US Audit Board’s Role Still Sparks Debate Two Decades Post-Enron

Congress is reconsidering the accounting guardrails it put in place more than two decades ago to ensure investors can trust the revenues and asset values listed companies publish. Republican budget proposals would abolish the US audit regulator and reassign its work to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While lawmakers negotiate over what will end up in a final version of their tax and spending bill, the proposals have prompted debate over how best to regulate auditors and the role of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. A member of the board and two former executives turned whistleblowers of once-corporate titans Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Amanda Iacone about whether the audit regulator should remain independent or whether it would benefit from being folded into the federal government. On this episode of Talking Tax, Sherron Watkins, a former Enron finance executive, and Cynthia Cooper, a former WorldCom chief audit executive, argue that Congress shouldn’t scrap an agency that oversees auditors that act as investors’ last line of defense. To Christina Ho, a current PCAOB member who has objected to the board’s approach, moving auditor oversight to the SEC would counter what she sees as regulatory overreach and provide new opportunities to improve audit quality. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The Republican-led Senate Finance Committee unveiled its portion of the mammoth tax-and-spending legislation that's quickly moving through Congress, and there's a lot to unpack. The Senate bill has dozens of differences from the House version. It makes several business breaks permanent, softens the excise tax on university endowments, and phases out more slowly cuts to clean energy credits, while smoothing edges on the so-called "revenge tax." But there are many similarities in the approaches the two bills take—both have tax breaks on income such as tips and overtime sought by President Donald Trump, and seek to extend much of the 2017 GOP tax law. Things are moving quickly as the Senate aims to pass its version out of its chamber before the July 4 break. In this week's episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporter Chris Cioffi speaks with host David Schultz on what's in the bill, what's left out, and where Congress goes from here. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Recent layoff announcements at Big Four accounting, tax, and consulting firms come as the industry faces economic uncertainty and a shrinking talent pool. The accounting profession is at a crossroads as a new class of students graduate. While recent data shows heightened interest in both undergraduate and master's degree programs, the industry faces possible disruptions like workforce reductions and emerging artificial intelligence tools. Deloitte LLP announced in April it would lay off government consulting employees as the Trump administration slashed federal contracts. The firm said in a statement the personnel actions were based on its public-sector clients' "evolving needs," among other factors. PwC LLP plans to cut roughly 1,500 jobs, many in its tax and assurance practices, the firm said last month, after two years of historically low levels of turnover. The firm plans to slow down its campus recruiting and will offer fewer internships for next year. But PwC announced this week it plans to reorganize its US advisory business, doubling the number of divisions from four to eight. The move "is being approached from a position of strength," according to a statement from PwC US advisory leader Tyson Cornell. Peter Demerjian is the director of the school of accountancy at Georgia State University. Namaan Mian is the chief operating officer at Management Consulted, a professional training and coaching organization. Demerjian and Mian spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Jorja Siemons about the recent layoffs, the industry's embrace of AI, and potential impacts on the industry's next generation. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The “revenge” tax provision that’s in the giant tax bill working its way through Congress has a lot of people worried. Known as Section 899, the provision would impose stiff, retaliatory tax rates on companies and people from countries that the US deems to be imposing "unfair" and "discriminatory" taxes against US companies. It was included in the version of the bill House Republicans narrowly passed last month, and now gets Senate attention. The aim of Section 899 is to push those countries into changing their policies, but many observers fear the move would lead to lower foreign investment in the US, costing American jobs and cutting into economic growth. That’s not the only reason for concern. Financial markets are worried about the retaliatory tax’s potential impact on the value of US assets. Some observers think Section 899 would damage the US’s longstanding reputation as a stable, reliable place for global companies to do business and for global investors to put their money, On this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax senior reporter Michael Rapoport explains the retaliatory-tax proposal and discusses its prospects for becoming law. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Companies scored wins after the House passed a multi-trillion-dollar tax bill that largely preserved the current tax rates on foreign-earned income. Republicans' 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act created a new international tax regime including a minimum tax on global intangible low-taxed income, or GILTI, a reduced tax rate on foreign-derived intangible income, or FDII, and a base erosion and anti-abuse tax, or BEAT. Each of these tax rates will go up in 2026 without congressional action, but House lawmakers made slight changes that will result in minimal tax increases. But the debate isn't over. The bill now heads to the Senate, where tax practitioners and companies expect impactful changes to the mammoth legislation, including the international provisions. On this week's episode of Talking Tax, reporter Lauren Vella talks about the House provisions, what companies want to see in the Senate version of the tax bill, and how the legislation might impact US relations with other countries. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

