← AICPA Town Hall
AICPA Town Hall
Discussion on CPA pipeline growth opportunities and an election update
00:58:12
Topics include: DC and profession update CPA pipeline and pathway discussion Key technical updates Speakers: Barry Melancon, President and CEO, AICPA Erik...
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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.
- [00:11]
B
Good afternoon and welcome to the AICPA Town Hall. I'm Eric Ouskerson, one of your hosts for today and we're coming to you from Atlanta, Georgia. We just completed the AICPA Council meeting. We have a great update for you today. So let me clear the agenda. We're going to kick things off with Barry Malonson talking about some highlights from the AICPA Council meeting. We're then going to get into a DC update. A lot is happening here with the elections just 11 days away. And both Mark Peterson and Barry Malonson will be providing some insights on what's going on there. And then we're going to have an update related to the national pipeline activities. And there's this topic that Sue Coffey and Lisa Simpson are going to cover called the Additional Pathway to cpa. So I think that's going to be very informative. Then Lisa will be doing her technical update and we look forward to a active open forum session. So, Barry, let's kick things off. And just first off, I think most of the town hall members know what AICPA Council is, but let's just provide a little bit of background. I also like to acknowledge when we're here at council, you know, 400 plus attendees town hall, the town hall comes up a lot. So this town hall community is definitely represented well at council and also in.
- [01:35]
C
The audience every two weeks, et cetera, because they talk to that all the time. As I travel around the country and deal with, talk to members, the town hall is like top of mind and people love it and we appreciate everybody being here all the time. So what is AICPA Council? It's, you know, in election season that we're talking about right now, it's, it's sort of like a combined House and Senate for us. It's, it's a place where representatives of the CPA profession from every state gather a couple of times a year to talk about the issues of the day, get updates and things of that nature, and maybe most importantly, to provide feedback to all of us and to our board on, you know, what's happening in their states, what's happening in their practices or their corporations if they're in business and industry. And, and we feed that back into our strategic planning processes and our activities. And so this is a very important meeting. It's been going on for a long time and this was my last one. I've Been to a lot of these council meetings over the years. In fact, I gave the number of 291 between AICPA and SEMA council meetings around the time. So I've got a lot of experience for getting all of that feedback and frankly the feedback we get from the town hall is fantastic as well.
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B
Well, Barry, you beat me to, I mean this council meeting, to say the least, was extremely meaningful. You talked a lot about your reflections of leading the profession over the last 30 years. A lot of acknowledgement of the huge impact that you have made. Amazing legacy and what we're going to. We're not going to do this today, Barry, because this isn't your last town hall, but I think you probably will be on a town hall in 25. But as we move to the end of the year, we will have a discussion with you similar to the discussion you had with some of the council members. Just reflecting back on the past 30 years.
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C
Yeah, I look forward to that. But look, it was a great day for me yesterday with just an outpouring of support and frankly I've seen a lot of that in the town hall feedback as well and it's very meaningful. Profession is very meaningful to me and you know, but let's focus on the issues and really get to what's, what's top of mind for everybody today.
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B
Well, we do, we do have plenty to discuss and. And you will still be active in 2025 doing many other things connected to the profession.
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C
Yeah.
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B
So there was also a big announcement that occurred on October 16th and the reception related to this announcement has been tremendous. Mark Koziel was announced as the next CEO of the aicpa. The town hall community knows Mark rather well. He was one of the founders of the town hall. He's currently the CEO of a lennial, one of the largest firm associations and he also was previously at the aicpa. So Barry, you had some comments related to this at council.
- [04:29]
C
Mark is going to do a fabulous job. I couldn't be more excited. Mark, like you said, has worked with us with sort of when we were creating the town hall. So a lot of people listening today are going to remember Mark very well. And Mark and I have already started on transition and working together and I'll be there to support Mark. But I think it's obviously a great honor for Mark anyone in this position. It is an honor and I just think that his knowledge, broad based knowledge of public accounting, management accounting advocacy issues and the like is going to be just fabulous for the association going forward.
- [05:05]
B
Yeah. And Mark starts January 1, 2025. And I think there's a very good chance he'll be on our first town hall in January. So you will be hearing from Mark sometime soon. So, Barry, let's now just talk a little bit about some of the highlights from your update. You kicked things off reflecting on kind of the state of the economy. And this is one of our surveys related to the direction of optimism or pessimism in the economy.
- [05:38]
C
Yeah, we survey members on a random basis on their sort of outlook on the economy. We've been doing this for years, every quarter. And you can just see it sort of looks like a little bit of a seesaw up and down, up and down, up and down with different opinions. And, you know, we bring you economists here at the town hall periodically as well, and you can get economists to give you a lot of different predictions. I think that the real message here is the uncertainty, and obviously the election plays a part of that. But global uncertainty, frankly, I did a lot of talking about our national debt and its impact on this type of environment as well. The national debt is a huge issue. It's got to be addressed by our elected officials. The reality is you hear the term 30 + trillion dollars of debt, that's a cash basis number. And I've covered this in town halls in the past. But let me remind you, when you take the look at the accrual basis financial statement of the United States and you bring from the footnotes, the unrecorded, if you will, obligations of Medicare and Social Security, it's more than $130 trillion of deficit. And just to put a point on it, since most of us listening here are CPAs, the GAO, the Comptroller General, Gene Dodaro, and they do not give a clean opinion on that report. And the primary reason for that is that they are concerned about the measurement of those actual obligations. And believe me, they don't actually say it in the report, but they don't make the assumption that they're overstated. They are concerned that they're understated. So it's a big issue and it does affect this economic outlook. At the same time, we've seen data in other surveys. PWC issued a pulse survey over the weekend with about 2/3 of business executives anticipating a recession still. Yeah, so it is a, you know, it's just this uncertainty.
