Accounting Today - June 2011

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Lynch, a division of Accounting Principals.
“This is the first year where the economy
is starting to pick up, and business is begin-
ning to come back to the level it was. As a
result, this year requisitions were up for tax-
related contract roles almost 300 percent
from last year.”
Avdi noted that many ;rms are especially
short-sta;ed in middle management. “Many
;rms laid o; accountants with two-to-four
years of experience, so there’s a lot of senior
management and partners, and first- and
second-year classes. What’s missing is the
middle gap of knowledge,” he said.

Avdi recommended that ;rms proactively hire needed sta; six to 12 months in advance of tax season.

A complicating factor to tax season was not only the slow release of 1099 forms, but the number of times they were amended and corrected, indicated Jim Oliver of San Anto-nio-based Jim Oliver & Associates.

“You were never sure if you got the correct ones, so you waited,” he said. “It seemed to go on and on. Another area that surprised

Lessons
FROM PAGE 52

some clients was the increasing use of pub-
licly traded partnerships,” he observed. “I
don’t think brokers know what they’re do-
ing to clients when they have clients invest
in these. ;ey think it’s like a stock, but it
requires totally di;erent reporting. ;ere
seemed to be a lack of knowledge in the
investment community about the tax con-
sequences, and we spent more time with
clients as a result.”
Oliver noted more concern about fees this
past season: “Sometimes they didn’t under-
stand the complexity of their return. And
sometimes they thought our fees went up,
but when we checked last year’s return the
fee had actually gone down. ;is may be just
the result of a bad economy.”
Although he acknowledged the e;ciencies
of e-;ling and the use of portals, Oliver sug-
gested that clients are less likely to spend time
reviewing their returns as a result.

“In the old days when they actually signed
the return, it meant more,” he said. “Just now
we’re ;nding out that they didn’t look at it.
We still want the client to look at the return,
even thought we review it twice in the o;ce,
because there are some corrections only they
would know about.” AT
prevention training, according to ACFE pro-
gram director Bruce Dorris: “;ey see chang-
es recently in the regulatory environment and
are looking at what are our best practices here
when it comes to anti-fraud measures?”
;ough the CFE, established in 1988, is
held by more than 30,000 people, the public
is not su;ciently knowledgeable of its mer-
its, said Dorris.

CREDENTIAL CREDIBILITY

Public education is the primary goal of the recently launched DesignationCheck.com, where people can learn more about credential speci;cs for ;nancial professionals, as well as locate a ;nancial advisor.

“They all run together in consumer’s
minds,” said Keith Hickerson, senior strat-
egy consultant at ;e American College, an
institute specializing in ;nancial education
and a sponsor of the Web site. “With the list
of letters, they think [the advisor] must be
pretty bright because there are a lot of letters
after their name. But it depends on what the
letters are.”
All letters are not created equal. Hickerson
is aware of several organizations that award
credentials with no exam and scant require-
ments. “Some are very good — there’s others
where you can go to a hotel over the weekend,
write a check, put letters after your name,
and consumers don’t know the di;erence,”
he continued. “It’s studying for two to three
years versus going to a Holiday Inn over the
weekend.”
Joseph T. Wells, founder and chair of the
ACFE, believes that the same research is
required of those seeking a credential. “If
you don’t know what or who is behind the
certi;cation, you should check,” he said. “If
you’re called as an expert witness and you
have a certi;cation that in the South we’d call
‘hokey,’ it’s going to hurt you more than it can
help you.”
;e right credential, on the other hand, can
only help an accountant, according to Hick-
erson. “Accountants have such a wonderful
background, the language of business and a
natural advantage to branching out to other
credentials with their core base of knowl-
edge,” he said. “CPAs are not afraid of rigor.
It’s nothing new for them to go in-depth on
information.” AT

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