House Republicans are moving quickly to get a massive tax-and-spending package across the finish line before week's end even as they negotiate with party factions over outstanding concerns. Some Republicans are demanding deeper cuts to social programs like Medicaid to curb deficits as part of the deal and to reduce the package's cost to extend the 2017 tax overhaul. And yet the bill increases the debt limit by $4 trillion and adds billions in spending. Cut out of the process, Democrats oppose the proposal, and even some Republicans have objected to its size and scope. Regardless of where lawmakers fall on the political spectrum, they all seem to agree on one data source: What the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget has to say about the package and what it will do to the national deficit, which now stands at over $36 trillion. On this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporter Chris Cioffi talks with Maya MacGuineas, longtime president of the nonprofit public policy group, and digs into why the growing debt can be problematic for future economic growth. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

With the massive wave of federal government layoffs, tens of thousands of workers from the IRS and other agencies are likely looking for new jobs, potentially in the private sector for the first time. Caroline Ciraolo, a partner at Kostelanetz and founder of the firm's office in Washington, D.C., has started an initiative that connects former federal tax professionals with law firms and other private employers. She knows what it's like to make the transition: Ciraolo was the No. 2 official in the Department of Justice Tax Division from 2015 to 2017 before returning to the private sector. In this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax Editor at Large Rebecca Baker sat down with Ciraolo to discuss shifting out of government work, and how the "love of the practice area" is a key transferable skill. "That passion for unpacking complicated transactions and complicated facts and circumstances, identifying the issues—those skills are equal on both sides," she said. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

The IRS right now isn't the same agency it was at the start of this year. That's because about 20% of IRS workers have signaled they want to leave or have been fired. The ripple effects of this exodus could go far, not just for the IRS itself, but for businesses and individual taxpayers trying to file their returns. Roughly half of the 30 people at the top of the IRS organizational chart have left, many because of Trump administration decisions that stretch boundaries of the law. Those departures in particular erode an important layer of defense to the IRS's most important missions: taxpayer data security and a fair tax system, former and current agency officials said. Most recently, two executives brought on to help the IRS build up its enforcement and reporting of digital assets left and were replaced by longtime IRS official Trish Turner. The leadership departures, combined with the broader cuts across different levels of the agency, make it harder for the IRS to collect revenue for the government and provide help to taxpayers. The IRS plans to lean more heavily on technology to make up for the lost workers. In this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax reporters Erin Slowey and Erin Schilling discuss who's replacing executives who have left, the impacts of the high turnover, and what happens when workers who want to leave can't. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

House Republicans are pushing a plan to dismantle the US audit board and send its watchdog duties to the Securities and Exchange Commission as part of a federal budget-cutting process. It's not the first GOP attempt to rein in the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, but this time it comes against the backdrop of the Trump administration's sweeping drive to cut regulations and downsize government. Congress set up the board in the early 2000s to restore investor trust following high-profile corporate accounting scandals at Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. The move to eliminate PCAOB threatens to derail independent oversight of auditors charged with vetting the financial reports of public companies worth trillions in stock value, according to Bloomberg Tax senior reporter Amanda Iacone. On this episode of Talking Tax, Iacone speaks with Benjamin Freed, Bloomberg Tax team lead for state tax and financial accounting, about why the PCAOB is being targeted now, previous attempts to curb its influence, and what a potential disbanding could mean for audit firms. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.

Before leaving for a two-week break, House Republican lawmakers adopted a Senate budget outline to expedite legislation to push through trillions of dollars in tax cuts, raise the debt ceiling, and slash billions in spending. Now comes the hard part where policy committees need to fill in the fine details. The Senate framework called for $1.5 trillion in new tax cuts, to enact policies like some proposed by President Donald Trump on the campaign trail. The Senate's use of a so-called current policy baseline wipes away, on paper, trillions of dollars expected to add to the deficit from extending the expiring parts of the GOP's 2017 tax law. The House is seen as taking the lead, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) publicly aiming for a Memorial Day deadline to get a bill on Trump's desk. In this episode of Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax federal editor Kim Dixon talks to congressional reporters Chris Cioffi and Zach Cohen about what to expect in the next work period. Do you have feedback on this episode of Talking Tax? Give us a call and leave a voicemail at 703-341-3690.