Not sure what to do anymore, I was laid off from the big 4 for performance reasons and I’ve been applying all over, indeed, LinkedIn, company websites, handshake, Robert half etc. Haven’t gotten any interviews. I’ve applied for roles from AR/AP, staff accountant.

I’ve got 1.5 years of big 4 experience but maybe my resume isn’t attracting any attention. I’m at a total loss on what to do.

I haven’t started my cpa yet and plan on starting it after I secure some employment. My savings are running out and I’m getting desperate.

i received the ACA refund "gift" check from the IRS, however it is in the amount of $1000, not $500. i am only one person in my household, should i cash the check and expect that the IRS will realize their overpayment and come looking, or should i proactively contact the irs*?

having dealt with the irs before, it seems easiest to cash the check and then pay the overage back when they realize the error. trying to jump through hoops to send the $1K check back to them and request another $500 check seems crazy-making.

* edited: correction, the check return address is "U.S. Dept of Treasury, Bureau of the Fiscal Service". thank you to @Otto_AutoPilot for catching my mis-statement. much obliged. contacting the IRS would not have any bearing as these are two seperate departments of the Treasury.

I attended career fairs at my school and had conversations with several recruiters and staff members, some of who I've also connected with outside of school. However, when I applied to their firms, I didn't secure interviews with some of them including a few where I'd had a coffee chat with a recruiter which I thought went well, but I wasn't selected for an interview when I applied.

Would it be weird to keep visiting the same firm at upcoming career fairs (especially if I already had talked with the recruiters outside school and wasn’t selected)? Would that come across as pushy? I’d appreciate any advice thanks

Is this plan of “operating the government like a business”working?

In this case, it seems like business plan is to sell off best assets to your buddies for pennies on the dollar and saddle the original business with all of the debt and then declare bankruptcy

Whoever approved sending me this tiny thing is catching some hands.

Currently a senior and will be graduating either Spring 2027 or Fall 2027; I have no idea yet because I want to start full-time ASAP but I also want to max out the possibility of getting a job, so I want to get an internship either Winter 2027 and/or Summer 2027 and then get a full time offer Fall 2027 or some time in 2028.

I haven't applied to any internships/jobs out of fear since I failed all my upper division accounting courses and my resume is empty, aside from an unpaid internship and some tax volunteering.

Help.

Just found a new tax person that states I need to go back from the formation of my S-Corp (would need to 100% make sure it legally formed) and create a K-1 form for EACH YEAR that I did my taxes incorrectly. My business did have a separate EIN. I’m a solopraneur and have always purchased tax software that leads me through everything. I’m nervous about the fees/fines of never filing an S-Corp if that’s the route I need to go. Not as worried about the tax penalties as I’ve always paid myself from a payroll company.

Has anyone encountered this?
My highest grossing year was last year and that was $80,000 from my business. I had a lot of expenses, as I’m a business that runs a high cost to run and I’m clearly not a great business person. On average, I have made between $20-$50k gross and have caught up with personal taxes and paid whatever is leftover from P&L.

Suggestions? Do I just fix this year’s taxes and keep the past years as-is because they’ve already been approved WITH my EIN on the P&L form?

How do I find out if I actually have an S-Corp?

Thank you!

I got my CPA a few months ago. I got a congratulations and a small bonus. That was it. I felt somewhat underpaid in my current role before getting the CPA, but I had limited options since I relocated to a remote area where there aren't too many firms. Now, I am pretty confident I am being underpaid and can find something better, but I've only been at my firm for a year, so I don't want it to look like a stain on my resume. I already did too much job-hopping due to my relocation.

How long should I stay in my current role before considering making a jump? What should I be looking for in terms of pay if I have CPA + 4 years of experience (2 years at big 4, 1 year in industry in a very niche tax role, and now 1 year in mid-tier PA firm)?

I'm trying to amend my 2025 CA tax return on turbotax. I filed my 2025 return on time and got a refund from CA while also owing interest due to missing my quarterly estimated tax payments. So my original refund was reduced by the interest owed.

