Accounting
Deloitte rower earned gold medal at Paris Olympics
Published
7 months agoon

Oliver (Olli) Zeidler, a full-time specialist and consultant for Deloitte Germany, earned a gold medal in the men’s single sculls rowing event at this year’s Paris Olympics, marking Germany’s first gold title since 1992 in the event and the first medal overall since 2000.
As a former competitive swimmer who turned to rowing late in his career, Zeidler continued a family tradition of rowing success by following in his grandfather’s and aunt’s footsteps, both of whom are Olympic champions.
This year, 15 elite athletes, including 10 Deloitte professionals, competed as part of
“I come from a very sporty family,” Zeidler told Accounting Today. “As a child I tried a lot of things. I played basketball, I did athletics and also swimming. At some point, swimming became more and more competitive, and I needed to train more and more. That’s why I became a professional swimmer. And it went pretty well. I was successful at the German championships — European junior champion in the relay — and then in 2016 I unfortunately missed the qualification for the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro.”
“After that, there was not that much fun left. That was mainly because a lot of people on my team retired,” he continued. “It was a bit hard to push myself, so I decided to retire from swimming as well in November 2016.”

SIMON HOFMANN
He spent four to six weeks doing nothing until his body started sending him signals that he needed to be doing some kind of sport, he said. That was when he decided to take up rowing.
“I started rowing on the rowing machine in the basement of my parents [home],” said Zeidler. “At some point, I asked my dad then if he could teach me how to row on the water because it can be pretty dull to only row in the basement looking at a wall. And that’s how the journey started.”
He had been working for one and a half years already at Deloitte up to the time when he changed from swimming to rowing.
“I did a traineeship in Germany and started a bachelor’s degree supported by the company and a master’s degree as well, supported by the company,” said Zeidler. “I was always aware that in Olympic sports you will not have those big sponsors once you retire. I knew that the time would come when I would need to stop with rowing or with sports. When the professional area took over, I didn’t want to start in my 30s. I wanted to start earlier, building a base, and Deloitte allowed me to do so with their programs.
“I didn’t need to take holidays for my competitions or the training camps,” he added . “That was super helpful because before it was really difficult to do the 40-hour job, but they supported me.”
Deloitte started to support the German Olympic team after the 2021 Olympics with a collaboration, as well as the International Olympic Committee partnership in the last two games. Internationally, it
Zeidler prepared for this Olympic rowing regatta for three years, which included two trips to Paris. “In total, we spent five to six weeks on the lake, already in training camps to be really prepared for the adverse weather conditions we sometimes find there. It was definitely one of the keys for success that I knew already the course and everything.”
His race plan was designed to peak in the semifinal and the final. “It worked out perfectly,” said Zeidler. Whereas he had struggled in the Tokyo Olympics three years ago and only made the B final in the end, he was proud of his performance during the semifinal in Paris.
“It was an amazing race in the end,” he said, even though the lineup in the semifinal was similar to the one in Tokyo. “I was really happy when I was able to finally put my boat on the water and do something. Before, the wait was terrible. But I set an Olympic record in the semifinal in front of my mom watching. It was a very emotional moment. And after the semifinal during the cooldown, I really took one or two minutes to say goodbye to the demons of Tokyo.”

