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Welcome to the AICPA Town Hall Series,
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your resource for the latest news and
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updates on pressing issues facing the accounting profession.
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C
Good afternoon and welcome to the AICPA Town Hall. I'm Eric Ouskerson, one of your hosts for today. Today is Thursday, May 7, 2026. And Lisa, we're in the heart of, like, event season. I know we've got many firms holding retreats. There's tech conferences going on. We've had our employee benefit conference this week as well. Last week I was in San Francisco for a tech event. I know you've been on the road as well. Great to be with you here though, today.
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D
Yeah, thank you. It's great to be here. This is an exciting and fun time for me because I get out into the field, get to see y' all out in the wild in Vegas or other locations, and we get to talk about all the things that are top of mind for those of us in the profession who are interested in what's going on. So we'll cover a lot of that today. And looking forward to a great show with you, Eric.
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C
Yeah, we've got a great program and we're 30 days away from the largest event of the year. Engage. We'll be talking a little bit about that shortly as well. So we're going to kick things off with a DC update with Rachel Dresden. Then we're going to have a technical update with Melanie Lauritsyn, a lot of updates related to things going on at the IRS and other regulatory updates. We're then going to have a very interesting session related to tax transformation. What's happening right now with the technology capabilities in all areas of the practice is incredible. But the recent advancement of these models is truly accelerating the capabilities of the tax area. And we're going to have Brandon Alfred to talk to us about where the whole tax area is going. So I'm looking forward to that. And at least I know you've got a leadership segment here.
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D
Yeah, I've got Sarah Cron joining me. Sarah's on the PCPS Executive committee. Had the chance to get to know her and learn about her leadership philosophy and how that's coming out to play in her firm. And so I'm excited to bring her perspectives to the conversation as well. So we got a couple of first timers on Town hall today.
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E
Eric.
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C
Excellent. Excellent. So let's get into it and kick things off with Rachel in the DC studio. It's a great day. It's a beautiful day here in New York. How's everything in D.C. and what's kind of going on right now in the Capitol.
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E
It's a beautiful day here in D.C. also. Good to see you, Eric. So I will just start with a bit of an update of what Congress has been focusing on over the past couple of weeks. So for the town hall, what you may be most interested in is in the Senate, they have been working on the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the next Fed Chair. So on the last town hall, we talked a little bit about this because his hearing had just occurred and Senator Tillis from North Carolina had put a hold on moving forward with his nomination because of an ongoing investigation by the Department of Justice into the current Fed Chair, Jerome Powell. Well, DOJ has suspended that investigation, and so therefore, Senator Tillis has released his hold, which has meant that last week they had a vote in the Banking Committee, in the Senate to move forward with Kevin Warsh's nomination. This week, the House and the Senate are in recess. They're back home in their states and districts. And next week, we expect that they could hold a floor vote on Kevin Warsh's confirmation to be the next Fed Chair. So that could happen any day next week. And then in the House for the town hall, they were working on Homeland Security funding, so that may be of interest to our viewers. The House passed that legislation, which ended the longest shutdown in history of an agency. It was going on close to 11 weeks. And what they did is they passed the DHS funding bill, but they did not include funding for ICE or cbp, which were the controversial provisions of that bill. And what they're going to do is they are going to fund ICE and CBP through the budget reconciliation process. And I want to mention this because this is being referred to as Budget Reconciliation 2.0, and it's just narrowly focused on ICE and CBP funding. We've talked about budget reconciliation on the town hall before that. It's how they passed HR1 last year at towel. They passed TCJA, the inflation reduction act, things like that. But when you hear budget reconciliation moving through Congress right now, they're talking about this 2.0, which is just funding for ICE and CBP. However, they could move to a budget reconciliation 3.0, which would be a broader bill that could include tax provisions and other things that would have a more direct impact on the profession. So we'll be following that and give you updates should they move to Budget Reconciliation 3.0. And the other issue that I wanted to update the town hall on is related to boi, Beneficial Ownership Information Reporting So last week, the House Financial Services Committee marked up legislation related to boi. So for many of you who have been with the town hall for a little while, you are familiar with BoI, but I'll just give a brief recap. About 18 months ago, we were talking a lot about this here on the town hall because it was time for nearly the deadline for reporting this information. So what this is, is in 2024, FinCEN within Treasury, they came out with a rule as part of the Corporate Transparency act, in which millions of small businesses would have to report their beneficial owners. And this was all to curb money laundering. And last year, when the Trump administration came in, they sent out an interim rule that said that domestic owners do not have to report, that only foreign owners have to report. So that's the current status. And this legislation that the Financial Services Committee marked up last week is just to put into statute that interim rule so that a future administration couldn't roll that back. We don't expect that to happen, but it would just put it in statute so that it couldn't happen. So wanted to let everyone know about that, because that's an issue that I know many of you were following about, you know, 18 months or so ago. So that's the latest in D.C. yeah,
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C
we talked a lot about BOI. So the ASPA supports this bill, correct?
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E
Yes, yes, yes.
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C
Excellent. Well, moving on to the latest related to the Department of Education and this whole category of professional.
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B
Yes.
