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Blake Oliver

The End of Data Entry and What It Means for Your Tax Practice

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Elizabeth Beastrom left public accounting 30 years ago because she was sick of rekeying data into tax returns. Now, as President of Tax and Accounting Professionals at Thomson Reuters, she works to make sure no accountant has to do that mind-numbing work ever again.

“I was a lazy CPA,” she admits with a laugh during this episode of the Earmark Podcast. “I didn’t want to spend my time doing work that I didn’t think was necessary.”

In this conversation with host Blake Oliver, Elizabeth and Kirat Sekhon, Thomson Reuters’ Head of Technology, map out their vision for automating the entire tax workflow, from gathering documents to delivering returns. They want listeners to know that AI-enabled firms are going to outcompete everyone else, and the shift from compliance to advisory isn’t optional anymore.

Why Tax Firms Can’t Keep Doing Things the Old Way

The numbers tell the story. Fewer people are taking the CPA exam while more accountants retire every year. Meanwhile, tax complexity keeps growing, which means more demand for services with fewer people to do the work. Throw in private equity firms buying up practices and pushing for efficiency, and you’ve got a perfect storm.

But it’s not just about headcount. The new generation of accountants expects modern tools that actually work together—not the clunky desktop software their predecessors put up with.

“They expect to use intuitive and connected tools,” Kirat explains, “so they have a better experience while they deliver value to their customers.”

So why has tax software stayed stuck in the desktop era while cloud accounting tools have taken off? Kirat points to two reasons. First, tax calculations are hard to get right, and once you build something that works, nobody wants to break it. Second, accountants themselves haven’t pushed for change. When you’re working 80 to 100 hours during busy season, the last thing you want is to learn new software.

“The term SALY—same as last year—still comes through,” Elizabeth notes. “You found a way to do it and you like to replicate that. Change is hard, especially when you have to introduce that to the firm when you’re working 80 to 100 hours a week.”

But resistance to change is becoming dangerous. Elizabeth’s own exit from the profession 30 years ago shows what happens when the work becomes too tedious. Back then, she discovered she loved the advisory side, including talking to clients, understanding their businesses, and making recommendations that actually helped them improve. But she was stuck doing data entry.

“I would spend time talking to my customers,” she recalls. “Some of my best inputs came from the people in accounts payable or accounts receivable. I would get a detailed understanding of their process.” But then she’d have to go back to rekeying tax data, and the contrast was too much.

Building the “Bookends” Around Tax Prep

Thomson Reuters isn’t trying to fix one piece of the tax workflow; they’re automating the whole thing. Their strategy focuses on creating what Elizabeth calls “strong bookends” around their core tax engines (GoSystem Tax, CST, and UltraTax).

The front bookend came through their acquisition of SurePrep three years ago. Practitioners dump all their client documents into the system, and SurePrep automatically classifies them, pulls out the relevant numbers, creates a binder for review, and fills in the tax software. No more manual data entry.

“That’s a huge time savings when you don’t have to spend time doing all of that manual data entry,” Kirat says, “and they can actually focus on the return.”

The back bookend arrived with SafeSend, acquired earlier this year. It handles return delivery, e-signatures, and payment collection, eliminating what Elizabeth remembers as the nightmare of printing, mailing, and faxing documents back and forth 30 years ago.

What’s different about Thomson Reuters’ approach is they’re keeping these tools open to work with competitors’ software too, not just their own tax products.

“It is an open, curated ecosystem,” Elizabeth emphasizes. “If customers find value in part of their workflow, we want to make sure we connect to it.”

Beyond just automating existing steps, they’re trying to eliminate unnecessary work entirely. Take the client questionnaire—that paper organizer Blake’s mom still fills out by hand every year. Thomson Reuters wants to “kill the questionnaire” by using AI to pre-populate information from prior returns and only ask for what’s actually new or missing.