After that, his mind felt freer. “I was really looking forward to racing the final, and the Olympic final was the race I wanted to have,” said Zeidler. He had made it to the point where he felt he was at the peak of his abilities and was able to really enjoy it.
“Even if you think that the Olympic finals are the biggest thing you can achieve in rowing, there was no pressure anymore,” he added. “The semifinal was a lot of pressure, but the final was just going out having fun and executing the race plan. I knew that if I execute the race plan, I will win a medal today. … In the end, it was the gold medal. I had a perfect race in the final, and I was super happy after that. It became very emotional for friends, family and also for myself, and I think that’s what the Olympics are known for,”
The fans were very supportive during the medal ceremonies. “The grandstands in Paris, this was also amazing to see,” said Zeidler. “Even at the heats we had grandstands, and when I just watched the racing, I had shivers all over my body. Sometimes my knees became a bit soft. But when I heard the crowd cheering, it was such a cool atmosphere on the rowing course.”
He hopes to compete in the next Olympic Games in Los Angeles. “I’m aiming for 2028 and my goal is to become as successful as my grandpa and my aunt,” he said. “They both won one gold and one bronze medal at the Olympic Games, so I hope to manage to win at least a silver, if not another gold medal.”
His grandfather, Hans-Johann Färber, became Olympic champion in 1972 and won a bronze medal four years later. His aunt, Judith Zeidler, won gold in the Seoul Olympics and then bronze in Barcelona.
“It’s the third generation of Olympic gold medalists in the family now,” said Zeidler.
Over the years, he had been inspired by the stories of his family members. “Rowing is a very traditional sport,” said Zeidler. “That’s something I really love, and the Olympics were just something very special. But I think back to the days when my grandpa showed me the books of the Olympic Games where it was captured, and that’s how my dream developed to become an athlete and an Olympian one day as well. It’s a nice family story, but in total, the Olympics, the values they share, is just something I can really connect with.”
He had many opportunities to connect with other Deloitte athletes at the games, including a fellow rower, Jan van der Bij, who hails from the Netherlands and won a silver medal in the men’s eight.
“In total, we had 15 Deloitte athletes in Team Deloitte, and 10 of them are actually Deloitte professionals,” said Zeidler. “Of the Deloitte professionals, we have a lot of rowers. That is very cool. We are like a family in rowing, so we know each other. Even after racing, we caught up and celebrated together in the different houses of the nations. For example, I met Jan from the Netherlands, who won the silver medal in the eight, and it’s cool to not only have the same sport you’re in, but also the same employer and a similar professional background within the firm.”
The athletes attended parties to celebrate the victories with other Deloitte professionals. “If you think about the Olympics, all the nations have their houses, but also the sponsors have their houses where they make little parties,” said Zeidler. “Every evening you can attend two or three parties, and one morning, Deloitte invited us to their house. We met a lot of Deloitte professionals there, a lot of volunteers who were there for the games.”
“It was a nice atmosphere, and it felt a bit like coming home, as well, because it was not really screaming ‘Deloitte.’ It was a bit of a hidden place there in the middle of a park, and it was cool to see. Catching up with the colleagues was also nice — so not Olympians, but the colleagues were into the IOC partnership and into the sports business groups.”
The celebrations continued in Paris and on the flight home as well.
“After the games, after winning the gold medal, I was already in completely another world,” said Zeidler. “For example, one evening, my girlfriend and I got invited to the top of the Eiffel Tower. We went up there in a private elevator. All the other people needed to wait, and I think they were wondering, ‘Who are these guys? Why are they allowed to go up there in a private cabin?’ And then the Eiffel Tower guys even let us one floor above all the others, so we had a clear view over the city.”
“And on the way back, the pilots let me sit in the cockpit for 40 minutes, including the landing,” he continued. “And then arriving here, there was a big reception at the airport with friends, family, a lot of media. They brought me to a little place here in a convertible where I was waving to former teachers, to friends, to a lot of families who are living here close to Munich in the same village. And the celebration continued. Then I went to Deloitte, to the office. There was also a reception. Then the next day at my rowing club in Frankfurt, there was also a reception with a lot of people showing the medal around. It was a crazy world.”
He has already been scouting out the next Olympics venue. “I actually fly to L.A. on holidays, so I think I will definitely have a look at the rowing course there and see.”
You may like

