← AICPA Town Hall
AICPA Town Hall
DC outlook, trends defining the profession and risk management strategies to move from one tax season to the next
01:02:00
Topics include: Key DC updates AI, tech and transformation trends in accounting Technical updates Speakers: Erik Asgeirsson, President & CEO, CPA.com Mark...
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- [00:01]
A
Welcome to the AICPA Town Hall Series, your resource for the latest news and updates on pressing issues facing the accounting profession.
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B
Good afternoon and welcome to the AICPA Town Hall. I'm Eric Ouskerson, one of your hosts for today. Today is September 11, 2025, and you can see I'm here live in our New York studio with Mark Koziel, the CEO of the AICPA and, and Lisa Simpson. Great to be with both of you. It's a beautiful day here in New York, but we're all reflecting, as we always do, about September 11th. And there's a lot going on here in the country and around the world.
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C
There is, yeah. And it's, I know there's a number of remembrances happening around the city. I can see it. So it's important to remember, you know, the events of that day.
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B
Lisa, great being with you.
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A
Thank you. It's good to be back in studio with the original founders of Aicph Town Hall. So it's fun.
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B
Absolutely. It is. Great to be back. Great to be with the town hall community. So we've got, we've got a great agenda today. We're, we're going to kick things off with, with a DC update with Rachel Dressen. Then Lisa Simpson's got plenty to talk about related to the implementation around the HR1 bill. Mark and I and Lisa then are going to have a profession update. Talk about a pretty significant project underway at the AICPA Rise 2040. We're also gonna share some highlights from an executive roundtable, a tech summit that we just held in New York City this week. And then we're gonna bring our AON partners up and we're gonna talk about some risk things to be thinking about as you head into 2026. So let's kick things off and welcome Rachel from our DC studio. Rachel, good to see you.
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D
Thank you.
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B
And I know the top lot of hot topics there in D.C. but the upcoming government funding deadline has got everybody real concerned.
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D
Yeah. So Congress is back from their August recess, which is their longest period of time that they're away from D.C. during the year. And as you mentioned, they have come back to probably one of the biggest issues that, that they have facing them during the year and that is to fund the government. And they only have a limited amount of time to do so. So they have until September 30th, which is the end of the fiscal year, which if you are counting, they only have a week and a half really to do this because they will be out of session. That Last full week of September for the Jewish holidays. So that means they only have six, seven days to try to come to an agreement on how they're going to fund the government. Right now, the House and the Senate have both passed legislation on three of the 12 bills that need to be passed to fund the government. The only problem is that they haven't passed identical bills, and they have to be identical to make it to the President's desk. And they're not the same bills. So they've passed both the Military Construction and Veteran affairs bills, both the House and the Senate, but the other two bills they've each passed aren't the same. So what they're trying to do right now is to figure out exactly what type of package they'll put together for funding the government when the September 30th at midnight clock ticks. So the thinking right now is that they will have to pass a cr, we know that, which is CR stands for Continuing Resolution, which means that they will continue to fund the government at current levels. However, they may try to pass a small package of a mix of those three bills as a part of the cr. So it would be passing three individual bills, and then the other nine bills they would pass as a continuing resolution, continuing just the current funding. And the three bills that they're currently looking at, they are smaller in funding. So if you just look at the overall government funding spending, it's only one tenth of that discretionary spending. So it would be smaller, and it would include most likely the Legislative branch, and it would include Agriculture and FDA and then that military construction and Veterans Affairs. So that's kind of what they're looking at right now. But as we've talked about before, to fund the government, they're going to need bipartisan support. In the House, they only need a majority. So Republicans could pass it on their own, but in the Senate, they need 60 votes. And Republicans right now they hold 53 seats. So they need at least seven Democrats to vote along with them. And in order to pass a government spending bill. And so therefore, it will have to be bipartisan. So that's where the real question comes in, is exactly what can they come to an agreement on a bipartisan funding basis? Some of the Democrats are wanting to include an Obamacare premium tax credit with part of the government funding bill. And, and what this is, it's a credit that was expanded in the Inflation reduction act in 2022, but it expires at the end of this year. So that's one thing that they're considering asking Republicans to include in the bill. And then there are some other things that they're talking about, maybe rolling back some of the things that President Trump has done. And then there's also the question just politically, is it advantageous to shut the government down on either side and then blame the other party? So that's what we're confronting right now. We have just a short period of time in which they need to come to an agreement on this. And we don't know exactly how they will go about this, but that is common. Usually these things fall apart multiple times before they come to together at the end. But there is a real possibility that there could be a shutdown come, you know, 12:01am on October 1st. So this is something that we're following very closely because it would have a significant impact on the various agencies that, you know, we work with and that have, you know, oversight over issues that the profession cares about and works on. So we will keep you updated on this. But that's the latest on where things stand on the government funding issue in Congress.
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C
Rachel, on the scenario planning. Obviously, our members who are in tax are going to be very interested on whether or not the IRS would be shut down or not. And isn't it that they're considered to be necessary during tax season, which they define as April 15th. So what would happen with the IRS if there was a shutdown?
