An exciting change in my career is currently in progress. I should begin a new career in academia in January. I am very excited, but admittedly a little superstitious. So, I’ll be playing it a little close for now – I don’t want to jinx it. I hope it is the beginning of something great for me and my family. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!
Well, I have applied to a handful of colleges in hopes of landing a faculty position. It is quite possible that you will encounter this site if you entered my name in a search engine as part of your background check. If you do encounter this, you might be interested in my articles: one is a copy of my comment letter sent to the AICPA on the exposure draft for SSARS 21, the other is an unpublished letter I wrote in response to the release of FSP 117-1 in 2014. I have some other material in the works – finding the time to complete it, now that is a challenge.
Today was my last official day as a shareholder in HBL. I had the firm tax holiday that I was unable to take last week because of my workload, so I took it today. My iPhone signaled me that my email password no longer worked. I guess they wasted no time in disconnecting me. We’ll see what new opportunities await. Need to get moving on a few items.
Diary entries 14 years apart
7/28/2000
Day one – Hammel & Company, P.C. –
Well, I am sitting in my office near the kitchen; just about finished with my first day of work.
I met some of the people I work with; they seem nice. I hope I can remember their names.
I think the tax partner may have gone for a bike ride.
I have no clue what I am doing here; I hope no one notices…..
7/28/2014
Another day at HBL CPAs, P.C. –
Well, I am sitting in my office near the kitchen; just about finished with another day of work.
I met with some of the people I work with; they seem nice. I hope I can remember their names.
I think the tax partner may have gone for a bike ride.
I have no clue what I am doing here; I hope no one notices…..
I know I don’t deserve the credit – I’ll have to give it to his mom. It was the first day of school and Nicholas learned that his best two friends, and his close third, were all together in the other fourth grade class.
Dad: How was the first day of school Nick?
Nick (very upset): All my friends are in the other class, it was terrible.
Dad: I’m sorry son, sometimes those things happen.
Nick (after a pause and shaking off his mood): I’ll guess I’ll have to make some new friends then.
When they already know, and you don’t have to tell them..
After three years of effort, we finally were able to acquire another local practice. A hopefully continuing friend of mine, Mari DeVries, has one of the most successful audit firms in Southern Arizona. Her practice and ours were merged on May 1st and our offices will officially join at some point later this year. Mari will take over the audit lead and I will work on other development projects. My most immediate goal, besides finishing a large backlog of work, is recruiting staff. We have six slots to fill and I have offers accepted for only three. I expect to close the next two shortly. If I can locate one more tax staff, life will be good. In many ways, it already is.
When I first started my blog. I would google my name to see if my site would appear on the first page – it did not. Search rankings can be tricky. Call it an exercise in vanity, but every professional needs to monitor their online presence. The other day I googled my last name and got a hit for a veteran in Missouri with the same last name, so I decided to follow the link. This state sponsored site has many stories from vets – William Brookshier was one I watched. I then randomly selected a few others to view. I picked one near the bottom of the list. A touching experience. These men (and women) endured so much, yet many will never consider themselves entitled victims, just Americans. A lesson for all of us.
http://www.missouriveteranstories.org/video.cfm?ArchiveID=24140
We can be frustrated by the lack of accountability in others or the seeming unwillingness of others to be held to account. Long ago I learned to stop looking for accountability in the world outside and look within myself. If others see you as one who accepts the consequences of being called to account, then they will be encouraged to accept being held accountable. Those who demand accountability in others but who are unwilling to be held accountable, drive people away. Do as I say but not as I do, does not work with professionals.
A popular recent post is the one I wrote on the AICPA’s effort to develop a new SME reporting framework. Had I known it was going to generate so many hits, I would have made it shorter and more to point. Hint if you have not read it yet, you might skip about half-way down. Recently I became aware that the IASB had earlier notified us they intend to develop a subset of IFRS for SMEs for the micro entity – basically the very small business. Using their definition, that would cover quite a few of my firm’s clients. Perhaps the AICPA’s effort was intended to mirror the IASB’s effort and they intended their new framework to be the U.S. answer to SME IFRS for micro-entities. Again, the AICPA is not an official standard setting body; however, maybe the FASB can pick up the guidance and meld it into their private company reporting effort and get us big GAAP, little GAAP, and tiny GAAP. I don’t think it will replace tax or cash basis reporting…but interesting.
In the small business side of our market, we just don’t have much ongoing demand from users for GAAP or IFRS statements. Here is a link to the recent JofA article. http://www.journalofaccountancy.com/News/20126128.htm
Link to my earlier post: https://insidecpa.com/2012/06/aicpa-sme-effort-too-many-cooks/
Two proposed new standards, a nonattest standard related to association with financial statements, and a new compilation engagement standard that attempts to narrowly define compilations to a non-existent form have placed the profession at the crossroads. One path has us departing from reality and entering a narrow corridor that will choke our most basic service to a level of abstract foolishness, a path driven by the idea that independence is somehow impaired if we help our clients. A good day for those who sit on high horses. You can read my response to the Committee(s) by clicking on the link below.