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E
So on May 1, the Department of Education released their final rule on student loan caps. So just as a refresh on what this issue is, HR1 that passed last year included a provision in there to cap graduate student loans at either $50,000 or $20,500 annually. The Department of Education then went through the process of writing a rule on this, which we saw a draft at the end of last year. And they had a list of 11 professions for that higher cap. They were mostly medical professions. And the two that were not medical professions were law and theology. The proposed rule was in the Federal Register in January. And what the proposed rule had is they had a note at the beginning saying that the Department of Education was not making a value judgment on what is or is not a profession, which is very important. The AICPA had been advocating very strongly on this, saying that, you know, accounting is a profession, we are highly regulated profession, we have a lot of requirements to become a CPA and to maintain your license. And so it's very important that we are deemed as a profession. So that was extremely helpful. Language and in the proposed rule in January. And so what came out just about two weeks ago is the final rule. And in that final rule, they enhanced what they had said in that language, that they weren't making a value judgment. So they said that they weren't deeming whether a career was of worth or if a profession should be considered a profession or not. That this list that they were using was really just for these student loan caps. They did not make a change to the 11 professions that they had included for that higher loan cap. But I do want to note that in the preamble for this final rule, they did comment that they reviewed every profession that had commented. And for accounting, they made a note that you do not need a master's degree to become a cpa and that someone with a bachelor's degree can take the CPA exam. So that's something that they included in the preamble before the final rule. And this will all go into effect on July 1st of this year.
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C
Thanks, Rachel. And as we move, there's already been a couple of questions related. Oh, actually we have tariffs first. So there's a couple questions about the SEC question, quarterly filing rule. But just there was a question, a couple questions came in about boi, you know, information that's been already submitted. What happens to it? Is there a way to destroy it or does that need to be updated? So there was a lot of people that did do the BOI filings.
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E
Yeah. I'm not aware that they would need to do any sort of an update for any information that is filed, but because it only applies to foreign owners. So any domestic owner doesn't have to do anything right now because this interim rule is in place and the final rule we expect any day. So if you submitted information already, there isn't anything that you need to do at this point.
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C
Well, tariffs. So it looks like 75,000 applications have been filed and some have been validated, some have been denied.
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E
Yeah. So it seems like we don't have a town hall without something new happening on tariffs. So in April, the process for filing refunds started. The administration has said that they will start paying out those refunds as soon as next Monday, although we've heard some reports that some have started to receive the refunds already. And as you mentioned, you know, a number of applications have been filed and they've been going through those in a small percentage have reached the refund process. A few, you know, have been denied. And they've been denied for various reasons, like they have inaccurate information or that they are applying for tariffs that are not eligible, things like that. So the process is occurring right now and we have a lot of information on our resource page. If you go to the link here on this slide, you can find the most up to date information related to. So I encourage you to do that because there is a lot of information that comes out in between each town hall.
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C
So related to SEC quarterly filings. So where does that stand? I know the SEC chair commented about it this week.
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E
Yep. So just on Tuesday, the SEC released a proposed rule to allow for companies to switch from court, reportedly filing two semiannual reporting. And this was something that we had been expecting. The president had put something out on social media back in September saying that he thought that this would help to reduce costs. And afterwards SEC Chair Atkins said that he would fast track a rule related to this. So the proposed rule came out and there is a 60 day comment period on that. So you have 60 days to comment on it and then SEC will then go through all of those comments before they come out with a final rule. So that's the latest on the quarterly filing.
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C
We got a couple of Call to Actions to close out the DC Update.
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E
Yeah. Just wanted to remind everyone that our Call to Actions are still live and we want to thank everyone who have already reached out to their House members and Senate members. It makes a big difference. Having worked on the Hill for a number of years. Hearing from constituents is really important. The fiscal state of the nation Call to Action. You can see here on the screen if you want to hit that QR code. Or also the STEM Call to Action, which is to include accounting in STEM for these K through 12 grants for students, which we think will really help the pipeline. It shouldn't take more than a minute for you to do this and it really can make a big difference. So we really do encourage you to click on these links if you haven't do so yet. And just again, thank you for those who have done so well.
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C
Thanks Rachel. There's a lot of good questions that have come in related to the tariffs. I think we'll maybe try to get one or two during Open Forum and we can leverage these questions for the next town hall. So thanks and look forward to having you back shortly. So with that, I'd like to bring up Melanie Lauritsyn for the technical update. Hey Melanie.
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Hi Eric. Happy to be here as always.
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Great to see you. Yeah.