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D
So what happens when there's a shutdown is they each agency determines who is essential. So the essential employees still have to go to work. They don't get paid, but they still go to work. And so for the irs, they could deem a number of those employees who, who would be implementing anything related to the Oct. 15 filing deadline as essential so that some of that work could continue on.
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B
Well, we've got some other developments. This Genius act that was released for public comment.
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D
Yeah. So just last month, the treasury released a notice for public comment on the Genius act, which this bill was was signed into law by the president in July. And it has to do with digital assets and creating a framework for stablecoins. The treasury has asked for comments and they have a deadline for comments of next month on October 17. We, the AICPA, we plan to comment during this period and we plan to raise a few different issues. One is just, you know, we will ask for some clarification on some various reporting issues within the bill. And then we support language that was included in a separate digital assets bill that has passed the House. It has not passed the Senate as of yet. And the language that we support would require internal controls and annual reserve attestation. So in our comments, we will include, you know, supporting similar language to the GENIUS act as what is in the House pass Clarity Act. And then earlier this year we came out with some criteria, the stablecoin reporting criteria. We will include that in our comments as well as proposed controls criteria. So that is our plans as of now for what we will include in the comments. But we wanted to let everyone know who, you know, many of you are following digital assets and the implementation of the Genius Act. So that is the most recent news related to digital assets.
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B
And we're going to have an upcoming town hall, we're going to have a special segment just related to crypto assets, stablecoins. We'll be talking about all of this with Ron Quanta. And we're having our upcoming blockchain symposium next month as well here in New York. So some updates related to, I guess the Finance Committee meeting with the IFRS chief council nomination.
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D
Right. So just yesterday the Finance Committee held the hearing for Donald Korb to be the next chief counsel at the irs. And this is something that is will just go through the Senate. The House doesn't have any anything to do with the nomination process. So this is just a Senate only exercise. But they had the hearing on his nomination and one thing that was brought up at the very beginning was just a bipartisan agreement that they did feel like he was qualified. He has 50 years of experience as an attorney and they felt like he had the qualifications for the job. And he brought up in his opening remarks and in his closing remarks that he will be focused on the timely administration of know, coming out with new things related to any new tax policies and also the importance of fair enforcement. So that's, you know, what he said at the opening and closing during his time. But when the senators were asking him questions, there were a few contentious moments, which is not uncommon during some of these hearings. But there are questions about, you know, some of the statements that he has made made in the past and whether or not he would have any sort of a political bias. There was a question related to the IRS sharing data with ice, and he said he referenced a US District Court action and he said that it was legal to do so. He also got questions on the employee retention credit, which is something that we've been following very closely, as you all know, and just the, the payments of those and any improper payments. And he said that, you know, he believes that, you know, if he were to be confirmed that he would have a significant impact or involvement in the administration of those, the ERC credits. And then, you know, he also said that, you know, he will be working on, you know, trying to clarify, you know, any future tax legislation, guidance that that is needed by the irs. And Lisa, I know that you're going to talk about some of the things that, you know, should he be confirmed that right out of the front that, you know, he'll need to be working on later in the town hall.
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A
Yeah, they got some hot topics that are on a lot of our practitioners minds. So we'll get to those when we get to the technical update.
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B
And we've got plenty of questions coming in related to electronic payments. I know you're Lisa and I are looking at the question questions as they come in. We welcome the feedback. So Rachel, another topic that's been with us all year, the tariffs.
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D
Yeah. So just updating you on the latest. It seems like for every town hall we have something new to share with you on tariffs. So what has happened since the last town hall is an appeals court has ruled that the president doesn't have the authority to implement these tariffs under the act that he has been doing so, which is the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. So now the administration has appealed to the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court has said that they will hear this in November, which is pretty quick. So we will know whether or not he has the power to do these tariffs. And you know, they could rule in a number of different ways. They could rule that he doesn't have the power to do these specific tariffs. They could rule that under the act you can't implement tariffs at all. Or they could say that he does have the authority to do this. So that is something that we'll all be watching, whatever the Supreme Court decides on this. But just really quickly, just on the international front, while we're talking about terrorists, I just want to quickly mentioned that the SEC commissioner, Chairman Atkins, has also recently just made comments related to ifrs, the International Financial Reporting Standards. And he has raised questions on whether the US should accept the IFRS principles and not only gaap. So that's something else that we're hearing on the international front. So there's a lot going on in Congress and then within the administration too.
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B
Well, thanks, Rachel. We'll have you back for Open Forum. Plenty of questions coming in. And we're almost continuing with a little bit of a DC update here with latest on HR1.
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A
This is a hot topic. Eric, do you mind if I grab that?
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B
Yeah, absolutely.