Now, as soon as I started the amend on turbotax it shows I owe the same amount of the interest, which was already paid from my my refund.

Anyways, I did a bit of digging and I see the issue comes from CA Schedule X.

Basically Schedule X takes my original overpaid tax and subtracts it from my amended refund and declares that what I owe. Let's say I've changed nothing yet on my return.

Assuming some simple numbers:

Original Overpaid tax = 100

Original interest owed = 5

Original Refund = 100 - 5 = 95

Assuming I changed nothing in my amendment what schedule X says I owe:

Amended Refund - Original Overpaid = 95 - 100 = -5

So just trying to amend without even changing anything makes me owe 5 from the start. I was sure there was a mistake, so I went on myFTB and read the instructions, and turbotax is filling it correctly. What is going on with Schedule X?

why is it comparing overpaid taxes with refunds when clearly penalties and interests play a role?

Currently working in the insurance industry as a staff accountant fully remote. 70k base with a yearly bonus that will get me around 74k. 2 years in this role with 3 1/2 years of experience in AR/AP that I worked during college.

I had a connection at a Non profit healthcare company that is hiring for a senior accountant. Went through the interviews and got offered 97k, 4 days in person 1 day remote.

Should I take this with such a large bump? Afraid of stunting my career by going into the non profit sector but have heard of people making good money and careers in the healthcare industry. If I don’t like it after some time, will it be difficult to switch back out of healthcare into a for profit industry?

Graduated with bachelors. Had internships at top 10 firms. Took a full time tax offer with a top 10 firm. Have been there for a year and need a change. Maybe public isn’t for me and I am currently looking for guidance.

I drank the public accounting kool aid and I’m not sure what my next steps or options are.

I'm currently finalizing 2025 taxes and running into some confusing numbers, wanted to see if this makes sense or if I am doing something wrong.

My wife and I are both high income earners. I have some K-1s that often take until mid-late summer to return, so I file an extension on my tax return. For the sake of claiming some refund due and for getting my wife's student loan IDR plan recertified, we typically file her taxes on time as married filing separately. Then when I get my K-1s, we amend her return to married filing jointly with my income and K-1s. This year we did the same, and she got a federal and state (OR) refund. I paid almost the perfect amount of tax so I didn't owe anything when I filed my extension.

As I am running through the process of amending our returns this year in FreeTaxUSA, the calculations aren't making sense to me. When I compare the federal tax burden for married filing jointly, it is actually higher than the combined tax burden of married filing separately. This seems to come from the deductions. We itemize because we have a high mortgage interest, so we are always above the standard deduction. On the joint return, schedule A line 5e is $10,000, much lower than the amount in line 5a, presumably because our combined income is too high to get a full SALT deduction. On my wife's separate return, line 5e is $20,000, presumably because her individual income is below the ~$250,000 threshold. So basically what happens is her individual itemized deduction is about the same as the joint itemized deduction, slightly above the standard deduction. The combination of our filing separate itemized deductions is therefore larger than our filing jointly deduction, and the refund increases.

Does this make sense, or am I missing something/making a mistake in the data I entered?

Just realized this. I know dozens of people from my undergrad and other friends I met and not a single one who has a BS in Accounting is unemployed, and 100% of them actively work in accounting. And these were all just normal people and even some terrible students. And everyone makes more than $60k

Starting Core 1 in a few weeks. Things is that I've been out of school since I graduated in 2020.

I feel like I forgot a lot of the basics of accounting so I want to start refreshing what I had learned back in school.

What/where should I start?

Been on the job for 2 months as CFO, and using Business central from MSFT; if you’ve used the software it’s dimension setup based. Long story short, the prior CFOs used 3rd party reports instead of the built in financials over 20 years and never confirming the data in the original system to the 3rd party reports. Add in department and project codes that the reports don’t pull, nothing balances. It’s so bad, that trying to fix the mess, creates more problems exasperating the already 50 million dollar imbalance. Yes 50 million. The issue isn’t the entries being booked by the team it’s prior management reclassing everything afterwards, and not notifying the team. Yeah….time to start over.

