Presenting the 2022 Accounting Power 50

When your accountant speaks, you should listen. When a lot of accountants speak, you should listen closely.

While that may not be words to live by for business leaders, they should resonate now. New Jersey, along with the rest of the nation, stands at an economic crossroads. The pandemic downturn is mostly a memory, but inflation is running hot and the Federal Reserve is taking steps to get prices under control. Unfortunately, those steps could cause a recession, a possibility acknowledged recently by Fed Chairman Jerome Powell. Businesses still recovering from the COVID-induced slump are facing new challenges that could get worse as monetary policy changes take hold.

So publishing the NJBIZ Accounting Power 50 at this moment seems appropriate. Accountants will be sorting out not only the macroeconomic winds buffeting their clients, but also the fiscal responses by governments at all levels.

We got a sense for what the profession collectively thinks about the near-term outlook from a survey conducted recently by the New Jersey Society of Certified Public Accountants and sponsored by Investors Bank. The organization received responses from 240 professionals and released the results early in June.

“Compared to a survey completed last year at this time on the economic outlook, this year’s respondents were decidedly more negative,” NJCPA said. “Last year, more than 40% of respondents said they believed the economic conditions in the U.S. would improve, and 35% believed the New Jersey economy would improve. This year, those numbers were only 9 and 7%, respectively.”

The respondents also said that governments could make themselves useful by fighting inflation, easing regulatory burdens and keeping corporate taxes low. None of which is surprising, but all of which will require vigilance on the part of business owners and executives. And their advisors.

Many of the best of those advisors are listed in the pages of this week’s issue. What they say and do will go a long way toward determining how the state weathers the continuing economic turmoil.

As always, the top 10 honorees are listed in numerical order; the rest are listed alphabetically. Take a look and, by all means, let us know what you think.