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A
And it's one that's actually incredibly timely. So in case you missed the news on August earlier, late in August, the IRSH issue guidance that we really needed around the research and experimentation expenditures implementation under H R1. And it is guidance that we've been advocating for because we knew that for small entities or small businesses defined as having 31 million or less in revenues on average over the last three taxable years, there were some time considerations around their 2024 tax return filings. So we've been advocating and got some guidance this week. I'm going to tell you up front it's complicated and you're going to see that again and again as we go through the slides. But first of all, as a reminder, section 174 had gone. It was not in place for 202223 and wasn't for 24 until HR1 was passed. Now it allows for the immediate deduction or electing to capitalize and amortize domestic R and E for tax years beginning 2024. And then there's a 15 year amortization requirement if it's a foreign R and E expenditure. So this revenue revproc that came out is full of detailed information and it is about transition rules for these small businesses. It's also about how to make certain elections and a lot of good things. So if we look at what the RevProc tells us, it is going to give us the opportunity to retroactively apply Section 174 for those small businesses. And you're also going to get guidance on how to expense the remaining unamortized amounts, how to make a method of accounting change, and it gives relief for these small business taxpayers who've already filed their 2024 tax return. But it's complicated. So before I move to the next slide, which also says it's complicated, I just want to point out that there is still going to be a need for guidance around section 174. A lot of what came out is only for small entities, which I've mentioned. But you're also going to have to look before you make any big decisions to about interplay with other provisions such as 163J. If it's a partnership, then you're going to have to think about how you're going to address partnership issues around that. So it's complicated. What the latest guidance says for small businesses only depends on whether or not the return has been filed prior to August 28th, which was the date of the RevProc coming out. And as you can see, there's an automatic extension. I'm just going to pull up the slide so I can get to the notes a little better. So give me just a second here. But you've got a lot of details on the screen there that can help you start thinking about the considerations for your clients. And as you can tell, what you're going to do depends on whether or not they filed the return. And so a lot of your small business clients may have extended the returns. And you will see that if the return has if the filing has been extended and it's still out there and you're going to file it by the original due date, then you can make an election to expense under that new guidance. So that's really helpful information. But it's September 11th. The guidance came out on August 28th, so there's not a lot of time to go through the machinations. So you'll have an option to consider, even if you can't get through it all by the original due date of the return, to capture all of those costs expedited by filing amended returns based on some due dates that we'll clarify. If the return has already been filed and it was filed prior to the revenue to the RevProc coming out, you get an automatic extension to file a superseded return. And a superseded return is basically saying that you didn't file the first return. That's the simplistic approach to it. So this allows you to make certain elections if you didn't make them on the return when it was originally filed. But there are a couple of caveats. You have to write in big bold letters on top of the return, RevProc 2025-28, which is the guidance that we've been given. And again, don't panic if there's no time to incorporate this new guidance, then look at our third bullet, which is for 2022-24 returns that were filed under our previous treatment for R and E. You can retroactively amend the returns and make the election for each of those years by the earlier of when the statute of limitations expires. Assuming and if you filed on the first day of the filing season, that could be as early as January or July 6, 2026. So those are some key dates that you're going to want to go back into the files and look for when 2022 return was filed, when 23 was filed. And if you're going to file 24 without taking the new treatment, then you'll have to consider that date as well. The caveat is the Election to incorporate the new guidance is all or nothing. You can't do it for 22, not for 23, do it for 24. It is 22, 23 and 24. Or don't take the new treatment on 22 and 23. Really complicated, as I mentioned, and big caveat at the top, this is again, only for those small businesses, the larger businesses. So those with more than $31 million in average revenue have only one option, which is to expense after 2024. So you've got a little more time to deal with those. I know that was complicated. As I've said, that's our buzzword for today, complicated. But we do have some great resources for you that I want to make sure you're leveraging because that's a lot to cover at a very high level. You, you're going to have nuances to dig into with all of your clients. So we've got a summary that you can look at, some insights for our tax section resource members and then our tax section Odyssey podcasts, which are always really helpful because you're getting the inside track on the latest guidance. So check out all of those. Again, start thinking about your clients, but don't panic if September 15, October 15, whatever the due date is, isn't going to work to make through, go through all the math. You've got time. And Mark, I know you. This is an issue that you were kind of asking us about earlier today.
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C
It was, yeah, you know, we were in sessions with some tech companies yesterday. I know there's, there's a lot of support that's out there. The reproc itself is, is daunting. And I think just these summaries and how complicated it is kind of explains that a little bit too. But I do think, you know, for us to be talking to our members about, you know, not panicking, you have time and it may be best to sit down client by client and just knock out the three years for each and every client. Have a game plan to take a client by client, not year by year. So if you can get all three years kind of jumbled together for particular clients, maybe even look at, you know, particular industry groups as you as you're doing that. And I've had a number of manufacturers asking me questions already, referring them to our tax team of various small business members that I know. So it's still great incentive. It's a great benefit for small businesses, but there is time to get it done.
