Accounting
Confidence grows among US accountants but plummets globally
Accountants and other financial professionals in the U.S. are showing more signs of confidence in the economy, according to a new survey, but optimism is waning in other parts of the world.
The quarterly
Confidence in Western Europe is at its weakest level since the third quarter of 2022, while U.K. confidence is at a record low, perhaps due to recent announcements of large tax increases ahead for employers in the U.K. budget.
The
Globally, there was a sharp deterioration in the Employment Index part of the survey, while, on the positive side, there were small gains in the forward-looking New Orders Index and the Capital Expenditure Index. Cost pressures no longer appear to be elevated by historical standards in most parts of the world, although Western Europe appears to be an outlier, with nearly three-fourths of respondents reporting increased costs last quarter.
“The global economy proved quite resilient in 2024, aided by the strength of the U.S. economy,” said ACCA chief economist Jonathan Ashworth in a statement. “The greater resilience of the Global New Orders and Capital Expenditure indices would suggest that the global economy is not set to lurch downwards imminently. Nevertheless, while the Global Confidence Index can at times be volatile, its sharp decline attests to the significant nervousness among companies, given the enormous uncertainty at the current juncture. Against such a backdrop, there are significant downside risks to global growth over the coming year.”
Accountants listed their top three risk priorities at the end of 2024. Economic risks remained the highest priority for the second year in a row,, while talent scarcity, regulatory change and cybersecurity ranked much closer to the top than in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Responses in Q4 2024 showed noteworthy regional and sectoral nuances. For example, Central and Eastern Europe was the only region to rank cybersecurity as its highest risk priority, while talent scarcity was seen as the most important in the Asia Pacific region and Western Europe. South Asia and North America also stood out for keeping geopolitics among their top three risk priorities.
“Confidence in the U.S. registered a reasonable gain after a large increase previously and is now slightly above its historical average,” said Alain Mulder, senior director of Europe operations and global special projects at IMA, in a statement. “There were also improvements in the other key indicators by varying degrees. This is clearly an encouraging sign, because the U.S. is the only major engine of the global economy where activity is showing significant resilience at the present time.”
Al Drago/Bloomberg
The week before confirmation hearings for President Donald Trump’s nominee for commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, former Missouri Congressman Billy Long, Democrats in the Senate are asking questions about the timing of campaign donations he received immediately after his nomination.
In
Between Dec. 4, 2024, and the end of January 2025, the letters said, Long’s unsuccessful 2022 campaign for Senate received $165,000 in donations — after nearly two years without receiving any — and his leadership PAC received an additional $45,000.
The donations allowed Long to repay himself the $130,000 balance of a $250,000 loan he had personally made to his campaign back in 2022.
(Read more: “
The senators’ letters described the donations as “a highly unusual and almost immediate windfall,” and characterized many of the donors as being “involved in an allegedly fraudulent tax credit scheme.”
“The overlap between potential targets of IRS investigations and the list of recent donors heightens the potential for conflicts of interest and suggests that contributors to Mr. Long’s campaign may be seeking his help to undermine or avoid IRS scrutiny,” the letters said; adding, “This brazen attempt to curry favor with Mr. Long is not only unethical — it may also be illegal.”
The senators then warned, “There appears to be no legitimate rationale for these contributions to a long-defunct campaign other than to purchase Mr. Long’s goodwill should he be confirmed as the IRS commissioner,” before appending a list of approximately a dozen questions for the donors to answer.
The donations were originally discovered in early April by investigative news outlet
After Long left Congress in 2023, he worked for a tax consulting firm, including promoting the COVID-related Employee Retention Credit. In early January, Sen. Warren sent a letter to Long questioning his tax credentials and promotion of the ERC.
The IRS has run is now on its
Long’s confirmation hearing before the Senate Finance Committee is scheduled for this Tuesday, May 20.
Al Drago/Bloomberg
President Donald Trump called on members of his party to unite behind his economic agenda in Congress, putting pressure on factions of lawmakers who are calling for last-minute changes to the legislation to drop their demands.
“We don’t need ‘GRANDSTANDERS’ in the Republican Party,” Trump said in a social media post on Friday. “STOP TALKING, AND GET IT DONE! It is time to fix the MESS that Biden and the Democrats gave us. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
Trump sent the post from Air Force One after departing the Middle East as the House Budget Committee was meeting to approve the legislation, one of the final steps before the bill can move to the House floor for a vote.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has set a goal to pass the bill next week before the House recesses for its Memorial Day break.
However, the the bill
Narrow majorities in the House mean that a small group of Republicans can block the bill. Factions pushing for steeper Medicaid cuts and for an increase to the SALT write-off have both threatened to defeat the bill unless their demands are met.
“No one group gets to decide all this stuff in either direction,” Representative Chip Roy, an ultraconservative Texas Republican advocating for bigger spending cuts, said in a brief interview on Friday. “There are key issues that we think have this budget falling short.”
Trump’s social media muscle and calls to lawmakers have previously been crucial to advancing his priorities and come as competing constituencies have threatened to tank the measure.
But shortly after Trump’s Friday post, Roy and fellow hardliner Ralph Norman of South Carolina appeared unmoved — at least for the moment. Both men urged continued negotiations and significant changes to the bill that could in turn jeopardize support among moderates.
“I’m a hard no until we get this ironed out,” Norman said. “I think we can. We’ve made progress but it just takes time”
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