The next frontier is what Kirat calls “agentic AI,” systems that don’t just handle one task but orchestrate entire workflows. These AI agents can use multiple Thomson Reuters products in sequence, making decisions along the way to get a return from start to finish with minimal human intervention.

But everything the AI does needs to be auditable. Kirat stresses that any AI handling tax work must show exactly what decisions it made and why.

“Our customers expect the work product of an accountant to be 100% accurate,” she explains. “Without providing that audit log with the decisions and choices and confidence levels, we’re missing the mark.”

Blake agrees enthusiastically, sharing his frustration with current AI tools that don’t show their reasoning. “I want to know why it matched this transaction,” he says. “There’s an AI conversation for each one of these transactions. Why not give that to us?”

The Shift to Advisory Can’t Wait

If machines can prepare returns faster and more accurately than humans, what exactly are clients paying for? Two-thirds of Thomson Reuters’ customers say they want to shift to advisory services, but most don’t know how to actually do it.

Enter Ready to Advise, launched in June 2024. The tool takes everything from a completed return and analyzes it against potential tax strategies based on that client’s specific situation and goals.

“It will quantify the savings,” Elizabeth explains. “It will ask for more information to get to a range. It will allow you to have that discussion where you can say, ‘Hey Blake, I noticed from your 1120-S filing some potential strategies you should take.'”

Then it walks you through implementing those strategies and produces client-ready documentation. For firms struggling to move beyond compliance, this is huge.

But technology alone won’t fix the business model problem. Clients have been trained to expect strategic advice for free. “I might call my accountant and say, ‘Hey, tell me what this big beautiful bill does for me this year?,’ which is code for don’t charge me for this,” Elizabeth says, capturing the conundrum perfectly.

That’s where Practice Forward comes in. It’s Thomson Reuters’ tool for helping firms understand their worth and develop advisory pricing models. The goal is shifting from hourly billing for returns to year-round advisory subscriptions.

Ready to Advise also solves a talent problem. Traditionally, you needed years of experience before you could offer meaningful tax advice. But with AI assistance grounded in Checkpoint’s content (maintained by over 4,500 subject matter experts), newer staff can contribute to advisory work much sooner.

“That junior associate’s experience, paired with all the knowledge that there is available in generative AI today, is incredibly powerful,” Kirat notes.

Blake shares a personal example that drives home the value of advisory over compliance. His tax preparer advised setting up a C-Corp to potentially qualify for QSBS treatment, which could save millions in taxes someday.

“I can’t even quantify the value of that,” Blake says. “But that’s why I’m willing to pay thousands of dollars for a tax return. It’s that insight, not the return.”

Meanwhile, DIY tax software keeps getting better. Blake describes doing a business return himself using consumer software with ChatGPT open for research. The same process would have taken hours of manual work just a few years ago.

Firms that stick to just preparing returns are going to get squeezed from both ends.

“AI-enabled professionals and firms, they’re going to outcompete and outperform,” Elizabeth warns, “because they’re going to be able to do it faster, better and get to this advisory, which our clients want.”

What to Do Right Now

So where should a traditional tax firm start? Elizabeth recommends figuring out what you hate doing.

“What are your pain points that you hate to do?” she asks. “There’s a pretty high likelihood that I or a talented person on my team is going to be able to say, ‘This is how we can solve that for you.’”

The technology exists today. SurePrep can handle document gathering. SafeSend can automate delivery. Ready to Advise can help you identify tax-saving opportunities. CoCounsel can answer complex questions using curated, expert-verified content. The audit logs are there to verify everything the AI does.

The harder change is mental: accepting that the compliance work that defined the profession for decades is becoming commoditized, and the future belongs to firms that embrace automation as the foundation for higher-value advisory services.

Elizabeth even suggests bringing these concepts into accounting education to attract new talent. Currently, tax courses focus on rules and calculations rather than strategy. After all, accounting is still “the language of business,” as Elizabeth was told as an undergraduate. The difference is that AI can now handle the grammar and spelling, freeing professionals to focus on telling the story.