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B
The Congress will be right someday, Barry, because someday there probably will be a recession.
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C
Yeah. But you know, there's even this debate now that this organization that actually determines officially if we're in a recession and not an independent organization. But there is some argument that we've been in a recession, so who knows what's right?
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B
Well, we got a lot to cover. Let's. I mean, firms are always a top topic at council. So here are the top priorities and concerns of firms.
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C
Yeah, this is our PCPS study of firms. And this is a summation of the five top topics. You can see number one on that is talent, which we're going to talk about with sue and Lisa here in a moment. And number three is sort of a next generation and evolution. I think that's a really, really critical component as well. And, and then, you know, working with the IRS and technology changes come into the sort of the top five. You know, I had another slide at council and I also talked about what are the top five issues for our members who work in business and industry. And what I spoke about is a little bit of a worry that we don't have a gap here because from a corporate perspective, and these are all size businesses, they're different than this. Human capital falls down to number three. And you know, all the rest of them are about technology and transformation. And I just think there's a message in that for our firms that we have to be thinking about transformation of firms as well. We're going to talk a little bit about that here in a moment. But obviously complexity of the world and we'll talk a little bit about tax legislation prospects coming up here in a moment as well.
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B
Yes, and here's some evolutions with standards here. And this is very important. This is related to technology, it's related to the client accounting services area. Lisa Simpson has covered this with me on the last two town halls. But Barry, this is something you've been closely involved with as well.
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C
This is near and dear to my heart and I would say I would add to it. It is technology that you just mentioned, but it's hopefully a little part of simplification because the complexity point was in that earlier slide as well. And in just simple terms, with the development of caste practices, how firms are doing this work, this outsourcing work with clients, which continues to grow and will continue to grow, obviously technology driven. There's been this sort of debate among a lot of firms as to whether these financial statements that come out of this process are subject to the normal QC process in a firm and subject to peer review. Now, to be fair, the committee that sets these standards believes that they were pretty straightforward in saying they do not. But a lot of firms have interpreted some of that language and in ways that would indicate or put them into the quality control systems of firms, which makes it more complicated in a different sort of environment with the client. And so what this exposure draft is about is to take another step of clarity in this process to say this really falls under the consulting engagements. It doesn't fall under peer review. It's not part of the QC processes of firms when you deliver these services with an engagement letter that's really keyed into CAST services. So it's a little bit of attempt by our standard setting to be just even more precise and clear where there's.
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B
Been some complexity and this is being very well received. We'll be talking about this@digital CPA. I mean, there were firms actually people starting, you know, saying I don't want to be in a licensed CPA firm because of this issue. And there's no reason, there's no reason now with the consulting services this falling under consulting services that hopefully will stop.
- [11:07]
C
Occurring and they have to officially adopt it in December after the comment period because it is a standard.
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B
So, Barry, we got a lot to cover, but this is just, maybe just a couple quick comments here and then we got a couple of other slides before we bring Mark in.
- [11:20]
C
Yeah, I tried to summarize some points to some of the major issues coming forward from a profession perspective. And on the left hand side of this, it's about the evolution of services. We just talked about cast, but tax services are going to evolve. We're going to cover that here in a moment. Certainly auditing is evolving, for instance, with our DAS project. So there's this sort of massive evolution of services from firms. And you know, obviously firms are changing, firm structures are changing. We've talked about private equity in the past and there's a blurring of how we leverage cpa. And what is the CPA firm definition? Those things are going to continue to evolve going forward. The bottom left hand we're going to talk about that is a little bit today too. But we do an awful lot of what we do in the marketplace is in the areas of doing it from a competition perspective. Yes, assurance services, auditing are reserve services under the law to our profession. But tax and everything else is something we have to compete with. And there's a lot of change with technology, which is on the lower right hand. And so we have to make sure every firm is as much as possible thinking about how they evolve these activities. The combination of human capital and technology. It's an evolutionary time. There's no question.
- [12:28]
B
Evolutionary time and this is, this did come up at council on a council question. I know a lot of the town hall community also was talking about this, the marketplace reaction to this Intuit ad. Intuit has pulled the ad. There's an article here from Forbes about them, about them pulling this ad. Barry, you and I have talked about this. When I. And you've got. We've got a quote from the CEO of Intuit and I know you connected with him. I think this is an opportunity for us just to step back and reflect a little bit about just the tax practice strategy. Because one thing is clear. This trend of leveraging technology to move from a do it yourself like TurboTax to an assisted return with somebody virtually connecting with repair, this is a trend that is continuing. There's other companies, not just Intuit, doing this. So this is something that the firms do need to think about.
