RE:Accounting industries big failure with Enron.(Peter said) I'm an accountant so I don't think financials are mumbo jumbo exactly haha. I probably have greater ease in understanding financials than the average investor so I find them quite useful obviously. With that said, there is always room for manipulation in reporting, so I would suggest taking unaudited reports or even just reviewed financial statements with a grain of salt if you don't like or trust the management (or it's a shadier line of business, such as in the newly formed marijuana industry we've seen a few scandals as it relates to overvaluation of acquired businesses and assets). I'd say that note disclosures are vital to properly understand complicated and comprehensive sets of statements. Thing is, most people don't have the patience or accounting knowledge to read huge quarterly/annual reports and actually make sense of everything, so Peter's point is fair.
With that said, the increasing complexity and regulation of accounting practices is for an obvious purpose, especially when looking at something like the Enron scandal. That purpose being to ensure some reasonable standard of accuracy, integrity and usability for the various users of the statements. Further, accounting standards are always changing and evolving to serve the purpose of reporting accurate information in a way that makes sense. It is meant to have purpose for various users, including investors. With that said, it's not surprising to me that the feeling is that financials are getting more complicated and more difficult to understand as the desire for increased accuracy and "sensible accounting" usually requires more rules and more knowledge of the details to properly understand what the hell you're actually looking at.
There is a large seperation between legal treatment and accounting treatment that I, too, find frustrating. With that said, legal treatment - at least to me - can sometimes feel entirely arbritrary compared to accounting which usually has some underlying logic to justify the treatment.
Even tax accounting is an entirely different ball game than just financial reporting. So I don't think Peter is wrong that the changing regulations make things more complex, but I wouldn't say that's entirely to just increase fees. I think it's to tighten loopholes that could allow for manipulation of statements and to more or less, cover the asses of the accountants who provide varying levels of assurance of the accuracy of financial statements.
Just my 2 cents there.