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A
Exactly. Yep. The other hot button that we've been getting a ton of questions about is around electronic payments. So a lot of questions are coming in about whether or not the IRS has set the date to for when they will no longer accept paper checks to the Treasury. So just a quick reminder, the US treasury will no longer send out paper checks with some exceptions and we're not going to go into those today because they're, you know, they're just going to bog us down. But some exceptions they'll stop sending electronic payments September 30th payments to the Treasury. The guidance the executive order said should be processed electronically as soon as practicable. So again, no guidance yet on when that as soon as practical date is. It could be as soon as October 30th. It could be before the end of the year. But the IRS wants to make sure that everyone knows about the other electronic payment options. So we've listed those for you. Some interesting news that just came out on the electronic filing tax payment system breaking news, so I'm going to read it to you. So the EFTPS system that a lot of your clients are using has a recorded message that individuals will not be able to create new enrollments after October 17th. If you're already enrolled, you can continue to make payments via EFT PS if not, individuals will be required to use one of the other payment methods or IRS direct pay in order to make return payments and all taxpayers will be required to transition later in 2026. So EFTPs is off the table for any new enrollees, but they've got the other payment options there for you. We continue to advocate for automatic exceptions for certain taxpayers. So we know that this is a concern for international taxpayers. I know that trusts are another pain point area. We are continuing to outline the problems and challenges that this will present to a lot of them. But we do have a resource available for you that helps outline these payment options and helps you prepare clients for transition. So again, I know that's been a hot topic. More news around HR1 that was that was released recently is what occupations are going to be eligible for the no tax on tips clause within HR1. And spoiler alert, accountants are not on the list. So don't get your hopes up. Don't start trying to ask for tips, but there will be more to come from the IRS on this really quickly. As a reminder, the provisions of HR1 provide a temporary deduction off of income for up to $12,500 for an individual, $25,000 for a married couple for tips from these certain specified trades or businesses. So again, more to come the IRS did announce that they were not going to make any changes to the 2025 W2. We talked about that a few weeks ago, but they did release a 2026 draft W2. So I've given you a link to the article on that. And the 2026 draft does include the boxes that will help you adequately or easily report the qualified tips and overtime compensation, which we don't really have any updates on today. So that knocked out probably 75% of our tax questions from the audience. But we wanted to switch a little bit and remind you that the energy tax credit for electric vehicles is expiring at the end of September and that is an accelerated expiration date. So we want to make sure that if you or your clients are thinking about that, that they're aware of this upcoming expiration and we've given you an email templ that you can use. IRS Round Robin is always a fun one and I think this will knock out the next 25% of our questions around what's going on at the IRS, first of all is the IRS workforce and I think this will be good news to most of you. Treasury has begun offering some IRS employees who participated in that deferred resignation program the opportunity to resent rescind their resignation, and their IRS is actively recruiting to fill a lot of seasonal positions. We've talked in the past on Town hall about our concerns around implementing HR1 getting us through tax filing season with a reduced workforce. So the IRS is looking to refill some of those positions. We've also been getting questions about IRS lockbox address changes and they didn't tell any. So there is a link to a page on our website that gives you a lot of different updates on several of the topics that you've been asking us about. You'll see one that points at the IRS lockbox address changes so you get the information there. IRS Erroneous Notices Another hot topic and a very interesting one. Our team has been talking with the IRS ongoing since May and pointing out the examples that you've been providing us around the erroneous notices that you or your clients are getting. So the IRS fixed a systemic issue around the penalties, but then started sending out intent to levy notices, which is obviously pretty scary. We've communicated to them about the issue and and are waiting for them to continue to get the systems fixed. But in the meantime, go to this webpage and it's going to give you detailed suggestions on how you or your clients can respond. The most important is to submit a Form 9423 within 30 days of getting that collections intent to levy notice. And that will show that you intend to appeal that collections intent to levy, file that certified and keep that documentation as IRS continues to work through it. If you're calling the IRS service line, we've got guidance on a particular issue sep that you can refer to to try to get expedited assistance on that. But our practitioners who are experts in this area suggest immediately filing that collection notice to appeal as your first step and as a protection.
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C
And Lisa, was there more than one version of the erroneous notice? Yes, we have a list of them on the website.
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A
We do because it's impacting trusts and estates. We're seeing them initially we were seeing them for all kinds of returns. So it's not just one type.
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C
And they should look at the list and if they've gotten anything or their client got anything erroneously that we may not know about.
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A
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Because this has been just a huge help for us in knowing what we need to talk to the IRS about really quickly. Just a quick reminder that the AICPA National Tax Conference will give us an opportunity to dive into a lot of these topics in depth and for first time attendees. Bring someone along with you and you can get that first time attendee can get up to 50% off that in person.
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C
Conference registration is going to be so important this year. It's a must attend event.
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A
Absolutely, absolutely.
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B
Well Lisa, that was quite an update. So thank you, thank you very much and look forward to continuing the discussion with you here and Mark on the profession update. So Mark, it's, it's September. You've been in this role nine months now and you started out with a listening tour. You've now brought in this with, you know, the collective AICPA leadership group and board with this Big Rise 2040 project. So I'll let you kind of hit some of the top of the waves of that initiative we have.