What becomes of the broken-hearted; the earth moved; Kreative accounting; and other highlights of recent tax cases.
Providence, Rhode Island: Four Florida residents have been convicted and sentenced for what authorities called one of the largest schemes to defraud CARES Act programs.
The defendants defrauded various federally funded programs of more than $4.8 million, and each of the defendants pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. The schemes involved obtaining and using stolen ID information to submit fraudulent applications to multiple state unemployment agencies, including the Rhode Island Department of Labor and Training, and to submit fraudulent Economic Injury Disaster Loans and Paycheck Protection Program loan applications. The defendants also submitted fraudulent applications in the names of other persons to federal and state agencies to obtain tax refunds, stimulus payments, and disaster relief funds and loans.
The scheme involved using the stolen information to open bank accounts to receive, deposit and transfer fraudulently obtained government benefits and payments and to obtain debit cards to withdraw the money.
Sentenced were Florida residents Tony Mertile, of Miramar, identified in court documents as the leader of the conspiracy, to six years in prison; Junior Mertile, of Pembroke Pines, sentenced to 54 months; Allen Bien-Aime, of Lehigh Acres, to four years; and James Legerme, of Sunrise, to four years. All four were also sentenced to three years of supervised release to follow their prison terms.
The government moved to forfeit a total of $4,857,191, or $1,214,294.75 apiece, proceeds of the conspiracy. The defendants have also forfeited hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of Rolex watches and assorted jewelry and more than $1.1 million in cash. Each defendant is also liable for $4,456,927.36 in restitution to defrauded agencies and financial intuitions.
Raleigh, North Carolina: Michon Griffin, 46, who engaged as a money mule (a.k.a. middleman) in an international romance scheme, has been sentenced to two years in prison and three years of supervised release after pleading guilty to conspiracy to commit money laundering and to making false statements on her 1040.
Between 2021 to 2023, Griffin received more than $2 million from the scheme that she deposited into fictitious bank accounts that she controlled. She converted the money to virtual currency and wired the funds to overseas accounts controlled by her co-conspirators in Nigeria.
Griffin received some $300,000 from the romance fraud, which she did not report as income on her 1040 for 2021.
She was also ordered to pay $109,119 in restitution to the IRS.
Las Vegas: Tax preparer Keisy Altagracia Sosa has pleaded guilty to preparing false income tax returns.
Sosa has operated the tax prep business National Tax Service, and from 2016 to 2021 prepared and filed false federal returns for clients. These returns included falsely claimed dependents, and fictitious Schedule A and Schedule C expenses such as sales taxes paid and unreimbursed employee expenses.
Sosa continued to prepare false returns even after the IRS notified her that her returns appeared inaccurate and informed her that she may not be meeting due diligence requirements.
Sosa caused at least $550,000 in tax loss to the IRS.
Sentencing is June 11. She faces up to three years in prison, as well as a period of supervised release and monetary penalties.