- [13:29]
C
Yeah, and I did have a conversation with Sasan and the ad was pulled. And I think everybody agrees it was not the right tenor and certainly didn't deliver an intent that they should be concerned about and they are concerned about. But your point is the real point here. So if we go back to thinking about this point I made on the last slide. We have to compete in the marketplace and the marketplace is changing very significantly. This quote here is from Sasan in a Forbes interview. But this is in essence what he said to me in our conversation. And there is an evolution of this process. Now the reality is, is that we have always competed as a profession in the tax space and we have won a significant notion as a profession of what I would say, the sophisticated tax practices, you know, the tax preparation around the country. And we have to be cognizant of what we need to do to change our positioning. What I always say is that we are now in a period of time in which the tax return is a byproduct. Right. You know, I always use this analogy. If I went to a business league luncheon in your town and I asked the 60 year old entrepreneur, what is your relationship with the CPA? They might say they do my taxes. If I ask a 30 year old entrepreneur in that process, they're going to say something more about the holistic relationship and they won't even mention the notion or imply the tax return is coming through that process. It's a byproduct. And the more we think strategically about tax practices, making sure that we're targeted on the right markets, that what we are trying to achieve with the sophistication that the CPA brings to the table. That's a key component. But make no mistake, the technology providers of the world, like Intuit are going after pieces of this market. And it is an open market.
- [15:21]
B
That's right. And a lot of questions, comments coming in here. One thing, assisted category. You have, you know, tax preparers. That's the same thing as an assisted category. That's what, that's what he means in this quote. This is actually from a podcast, the Decoder. You know, Sasan has also been stating this on their earnings calls. So they are moving into the assisted category, the prepared market category. That trend is continuing. A lot of comments here are like, AIC members shouldn't even worry about this ad because this is not really who they're competing with. And that's accurate. But think about all the points that Barry just made about evolving and building a strategic tax practice. So we can have a panel discussion on this later. So we.
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C
I just want to acknowledge, though, that, yeah, that is a true statement that we need to be thinking about where really we are as a profession and what your practice is. But a lot of people were upset about the ad, and that was one of the reasons why that I wanted to have that conversation. So it's sort of. There's two sides to that coin.
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B
There is. And some people said, hey, they still seeing the ad? You know, it takes a while to pull ads.
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C
It takes a couple of weeks for that to get. To actually get all the way through the system.
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B
Okay, continuing on. Mark, welcome. All right, thank you, Eric. This is. Everybody at council is waiting for your update. And I think everyone here is, you know, on the edge of their seats.
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D
It's crunch time. All right. We're at crunch time, less than two weeks out. You know, we follow the elections closely because they are going to. It's going to matter for policy discussions in the next couple of years, particularly in the tax environment. And we'll talk about that again. We operate a bipartisan, in a bipartisan way, and we're successful with both sides of the aisle. But it does change the inflection and the kind of issues that are prioritized. But just some thoughts to give the town hall. You know, I'm going to talk about a little polling. You know, folks are suspect of polls. We try and mitigate that a little bit by putting in, putting together an aggregate of multiple polls. And, you know, there's some interesting activity going on there. Another issue is early voting. There has been historic number of early voting going on, particularly in the battleground states, which I'll Mention that has, again, historically been beneficial to the Democrats. Democrats usually benefited from early voting. There's some information coming in that maybe the Republicans are actually picking up and are contributing to those historic numbers of early voting. Some of those, the early voting started before even the vice presidential debate. So voting's been going on. The last of the battleground states, Wisconsin, will be the last one to open up early voting, which is next week. The other thing I would say is you see the national polls and national polls matter for enthusiasm, fundraising, media attention and things like that. But ultimately, it's the Electoral College that makes the difference. And so when you look at that, the states that are really in play, seven of them, Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Georgia. We're in Georgia right now. And if you look at those states and you use this Real Clear Politics aggregate poll, former President Trump is slightly ahead. Now, when I say that people are gonna see polls and they're gonna say, that's not what I'm reading. I understand that. But he's slightly ahead, but within the margin of error. Each one of those states, former President Trump is slightly ahead, the largest being Georgia with just 2.2%. But that's all in the margin of error. So, yes, he's trending, but it's still within the margin of error. And it's gonna be close. It's trending towards close as we sit here today. But we're less than two weeks out.
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B
So my question here, and we'll move to the next. You're gonna be back on November 7, two days after the election. So I think. And then will you be able to call the race by then?
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D
So. Probably not.
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B
That's right.
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D
Probably not.
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B
I mean, we're, it's gonna be a long week.
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D
Election officials in certain states, including those swing states that are vital like Pennsylvania and a Michigan, have said it may sitting here today before the election. They think it would take at least until Friday after the election in order for them to have a sense of where they are. So it's going to be a long week.
- [19:39]
C
I think it's a sad state for us as a nation that we can't get the election. You know, we have governor's elections in all 50 states and they don't linger out. And I think that's a, I think we look bad on a global stage from that standpoint.
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D
It does. It'll be, I mean, listen, it's not going to be election night. I can pretty much guarantee that. And then just real quickly, the last point is in Congress Again, the trends are, is that the Senate is going to flip Republican because the seats that are in play and the House is going to flip. Democrat decides the margin is in question.
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C
Although if there's one that might not do what you just said, it's probably the House. Right. The Senate, much higher probability of flipping than the House.
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D
Yeah, it's.
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C
But either way, the House will be.
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D
It's the map. It's the states that are in play, you know, Ohio, Montana, West Virginia. It just is an advantage because of the map for the Republicans.
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C
To just to remind people, though, the Republican majority is essentially four seats right now or four seats in the House. And even if it does flip, and if it's four or five seats, that is a very unwieldy body to sort of predict and manage. If you're the speaker with just that.
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D
Narrow of a margin, 100% narrow margin, it's impossible. Somebody doesn't show up or somebody's grumpy. That's all it takes.