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C
And we've covered on past town halls part of the listening tour where we had the Ask Mark email address. It's still open if anybody wants to email me. If they haven't yet, ask mark. @aicpa-SEMA.com I received over 1300 emails. I've answered each and every one of those. So I think that was helpful in the first couple of months to be able to do that. But as that and as we came into a new leadership year with Lexi Kessler as chair and we have John Graham on the SEMA side as co chair of the association, but LEXI is the aicpa. They really wanted to kind of continue on this, listening and being able to have member input as we go in a new strategic direction for the profession. And that's what's become rise 2040. And I think we've talked a little bit about it on the past Town hall. This is not the first time we've done it. Started back in the late 90s with the Vision Project. CPA Horizons 2025 was created in 2011. But because of that 2011 report, the CPA Horizons 2025, here we are, time to update it. Now on here you see this profession update, there are three hard trends that absolutely have been around since the dawn of time for the profession. And that's really been around regulatory, technology and demographics. And how do each of those three big pillars take us into a new direction? And so every one of these reports have had some aspect of each of these three. And I think, you know, Lisa and Rachel's update showed some of that. When you think about digital assets, that's a new regulatory environment that we have to deal with, that we have to respond to the marketplace to be able to do so. You know, all three of these are important and these become kind of the three major pillars of hard trends. These are fact. Each and every year we see it. Each and every report we've done on that. If we go to the next slide and we talk about the preliminary insights. So we have already been through what we've, we've had it at the AICPA Council meeting. We added SEMA council. We have 90 facilitators trained. It's our Leadership Academy alumni who have volunteered to be trained to be able to offer doing facilitated sessions inside of companies, inside of firms, inside of state societies. We've had four state societies already complete a future forum. We have eight scheduled to be complete and 10 more states who are planning to complete a future forum. So we have 18, 22 of the 50 states already committed to do something. And we are looking to get as many states as humanly possible to do that. We had over 900 participants. And so right here you see what the preliminary insights are around what we're hearing. So AI is a catalyst for transformation that kind of falls into that technology category, embracing an anticipatory mindset. So what that's telling us and what people are asking for are as we do this trend analysis, a hard trend is something that is fact, something that is deemed to be fairly permanent. It's got a 95 plus percent chance of being fact nearly forever. And then you have soft trends. Soft trends are those that may end up morphing into a hard trend or maybe they are soft trend today and they're with some influence of what we do as a profession, we have a chance to influence how that soft trend affects who we are and what we do. And so that anticipatory mindset and continuing that on and how do we integrate that into our thinking as a profession. And we are looking to take that. And even after we establish our final report in May of 26 and present that to AICPA council, we plan to have an evergreen product that every one of our members, based on the size firm that they're in or the industry that they serve, or the business that they're a CFO in that they could go in and they can match up strategic thinking for their particular organization against the model of those types of entities just like them so that we can continue this conversation indefinitely. And then the final two. Trust and ethics. In a digital age we are the trusted profession, the trusted advisor, the trusted cpa. We always talk about quality and trust being paramount inside the profession. As we move into this AI digital age and a sense of distrust around information, it's going to be our job even more importantly to really present some level of trust to the business marketplace and to our clients. And then I skipped over and I want to kind of finish up with workforce and talent transformation. It is not just about bringing talent into the pipeline, but it's also making sure that they're trained up, that we take these gaps that we're seeing in competencies and being able to train up in a different way. And I use the example all the time. We're asking these kids today coming out of school to do things way different than we did when we started. Right. You know, when I, I was asked by partners in, in our small firm that actually had to foot the Lotus 1, 2, 3 schedule because I couldn't trust the formula that was created in there. How do I know that Lotus calculated correctly? And today we don't do that anymore. And there's a much different mindset and skill set we're asking of our young members. And so the pipeline is important. We've talked ad nauseam in the past about pipeline initiatives, what's happening in the States with changes in the requirements to sit for the cpa. But it's really to make sure that we have a pipeline that's viable into the future and that they are trained up in doing the things that we need them. To do so as we transition into the next slide and what we're talking about in talent, you know, we continue to talk to the marketplace around what's happening in the market. Are we fully staffed? Are we not fully staffed? Do we have a pipeline problem? Do we not have a pipeline problem? And so we continue to have this conversation. So we do want to ask you this question so that we are have a better understanding of the town hall community. If you're hiring finance and accounting professionals, are you having challenges filling your open roles so we can make that for the the current year to say? All right, answer this question. And if you're not hiring, that's okay too. You can answer it in the same way, whether you're in business and industry or you're a public accounting firm, large firm, small firm, we want to understand what's happening in the market because we have heard and it has affected some of our firms in the marketplace that consulting has softened. Right. And this threat of the economic uncertainty, consulting is usually the first to slow down versus other things. We're still hearing very traditional services still being strong. But we're trying to understand overall, in your finance and accounting professionals, are you looking for somebody? And if you're looking for how is hiring going this year versus the past year and being able to do so. And Eric, I think the poll.
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B
Yeah, so the poll's live. Please answer the poll, not answer via Q and A. And Mark, one thing that we're going to do with the town hall community today, we're just asking this single poll related to the current status of hiring and challenges out there, but we're going to also come back to them. We're going to release some of the Rise 2020, 2040 plans and then have a dialogue and a polling session with the town hall community to get their input.
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C
Absolutely. So much like we've done in live versions of it. How do we take that and bring that to this electronic community that is so strong, it's amazing the number of folks we have involved in this. And so in a, in a future town hall, we do plan on running a kind of mini rise 2040 session so that you can see that your input matters and gets into the system as well. That's going to be really important to us.