Elk Mound, Wisconsin: Business owner Deena M. Hintz, of Eau Claire, Wisconsin, has been sentenced to a year in prison for failure to pay employment taxes.
Hintz, who pleaded guilty in December, owned and operated Jade Excavation and Trucking for nearly 10 years and at times had up to 15 employees. From 2017 to 2021, Hintz deducted more than $400,000 in federal employment taxes from employees’ pay and, instead of paying those taxes to the government, kept the money.
She was also ordered to pay $482,185.46 in restitution.
Littleton, Colorado: Tax preparer Thuan Bui, 60, has been sentenced to three years in prison and a year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $50,000 fine after pleading guilty to one count of aiding or assisting in preparation of false documents.
From about 2016 to 2021, Bui operated a tax prep business under several names, lying to clients that he was a CPA. On hundreds of returns, Bui overstated or fabricated expenses on Schedules C.
Philadelphia: Resident Joseph LaForte has been sentenced to 15 and a half years in prison for defrauding investors, conspiring to defraud the IRS, filing false tax returns, employment tax fraud, wire fraud, obstruction and other charges.
LaForte defrauded investors using a fraudulent investment vehicle known as Par Funding. Along with conspirators, he caused a loss to investors of more than $288 million.
He and conspirators diverted some $20 million in taxable income from Par Funding to another entity controlled by LaForte and nominally owned by another, then filed returns that did not report this income; he also received more than $9 million in kickbacks from a customer of Par Funding and did not report this income to the IRS. He paid off-the-books, cash wages to some employees, failing to report these wages to the IRS and not paying employment taxes.
The federal tax loss exceeds $8 million. He also caused $1.6 million in state tax loss to the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue by falsely reporting that he and his wife were residents of Florida from 2013 through 2019 when they lived in Pennsylvania.
Hampton Roads, Virginia: Two area residents have pleaded guilty to their roles in a refund scheme involving pandemic relief credits.
Between October 2022 and May 2023, Kendra Michelle Eley of Norfolk, Virginia, filed eight 941s for Kreative Designs by Kendra LLC using the EIN assigned to another company, Kendra Cleans Maid Service. These forms covered four tax periods in 2020 and four in 2021. On each of the forms, Eley falsely reported wages paid and federal tax withholdings for 18 purported employees, knowing there were no such employees.
For the four forms filed for 2021, Eley claimed false sick and family leave credits and Employee Retention Credits, totaling some $975,000. In December 2022, the IRS issued two refund checks payable to the cleaning company totaling $649,050.
That same month, Eley and Rejohn Isaiah Whitehead, of Portsmouth, Virginia, opened a business checking account in the name of Kendra Cleans; signatories on the account were Eley and Whitehead. The two falsely represented the nature and extent of the business, including that it had 16 employees and that the average pay of each was $2,000. Eley funded the account by depositing one of the refund checks in the amount of $389,640. In January 2023, Eley wrote Whitehead two checks from the account totaling $60,000.
Whitehead’s sentencing is June 26 and Eley’s is July 9. They each face up to 10 years in prison.
Accounting
Accountants tackle tariff increases after ‘Liberation Day’
Published
15 hours agoon
April 3, 2025
President Trump’s imposition of steep tariffs on countries around the world is likely to drive demand for accounting experts and consultants to help companies adjust and forecast the ever-changing percentages and terms.
On April 2, which Trump dubbed “Liberation Day,” he announced a raft of reciprocal tariffs of varying percentages on trading partners across the globe and signed an
“A lot of CFOs are thinking they are going to pass along the tariffs to their customer base, and about another half are thinking we’re going to absorb it and be more creative in other ways we can save money inside our company,” said Tom Hood, executive vice president for business engagement and growth at the AICPA & CIMA.
The AICPA & CIMA’s most recent
“CFOs in our community are telling us that, effectively, they’re looking at this a lot like what happened over COVID with a big disruption out of nowhere,” said Hood. “This one, they could see it coming. But the point is they had to immediately pivot into forecasting and projection with basically forward-looking financial analysis to help their companies, CEOs, etc., plan for what could be coming next. This is true for firms who are advising clients. They might be hired to do the planning in an outsourced way, if the company doesn’t have the finance talent inside to do that.”
The tariffs are not set in stone, and other countries are likely to continue to negotiate them with the U.S., as Canada and Mexico have been doing in recent months.
“The one thing that I think we can all count on is a certain amount of uncertainty in this process, at least for the next several months,” said Charles Clevenger, a principal at UHY Consulting who specializes in supply chain and procurement strategy. “It’s hard to tell if it’s going to go beyond that or not, but it certainly feels that way.”
Accountants will need to make sure their companies and clients stay compliant with whatever conditions are imposed by the U.S. and its trading partners. “This is a more complex tariff environment than most companies have experienced in the past, or that seems to be where we’re headed, and so ensuring compliance is really important,” said Clevenger.
Big Four firms are advising caution among their clients.