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C
Yep.
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B
Okay. We got a lot of BoI questions, some people saying we can talk about election a lot, but let's move on.
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D
All right, I hear you. I hear you. So. So lame duck. We've got a potential for maybe some relief around beneficial ownership in lame duck. There is going to be a lame duck post election. Our government funding runs out on December 20th, so they're going to have to fund the government to some point in the future. Hopefully it's past tax season of 2025. There's also the possibility for some relief as it relates to boi. There is the possibility. I wouldn't count on this. I wouldn't count on Congress to do anything. But there's going to be a vehicle. We've seen some court decisions in Oregon and Alabama which actually conflict with each other related to the underlying language, the underlying bill of the Corporate Transparency act, which BOI is included in, and whether FinCEN has the authority to push forward. Right now, we still believe it's going to be moving forward unless there's some delay. There is two bills that have potential. There's a defense authorization bill in the lame duck. There is a delay amendment that could be attached to that for one year, but that has to happen. And there's also legislation. Congressman Timmons from South Carolina along with us and FinCEN. FinCEN is hearing the noise. Okay. They are in the room, in the negotiation, talking about unauthorized practice of law, you know, a safe harbor for CPAs and even the concept of some level of delay. We've been talking to them A lot. And we've also heard from state societies that FinCEN is reaching out to talk to the state societies about, you know, how to get the word out to small businesses. But we're running out of time.
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B
That's right. And Mark, we're going to have FinCEN on next town health. So that's, you know, let's continue the FinCEN discussion then.
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C
Two quick points. When Mark says a vehicle, what you mean is that FinCEN, that bill won't standalone. Be a standalone legislation. There needs to be some other piece of legislation that moves. And tell me your, I love your quote about lame duck sessions. So how the attitude towards them changed.
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D
So it always starts out incredibly ambitious and then it ends up being the absolute least amount of activity. So they'll fund the government and they'll probably, they'll authorize some money for the natural disasters possibility of this stuff. But don't count on it.
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E
Right.
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C
Because depending on the elections. One last point on FinCEN. I still have to say this point. Lisa's going to laugh at me here, but there are a lot of CPA firms doing the work with boi. There's a lot of non CPA firms doing the work with boi. And there is no unauthorized practice of law hurdle here. There's insurance coverage here. I really think if firms really ought to think about this very hard because you're gonna wake up two or three years from now and there's gonna be another service provider between you and your client and at least make that decision knowing that that's a high likelihood. If this is not something you choose to do as a firm, that's great.
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D
Barry. We've had this. The town hall has seen this slide before, but I wanna put it in terms of the lame duck. There's always a possibility, but as we pointed out, they're more ambitious than reality. But there's a couple things that I want to lay out with this piece of legislation. The business extensions for 174 research and experiment and then 179, very popular. That's why it passed the House overwhelmingly in January. So it's been out there kind of languishing in the Senate. Also some relief as far as natural disasters, including some legislation that we've been proponents of for a long time that allows the IRS to key off FEMA as far as automatic delays. And then all of that is funding by shutting down the ERC program. So the possibilities with this is that they're going to get discussed, it's going to happen. It's just when I could see the natural disaster issues being pulled into the lame duck. If anything does, that will be it. You know, the, the business issues will get pulled in the 2025 debate and that ERC package will definitely be used because they're gonna want that, whatever it scores at maybe south of $80 billion to pay for some of the other tax incentives that they want to create.
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B
And Mark, why don't we. This slide here, this might be a good slide to hit on November 7th. So this, we can come back to it. We can come back to this because.
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D
Just absolutely, it's gonna be a tax year.
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B
Let me just say we're gonna be.
- [25:43]
C
Hitting this slide a lot because I won't be here on November 7th. But we know that members don't want a tax bill during tax season. We know that you don't want a tax bill in 2026 that's retroactive to 2025. But you know, there will be a tax bill and when it gets passed is really unpredictable and it has a lot to do with the results of the election. It has a lot to do with the interaction between the White House and the Congress. And you know, it's going to be a pretty big tax bill.
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D
Absolutely.
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B
So, Mark, there's actually been some comments coming in about ptin and this slide is kind of a leave behind for the town hall attendees. There's a lot of information. It really breaks out, you know, who are the tax return preparers?
- [26:32]
D
Well, it does. And part of the reason that we're refocusing on this is because there is legislation to address, you know, paid tax preparers. So, you know, in the whole ecosystem you have CPAs, enrolled agents and attorneys. Right. The Legacy Circular 230 folks have, you know, rights to practice before the IRS. You know, big numbers of CPAs. You've got the enrolled agents and obviously the attorneys. And then in the current environment you have this next layer which are paid tax preparers that have a PTIN number that have also gone through a program at the IRS that gives them some amount of, of limited representation before the irs. You know, they've taken some continuing education and they have some ethics compliance and things like that. There's a whole nother level of paid tax preparers that simply have the PTIN number. So they've got the number. It's a huge, you know, over 800,000 PTIN holders. And then, you know, there's also the ghost preparer, the unregistered preparer, which is where a lot of the incompetence and the and the fraud shows up that Congress and Treasury and the IRS is very focused on. We have been for many years. A solution that is an answer for all of this, which is have appropriate regulation of paid tax preparers with some safety cones around it, but make sure you don't negatively impact or inappropriately impact the CPAs, enrolled agents and attorneys. And to lay that out, basically it is right now, this is going to sound crazy. IRS can give you a P10. They don't have the authority to take it away. So it's nuts. But they don't have the statutory authority. So we think they should get it. We've got lots of examples of in CPA firms where you have non signing preparers. So a lot of people touch a return. CPA signs it. There have been proposals where they would want, the IRS would want everybody to have a PT in even if they're actually not signing it doesn't make any sense. CPA signs that they're responsible. And we know this, we know this because of over the years there has been workplace marketplace confusion. Some of it has been purposeful. You know, you can make up acronyms, you can make up recognized, certified by the irs. We would like to have some attempt to mitigate that confusion. And then a GAO study about how do you reconcile state tax preparer programs with a federal program.
