What I do
for a living can be demanding.
I am
thinking about it because we have lost another employee.
Mind you,
there is always a good reason to leave: a larger firm, a smaller firm, someone
wants to go private and get away from any firm, more predictable hours, a geographic
move, … it is endless.
The auditors
complain about the insane paper chase that has become their corner of the
profession. They spend as much time completing checklists as actually doing any
meaningful work. It truly takes an idiot to think that we can prevent the next
Enron by checking a box on page 64 of a 98-page checklist.
Let me clue
you in: by page 64 the auditor has zoned out.
The key to
audit fraud is experience – the one thing the giant firms are not geared to
provide. Their economics are based on 1 to 4-year accounting graduates. That is
no country for old men. Or women.
Tax has
fared no better.
It used to
be that accountants would stagger year-ends for their business clients. Some
would be June, some would be October. This helped to balance the workload and
keep accountants from being crushed. Congress – reminding us that the truly
useless become politicians – decided years ago that calendar year-ends were the
way to go. They allowed a few exceptions, but the majority of closely-held
businesses were herded to a calendar year-end.
BTW
individuals also end their tax year on December.
So we have
this insane crowding of work into two or so months. Granted, much is extended,
meaning that the crowding occurs again when the extensions run out. There is no
real reason for it, other than government whim and profligacy.
Why, no …
gasp! We cannot possibly allow other-than-December year-ends because that would
cause a one-time hit to the Treasury. Ignore the fact that there previously was
a one-time boon to the Treasury when businesses went to December. The very pillars
of society would fall!
Uh huh.
Congress continues
its quest to have every economic transaction in American society reported to
the government via a Form 1099 or its equivalent. Oh, and if you would be so
considerate to do all this by January 31.
We tie-up at
least three paraprofessionals for a good chunk of January with 1099s and
payroll reporting. Let’s not go Boston University stupid and pretend this is not
an indirect (but substantial) tax on business activity. A tax heaved on us by sociopaths
who make $174,000 annually, live in one of the most expensive cities in the
country but somehow become multimillionaires on a routine basis.
Uh huh.
Take an IRS
that has sought for years to do more with less, meaning that more and more of
what it does is automated. This returns us to all those 1099s the government
wants, with its computer matching and automated notices.
I would be
curious to know how many millions of man-hours are wasted every year by BS
notices the IRS sprays out. Some of this used to be resolved internally before
mailing a notice, as an IRS employee maybe … just maybe … actually looked at the file. Ah, how innocent we were then.
There are
consequences to all this nonsense.
I had a
conversation very recently with a CPA firm owner. We are similar in age and
background. He was telling me how it is becoming almost impossible to hire, as
there either is no one available or what is available is simply not hireable. Given
our immediate needs, this was not good news.
Our conversation
then expanded to the question of why a young person would pursue the career we
ourselves chose years ago. There are so many more career paths now providing competitive
income levels without depriving someone of 4 to 5 months of their life. Every
year.
He did not
want his kids to be accountants. They didn’t.
It is
showing up in different ways. Accountancy, for example, remains a popular
college major and graduation rates are strong. However, interest in pursuing a
CPA credential is declining.
The CPA credential
of course is closely associated with a CPA firm. When I was coming through
there was a career point one could not pass if one did not have his/her CPA.
One could make senior accountant, for example, but not manager without the
certificate.
My CPA was
not optimistic, arguing that our generation – his and mine – might be the last
of its kind.
I am hearing
this opinion repeated by more and more practitioners. It is not uniform, mind
you, but it is common.
I do not do
gloom, but I also believe that the next generation of accountants will demand
more life balance that we - the 50-and-60-year-old crowd – did when it was our
turn.
Good for
them.
What will it
do to the giant CPA firms and their churn-and-burn business models? What will
it do to the accounting governing bodies, who seem to represent the largest while
seemingly having little interest in entrepreneurial and closely-held businesses
the vast majority of CPAs – me included - represent? How about Congress? What
if they passed a tax law in December and CPAs refused to work 24/7 for their
incompetence?
I wish some
of this had happened earlier in my career.