“Our point of view is we’re advising all of our clients to do a few things right out of the gate,” said Martin Fiore, EY Americas deputy vice chair of tax, during a webinar Thursday. “Model and analyze the trade flows. Look at your supply chain structures. Understand those and execute scenario planning on supply chain structures that could evolve in new environments. That is really important: the ability for companies to address the questions they’re getting from their C-suite, from their stakeholders, is critical. Every company is in a different spot according to the discussions we’ve had. We just are really emphasizing, with all the uncertainty, know your structure, know your position, have modeling put in place, so as we go through the next rounds of discussions over many months, you have an understanding of your structure.”
Scenario planning will be especially important amid all the unpredictability for companies large and small. “They’re going to be looking at all the different countries they might have supply chains in,” said Hood. “And then even the smaller midsized companies that might not be big, giant global companies, they might be supplying things to a big global company, and if they’re in part of that supply chain, they’ll be impacted through this whole cycle as well.”
Accountants will have to factor the extra tariffs and import taxes into their costs and help their clients decide whether to pass on the costs to customers, while also keeping an eye out for pricing among their competitors and suppliers.
“It’s just like accounting for any goods that you’re purchasing,” said Hood. “They often have tariffs and taxes built into them at different levels. I think the difference is these could be bigger and they could be more uncertain, because we’re not even sure they’re going to stick until you see the response by the other countries and the way this is absorbed through the market. I think we’re going through this period of deeper uncertainty. Even though they’re announced, we know that the administration has a tendency to negotiate, so I’m sure we’re going to see this thing evolve, probably in the next 30 days or whatever. The other thing our CFOs are reminding us of is that the stock market is not the economy.”
Amid the market fluctuations, companies and their accountants will need to watch closely as the rules and tariff rates fluctuate and ensure they are complying with the trading rules. “Do we have country of origin specified properly?” said Clevenger. “Are we completing the right paperwork? When there are questions, are we being responsive? Are we close to our broker? Are we monitoring our customs entries and all the basic things that we need to do? That’s more important now than it has been in the past because of this increase in complexity.”
Accounting
How to use opportunity zone tax credits in the ‘Heartland’
Published
15 hours agoon
April 3, 2025
A tax credit for investments in low-income areas could spur long-term job creation in overlooked parts of the country — with the right changes to its rules, according to a new book.
The capital gains deferral and exclusions available through the “opportunity zones” credit represent one of the few areas of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 that drew support from both Republicans and Democrats. The impact of the credit, though, has proven murky in terms of boosting jobs and economic growth in the roughly 7,800 Census tracts qualifying based on their rates of poverty or median family incomes.
Altering the criteria to focus the investments on “less traditional real estate and more innovation infrastructure” and ensuring they reach more places outside of New York and California could “refine the where and the what” of the credit, said Nicholas Lalla, the author of “
“I don’t want to sound naive. I know that investors leveraging opportunity zones want to make money and reduce their tax liability, but I would encourage them to do a few additional things,” Lalla said. “There are communities that need investment, that need regional and national partners to support them, and their participation can pay dividends.”
READ MORE:
A call to action
In the book, Lalla writes about how the Innovation Labs received $200 million in fundraising through public and private investments for projects like a startup unmanned aerial vehicle testing site in the Osage Nation called the Skyway36 Droneport and Technology Innovation Center. Such collaborations carry special relevance in an area like Tulsa, Oklahoma, which has a history marked by the wealth ramifications of the
“This book is a call to action for the United States to address one of society’s defining challenges: expanding opportunity by harnessing the tech industry and ensuring gains spread across demographics and geographies,” he writes. “The middle matters, the center must hold, and Heartland cities need to reinvent themselves to thrive in the innovation age. That enormous project starts at the local level, through place-based economic development, which can make an impact far faster than changing the patterns of financial markets or corporate behavior. And inclusive growth in tech must start with the reinvention of Heartland cities. That requires cities — civic ecosystems, not merely municipal governments — to undertake two changes in parallel. The first is transitioning their legacy economies to tech-based ones, and the second is shifting from a growth mindset to an inclusive-growth mindset. To accomplish both admittedly ambitious endeavors, cities must challenge local economic development orthodoxy and readjust their entire civic ecosystems for this generational project.”
READ MORE:
Researching the shortcomings