- [40:46]
B
Okay, well, thank you for everyone filling out the poll here. We're going to share the results during the Open Forum. I got a little preview here, so it'll be interesting. We'll wait, we'll tabulate them and then talk about that during Open Forum So this week we held this executive roundtable here in New York. Mark and I were, where the co host, Lisa Simpson and others from the ICB leadership team were there. And what we, what is so important for us to do is to connect to this technology community that is transforming the practice of finance and accounting. They're investing, you know, billions of dollars, literally billions of dollars in building out solutions to advance the tax area, the audit area, accounting services, you know, business and industry, CFO capabilities. And what we've been doing for a number of years is we share with them our strategies and they all share with us, Mark, where they're at in the journey. And what I can tell you is the state of these solutions have never been better from the perspective that a couple years in or even one year in leveraging cloud computing, leveraging AI development resources, they are really building solutions and that are already able to be implemented in firms and they really view the firms as a partner. And Mark, you talked earlier about trust. A lot of these companies, that's what they want to do. They want to empower trust, they want to empower the capital markets and they want to work closely with firms as well as members in business and industry.
- [42:37]
C
Absolutely. And they've really been. It's amazing to find the Companies who are CPAs who had a frustration in their day job at some point and decided that they were going to create a technology to solve that one particular problem, that largest pain point that they had as a, as a practitioner. And they've gone out and they're, they're starting that. So we do have built for the profession, by the profession in a way. And it just, you know, and the blend between tax and cast and audit was just amazing to see all of the three big pillar traditional services that we have additional technology being available.
- [43:21]
B
So we've issued a full report on the state of AI in accounting and here we've broken some of the key highlights out in five areas looking at what the current impact is. Tremendous amount of automation related to, you know, bookkeeping and getting data into the cloud accounting solutions. Moving to the next category here, tax prep. The amount of money that's being invested in building out the automation of the inputting of the data into the system of record. The tax prep software has never been higher. There are so many entrants here, so there's going to be a lot of evolution. There's been a lot of evolution, Mark and Lisa, as you know, over the last 10 years. But over the next two years we're going to see some New entrants actually supporting the electronic filing with the irs. And you're going to, you're seeing, we're seeing a lot of innovation on the front end. The list goes on here. Audit and advisory services, they're coming along. I really think that the AI movement is going to empower the trusted advisor, really allow them to, to provide more insights as it automates more and more of the road type of work.
- [44:41]
C
Yep. And I think so great list for our business and industry members is probably that fifth bullet that they're saying more. So we will say, you know, it may not be your organization directly, but we have heard that the firms are probably a little farther advanced than business and industry is in AI adoption. AI adoption you're seeing in sales, marketing, workflow, efficiencies, maybe not so much in the accounting and finance space. But I do think we'll see some other companies that'll create tools that'll have AI incorporated into it that will help finance as well in the near future.
- [45:19]
A
One quick note to add as we move into the professional liability conversation is if you're a firm and you're looking at that, your mind could be blown away by all of those different logos and all of those different solutions. So I think it's just important to, to take a deep breath and understand that you don't have to be the expert in how to build your own chatbot, how to create your own agent. A lot of your software vendors, either current or new on the horizon, are going to be doing that for you. So don't panic, but don't get left behind. Stay curious, play around, ask your vendors what their AI roadmap is and just stay on the lookout because it's going to be fascinating and revolutionary in the way the accounting profession gets things done.
- [46:07]
B
Lisa, it's well said. And what's so exciting, there's never been a better time for doing what you're doing. Even like we're talking about the electronic payments with the irs and that's there's solutions coming out that are going to help. I mean, a lot of questions coming in with elderly clients, how do I support them, the technology providers. There is a technology provider who's thinking about how he, how they can support that. So I do think these, these solutions are making the practice more industry, more interesting and that, that goes for the members of business and industry. So at least we're almost moving into a lightning round here. It's going to be a lightning round with Aon.
- [46:44]
A
So yeah, so Sarah is a repeat guest and Nicole is joining us for the first time from our AON and CNA partners with the Professional Liability Insurance Program. So, Nicole, you can introduce yourself some other time. We're heading into how are we going to wrap up tax season? Sarah, a couple of quick questions for you, but I think these are so important because I know that so many of our members in the audience are trying to figure out what to do about that darn client who won't respond to their request. So what's your advice?
- [47:17]
E
Absolutely. I talked to someone today about this. It has a deadline in four days. So really contact those clients who you haven't heard from yet that have deadlines in four days or a month and four days. Contact them now. Specify what you need, when you need it, and what's going to happen if you don't get it by that time. Be clear, be direct, be concise, get it in writing, and maintain that documentation.
- [47:40]
A
That's great. And this is a great time to remind everyone. Download the slides from the resource section of the on 24 platforms so that you can access all of the links that we have throughout the presentation today. Oh, and this is another good one that we hear a lot about. My client owes me money. Can I just not file the return?