- [29:04]
B
So mark, a lot of important activities underway with your team and no, really on this one, I think we'll be showing that pyramid slide again. We got a couple more slides here. Then we're going to get to Lisa and Sue.
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D
Well, yeah, and you know, I mean the SAFE act, which is another one that we've been talking about for several years now, and this is one you put in the category of really trying to help, you know, the workload issues. Right. 125% of previous years, tax year's liability for extensions automatic. We believe that it will actually create some relief. This is in a very good place to happen. I'm not saying a lame duck, but as the larger package is discussed next year, there is bipartisan interest in this and we think it's got a real good chance of happening.
- [29:48]
C
And you and I had conversations with small firm practitioners just this week that said this would materially change their practice as it relates to that issue as to how it would be implemented. I do think if it does pass, it gives firms an opportunity to look at their project management in the tax season sort of from January 1st to October 15th, and rework that very significantly because this will change. You can do These extensions literally in January from the standpoint of how it would work.
- [30:19]
D
Yeah, great. Natural disasters. Everybody's aware of what happened with the recent hurricanes. This is another issue, like I said, potential for lame duck, but really good possibility of making some headway in the tax debate next year. The two hurricanes hit Florida and the rest of the southeast. Helene and Milton, we reached out to the irs. IRS has been very good at providing relief, but we think that if there was even more clarity and certainty of our own, automatic and immediate, it would be extremely helpful. The other part of that is it's not just IRS. There are other reporting requirements around FBAR and around BOI. We did talk to FinCEN about relief for both of those. We got relief for FBAR filing requirements, but not on beneficial ownership. And so that's going to be another ongoing conversation.
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B
Well, Mark, that was a power update. Thanks, Barry, for the council comments. And Lisa and Sue, welcome.
- [31:17]
A
Thank you. So I'm excited to talk with Sue Coffey, who's joined us on several town halls to talk about all of the work that's being done around the talent pipeline. And one of the topics that we're going to talk about today in more detail is an additional pathway to CPA that's being proposed. So, sue, thanks for joining. We're going to do a quick high level review of what MPAG is and then we'll get into some of the details.
- [31:42]
E
Okay, sure. And it's great to be here again and thanks for having me, Lisa. So the National Pipeline Advisory Group, just as a reminder, we've talked about this before at previous town halls, was a group of professionals that was put together as a result of a resolution of our governing council. In fact, the group that just met yesterday and the day before to develop a national pipeline strategy to address our talent shortages, they were very specific that they wanted it to be highly inclusive, which makes a lot of sense. There are a lot of opinions within our profession and a lot of stakeholders. They wanted everything to be on the table. So very important part of our mission and most importantly for it to be data driven. And you see that there's a QR code on this slide that will direct you to the report, which includes all of the data that they collected. And I'll talk a little bit about that in a second. It talks about the themes that they determined we needed to address based on that data and then the many recommendations that as stakeholders to our profession, all of us need to kind of rally around. So data is really important. Right. And I'd be remiss if I didn't just mention some of the data points that were really driving the work of that group, because there was a lot of opinion out there, and it was important that whatever we did, we really based the decisions on the data. And there are two types of data, hard trends and soft trends. And hard trends are the things that we really can't control. And we all know that there are declining birth rates within our country, and that is actually creating fewer people who are going to college, which means that we have to really fight harder for our fair share of those students and get them excited and interested in our profession. And there are more majors now than, for example, Lisa, when you and I started, and many of them pay more. Okay, so we're starting at a very different point now. Softer trends are things that really we can control. And these are the reasons why young adults choose not to come into our profession. So there are things like a lack of interest. Salaries is certainly one of them. The employment experience and the workload that is associated with our profession is up there too. And the ROI of pursuing accounting in college, which gets to the cost and time of education, it gets to funding flexibility that we offer individual, and it gets to the various pathways. The good news is that these things that you see on this slide are all things we can do something about. So NPAG took all of this data. They started to identify the many themes that we needed to start addressing to turn the tide. And I think what's important to note before I just kind of go through these really quickly is that no one theme is more important than the other. Addressing any one theme is not a silver bullet by any means. There is no one stakeholder in our profession, whether it's us or a state, society or academia or firms, can do it alone. We all have to do it together. And that's what's great about our profession. When we tackle projects together, we really have good outcomes. So just real quickly going through these, we need to tell a more compelling story about accounting careers and really what an amazing profession this is. We don't do a great job of that. We have to do a better job. We need to make the academic experience. We know that people drop out after they take principles of accounting. How can we make that course more engaging? How can we pull people through versus weed them out? We need to prioritize strategies to broaden access for underrepresented students and groups. Really, at every stage, we need to better support CPA exam candidates. They need time to study. That's the number one Thing they say they need to be rewarded as sections of the exam are passed and they need reimbursement for costs. And many times up front because it is very expensive to take the CPA exam. Enhancing the employee experience, Lisa, is something you and I talk about very frequently. I know PCPS has a lot of resources. I know you've talked about them with this community often, particularly in the first five years of employment. We need to do a better job. And then, as you mentioned earlier, we need to address the cost and time of education. That is certainly a hurdle that gets to the 150 hours of education. We really need to make some changes that assure that there's greater flexibility and access to our profession when people can't afford that fifth year of accounting.