And that’s where an “opportunity zones 2.0” program could play an important role in supporting local tech startups, turning midsized cities into innovation engines and collaborating with philanthropic organizations or the federal, state and local governments, according to Lalla.
In
Other research suggested that opportunity-zone investments in metropolitan areas generated a 3% to 4.5% jump in employment, compared to a flat rate in rural places,
“It creates a strong incentive for taxpayers to make investments that will appreciate greatly in market value,” Tax Foundation President Emeritus Scott Hodge wrote in the analysis, “Opportunity Zones ‘Make a Good Return Greater,’ but Not for Poor Residents” shortly after the Treasury study.
“This may be the fatal flaw in opportunity zones,” he wrote. “It explains why most of the investments have been in real estate — which tends to appreciate faster than other investments — and in Census tracts that were already improving before being designated as opportunity zones.”
So far, three other research studies have concluded that the investments made little to no impact on commercial development, no clear marks on housing prices, employment and business formation and a notable boost in multifamily and other residential property,
The credit “deviates a lot from previous policies” that were much more prescriptive, Feldman said.
“It didn’t want the government to have a lot of oversay over what was going on, where the investment was going, the type of investments and things like that,” she said. “It offered uncapped tax incentives for private individual investors to invest unrealized capital gains. So this was the big innovation of OZs. It was taking the stock of unrealized capital gains that wealthy individuals, or even less wealthy individuals, had sitting, and they could roll it over into these funds that could then be invested in these opportunity zones. And there were a lot of tax breaks that came with that.”
READ MORE:
A ‘place-based’ strategy
The shifts that Lalla is calling for in the policy “could either be narrowing criteria for what qualifies as an opportunity zone or creating force multipliers that further incentivize investments in more places,” he said. In other words, investors may consider ideas for, say, semiconductor plants, workforce training facilities or data centers across the Midwest and in rural areas throughout the country rather than trying to build more luxury residential properties in New York and Los Angeles.
While President Donald Trump has certainly favored that type of economic development over his career in real estate, entertainment and politics, those properties could tap into other tax incentives. And a refreshed approach to opportunity zones could speak to the “real innovation and talent potential in midsized cities throughout the Heartland,” enabling a policy that experts like Lalla describe as “place-based,” he said. With any policies that mention the words “
“We can’t have cities across the country isolated from tech and innovation,” he said. “When you take a geographic lens to economic inclusion, to economic mobility, to economic prosperity, you are including communities like Tulsa, Oklahoma. You’re including communities throughout Appalachia, throughout the Midwest that have been isolated over the past 20 years.”
READ MORE:
Hope for the future?
In the book, Lalla compares the similar goals of opportunity zones to those of earlier policies under President Joe Biden’s administration like the Inflation Reduction Act, the CHIPS and Science Act, the American Rescue Plan and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.
“Together, these bills provided hundreds of millions of dollars in grant money for a more diverse group of cities and regions to invest in innovation infrastructure and ecosystems,” Lalla writes. “Although it will take years for these investments to bear fruit, they mark an encouraging change in federal economic development policy. I am cautiously optimistic that the incoming Trump administration will continue this trend, which has disproportionately helped the Heartland. For example, Trump’s opportunity zone program in his first term, which offered tax incentives to invest in distressed parts of the country, should be adapted and scaled to support innovation ecosystems in the Heartland. For the first time in generations, the government is taking a place-based approach to economic development, intentionally seeking to fund projects in communities historically disconnected from the nation’s innovation system and in essential industries. They’re doing so through a decidedly regional approach.”
Advisors and
“This really is a bipartisan issue. Opportunity zones won wide bipartisan approval,” he said. “Heartland cities can flourish and can do so in a complicated political environment.”

China to impose 34% retaliatory tariff on all goods imported from the U.S.

Actively managed ETFs hit $1 trillion

Donald Trump is attacking what made American universities great

New 2023 K-1 instructions stir the CAMT pot for partnerships and corporations

The Essential Practice of Bank and Credit Card Statement Reconciliation

Are American progressives making themselves sad?
Trending
-
Economics1 week ago
Young Americans are losing confidence in economy, and it shows online
-
Personal Finance1 week ago
Student loans could be managed by the Small Business Administration
-
Economics7 days ago
PCE inflation February 2025:
-
Economics1 week ago
White House denials over the Signal snafu ring hollow
-
Accounting7 days ago
IRS sets new initiative with banks to uncover fraud
-
Economics7 days ago
Consumer sentiment worsens as inflation fears grow, University of Michigan survey shows
-
Economics1 week ago
Texas troopers are in more and more lethal car chases
-
Personal Finance1 week ago
Millions of student loan borrowers past-due after bills restarted: Fed