Wyoming That Can Do Government Audits and One Can’t Do Its Job Because of Staff Shortages
There’s this in Ohio though:
Ohioans expecting to see how their tax dollars are being managed will have their chance come tomorrow, as Keith Faber’s office, the Ohio Auditor of State, gears up to release a series of financial and procedural audit reports. The state’s watchdog, tasked with fighting against the misuse of public funds, will provide insights into various public entities on a semiweekly basis.
Among the entities audited is RES-CARE OHIO, INC. DBA Mt. Hope #2 Group Home, which underwent an Agreed Upon Procedures investigation into its activities from January 1, 2023, to December 31, 2023. The Barnesville Exempted Village School District and Western Brown Local School District are also on the transparency docket, with both districts having been audited for the fiscal years of July 1, 2023, to June 30, 2024.
Unexpected findings are not off the table, as previous audits have sometimes resulted in Findings for Recovery, indicating instances where public funds were mishandled.
Here’s the full list from Faber’s office.
With their last CEO having left to go run the AICPA, the Allinial Global alliance has named a new CEO:
Accountancy association Allinial Global has announced the appointment of Tony Sacre as its new CEO.
Sacre will take over the role from Mark Koziel, who has moved on to become the CEO at AICPA & CIMA.
He is the first CEO from the APAC region to lead the association.
Business Insider discusses 13 successful founders who launched their careers at consulting firms. None of them are Big 4 alum, just a bunch of McKinseys and Bains.
Here’s a jobs report from KPMG:
Payroll employment rose by 151,000 in February, after rising a downwardly revised 125,000 in January employment. Public sector payrolls accounted for 11,000 of those gains, driven by gains in local government employment. The federal government shed 10,000 jobs, the largest decline since June 2022. That is still early for the layoffs we saw at the federal level in late January. We will not see the full effects of recent federal layoffs until March and April.
Private sector payrolls rose by 140,000, which is well above the downwardly revised pace of 81,000 in January. Financial activities added 21,000. Transportation and warehousing added 17,800 jobs, the fourth consecutive month. The gains were concentrated in delivery services.
Two other items of note:
Separately, the unemployment rate edged up to 4.1% in February. That was despite a drop in the participation rate to 62.4% from 62.6% in January. The drop was across all ages and races of prime-age (25-54) men.
Multiple job holders hit a new record during the month and made up the highest share of total employment since April 2009. That gain was driven by workers who are now working full-and part-time jobs. Women dominated that increase as they worked to supplement their pay amidst persistently high price levels.
It’s not looking so great out there.
PwC Fiji is now officially on Grant Thornton’s team.
PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Fiji has officially transitioned to the Grant Thornton global network, marking a pivotal moment in its 60-year legacy in the country.
This shift aligns the firm with Grant Thornton’s expansive network, which spans over 140 markets, employs more than 70,000 people, and generates annual revenues exceeding $7 billion.
That’s it for this news brief, I trust that sated your hunger for news for now. Feel free to email or text any time if you have a story or tip, saw an interesting link, or just need to vent. Bye!