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And I'm very excited because the IRS actually came out with some guidance or information on ERC and the IRS has been quiet for some time in that area, the employee retention credits. So to be able to understand what the IRS is doing, they came forward with a new process on how to extend the period that you would have to be able to litigate with the IRS on an ERC claim. Now, this is actually really important because if you recall, when ERC claims came in, they created a backlog and the IRS was unsure how to tackle this and people were asking for the refunds. So what they did is they did a risk analysis of those claims and they determined certain portions to be paid out immediately, others to be looked at more closely, and then some of those to be disallowed. Now what's happening is for those claims that were disallowed, the clock starts to click for two years in which a person can actually litigate or request that refund. After those two years, it doesn't matter if you're working with the IRS or in the appeals process or working through it, you wouldn't be able to get that refund even if it was properly filed and you are entitled to that refund. So what happened is if you do go to the IRS to appeal that disallowance claim, it would go into an initial review. Because originally, keep in mind, this was done through risk analysis and not an initial review. So you could be dealing with the irs. And again, I can't stress enough that that will not stop the clock from ticking. So what the IRS is doing because they recognize the situation is not normal or appropriate, they are now sending notices to people that have six months or less left on that two year limitation. And that notice will tell you, hey, your time is running out and you can actually file Form 907, which is an extension. Now that form needs to be signed by the taxpayer and the IRS to be valid and you can get an extension from anywhere from six months up to two years. And if necessary, you can actually file another 907 if you are working with the IRS. So this form, what it does, it allows you to continue to work with the IRS without that limitation running out on you. So it is important. The link is on the slide for Form 907 and how to move forward with that. Okay, moving on to the next topic, the QWONG case. Now this also has that same two year statute of limitation and we'll talk about how it's similar. So essentially, as a refresher with the QWONG case, the courts decided that during that Covid period and it's a three and a half year period that there really weren't any filing due dates until July 10th of 2023. So people now who did receive penalties which would have been considered erroneous penalties, they can actually request for a refund of those penalties. But because it is a court case right now and it could be appealed, some people may want to do a protective claim to see where this is going to net out. Now, the protective claim, what it does, it extends the period of when you can file for that refund claim, because that would be due July 10th of 2026. That's the statute of limitations there. The problem with a protective claim is it puts the onus and the burden on the taxpayer or the practitioner to follow through with the quant case to see if it got resolved. And from there, you have 90 days to do the refund claim. Now, if you do the refund claim, that is, you're initiating it with the IRS for them to do a review. And if they do a disallowance for that refund claim, then you have two years to start litigation. So what we're telling people is to have the conversations with their clients, make them aware of the situations, to then decide how to move forward. And the protective claim, what it is, it's essentially the refund claim, where you don't have to give specific numbers for the refund or the interest, but at the top of that form, you write in that it is a protective claim. So that is the difference between the protective claim and the refund claim. So with that, we're moving on to the next slide where there were some bills introduced on the House or passed actually by the House. And all of these bills are taxpayer friendly in the tax administration area. So that first bill, it really has the first bill on the left that you see has to do with the IRS creating a dashboard wherein you could get information real time and you could log in and see the status of things that are moving through, especially when you write correspondence to see what's happening with that, because right now it kind of goes into this black box of mystery. So that would be beneficial. The second bill that's on here has to do with disaster relief, and it would allow victims of disaster to be able to take the deduction for those disaster relief losses that they suffered. And then the final bill has to do with a barcode on a paper submitted tax return. So at the bottom of it or somewhere on the form, it would have a barcode. So even if you paper filed, it would get to the IRS and they could scan it in and it would digitally update that tax return. So then it could be processed in real time versus the current process of the manual processing of paper files returns, which of course we all know takes an extended period of time. Moving on to the next slide,
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so
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we've had a lot of people reach out about AI and how the IRS is actually using AI within their organization. And in March, the Government Accountability Office actually came forward with a report in which they give a glimpse. And I say glimpse because it's a smart look at how the IRS is using AI. Now, the IRS is actually using AI in a much broader sense than what this report has. But a lot of those initiatives that they have are actually protected and they can't be brought up in the report. But there's still some areas that we would be interested in. So for example, what you see on the slide are some of those areas, the first one has to do with audit and case selection where in the IRS they are able to look at a couple of years back of returns to see if there is an issue. So for example, the eitc, if they see there's a lot of people erroneously claiming that or improperly claiming it, meaning they're not actually following the rules, they can look back to see where they need to take a closer look. Now this also is applying with fraud detection. So for example, if the IRS starts seeing a heavy amount of returns where families are deducting, say 15 children and it's coming from one particular ptin, then they're able to detect fraud and take again another closer look. Now for those of you who just went through the filing season, you did see some most likely interacted with some of their AI measures. Most commonly people think of the callback feature that the phone lines now have. But there's also the chat bots that people can log in to try to get more real time information. What people also don't know is that the IRS assisters within internally of the irs, they too have chop baptized bots that are helping them provide answers to your questions. So we do have a survey that just closed and we're going to see how well that came out and turned out. But then finally, the IT modernization is where all of us have heard that IRS has some systems that have Cobalt and we also know that there's very few people in this country who can actually program in Cobalt. And so it's a real issue for the irs. And what they're doing is using AI to translate Cobalt into new programs with the end goal of having all the systems aligned and communicating and have updated servers within the irs. So again, these are all things that we're tracking and as we see it impact us, particularly in the tax world. Since I come from the tax area, we will be sure to let you know. So with that, we're going to move on to our last slide of the tax round robin. The things that you see here are just more for awareness of what's going on. So if you are in the international world or have clients in there, the OECD came forward with a toolkit with the Global Minimum Tax and how you can be more in compliance with it. So that toolkit, please be aware that it is out there. Also, if you have clients that are foreign filers, you would use the FHIR system. And the FHIR system is kind of cumbersome and it asks for information that foreign filers can sometimes really struggle with providing that information. So the IRS is actually going to be phasing that out and coming forward with a new system in 2027 which will be easier and more user friendly to get through. Also, as we all know, a new webpage has gone out for the Trumpiras.gov coming out. And please note that that is not a new IRA system. What it is is just a way for taxpayers who don't have access, say to the 401 benefits that they can create their own IRAs at some lower cost and be able to get more clearer guid. And so we do have some resources available for that. And then finally, the Department of Justice actually issued a request which is the final request needed so that IRS can reschedule marijuana from schedule one to schedule three. So what that means is marijuana would be reclassified from Schedule 1, which is equivalent of say heroin, to Schedule 3, which is equivalent of like Tylenol and you could do business in. Now keep in mind they're doing it with the mindset medicinal marijuana and we will be providing feedback and comments on that. So with that, I turn it back over to you, Eric.
