Skip to main content

client questions

Was just doing my taxes and came across a line other Other Income asking the following...to paraphrase...this is where you declare "Embezzled or other income from illegal activities"

Right, because if I did embezzle or get income from other illegal activities, I'd want to tell the government so, and not just that, I'd pay taxes on it.

Although we do have such questions on our checklists for clients, I don't think i've ever heard of anyone get an answer that said..yep, i saw fraud.

What would make more sense is if these questions were aimed at the non-VPs and officers, to the lower/middle rungs of the totem pole, where will people will be more willing to reveal information anonymously. How about a public accounting hotline..where anyone in a company can dial their auditor anonymously to report any unethical activity? Now that just might work sometimes.
Labels:

Comments

Anonymous said…
"Snitch" hotlines do exist in many companies, actually. :)
March 2, 2008 at 10:57 PM
notfordisplay said…
That wasn't what I was referring to, these hotlines too exist and are part of our control testing. But an added tool would be a hotline for employees to auditors. You never know how these calls to within your company can be handled.
March 3, 2008 at 6:04 AM
Anonymous said…
Fair enough. Some of those calls are, however, handled by third-parties to diminish that concern. It still matters who those third-parties report to, of course.

Another version of that is the hotline for customers to call auditors if their investment bank statement is incorrect. Some of my friends have been the person who's taking those calls. Hee hee.

I have, however, also seen procedures where auditors in fact do ask those questions of mid-level employees. For SOX in particular.
March 19, 2008 at 10:01 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

ADP/Payroll

Just realized that the very payroll/adp reports we all enjoyed looking at in order to see how much our client contacts made, now seem to piss me off. Especially when your main contact, who couldn't tell a debit from a credit, makes significantly more than you, and leaves at 5. It's almost guaranteed to get you in a foul mood and yak with your team about the ridiculous salaries that certain employees get when compared to yours.
36 comments
Read more

should you choose to audit financial services?

I'm trying to decide whether to audit financial services companies or non-financial services companies. What would you say are the pros and cons of either industries? Do individuals who choose non-FS have less career mobility within the firm or if they decide not to stay with the B4 after a few years? Really depends on what you'd like to do after (unless you really love auditing). If you want to a controller,etc. at a p/e firm or a hedge fund down the road, you'd want to go into financial services. The pay won't be too bad, especially if you get a share of the insane bonuses they dole out. If you want to audit industries with tangible products and want to get a better understanding of the operations of such businesses, then other industries are the way to go.In terms of mobility outside the firm, auditing other industries is the way to go since you have plenty of options when you exit the audit world. For example, in 2008, after Lehman collapsed, it was incredibly hard
47 comments
Read more

auditing vs consulting

I was wondering if you could break down the career opportunities in auditing and consulting (in a big 4). I know that consulting pays more in a big 4 and has more interesting work, but it seems that auditing has extremely good exit opportunities (Financial controller, CFO etc). Any thoughts on which is better in the long run? Well there's different consulting services offered by public accounting companies - the most popular being IT consulting and risk consulting. There are also other consulting services offered, but these two hire the most. Do they pay more? Yes, but not by much. Not enough for you to say: Shoot, the $$ is a huge reason for me to move over. Is the work more interesting than audit? Yes. You're actually looking over a company's processes and telling them what to do instead of what not to do (audit). Everyone I know who's made the switch likes it waay better than audit. In the long run though, choosing audit vs consulting really depends on what you want
66 comments
Read more