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- IRS spent $2.3B and left the door open
IRS spent $2.3B and left the door open
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I share the 4-5 most important accounting that actually matter. I scroll so you don’t have to.
So grab your coffee, take a quick break, and lets catch up.
Today’s Ledger:
A children’s hospital lost $5.3M.
The IRS went paperless and got sloppy.
Accounting majors beat the college average.
WTF of the Day🤯
Former CPA Helped Move A Hospital’s Missing $5.3M
Ronald Deabler, a former Atlanta accountant, just got four years in federal prison after prosecutors said he helped launder money stolen from Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Deabler, 66, was convicted in February after a hacker tricked the hospital into sending a $5.3 million payment to his bank account.
The scam started with a hacked vendor email. Someone pretended to work for a furniture company that did business with the hospital and asked for new bank details. The money landed in Deabler’s account on June 13, 2023. Prosecutors said he agreed to move the cash for a fee, opened another bank account, and tried to shift the full $5.3 million. The bank blocked most of it, but more than $1 million still moved before the scheme fell apart. Deabler also has to serve two years of supervised release and pay $682,860 in restitution, which feels like a pretty light sentence for helping move money stolen from a children’s hospital.
Read the article
What’s poppin in accounting🍿
The IRS Paperless Push Has A Security Problem
The IRS wants to stop drowning in paper. Every year, taxpayers send in forms, letters, and returns. A lot of that still has to be opened, scanned, and stored. So the IRS started a big project called Zero Paper to turn those documents into digital files. The project is worth $2.3 billion.
But the watchdog found a problem at two contractor sites doing the scanning. These sites were handling taxpayer information, and some workers were getting into areas they were not approved to enter. That happened 1,375 times last year. One site also had an open loading dock near taxpayer documents, with no guards watching it. The computer systems had problems too, including old software and missing security fixes.
Going paperless sounds great until taxpayer records are sitting in a building that is not locked down.
Read the article
Weekly Trend Chart 📊
Where Accounting Lands on the Salary List
College majors can change the math fast. New Fed data on workers ages 35 to 45 shows engineering still owns the top of the pay chart, with chemical engineering at $135,000, computer engineering at $131,000, and aerospace engineering at $130,000.
But the accounting angle is solid too. Accounting ranked No. 22 out of 73 majors with a mid-career median salary of $97,000, beating the overall major median of $87,000. Finance ranked higher at $112,000, economics hit $115,000, and business analytics came in at $109,000. Accounting is not the flashiest major on the list, but it still clears the average by $10,000 a year and gives students a practical business path with real earning power.
Meme of the Day😂
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