Of course I've heard the horror stories about the job market for young lawyers. I read that New York Times piece about the increasing supply (i.e., possibly reduced income) of doctors). Yesterday I chatted with my friend John the accountant (different John from the regular John). How's employment holding up in the bean-counting trade?
Pretty well these past four or five years, John reported. Indeed he and his partners (who run a small firm) have had to pay top dollar to get whatever help they can get. The main reason: Sarbanes Oxley, the post-Enron Congressional mandate to stiffen up the policing against fraud.
This year though, John said, demand for accountants seems to be slackening off--he can hire at reasonable prices again. Maybe the Sarbanes Oxley market is saturated, he speculated. Or maybe people have just figured out that there is only so much people can do to ferret out fraud. If the client is determined to cheat. he'll cheat, and you might as well reconcile yourself to that fact.
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Or, possibly, a lot of small business owners just view the cost of compliance as too high at this point. They agree that in a perfect world, they would have a CPA office help them out with their books, ensure they file 1099 forms timely, complete their business property tax returns and sales tax returns correctly, etc. But last year and even more this year they just shudder at the though of the additional financial outlay.
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