- [36:22]
A
And we'll come back and talk about all of the key themes in more detail throughout the course of town halls. But today I asked you to really focus on this additional path because there's an exposure graph out there that proposes changes that gives an additional path. So, sue, let's dig into that if we can.
- [36:42]
E
Yeah, happy to do that. So I think it's important to note that the work that we've been doing on this, we've been doing with the national association of State Boards of Accountancy and the state regulatory community, because this is about licensure, okay? This is about protecting the public interest. It is about making sure that we protect our brand and that it. We continue with quality and what our brand is known for, for quality and trust. I mean, the business and the practice environment is more complex than it's ever been, and it is not going to get any simpler. And really maintaining or even enhancing the level of quality is really important. So those, these three things on this slide are three things that we really focused on with the regulatory community to make sure that we were focusing on the right places. So on the next slide, you'll see a visual of what we're talking about. So the first two rows on this slide are how we currently get licensed. And it's the 150 credit hours of education, either getting it through a master's degree or otherwise. Then one year of experience that's verified by a cpa. And then of course, everybody has to pass the CPA exam and that's how you become licensed as a cpa. The third is what we're suggesting. We're suggesting adding this third row to create flexibility and access and to take cost out of the system. And it starts with a bachelor's degree. It adds two years of experience during which an individual would achieve a certain level of competency and then they would pass the CPA exam and they would get licensed. And so it's pretty exciting what we're doing. And we really need feedback because it's out for exposure. So competency is important. Competency is defined. It's defined as knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviors that need to be exhibited by the CPA candidate. And opinion as to whether you agree with that or not is really important. When you look at the bottom of this slide right here, you'll see that on the left hand slide we have about a two pager that identifies the competencies themselves and defines what they are. And on the right hand side, we provide just a couple of examples under each competency as to how somebody might exhibit them. But it is not inclusive. In fact, there may be other competency, other ways that individuals can achieve those competencies. We just thought it was a good idea to include examples.
- [39:12]
A
I love examples. I will just quickly say that if you download the slides, you'll find links. If you don't want to use the QR codes, we've got links embedded. You've got a link to that competency framework that Sue's just talking about. So make sure you download slides so you can get those live links.
- [39:29]
E
Thank you for that, Lisa. I appreciate that. So here are the competencies that we're suggesting that we're proposing in the exposure draft. And you'll see on the left hand side of this slide there are seven what we're calling professional competencies. And on the right hand side there are three technical competencies. And they're all very intuitive. They're defined within the exposure draft. But ethical behavior, critical thinking and professional skepticism. Communication, collaboration, teamwork, leadership, self management, business acumen, technology mindset. And then on the technical side, we're recognizing that in the first couple of years of someone's employment, they may do one thing. Okay, so they may just do tax. It may just be a tax firm. We wanted to make sure it was scalable based on firm size. But they may do a little tax, they may do a little, a little audit, a little assurance. And so we've designed it to be flexible so that the individual would be able to demonstrate the competencies. And we define them based on what firms told us these individuals did and what they were looking for. But then they're all interactive together. So as you're performing, for example, audit and assurance engagements, you should be able to demonstrate critical thinking and professional skepticism and business acumen and technology mindset. So they all kind of interrelate. And we wanted to make it easy for firms to execute on this.
- [40:54]
A
So if I'm in a small firm and let's say I only do tax work, or I'm only doing client accounting services, I can still use this to bring people into my firm and assess their competencies over the course of their experience.
- [41:11]
E
Absolutely. And some of the feedback we got, because we talked about this at the council meeting we were just at, and some of the feedback was like, wow, we should be using this within our HR function because these are really great skills that candidly are not just for entry level, but are important for all levels of individuals. So if I could maybe go through at a real high level how something like this would work. Okay, so the individual would get their bachelor's degree. I think that's when you look at this slide, that's the only thing that has to happen first. First, everything else can happen at various times. So somebody may get their bachelor's degree and they may sit for the CPA exam right away, right after college, and then they may go to work and then they could achieve these competencies. Right. But somebody may get their bachelor's degree and go to work for a firm and start learning, doing the experiential learning earlier and then take the CPA exam. So this just. This explains it. It's good to download and take a look at, but it's designed to be incredibly flexible and not rigid by any means and easy to implement. I think that's the other thing. Easy to implement. We wanted to make it simple to implement.
- [42:21]
A
I think if you look at this slide, you might get a little overwhelmed. But to your point, if you download everything, if you look at the exposure draft, you will see that it's scalable and that it is fairly simple. You're not trying to overcomplicate the competency approval.
- [42:41]
E
And that is the intent. That is clearly the intent.
- [42:44]
A
Okay, thank you.
- [42:45]
E
So here is the QR code for the exposure draft. We really need your opinion, honestly. And that's the best way to help download it. Take a look at it, tell us if we hit the mark. If we didn't hit the mark, let us know where we didn't.
