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Audit

State Library missing data for $215m worth of inventory [Connecticut Inside Investigator]
More than $215 million worth of assets at the Connecticut State Library were not properly accounted for, according to the most recent audit report from the Auditor of Public Accounts. “The State Library informed us that it carried forward its fine art balance for years and management was unaware of its history,” the audit report states. “Documentation of an item’s acquisition cost may no longer be available due to the age of the collections and lack of complete records.”

Former KPMG partner fined over audit failings for third time [The Times]
A retired KPMG partner has been hit with his third fine in as many as years, this time for overseeing the Big Four firm’s audits of the Jacamo owner N Brown, which contained “numerous failings”. Anthony Sykes, who retired in September 2022, was the partner responsible for leading KPMG’s work signing off N Brown’s accounts for its 2021-22 financial year. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) found “serious breaches” with the audit, particularly when considering a possible impairment of parts of N Brown’s business.

GOP state auditor candidate Abigail Maas wants to ‘Make Auditing Great Again’ [Des Moines Register]
“There’s not a lot of people that wake up excited to crunch numbers or bale hay at four in the morning, but that’s me, and I have cowgirl grit,” Maas said while speaking at a Westside Conservative Club gathering at the Machine Shed in Urbandale. “I have horses. Obviously I know how to rope and ride, and this is why I fight. I fight for the taxpayers.”

RTO

At PwC, AI is driving workers back to the office [Triangle Business Journal]
Remember when PwC said everyone can work however they want forever? Pepperidge Farms remembers.
The expectation for PwC’s hybrid workforce is that they spend 50 percent of their time in the office or with clients –— and PwC’s AI app is enabling each associate to do so according to their personal preferences. “As a firm, we have a fairly young demographic so the energy of a welcoming, cool space to come into is almost self-prophesizing in a way,” said Garret Tripp, managing partner of the Raleigh office. “I feel as if I don’t have to force my team to come in anymore and now people are used to what coming in means. It doesn’t mean put your rear end in a seat from 8 to 7 and just sit there and stare at each other. They’re learning how to work more collaboratively when they come in and they’re being more flexible about when they come in, so we are seeing a good utilization of the space and good attendance.”

Law & Order

Senators Press Deloitte, Other Contractors on Errors in Medicaid Eligibility Systems [KFF Health News]
Senators have launched an inquiry into companies paid billions in taxpayer dollars to build eligibility systems for Medicaid, expressing concern that error-riddled technology and looming work requirements “will cause Americans to lose Medicaid coverage to this bureaucratic maze.”

Zimmer Biomet sues Deloitte for $172M over ‘disaster’ of a project [MassDevice]
“While litigation is never our first choice, Deloitte strung us along with repeated false assurances, both before the contract and before the system go-live,” Zimmer Biomet General Counsel Chad Phipps told MassDevice in an emailed statement. “This is not the conduct we expect nor tolerate from our business partners, and we intend to hold Deloitte accountable for its actions, which not only seriously disrupted our business, but also put patient care at risk.”

Tax

IRS furloughs nearly half its workers, closes most operations [Journal of Accountancy]
Earlier Wednesday, a public message to IRS employees said “most IRS operations are closed” due to the lapse in funding. The contingency plan “identifies those activities that will continue during a lapse of annual appropriations in order to prepare for the Tax Year 2026 filing season, to continue modernization efforts, and to ensure timely implementation of P.L. 119-21,” commonly known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the IRS said. Taxpayer Services will keep 24,470 staffers, the updated, 162-page plan said.

IRS identifies exempt organization guidance priorities, announces phase-out of paper refund checks [PwC]
Treasury and the IRS on September 30 released the 2025-2026 Priority Guidance Plan, which identifies guidance projects that are priorities for allocating Treasury and IRS resources during the July 1, 2025 through June 30, 2026 plan year. This year’s plan includes nine tax-exempt organization-specific pieces of priority guidance.   The IRS on September 23 issued IR-2025-94 announcing the phase-out of paper tax refund checks beginning on September 30, which will affect exempt organizations.

Partners and Payouts

PwC partners approve its ‘Luke Sayers amendments’ [Financial Review]
Almost three years after the PwC tax leaks scandal story broke (and more than a decade since the misconduct), and the firm’s partners have finally signed off on changes so it doesn’t happen again. Or, if it does, to increase the threat of pain for those involved. They’ve voted to change the partnership agreement that had previously all-but-guaranteed partners get their generous retirement payments after leaving the firm. Now if they’re found to have been involved in wrongdoing that drags PwC’s reputation and bottom line into the gutter (and not just that related to the tax leaks either, but rather any serious misconduct), they can have their pension terminated.

Grant Thornton’s 180 partners on cusp of private equity mega-payday [Financial Review]
What is Grant Thornton Australia worth? A senior figure in the local accounting industry, who requested anonymity because they were speaking about another firm, said a simplified valuation rule of thumb is at least two times revenue (!), or roughly $800 million in the case of GTA.

EY Managing Partner Contenders Emerge as US Leader to Retire [Bloomberg Tax]
EY is poised to pick a new US leader in the coming months who will steer the Big Four firm as it grapples with AI technology set to disrupt the consulting and accounting industries.

Technology

Data breach at Camden accounting firm leaves residents searching for answers [WIS (South Carolina)]
According to a notice on Sheheen, Hancock & Godwin, LLP’s website, an unknown actor downloaded files from its network earlier this year. When Robert Baskins checked his mail, he didn’t expect to find a notice saying his personal information may be in the wrong hands. “This is ridiculous, and we can’t get no answers about it,” he said. Baskins’ mother, Eva Baskins, also got a notice but said her family has never done business with the firm.

CEOs are all in on AI — and it’s an ominous sign for middle managers [Business Insider]
Nearly seven in 10 chief executives expect to see returns on their AI investments within one to three years, compared with 21% who held this view in 2024, KPMG US found in a recent survey of 400 heads of large US companies. The shift underscores that, in only a year, CEOs’ confidence in investing in AI has swung “completely to the other extreme,” Tim Walsh, the company’s US chair and CEO, told Business Insider.

Careers

I’ve worked in Big Four consulting and Big Tech. Both were stressful, but I know which I’d pick if I restarted my career. [Business Insider]
In my opinion, a year at Meta is equivalent to two years elsewhere. People have high expectations for delivery, and things move fast. The upside is that you work with smart people who’ll push you. You also see how a world-class company operates using the latest technology. But it’s high stress. Consulting was stressful in a different way. Stress came from making your client happy, so if they sent you an urgent message at 7 p.m., you had to respond or at least look at it.