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C
Thank you, Melanie. We've got a number of questions. I'm going to let you take a look at them as we move to Open Forum. But there's one that the team asked me to ask you that came in. Any update on the erroneous CP53E notice?
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B
Yeah, I saw the questions coming in, Eric, and that's the CP53 that you just said. Unfortunately, the IRS has not given more guidance and we've reached out to them and talking with them right now. They just don't have more. But we are still working with them. And if we can get more guidance, we will absolutely share it with the town hall community.
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C
Okay, thank you. See you in a little bit. So now I'm thrilled to be bringing up Brandon Alfre, a very, very important strategic addition to CPA.com, when you think about CPA.com and our primary purpose, it's about the transformation of the practice areas, really thinking about how technology is evolving. Tax audit, accounting, advisory services. And over the past two years, year and a half in particular, we've started really leaning into the tax area. We're well aware of what these gen AI models are doing to drive enhanced capabilities. We talked a lot about the tax research capability over the past filing season. And Brandon Alfrey has started here. He started this year, he started the start of the year and he's the Senior director of Tax Transformation. So he's got an excellent background. He was a lead partner at squire, our top 100 firm, leading the tax area, thinking a lot about transformation while he was there. Also has some other really good experiences that set him up well for this position. He's been on the Tax Practice Management committee as an AICP volunteer. He was a Leadership academy grad. So Brandon, great to have you with us today and I'm really looking forward to this discussion.
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F
Well, thanks for having me, Eric. I'm excited to be here and talk about this.
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C
I think we got a little, do we have a little bit of an audio issue there? Just. Okay, thank you. So what do we mean here by tax transformation? And I'm going to have you clear this slide. But what I do want to highlight to the town hall community is that we're very connected to the technology ecosystem and it is dramatic. What is occurring right now related to the automation of the preparing and the filing of these returns. And this summer in particular, starting with Engage, there's going to be a lot of very significant announcements coming out from technology vendors on how they're going to be driving automation. So it's been happening over the past decade with a lot of the OCR capabilities, machine learning, and now it's going to go to really the final phase where a lot of this will be automated. So what does this all mean? Brandon? I know this is something you've been thinking a lot about in your career and we're in a moment right now.
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F
Yeah, we are definitely in a moment, that's for sure. Like you said, the automation has been building for many, many years and so we've gone from being purely compliance based for a long number of years. And doing a little bit of advisory. But when we talk about tax transformation, we're wanting to switch that. Not that we're taking away the compliance from the work that we do, but it's letting the automation come in and help do the compliance work to give us more time and more ability to do more advisory work with our clients to become better trusted advisors here. So when we say tax transformation, we say that this is an intentional evolution of the tax practice from being strictly compliance based to being focused first on being advisory based, using the technology to be able to help bring value to clients and bring value to your firm. So the AI and the technology that's happening, they're the catalyst in all of this. They're driving this, they're making it possible. And so AI is creating the capacity as we go through this. We're seeing it change almost daily at this point. But advisory is where we can jump in and create value from all of this technology that's coming in to help firms provide tax services.
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C
Yeah, and that's what I've been hearing from a lot of tech companies and some of the firms that they're working with. This creating of additional time or capacity, as you state here, is going to allow them to focus on advisory and outcomes, you know, moving to outcomes, successful outcomes. But here on this slide, you kind of unpack a little bit of some of these future outcomes, future advisory areas.
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F
Yeah, I think it's important that we talk about this in that there are many ways to go about advisory. Right. And it's not just like, hey, I'm choosing a new technology that's going to help me to do this, but it's about redesigning your practice so that you can take advantage of compliance and complaining using workflow and technology and then reimagining how you go about pricing the work that you do for clients to make everything become a more proactive client relationship. So I mean, we're just going to give a few highlights of what you could start doing. Right. There's a long list that we have, but maybe some of these might resonate with something you might be doing with a few clients or something you've been thinking about. So it's doing quarterly tax planning with clients instead of just waiting to the end of the year or jumping into their, to their entity choice and how to set that up and how to structure compensation to maximize the tax advantages that might be happening for business owner that might be needed for business owners. Also you could look at being more involved in the year end close and looking at the tax strategies that are there to some extent, that probably gets done a little bit already, but with more time and capacity, you can do much more of this and almost hand hold your client to get there. And for those that are a little more adventurous or forward thinking, you could move forward into some personal financial planning with the clients and jump into that area to help them to plan not only for taxes, but for the rest of their life and their legacy and everything that goes that way. So the point, I guess Eric, is not to choose all of these, to do them all at once, it's to choose a couple of them. What are the things that you regularly talk to clients about and then finding a way to standardize it, make it repeatable for more and more clients and deliver it consistently through using AI and the automation tools that are there and taking advantage of the capacity that that brings.
