I’m a cpa, and from what I can tell I’m the only one on Lemmy, god help me, so I’ll chime in.
Partnerships with $10 billion assets are no joke so I would imagine they are businesses like real estate holding companies, hedge funds, private equity, venture capital, things like that. Probably clients of a Big 4 like PWC Deloitte EY or KPMG.
The thing about entities like that is that they tend to be insanely complicated with TONS of moving parts. They’ll be dealing with complex financial instruments, partners coming in and out, financing structures that aren’t at all straightforward (if you’ve seen Shark Tank Mr Wonderful is infamous for offering complex financing deals rather than straight equity deals) plus international tax complications, book/tax timing differences, and all kinds of other stuff I can’t begin to get into.
Oh, and that’s just the tax side of it all. That’s not even starting to talk about the actual accounting, recording the transactions, balance sheets, income statements, and so on, which is an enormous layer of complexity before we even think about tax. Zillions of moving parts with plenty of room for errors and omissions.
Partnerships don’t pay tax at the business level so the individuals who own them need to report the income and activity on their personal returns and pay tax at that level. It’s not at all easy reporting their share of activity from entities like hedge funds and PE so plenty of mistakes are made, some quite substantial. Im guessing they are going to look at the partnerships first and compare to the biggest owners returns to make sure everything jives.
I find this news great. Our industry often faces challenges due to time constraints, budget limitations, client-provided data quality, logistics, and so on. Unethical behavior is rare among practitioners, but there are some shady ones. Typically, we defer issues, leaving them for others to handle, which seldom result in consequences.
Throughout my career, the IRS has never questioned our filed returns for individuals or businesses. We’ve received notices, mostly related to administrative matters rather than full audits.
A strengthened IRS enhances compliance, but the accounting industry is strained with few professionals and a lack of future talent. We already cut corners for efficiency, so aiming for flawless accuracy could pose a significant problem. It’s just another challenge to add to our list…
My issue with the taxman is that they have created and continue to allow those complications which only the rich can use, and therefore are elitist rules.
I wish the feds would/could go back to a basic tax structure based on wealth/income alone … where there’s nowhere for the rich to hide.
The thing is, much of the complexity is directly in response to the stunts jackasses have pulled over the decades, to prevent that from happening again.
Complexity aside, focusing on sheer logistics, to do a true full scale ‘drop your shorts and cough’ audit, the auditor would need to cross-reference receipts and bank statements to financial statements, then to the business returns, and follow it all to the individual owners.
That’s a colossal task, and it’s just too much work, not enough time to do it, and not enough qualified people to do it. Hopefully AI can assist in streamlining this process significantly in the future but who knows.
My spouse works for compliance and usually you are given a chance to right everything before it goes as far as being audited. Like you said, mostly administrative issues is taken care at the first level and it’s no biggie.
So if someone is being audited something is already very wrong and the first level folks have sent the case to audits or even criminal investigations.
Sort of. The IRS has an office of criminal investigations which is more equivalent to like an FBI raid with armed agents going to your home or a business and seizing your shit, maybe making arrests. I’ve personally never seen this or even heard of it second hand, but I’ve read about it. It’s extremely rare and as you said you usually have ample opportunity to deescalate before it gets to that point. Overall though the term audit is just a third party reviewing your work for accuracy, which could be a simple smell check review, or a long laborious process going dumpster diving with a microscope looking at everything. It’s unclear from the article what this is going to be.
My pleasure, I’m a huge nerd for this stuff and tax is super complicated obviously. Happy to help people understand. The more people understand in the general the easier my life is, lol
Lol they cant. The texas grid is separate because they dont follow federal regulations. They cant just reconnect it without bringing it to code lolololol
How many earthquakes has Morocco had by now? Seems like every day they have a new earthquake that pops up on here, each one with more people dead than the last.
A coworker of mine tried it one time while he was on the clock. He ended up having to go to the ER. They gave him something that coated his stomach (or at least that’s how he described it). He wasn’t fired or anything (and I don’t think he should’ve been, anyway), but people generally thought it was a pretty stupid move.
Elon Musk is afraid of Putin’s revenge. Crucial infrastructure like Starlink should be handled by the government, not a corp. Otherwise the corp will prioritize shareholders and profit rather than human’s life
Pretty sure he’s talking about the government of the country the company is registered in. As the is the only one that can realistically nationalise it.
I think he’s basically gullible. His companies have given him so much money, he just assumes he’s right. However he doesn’t understand diplomacy and Putin played him. He should have deferred to the state department, who deal with that BS all the time
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Technically, no. But I doubt that Musk will be getting any contracts in Ukraine after the war. Probably ruined any other future business in any of the other countries in a similar situation as Ukraine bordering Russia as well.
I hate Musk, but Starlink has been immensely important to Ukraine, I remember Michael Kofman saying that if there’s one wonder weapon in this war, it’s the Starlink.
What Musk did was refusing to help more. Shitty move, but it’s absurd to call it “helping Russia”. You also aren’t helping Russia because you don’t send all your discretionary income to Ukrainian army.
He was paid for a service and he turned it off, that’s way different than “helping more”. Don’t be a Musk apologist, he’s got billions to go to that cause.
Are you saying it doesn’t meet the definition or he can’t be tried for it. I’m assuming you’re not a lawyer but this is the definition. Elon’s actions=treason. Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance.[1] This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one’s native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplomats, or its secret services for a hostile and foreign power, or attempting to kill its head of state. A person who commits treason is known in law as a traitor.[2]
If you read the wiki page, you’ll find that citation [1] is about Roman and Germanic law, and citation [2] is a dictionary. Neither of which are relevant to this case.
But even if your definition were relevant, Elon Musk did not commit treason because he is not a Ukrainian citizen, and owes no allegiance to them.
Elon Musk has US citizenship. But under US law, this isn’t treason either. Treason is defined in the constitution as “levying war against the U.S.” not the case here, or “or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.”
You could argue this rises to the level of aid or comfort, but Russia is not an enemy in the eyes of the constitution. They would have to engage in open hostilities for that to be the case. The war in Ukraine is not open hostility against the US.
I’m not a lawyer, but I can do better research than copying the first paragraph from the first searh result.
Treason is a serious crime STOP diminishing that word by misusing it.
For Ukraine yes this treason. But in USA if you an oligarch with a lot of money you can do what you want. I won’t be suprise if the republicans will promote to stop the war by not sending ressources to Ukraine. You know, to promote democracy and free world…
I think there’s even a decent case to make this distinction, that Starlink is for communication but not attacking. The problem is making the decision unilaterally, in secret, with no warning, and contrary to customer expectations, with timing that uniquely benefits an enemy of civilization
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