- [43:01]
A
Yep. And I've got a direct link in that. Submit your comments if you just want to click on that as well. So you've got that. So that all sounds really interesting, but what's your timeframe looking like?
- [43:13]
E
Okay, so the competency framework is out for a 90 day exposure period. That exposure period ends December 6th. So there's still plenty of time for everybody to take a peek at it. It's not a long document. And give us feedback. There is a related exposure draft that proposes model legislative language that is designed to help state boards enable through legislation this additional pathway. And then we will take all the comments, we will bucket them, we'll evaluate them, we will edit, revise, make changes, and ultimately we will make a final proposal to both the AICPA and NASBA board of Directors for some type of final framework that would be subject to execution. And because this involves state legislation, timing will vary by state. Mark just talked about the complexity of the federal legislative system. The state legislative system is just as complicated, if not more so. We will be working on a jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis to create uniformity and implementation so that we preserve CPA practice mobility.
- [44:22]
A
All right. And we'll have to. We'll save the mobility conversation for another deep dive because that's always an interesting one. All right, so if you want to learn more, we have a webcast that you can catch on October 30th. And this is free. You get CPE. I would encourage you to think about who else in your firm or who else in your business and industry should be coming to this webcast to learn more about this proposal. So a lot of good information there. And we'll keep bringing this up so that we make sure that we get your feedback by the December 6 date. Thank you, Sue.
- [44:57]
E
Thank you.
- [44:57]
A
The constant reminder that business model is so important to this talent pipeline conversation. So just a quick link to the resources that PCPS is providing for everyone right now. I'm going to move on into my technical update. I'm sure we've got questions piling up for Open Forum, sue, so sit tight. All right, really quickly, from a technical update standpoint, on the last town hall, I showed you this slide that has all the details on the recent disaster relief that's been proposed. Just wanted to bring it back to you because two weeks ago was right around that October 15th deadline and you may not have been paying attention to me. So making sure that you have all these links if you have specific instances that you need to look up. As a reminder, the AICPA has a short benevolent fund that is funded by members, and it is for members to help in situations exactly like this. And the concept is you can help your clients if you're getting the help that you need as well. So please check out the Benevolent Fund and consider that as a resource if you need it. We also have financial tools available as well, and as we were talking through disasters and the role that the CPA can play, we kind of realized that there are really three phases of how CPAs can be involved in disaster relief. We'll dig into this in future conversations, but I just wanted to put this out there for you to start thinking about how you can build your holistic approach to serving clients, either with you individually or with others in your firm by offering those personal financial planning conversations by dealing with the tax ramifications of a disaster and then in the recovery phase, figuring out what the damages were, what the losses are, and providing the documentation that's needed to help your clients get the coverage to get the benefits that they are supposed to get. So again, I thought it was an interesting concept and it really makes so much sense that this is what the CPA community can provide in that holistic approach quickly because we always have to talk about beneficial ownership information. I confused you guys on the last Town hall and I apologize for that. So I had said that you were not going to be able to confirm that you had filed the BOI report and I stand corrected. Thank you for all of you who pointed out my error there. So I went digging and found this e filing assistance that the FinCEN has provided. So I've given you a link to it. I found it to be super helpful. I think you will too. It walks you through the steps to confirm your submission, get a copy of it, etc. We also have a webcast upcoming because we have so many BOI questions throughout Town hall that we can't get to all of them in detail. So Melanie Laurenson, who's been talking to us on BOI issues for the entire year, will be hosting that webcast and you'll have a couple of opportunities to get a deeper dive into some of the technicalities and the practical implications. As always, we have our BOI Resource center and the FinCEN Resource center which has some FAQs that I think are really helpful and some examples for you. Some additional resources that I think you should be thinking about for staying in the know. We didn't get a chance to dig into all of the TCJA provisions that could be expiring, but we have a 10 part video series for our tax and PFP section members that digs in to the expiring provisions and takes a look at some considerations you need to be thinking about so you can help your clients get ready. As I also mentioned on the last Town hall we have the reimagining your tax practice series that I just Love. So I wanted to point out a couple of the upcoming webcasts and a reminder that the December 18th one on right sizing your client base ties directly back to the PCPS toolkit so that we can support you through these conversations. I would suggest starting looking at those clients right now and dig into that toolkit. I'll put a link in the town hall newsletter to make that easy for you to get to. And then the Tax Action Odyssey podcast is always going to keep you up on the latest developments. October is Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and although we're almost at the end of it, I wanted to make sure that you knew about a new resource that we have from our partners at AON and cna. They've produced an ebook that I like to call Cybersecurity for Dummies. They would not let me put that on the COVID but it is a CPA firm's guidance to cyber liability. So hopefully that'll be helpful for you. And again, I'd encourage you to really make sure that you're up to speed on cybersecurity within your practice, within your business, because we know really bad things can happen if someone's able to exploit a weakness. All right. How'd I do, Eric?
- [49:47]
B
You did excellent. I mean this, I mean we got a lot of comments. Someone said, hey, this is 180 minutes of content packed into 60 minutes, so thank you. And it went so fast. Barry, there's a question about just a clarification question on boi. The statement you made maybe reiterated it again about your thoughts on a firm providing that service. And I'll make a comment before you jump in because there's also discussion about solutions. We are working on looking at the marketplace, looking at the solution providers. That is something that I think we do want to bring the town hall community talk about the tools, Barry, that a firm could leverage if they wanted to get into supporting boi. And if you got into boi, you probably would maybe do some other business filing services as well. But anyway, there's a little bit of confusion on your so clarify the statement you made earlier.