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C
Well, thanks, Brandon. And when we think about transformation, we think about three key things. It's the technology. Everyone always focuses on technology where it's at, but it's the people in the process and the business strategy. Process, business strategy. So with all of this, there's going to be a lot of evolution of kind of process offerings as well as talent development, correct?
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F
Absolutely. You can't just take one of these things and think that it's going to transform what's going to happen. It's going to change. This is going to change how you recruit and train people, what skills that they're going to need to give advisory services. And it's also going to make you rethink how does that process work? It's no longer, you're no longer going to have this like point A to point B to point C. It's going to be a close kind of a managed system approach to how tax work gets done and how the different people in the process interact with the data and the return and the client.
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C
Well, here in the town hall, sometimes we get accused of just talking about the opportunity without maybe some of the issues. So what's going to get in the way of kind of moving to this advisory role?
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F
Yeah, we always like the same as last year, right. That we kind of get into that rut a little bit, but we have to maybe get out of that a little bit. So we see that there's workflow friction that comes in. A lot of the processes that are still being done in firms are manual. Even with the advent of technology. The processes haven't changed quickly enough to help to make the automation help. And so we spend a lot of time in that workflow, doing manual tasks that we need to change our mindset and figure out how we can, how we can take some of those, those low value tasks that we have to do and move those into an automated state to give us more time. The second one is just the capacity compression. You know, tax season is busy and we're all stressed trying to get taxes out the door on time, make sure the clients are satisfied that we meet those deadlines. But as we focus too heavily on just the compliance aspect, we miss out on the opportunities that might come up in the data, might come up in the conversations and we don't turn around, aren't able to act on those, into turning those into advisory conversations that help clients and build the trust that we have with them at that point. And I think the last one that the big, the other big one that gets in the way is just the business model tension that happens here as we get faster at doing things. The model of billable hour times the billable rate doesn't come out in our favor anymore because we're doing things quicker. So we have to take a step back and look at what's going on. How are we providing value to the client and rethink not only the process part, a part of this, but how do we price the work that we're doing for clients? And there's lots of answers that are out there. There's different ways that you can go about it, but it is a conversation that you need to start having about when this happens, when you make this transformation effort. How am I going to articulate the value that I'm bringing because of the way that I'm doing business now?
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C
We got a lot of excellent questions coming in, I think. Let's talk about what we'll see in 26 and I'm going to bring a couple of these questions to you.
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F
Okay, perfect. Yeah. So 2026, I think you mentioned it already, Eric, that there's a lot of major changes that are going to come. We're going to see AI tax prep actually get deployed in firms for compliance work, probably starting in smaller batches rather than replacing full systems at this point. But they're going to start coming in and making an impact on how work gets done from a compliance standpoint. And with that, that's part of the greater disruption that's happening in the tax technology space. But more things keep coming into this tax technology space almost every day at this point. Some of it's people are adding on to current capabilities that they've had some of Them are bringing in a new solution or a new way to view the problem. But we're coming in and having a lot of different players come in and try to solve the same problems. And so you're going to get just this loud noise of all this technology coming in and it's going to bigger throughout the rest of this year.
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C
And then yeah, it's well said, there's going to be a lot of noise. But what we saw there was a lot of beta trials that occurred this tax filing season and you're going to be hearing about those outcomes at Engage or at other events. But I think one of the biggest things to sort through is this is happening. The technology wave is going to happen. Drive automation. It's the advisory move. And as you go to this last bullet here, one question that came in is so how, Brandon, will you be thinking about the different labor pool requirements as you move from more of the compliance to consulting and advisory? How are you going to, how are we going to work through this?
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F
Yeah, so I think, you know, I think it's a little short sighted to say that we're not going to need people. Right. But we're going to need people with different skills, skills than what they've come in. We're not going to be able to rely on the old model of having 18 months to 3 years to train somebody to know what they're doing in tax. We've got to rethink the whole learning model to help people understand and get up to speed quicker what's going on. We're going to need those people as we transition as partners transition out. As firms grow, you're going to need people who are client relationship managers and they're going to need those skills to get through that. And so you're going to have to upgrade skills of people in that direction as well as in their technical areas so that they can be able to leverage what's happening with the technology to actually truly become advisors to clients.
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C
Well, excellent. And we just one question came in about will this impact outsourcing offshore on some of the tax work? Absolutely, absolutely. This is that. And you might be utilizing those resources to do different things, but a lot of that outsourcing work that sometimes is offshored is going to be done by these next generation platforms that are leveraging a lot of these new AI models. So I know we've got a lot of resources that we're putting out to help on this journey.
