KPMG Canada Career Advertisement

Holly Bartels 

VISA 1500 

9/25/21 

Dr. Terryl Atkins 

Part A, Assignment 1 

While hunting down advertisement, I came across this KPMG poster on a retractable stand. It stood taller than the door frame to the left of it, demanding attention. KPMG Canada is a company that provides accounting services to individuals and businesses. This advertisement’s purpose is to entice people into considering a career with their company. With a brief look at the advertisement, one can see a pale background, a black dress coat, dress shoes, and the small amount of text.  

Since the background is pale and lacks distracting colour, the old, white brick wall helps to contrast with the subjects in the foreground: the black dress coat and shoes. The logo and text being almost a phthalo blue also stands out from the wall. To the upper right middle, we can find one piece of business attire; a black coat with white accents on the collar and pocket. Directly beside this element to the left, we have our logo and their posed question: “What will your story be?” The logo being smaller is not hidden by the larger text, as it is boldened. Below the suit coat, in the bottom right corner, we find a pair of dress shoes. Directly to their left is KPMG’s social media platforms with their account name for their careers department. The overall advertisement is in a clear and crisp quality. 

Their posed question and the objects featured in the image, convey the message that you can start “your story” with their company, your future. The empty, hanging clothes aid in allowing the viewer to imagine themselves within the dress wear and in turn, their company. The lack of a garment for the lower half of the body allows a person of any gender to see themselves there, dressed in pants or any other kind of business wear.  

I found that KPMG’s use of clothing and text in this advertisement create a successful recruitment sign, because there is no fixed gender being targeted, giving me a positive opinion on it.  

KPMG Canada placed this advertisement in the Student Union building on the TRU Kamloops campus, which is a building with a large amount of student traffic throughout the week. With this placement, the company probably hopes that those in degrees applicable would consider applying at their company. The tall height in the retractable stand made this advertising immediately noticeable in the busy hallway. 

KPMG Canada is credited with creating the Isle of Man Strategy, which helped a handful of its clients “evade taxes […] to receive taxable income on tax-free basis,” (Lawrie and Zhang p. 54). To do this, the client would ‘gift’ their payment to the offshore Isle of Man company, allowing the money to go unreported, as “under Canadian law, gifts are excluded from taxable income,” (St-Pierre par. 22). The plan was uncovered by the CRA when they investigated one of the clients in the scheme, since his lifestyle did not add up to what he was receiving income wise, (Cashore and Zalac par. 19-20). Even though KMPG Canada was caught in 2010 (but no criminal charges against them (Lawrie and Zhang p. 55)), I do not believe the company has changed for the better quite yet, as one of its shell companies shut down only early 2021, (Cashore and Zalac par. 42). 

References 

Cashore, Harvey, and Frédéric Zalac. “Wealthy KPMG Clients Continued to Dodge Taxes for Years after CRA Detected Offshore ‘Sham’ | CBC News.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 4 June 2021, https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/kpmg-isle-of-man-taxes-house-commons-finance-committee-1.6047111. Accessed 23 Sept. 2021. 

Lawrie, Gretchen, and Yang Zhang. “KPMG Canada’s Isle of Man Offshore Company Tax Strategy.” Journal of Case Research and Inquiry, vol. 4, Jan. 2018, pp. 54-55. ResearchGate, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/340630474_KPMG_CANADA’S_ISLE_OF_MAN_OFFSHORE_COMPANY_TAX_STRATEGY . Accessed 23 Sept. 2021. 

St-Pierre, Pascale Cornut. “Investigating Legal Consciousness Through the Technical Work of Elite Lawyers: A Case Study on Tax Avoidance.” Law & Society Review, vol. 53, no. 2, Mar. 2019, pp. 323-352. Wiley Online Library, doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/lasr.12397 . Accessed 23 Sept. 2021.