- [50:41]
C
Well, yeah, just. And I think the tools are very important. So that's a very important aspect of what I'm going to say is obviously to do this in an efficient and effective and technology supported way. For sure. I just think strategically it's a really important question to ask. What BoI is is about anti money laundering. I think anti money laundering is really the purview is something this profession ought to be really significantly involved in the way it's being executed with the BOI requirement is basically saying for all small businesses, which are the bread and butter relationship of all CPAs, that there's a filing that is due. The CPA is the trusted advisor. The CPA is in the best possible position to know changes in ownership, et cetera. Granted, some of the filing time frames of 30 days is a problem. We need to get that fixed with FinCEN and the legislature because then it will give you an opportunity to do it better. What I said is if you have all these alternative providers out there, this is about filing LLCs. A lot of them are single member LLCs and things that are rolling up into people's individual tax returns and other types of small enterprises, enterprises. It just feels strategically to me and I'm a big believer of this relationship, this trusted relationship between the client and the CPA firm. The CPA firm knows more about that client than anyone else in the world. Often more things about health issues and everything else that's going on with that client. It just seems to me strategically, I would think very hard about having another service provider inserting themselves by providing BOI compliance when my firm could actually do that. Why do I want another service provider interfering with my relationship, that trusted relationship with the client? I totally understand. Some people don't agree with that. I'm just telling you how I think about it strategically from a business continuity perspective. From a client continuity perspective, I think that's the strategic connect the dot way to look at this.
- [52:42]
B
Thanks, Barry. There's obviously a lot of nuances comments coming in about how do I know about all these changes that may happen with my client's business if they're getting married or other things are happening. So those are good questions. They said I gotta talk to my professional liability carrier. So yes, like any practice, you need to think about a lot of different elements that you're gonna have to make.
- [53:07]
C
And there's engagement letters to put the burden on the client to inform you that if we get that 30 day notice period change to a much longer period of time, you obtain that during the normal tax preparation process in all likelihood, or you could build that into that process. So I mean, I get the 30 day issue is a bit of a problem. And as it relates to professional liability, we went through all of this earlier in the year. I mean, our insurance policy, which covers 26 or so thousand firms, it made it clear this is an accounting service, it's covered from that standpoint. Obviously fraud is not covered, but you're not Gonna be committing fraud in this environment. So legitimate questions, but you can overcome those.
- [53:50]
B
In November 7th we're gonna have FinCEN on. So we'll be talking more about this then. So little lightning round now here, Lisa. I mean if you got. I gotta. This is not a quick question mark. You can spend an hour on this, but a quick answer. You know, tcga, you know, Harris position, you know, what thoughts?
- [54:05]
D
Well, I mean she's you know, extending the child tax credit, increasing the corporate rate, increasing the personal rate over $400,000. That's where she is. And if it's Trump, it's going to be extend everything from his first bill. Right. So that's what it's going to look like now. That's where they are. But the factor that you have to pay attention to is who has the gavel and what's the size of the majority.
- [54:28]
B
We'll be talking a lot about this.
- [54:29]
D
We will.
- [54:30]
C
You also have the promises out there on overtime pay, tips and all of those types of massive that filter into those.
- [54:37]
A
I want to ask a question of sue before we wrap up. So in one minute or less, can you explain the difference between this new additional pathway that's being proposed and the two years of experience at 120 hours?
- [54:51]
E
Yeah, sure. So the difference is that during the two year period. So there are a lot of people who have been suggesting that we move to a model that is a bachelor's degree plus two years of experience. The difference is that we're defining some of the competencies that need to be achieved during those two years of experience. This is about the license, right. And this is about making sure that entry level people have the competencies that are necessary for entry level work and to be, you know, productive professionals throughout their career. And we've heard from firms over the last several years that those individuals don't necessarily have the skills and competencies that they expect when people graduate university. So we're helping out by adding those competencies, both professional and technical in a.
- [55:38]
C
Profession in that with AI and other technologies we have to move the competencies for everyone up channel because that's where our value add will be in the market.
- [55:48]
E
That's a great point.
- [55:49]
B
So we've got close to 100 comments coming in. So you already getting some feedback?
- [55:53]
E
Wonderful. Love it.
- [55:55]
A
All right, let's go and start the wrap up. Eric, I'll turn this one over to you.
- [56:00]
B
Yeah, thanks Lisa. So we've got the digital CPA conference coming up December 8th to 11th. Just wanted to highlight that. And we've you know AI top topic here at Council. So we've got an upcoming webinar decoded in the future which will be focused on AI and we've also got blog and some tools here to help you get your arms around that. A lot of questions coming in about the Town hall rebroadcast the newsletter. Here's where you can find more information related to those capabilities. And then we've been talking a lot about November 7th so we've got Mark coming back. You know, we'll be unpacking what happened on November 5th. Melanie Lauridson talking a lot about tax and boi with Bill Lamb from FinCEN. And who knows, we might have another special guest that we haven't announced yet.
- [56:51]
A
Alright, we'll play that by ear. As always, you can easily subscribe to the entire Town hall series by using this QR code or the direct link and we appreciate everyone being with us today. What a power team we've got here and thank you all. See you in a couple weeks.
- [57:07]
D
Thank you for your participation.
- [57:09]
A
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E
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A
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