- [39:01]
F
We do, yeah. So attach today for download is just five things that are happening in tax that's showing that it's ready for this transformation. So you can download that and read those. We are excited to announce that we're launching in June a tax transformation survey for firms to tell us where they're at as far as technology, as far as transformation, where they're at in their people development, where they're at in their process development, that it's going to open up in June and we'll have a report out for you by DCPA about what that survey really says. And then lastly, we're doing a webinar on June 3 about moving from compliance to advisory with a real world example of a firm that's doing it.
- [39:46]
C
Well, excellent, Brandon. A lot of energy here from the town hall community. Some really excellent questions and we're going to people want to know more about the different tools and understand some of the other issues on adoption. More to come, more to come in future town halls. And we've got other sessions outside of the town hall that we'll be having to help manage this massive wave of transformation. But thank you, Brandon, for being with us today and looking forward to having you back on the town hall.
- [40:20]
F
Thank you,
- [40:23]
C
Lisa. Welcome, Lisa Simpson. There you go, Lisa, I know you're passionate about that last topic. You would have enjoyed having that discussion. So looking forward to your thoughts in this leadership, this leadership talk coming up.
- [40:40]
D
Yeah, it's a perfect lead into the conversation that we're going to have with Sarah Crom. Sarah is the managing partner of SKC Co. And she's a wonderful volunteer who is currently serving on the PCPS Executive Committee as the treasurer for me. And she's also a past president of the New Jersey Society of TPAs, also a past AICP member, council member. She's a frequent speaker on leadership innovation, client success. And I've just really enjoyed the chance to get to know Sarah over the last couple of years. I'm going to mention a podcast that Sarah did for us. And so if I act like I know Sarah a little bit better than you do, forgive me, I'm going to give you a link to the podcast, but with that that let's dig in. Sarah, welcome. And we'll skip your bio slide, but why don't we as we're transitioning to our slides, why don't you tell us a little bit about your firm? Where are you? How many people do you have? What kind of services do you provide? Who's your client base?
- [41:44]
A
Sure. Hi Lisa. Thanks for having me. I'm really excited to be here. Well, we are Based in New Jersey, we are a 30 person firm. We've been around for 44 years. We are 100% woman owned. All three partners are females. We work only with entrepreneur minded business owners and we're pretty strict with how we bring on clients. They have to be willing at a minimum to meet with us on a quarterly basis. A lot of our clients are monthly. We do a lot of tax strategy and tax planning, but we also do a lot of goal setting and operational efficiencies to help the business owner become the best version of themselves.
- [42:25]
D
And Sarah, what you're saying ties into what Brandon was talking about with that quarterly planning, with those regular conversations as opposed to just waiting till the end of the year and going, oh, let's talk about taxes right now. So I love that philosophy. One of the things that your firm is known for is a focus on five star service and unreasonable hospitality. Those are not words we typically hear in the accounting profession. So what does that look like? And let's start there. What does that mean?
- [42:57]
B
Yeah.
- [42:58]
A
So just to give a little brief background, it started back in 2022 when we created our five year vision. And back then I was introduced to the book called Unreasonable Hospitality. It was written by Will Guidera and it's based on the restaurant industry. So you have to translate that to customer service in the professional service firm. And one of the pillars that we built our vision on was to be a five star Michelin accounting firm where business owners wanted to come to us for the world class service that we offered. And so we were doing some preparation for really launching sort of this unreasonable hospitality. And now we have internally two different committees to focus on that. One that addresses unreasonable hospitality for our team members internally at SKC and then one that reaches outward to our clients and gives them that world class service. So as a quick example, we're all fairly good at doing deliverables, whether that's financial statements or tax returns, whatever the product is that the client comes to us for. That's the basic price of entry essentially to being a CPA firm. Nowadays what we're trying to do is really create that differentiator, sort of break through the AI and the technology and really focus on the people aspect and the client experience. And perhaps we're including them in one of our masterminds or maybe we're connecting them with others, people in our network that they'll benefit from. Maybe we're sending them a baby gift because they just became grandparents and we want to celebrate that. It's all about the experience that they have with us layered on top of obviously the quality technical services that we provide for them.
- [44:47]
D
So I want to remind everyone, Sarah said this is a 30 person firm, so this seems pretty interesting, especially for a 30 person firm. So how did you decide that as a firm you were going to focus on this and how did you decide to create your concierge accounting service?
- [45:07]
A
So a lot of it really started with needing to hone in on who our ideal client was. And so we got very, very intentional about who we would service. And we even have a client bill of rights that new clients have to agree to and adhere to before they come on board with us. So there's a lot of structure around who we will work with. And when you go through the process of calling clients and maybe getting rid of some legacy clients and really focusing on your ideal client, you have to make sure that you're standing out in their eyes and you have to have that attraction. And so we really wanted it to be all about how do we make these high level entrepreneurs want to be part of what SKC is all about and, and layering it into our vision really spread it throughout our culture overall. And I happen to be a foodie, so I liked the fact that the book Unreasonable Hospitality was written by a restaurateur and it really just gave us a good idea of what we wanted to offer to our clients. So our concierge accounting services is a little bit of a play on words. What the industry knows as CAS services, we call it concierge accounting services. And we will really do a white glove service. Our business owners, if that's what they want, all the way down to the bookkeeping, data entry, bill paying level, up to the highest CFO controller, strategizing level of work and everything in between customized to what that particular business owner wants. So we formally launched that concierge accounting service earlier this year, focusing predominantly on healthcare clients, just so we can sort of of work in the medical field and help the doctors and the medical professionals who are so busy doing what their predominant service is, they don't really have the bandwidth for the back office, which is really what we're providing for them.