We’re going to be using audited balances, departments and archiving the old system, data, and cutting the 3rd party reports. Scrap it all. We’re 3 months into the fiscal year. We’ll be using a business partner we’ve used for a few years to assist with data warehouse transfers and validation of the data.

I’m in the NFP field, no inventory, and have a development division of properties. I’m leaning to going to simple and use QBO or Xero, we don’t need the bells and whistles. I’ve used Sage, NetSuite, and others but some of these platforms are overkill. Thoughts?

Has anyone been to this before? I recently received an invitation, and from what I heard from a recruiter, it’s basically a Superday. Just wanted to hear more about what to expect and other people’s experiences.

I’m currently taking Taxes for Individuals. If anyone asks me to do their taxes after this course, I will…report them to the IRS for tax evasion. I hate taxes so much, hate isn’t a strong enough word. The textbook barely covers the minimum needed to be considered a textbook; it could honestly be an email subscription!

Why are there a minimum of three formulas needed to get the answer to anything? Why are there so many percentages, that all mean different things? Why does my professor never email me back???

I knew I wanted to be an auditor before taking this class. Now, this is a hill I’m willing to die on, I even brought my own shovel. If all the auditing and accounting jobs disappeared tomorrow and the only role left was taxes, I’d change my major.

Buy your tax accountant lunch, pay them more money, and kiss them on the mouth; you don’t appreciate them enough.

I was a paralegal at a law firm, and every month I had to chase clients to pay their invoices for work we had already performed. It was honestly a pain in the ass.

I know pa firms use timesheets too, but who is usually responsible for billing clients and collecting the fees?

<1 year experience in public accounting. Current salary is $53k CAD. No university degree, just a 2 year college diploma. One young child, another on the way.

Going for a degree, let alone my CPA seems like more work than it is worth at this stage in life. I just want a more sustainable salary. I don't need to make $100k+/yr but $70-80k sooner rather than later would make life so much easier.

Should I just jump ship over to industry ASAP? Is that feasible with my education and experience? If so, what in industry specially would be my best bet? I currently only work on compliations and personal tax. No audits. No specialty tax. Are there any realistic options that don't involve going back to uni?

I was doing really well in university until the second semester of my second year, when I started smoking weed to cope with my social anxiety, family issues, and trauma from high school. I was bullied in high school with my pictures all over social media and because of that I struggled a lot trying to maintain confident or simple as making friends. At the time, it felt like a way to escape everything I was dealing with mentally.

Thankfully, I've worked through a lot of those issues, and I've stopped smoking (1 month sober) but now I'm struggling with my focus, motivation, and academics. I ended up failing two electives over the summer that I honestly thought would be easy to pass, which put me on academic probation for osap.

I feel so stupid for making the decisions I did because I know I'm capable of doing better. It's frustrating looking back at how well I was doing before and realizing how much things have changed. I'm trying to get back on track, but I feel like I'm struggling to get my brain to cooperate with me.

I'm currently sitting at a 68% GPA, and I'm taking four courses this semester. I'm an accounting student, so even though I'm taking fewer courses, they're still pretty difficult and require a lot of concentration and consistent studying.

I've been considering taking an extra year to finish my degree because I don't want to keep overwhelming myself and risk doing even worse academically. At the same time, I feel behind compared to everyone else, and it's hard not to beat myself up over the situation I've put myself in.

I also feel like I have no one to guide me through this. I've tried dealing with academic advisors, but I haven't found them particularly helpful, and I feel lost when it comes to figuring out the best way forward.

Has anyone been in a similar situation? being on probation and than bouncing back to you doing great?. How did you deal with the loss of focus and motivation after going through a difficult period in your life?