- [48:00]
E
Yeah, Famous risk Management answer. It depends. So if they've already signed their E file authorization forms, you cannot hold up the filing of their return in exchange for payment. IRS publication 1345 says that you as a practitioner have three calendar days to file file that return once you've obtained the E file authorization form. So if you already got it and they still owe you money, you're out of luck. If you have not received the E file authorization form, you can request payment. So what we would suggest you do is send the return for review along with the request for payment, and then once you've been paid, then send the E file authorization form or better get payment in advance for your services, such as through a retainer or advance billing, and just avoid the problem altogether.
- [48:52]
A
Yeah. And this one I'm going to just hit very quickly so that we can move on to some important topics about future next year. So we've talked a lot about where the IRS needs to issue additional guidance on implementation of hr. One perfect setup for this question. And I think that the tips you've given us here, Sarah and Nicole, are, are great. So please don't underestimate the importance of documenting the conversations that you're having and following up on decisions that have been made. Did that sound like you, Sarah?
- [49:25]
E
I did.
- [49:28]
A
All right. Nicole, these questions are for you. So as we're getting ready for 2026 and thinking about what we should be doing, one of those is optimizing your client list. So give us some thoughts on that.
- [49:45]
F
Right, so now's a really great time to go through your client list and run your clients through the client continuance procedures. So similar to when you had your client acceptance procedures, you want to on an annual basis, review your client list and basically identify any risks that may have come up during the engagement and then find ways to address them. So, so if you had a client that was, we already talked about, that was slow in providing you information, or slow to pay, or had management turnover or management disputes with or, you know, any sort of changes where it's impacting your services, maybe they had a change in their business model. Maybe they are just a very difficult client and complain or maybe they're rude to your staff. There are a bunch of different issues that you can look at and pull in the people who are working with these clients to find out if this client is still right for you. And maybe yes, maybe no, maybe it's not an ideal client, but you can rehabilitate them in some way by say, you know, having a slow play, slow pay client, have a large retainer, pay a large retainer before services are provided or find other ways, like Sarah mentioned, to have work with your clients to get information on a more timely basis.
- [51:14]
A
And I'll make a quick comment when you move into the next one. Oh, I'm sorry, Nicole, I'm going to speed you up.
- [51:20]
F
If you can't, it's termination.
- [51:22]
A
Yeah, termination. And we have great resources, both from our professional liability insurance program. PCPS has good resources on right sizing and how to let go of some clients as well. So good information for us there. I'm going to skip, I hate to skip engagement letters. I know how hot it is. But really quickly, we got a lot of conversation around offshoring and outsourcing. So lightning round, Sarah, tell us what we should be thinking about if we're considering offshoring or out outsourcing.
- [51:55]
E
When you're, you know, a few things, there's standards that cover what you're supposed to do. So perform diligence on the third party outsourcing provider, making sure they not only are competent and qualified to perform what you're perform the services that you're going to ask them to do, but also that they have processes in place to protect your client's information. Definitely get client consent. The nature and kind of format of that consent depends on where the outsourcing provider is located, where what kind of information is being provided to them. But regardless, you need some sort of consent from the client. And then you treat them as any other member of your team. You review their work, you direct their work. Their work is your responsibility because ultimately, as the issuer of the deliverable, it's your liability.
- [52:46]
A
Yeah. And one more last topic that I want to hit in 30 seconds or less. Artificial intelligence. We just spent a lot of time talking about it. We've got a library of resources that you can access. I love the one about should I disclose my use of gen AI to clients? Make sure that you check out all of these. And we'll come back for a longer conversation. Sarah and Nicole. And really dig into engagement letters, AI and more fun stuff as we head into 2026. Thank you. All right, Eric.
- [53:25]
B
Okay, well, we can bring everybody back up. We can take some questions on the last section and all of today's town hall. I think it's been a power hour, so I've got a couple of. Let me first just hit the polling question. So 40, about a little bit over. 40% are not hiring. So 40% not hiring. About 25% feel like the challenges are equal to the previous year. Around 10% not an issue or less challenging, and then 20% more challenging. So, like everything, Mark, it's diverse. It's different by state, different by industry, different by type of firm.
- [54:14]
C
It tells us this is business.
- [54:16]
B
One third of our members on this town hall. Business and industry, too.
- [54:19]
C
Yeah. And it should also be hiring at some point or possibly, you know, one of the things I think it does prove out, though, is that there is no one answer out there. When someone says, oh, the. You know, there's no need for accountants anymore. We're not hiring. We soften. Whatever. There are still other places. What I like about those results is there's still a home for CPAs to find based on that. And we are going to continue to keep fighting hard to make sure we keep the pipeline as full as we can. Yeah.
- [54:49]
B
And you say 40% are not hiring, 60% are. That's helping the people right now thinking about, you know, their majors. There might be more hiring going on here than maybe some of the other. Other markets, so. Well, thank you. Thanks for participating in that. That poll. Lisa, another question came. We're gonna. We'll go to some of the. The tax questions in a minute, but there was a couple of questions on the. The QM standard and saying that you know, here. And is there a delay? And there's a delay related to QC1000, which is the PCRB QM standard, but not there. There is no delay related. It's. It has been pushed out a couple of years, but before. But it's, it's December 15, 2025 for the SQMS1 standard.