- [47:11]
D
Having served a lot of doctors and dentists when I was in practice. You're right. So it's such a great idea to focus in on a niche, especially one that already exists within your client base and then, then use your strengths and build out from there. I know that when we were talking you mentioned that you want to work with clients who value you at a premium who aren't just looking at what's the cheapest I can get my services done. And so you have to have the right kind of staff and you have to support the right kind of staff to serve in this model. So tell me about your approach to supporting your team members.
- [47:50]
A
The team is really the most important to us. I mean, we talk internally about people first all the time and people over profits and those types of taglines. But we really try to take action with it in a couple of different ways on the technical side of things. And Brandon was just talking about how do we upskill our tax people because we don't have the Runway that we used to have with AI and technology. We created competency frameworks and both on the technical side and the behavioral side to really help guide our team to grow and to develop further in their professional skillset. And it's our job as the leadership team to not only provide them that roadmap, but to then also offer them the opportunities that will give them the experience that they need to really rise to the next level and ascend up the. Up the promotion ladder, if you will. On the other arm of it, we worry very much about our team's psychological safety within the firm. And you know, we talked, you and I, before that we have a mental health counselor on retainer at SKC just for conversations that people want to have, whether it's work related or personal related. If they have things that are holding them back or obstacles that are distracting them from being the best professional that they can be for their teammates internally or for their clients, we want to provide resources for them to be able to sort of clear the path for themselves.
- [49:16]
D
I love that. Because if you're battling some issues outside of work, you can't help but bring those in. No matter how good you are at closing off and saying, I'm at work now, I'm not going to think about it. That still impacts who you are when you're showing up at the office.
- [49:32]
A
And that goes beyond just the stress of busy season. Right. That affects all of us in different ways. So we keep our counselor on retainer year round so that she can help us work through not only the stress of busy season, but the stress of life in general.
- [49:48]
D
Life can be stressful for sure. I get it. What about your communication strategy? You've mentioned that you're a strong believer in over communicating. How did you get to that realization that you have to over communicate?
- [50:01]
A
I think when I first became a partner at SKC and I started doing more presentations and Sharing more ideas and making changes. And what I realized very quickly was when I said something one or two times, it didn't land, and it wasn't necessarily interpreted the way that I intended it for it to be. What I learned was that as the leadership team, we have a lot of time to sit with the changes that we want to make or the ideas that we have. And when we roll that out to the team, I think we take that a little bit for granted that we've had a longer Runway to sit with these things. And as we're promoting it implementation internally, this is the first time people are hearing about it, and it takes a while for it to sink in, and it takes a while for the team to understand what history the leadership team has with it. So what we try to do, again, as you said, is over communicate, but we try to also build into our communications the why behind a lot of the decisions that we make. So that gives an added layer of understanding to the team of what the background is, what the history is, what the decision factors were to get to where we are. And it really does help sort of grease the wheels in promoting the adoption of things a little bit quicker.
- [51:20]
D
That's great. And I think you also use that philosophy with your clients as well. You're over communicating to clients.
- [51:27]
A
I mean, my whole philosophy with people, again, the internal team or the external clients, is until someone says, all right, I got it, I'm going to keep communicating the message. And I feel like I've got my bases governed.
- [51:40]
D
That's a great framework. Great framework. We're short on time, so I'm going to move on into some of the resources that we have to support practitioners who might be thinking about how they can transform their business model and some of the ways that you've heard Brandon talk about or you've heard Sarah talk about. But first, I mentioned that Sarah did a podcast for us in our Transforming Tales of Business Evolution series. So I wanted to give you the direct link to that so that you could learn more and get a much more in depth conversation with Sarah on your radar. But also, all of this ties in to the PCPS Transforming your business model initiative that our teams have been working on for several years now. So in the spirit of over communicating, until y' all tell me you got it, I'm going to keep talking about these resources. I pulled out a few that I think tie directly into what Sarah's talked about today, which is the strategic planning toolkit. It's so important to actually have a strategic plan to have a vision to have alignment throughout the entire firm or organization on what, what is our strategy and why. We've also got talent toolkits that include mentoring and coaching. We've got.
- [52:54]
E
Right.
- [52:55]
D
Sizing your client base toolkits because Sarah had to let go of some of her legacy clients as she she shifted her ideal client profile. And then I wanted to make sure that everyone who's a PCPS member knows that we've got the Engage365 community so that you can have these conversations with your peers. You can ask questions about what worked, what didn't. And if you're not sure what PCPS is and you're in a public accounting firm, join us for an overview session and you'll find out about all the resources that we have at an amazing cost. Sarah, I put you to work for the next ask. So they're again tired of hearing me over communicate about why we need responses to our top issues survey. But what's your perspective?
- [53:42]
A
Yeah, I mean, you've got to give feedback, right? You have to give feedback to see improvements, to see changes, to have impact. And I think that this survey in particular is really important to complete so that the team at the AICPA has the information of what is keeping us up at night as practitioners so that they can look to the future in better ways to help us manage all of that.