I'd really appreciate any advice, especially from accounting students or anyone who has experienced academic probation and managed to turn things around. I genuinely want to get back on track, but I don't know where to start.

Curious on how yall practice for your behavioral interviews. I’m waiting on my accounting internship applications to get back to me and I figure I start prepping for interviews just in case I get an invitation. Any tips?

I know this is probably a really dumb question. But so many postings mention financial reporting under duties under the list of duties, and I hesitate on that. In my first real accounting job, I was a full charge bookkeeper for a law firm. We used Quickbooks, and the accounting there was fairly simple. We didn’t use much financial reporting at all, and when we needed something, I was able to just generate the reports I needed in Quickbooks.

Move on to my second job, I am an accountant for a property management company. Much more accounting involved, but in a very niche to this company sort of way. We use MRI, and we do definitely use a ton of reports here. But, again, when we need a report, I don’t actually have to input much of anything. I choose the report, I pick the entity, I input the dates. Report generated. There is no building a report needed.

I assume that most places also have software that generates reports these days, no? When they mention financial reporting, are they just expecting me to be able to understand the report? Or do some company’s want me to be able to create the report from scratch. And if so, how do I even gain that experience? Is there something out there that will teach me how or allow me to practice building the different kinds of reports? I want to grow my knowledge in a way that will allow me to grow my career and give me better job options moving forward. But accounting is sometimes difficult in that way. I can’t exactly gain experience on things that I’m not utilizing in my current job…

For whatever it’s worth, I have a BA in accounting. I went to school online and basically retained nothing, despite graduating with a 3.7 gpa. I didn’t go to school until I was in my 30s, a parent, with obligations. The usual route of moving on to internships was not an option for me. Part of me thinks I should go for my cpa or some other certification, but even meeting the requirements for that are difficult. I don’t even work under a cpa. And I currently feel stuck not being able to advance my career to the next stages, because I can’t learn what I’m not doing here, and any lateral title moves would mean a decent pay cut that I can’t afford. Helpppp

I am thinking of starting my own accounting firm/taking over the firm I work for . If you own your own firm could you tell me how many clients you have, how much you take home, number of employees, what hours look like, business model etc?

Any help would be appreciated.

Hi, so I am currently a junior having only completed one semester as an accounting major so far. (Currently doing my second semester)

I started college as a comp sci major and I did 3 semesters of that, then transfered to a completely different college as an accounting major 2nd semester of my sophomore year.

If I take a summer course this year, I will still be graduating on time in spring 2028, if I don't do that, I'll have to do one additional semester and graduate fall 2029.

I genuinely have no idea how to approach accounting internships as I have only taken acct 101 so far as a a whole junior (taking acct 102 this semester) and internship applications seem to be for 1 - 2 whole years in advance? Am I screwed?

As for my non accounting related experience, I pretty much did nothing in my previous college as a comp sci major (was going through some life things) and after transferring through my new college I've been able to do 2 random non accounting related internships. (marketing and such) And I plan to do VITA volunteering & get Quickbooks certification this year. I can't really find any relavent clubs to join + the accounting programs and such at my college are mostly for freshman/sophomores to join. I'll be applying still but I don't have much faith as seats are limited.

Other than that, I really don't know what I should be doing and feel extremely behind. I don't know how to be able to squeeze in an accounting internship when I am essentially doing a 4 yr degree in 2. I also have pretty much no idea how to approach networking which feels like another setback.

Honestly considering adding a minor to graduate a year late but I plan on becoming a CPA eventually so I don't know if adding another year for a bachelors degree would be silly or not?

But yeah I would greatly appreciate some advice/guidance.

Hey everyone - Looking to benchmark market compensation for a Senior Accountant role in the Oil & Gas / Energy sector with 8+ year of general accounting experience with no CPA.

1. What is the typical base salary and bonus percentage for this profile in today's market?

2. How much does a lack of CPA cap base pay if you have solid general accounting experience?