- [55:38]
A
That's right. And I'm seeing a lot more questions about how to implement. The AICPA has a ton of great resources available on its site that are open to you in terms of implementing if you're a small practitioner, because I've seen questions from solos. There is a practice aid specifically for small practitioners. So make sure that you're checking out those resources. And we have a great technology tool.
- [56:03]
B
Yeah. What I'll say is in the newsletter, because we always take in the newsletter. Lisa. We will put a link to the resource center. We'll also include a link to this tool that has been rolled out. There's a technology tool that you can take advantage of to help support that implementation. Lisa. There was also a question that came in about just the website again for the erroneous IRS notices.
- [56:29]
A
So the slide should have a link to an open page on the AIC site that has like a bunch of blocks on all of these hot topics and there's one that's labeled Erroneous Notices. And so you can just click on that box. It'll expand and give you a bunch of the details. And I'm going to hit a super quick one on engagement letters before we move into closing. Eric so our friends at CNA and AON provide a lot of sample engagement letters. We have many of those in our for our tax section members and those are generally available around the 1st of November, November. But this is my chance to thank Sarah in person for her and her team's hard work around those engagement letters. I know they're very highly anticipated.
- [57:14]
D
Great.
- [57:15]
E
Our pleasure.
- [57:16]
B
Well, Mark, it is great. Kind of kicking off September with you here in New York on the Town hall where, where it's a top. Even though we have the September 15th deadline, the team told me we're a top three. We're just below 14,000 attendees here.
- [57:28]
C
Thank you.
- [57:28]
B
We really love this community.
- [57:30]
C
Yeah. Thank you for hanging in there. And we do appreciate all of our members and for those who are facing up against the 915 deadline, hopefully this was like a nice little break from having to dig into those returns to get finished up. But we appreciate what you all do. Greatest profession in the world. And and I just love everything that we see out of our members. So thanks.
- [57:56]
B
Thanks, Mark. So, Lisa, and thanks to the Aon partners here and to Rachel. Why don't you and I now just take them through the closing slides?
- [58:06]
A
Absolutely. Lightning round. Closing.
- [58:08]
B
Let's see, we've got a number of slides. You're kicking it off with the MAP survey.
- [58:12]
A
Yeah. This is exciting news for those of you who participated in the PCPS map survey. The results are out. I wanted to make sure that you knew how to be on the lookout for those. If you participated, you'll, you'll have access through the platform if you're a PCPS member, which is the bargain of the century. And just as an FYI on our next town hall, September 25th, Erin Hartman, who leads the map survey for us, will be back to dig into the results. So make sure you come back. And Mark, I think this one's right up your alley.
- [58:45]
C
Yeah, absolutely. It's, it is volunteer season for us. We do look forward forward to getting our members. This is your opportunity. You know, I've had so many members that I've interacted with in a volunteer basis. That's really. I got the volunteer bug back when I was young and as a young CPA to get involved. I've had so many practitioners who tell me that they just want to give back to the profession. But every time they've been at a committee meeting and they try and give back more than they can receive, they receive five to 10 times more because there are 10 people around the table just as smart as they are. And that perspective and group thinking is so important. So I encourage all of you to get involved because it is a great profession and we all have a responsibility to make sure we're living the legacy now. It is our job to leave the legacy for the future.
- [59:36]
B
Thanks, Mark. Well said. And here is talking about AI. It's top of mind for everyone. Right now we've got AI and Accounting Adoption. Trust in the evolving User experience. Pascal Finnett, one of our partners, one of the leading innovation thinkers in America is going, who's been participating with us over the years, is going to be doing a webinar with Michael Cerami. And it's complimentary. And here's information related to that. Digital CPA will be held this year in Washington D.C. or right outside Washington D.C. at the Gaylord. We'd love to have as many of you attend as possible. Here is the list of the upcoming town halls. Our next one will be in two weeks on September 25th. We've got a great cadence to close out the year. We'll actually be live from Digital CPA on December 9th and you have this resource center I know most of you are registered for the auto Calendar invites we're hearing. Good feedback on that. It's been great being with you today. Have a good end of the week and look forward to being back with you in a couple of weeks.
- [60:51]
C
Thanks.
- [60:52]
A
Thank you.
- [60:53]
D
Thank you for your participation. You can also subscribe to the AICPA Town hall series on your favorite podcast platform, as well as watch archives on.
- [61:03]
A
YouTube and find resources@cpa.com Townhall Tune in.
- [61:07]
D
For live broadcasts Thursdays at 3pm Eastern Time.
- [61:14]
G
This podcast is designed to provide illustrative information with respect to the subject matter covered and does not represent an official opinion or position of the AICPA or AICPA.org it is provided with the understanding that The AICPA and AICPA.org are not engaged in offering legal, accounting or other professional service. If such advice or expert assistance is required, the services of a competent professional person should be sought. The AICPA and AICPA.org make no representations, warranties, or guarantees as to, and assume no responsibility for the content or application of the material contained herein, and especially disclaim all liability for any damages arising out of the use of, reference to, or reliance on such material.