- [54:07]
D
Thank you so much, Sarah. Eric and I are going to run through a few quick resources and then hopefully we'll have time for a question or so during Open Forum. And one of the resources that we wanted to just bring to your attention is an upcoming National Accounting Day, which is on May 19. There's an opportunity for all of you to get involved and to kind of celebrate and show the pride that you have if you're like me in being a cpa. So we're focusing on a theme of trust in action. And your participation is super easy. You just go into the materials today, download those resources that we have for you, and it's as easy as uploading a picture to us, a social media montage, and then you've got about a week to do that before it even opens. But we'll leave that open for a while as well so that you can celebrate and show your pride in being a CPA really quickly. We also have one of my favorite surveys that I wanted to talk about, which is the Client advisory benchmark survey. CPA.com is the primary, primary sponsor of this. I was just talking to someone earlier this week when I was out in the wild about how valuable this survey is. If you're in the business of providing client advisory services, no matter what that looks like in your firm, give us your data on some of the key benchmarks that we're tracking and we'll report all of that back out to you with trends in the profession that will highlight some opportunities for you, growth opportunities, help you get some leadership. Buy in if you need it. And we also mentioned that Brandon is launching a tax transformation survey. Coming up at AICPA's Engage event is a political action committee breakfast for AICPA members. And if you're going to be at Engage, we're having that breakfast on June 9th at the hotel. This is in person only. You'll see the information about the breakfast on the screen. If you're an AICPA member and you want more information, you can access that QR code.
- [56:16]
C
Well, thank you, Lisa. A lot of good information there and the resources. Let's move to Open Forum. I'll kick things off with a question for Rachel. So there's a lot bui a lot of questions came in just around the data, the data that treasury has because a lot of people did do the BOI filing. Yeah.
- [56:41]
E
So the bill that I mentioned earlier, it does have a provision in there that requires treasury to safely destroy the information that has been submitted. And also we are working with treasury on getting information on how they are currently safeguarding that information and how they will be safely destroying it.
- [57:01]
C
You answered the question. Excellent. Thank you, Lisa. And Melanie, I don't know if there's another technical question you want to bring up. I'll There was a couple of questions came in during Brandon's section just on small firms. How can we manage the cost of these technologies for the small firms? One thing that I always like to say is the technology continues to be the great equalizer. Even what I saw with the tax research capabilities that came out over this past tax filing season, they are something that the small firm can afford and it actually elevates their abilities. But Brandon, what's your thoughts on just the small firm in this tech transformation in tax?
- [57:44]
F
Yeah, I would agree with that completely. I think what we're seeing with the way that the tech is being built and the way that it's being applied, it's making it easily accessible for small firms to get that tech at a reasonable cost to allow them to perform better, to do more for their clients and to increase their revenue.
- [58:06]
C
Excellent. Great, Lisa.
- [58:07]
D
Melanie, really quickly, you've got a lot of great feedback. I think a lot of people might be sending resumes your way, but you mentioned an unreasonable hospitality book. Can you mention again who wrote that book?
- [58:19]
A
Sure. It was written by Will Guidera. G U I D A R A Great.
- [58:25]
D
We'll have to have you back for another segment. So thank you.
- [58:30]
C
Melanie, anything?
- [58:32]
B
Just based on the questions that came in. A lot of people were also asking around the quant case and how the protective claim can work into it. And there are resources on the links that we have there. And then there's another resource that the National Taxpayer Advocate came forward with blogs and that is in the slides that you guys have for there. And that's a very broken down way to understand it. It's a complex topic.
- [58:59]
C
Well, thank you. Thank you, Melanie, Brandon, Sarah, look forward to having you back on. And Lisa and I are now just going to cover a couple remaining slides. So here's the upcoming town halls. Another one in a couple of weeks, May 28 and then actually in three weeks. And then we've got got the town hall which will be live at Engage, basically kicking off the Engage event. It'll be 4:15 Eastern Time, 1:15 Pacific Time. So that's going to be exciting. It's a 75 minute session, Lisa.
- [59:39]
D
Yeah, and I'm saying I'm the warm up act for Ryan Reynolds. But really quick note, if you plan to attend Engage, either virtually or in person, the early bird discount runs through May 11th. So that's just around the corner. We hope to see you there.
- [59:56]
C
Well, that'd be great having this town hall community 14, 15,000 people with us and 5,000 people or 4 to 5,000 people there in person, over 5,000 people in total attending Engage. One thing I want to remind everybody about is that we've got this shorter survey available to you. We love your feedback. A lot of interesting sessions today give us feedback on those sessions, give us suggested topics for future town halls. Appreciate you spending like one extra minute in filling that out for us. And then we also have our town hall resource Center. We will have a rebroadcast of today's town hall on Monday. Leverage this resource center and we look forward to being with you in a few weeks, Lisa.
- [60:44]
D
So thanks everybody. We'll see you in a few weeks.
- [60:48]
A
Thank you for your participation.
- [60:50]
E
You can also subscribe to the AICPA
- [60:52]
B
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- [61:08]
C
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D
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D
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