The transformation won’t be easy, but it’s not optional. As Elizabeth learned when she left the profession out of frustration with mundane tasks, talented people won’t stick around if the work doesn’t engage them. The good news is that automation finally makes it possible to eliminate the drudgery and focus on what really matters: helping clients succeed.

Listen to the full conversation with Blake, Elizabeth, and Kirat for more insights on preparing your firm for the automated future of tax.

Two-Thirds of Accounting Staff Hate Private Equity—But Partners Love It

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Two-thirds of partners at private equity-backed accounting firms say they’re satisfied with their arrangements. But ask the staff actually doing the work, and you’ll hear a different story. Over half are dissatisfied, with one director calling the situation “a dumpster fire.”

This stark disconnect emerged from an Accounting Today survey discussed on The Accounting Podcast by hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary. The episode also revealed a disconnect in pricing. Tax preparers charge an average of just $280 for a basic 1040 (CPAs) or $228 (enrolled agents). These numbers had David asking incredulously, “Where are these people? I’ve never been quoted this low of a price.”

The Private Equity “Dumpster Fire”

The numbers from Accounting Today’s survey reveal a profession divided. Among partners and owners at PE-backed firms, 67% report satisfaction (40% very satisfied and 27% somewhat satisfied). But look at staff responses and it’s almost a perfect mirror image: 52% are either somewhat dissatisfied or very dissatisfied.

The anonymous comments from survey respondents paint an even bleaker picture. “It is a dumpster fire,” said one director at a large firm. “Low morale, people leaving, bonuses cut, pay raises eliminated or lowered.”

Another director at a very large firm agreed. “It’s horrible and dysfunctional. Losing clients, staff leaving, and partners pay more attention to their bank account than taking care of staff. Most partners are counting the days until they can leave with their money in hand.”

Perhaps most concerning for the profession’s future, 64% of respondents believe private equity will have a negative impact on the integrity and independence of public accounting firms. Another 56% think clients will suffer negative consequences.

“The industry will take a hit and the clients will take a hit,” David noted. “That’s not going to bode well for everybody else.”

It’s worth noting that fewer than 400 of the 44,000 US CPA firms have taken private equity investment, so less than 1%. But these tend to be larger, high-performing practices, and the trend only started accelerating around 2022.

Tax Preparers Leave Money on the Table

While PE-backed firms wrestle with cultural upheaval, smaller practitioners face a different challenge: chronic underpricing. The National Association of Tax Professionals’ 2025 survey reveals CPAs charge an average of just $280 for a basic 1040. Enrolled agents charge even less at $228, while non-credentialed preparers average $185.

These numbers shocked David. “Since I stopped doing my own taxes and pay an accounting firm to do them, it’s $1,200 to $1,300 a return. I’ve never been quoted this low of a price.”

Still, the survey contained some encouraging news. When preparers raise fees, clients rarely leave. Melissa Bowman, an EA in Ohio, increased prices 12-20% across the board twice since 2020, and “not one client left because of pricing.”

“If not one client leaves after you implement a substantial price increase like that, you’re still underpriced,” Blake pointed out.

One particularly surprising finding is that 18% of preparers don’t charge extra for state returns. “TurboTax has trained 45 million taxpayers over the last 30 years that you have to pay extra to get your state return done,” David noted. “The fact that almost 20% don’t charge for doing the state return seems crazy to me.”

Billion-Dollar Audit Relationships Raise Independence Questions

The independence concerns raised by private equity pale next to the decades-long, billion-dollar relationships between the Big Four and their largest clients. Deloitte has audited Microsoft since 1986, collecting $78 million in 2025 alone.

“This is like a $2 billion relationship between Deloitte and Microsoft over the last 40 years,” David calculated. “With that much money involved, the motivations just can’t be aligned with the public.”

The situation gets more complex when you consider that these firms also sell consulting services. “Doesn’t Deloitte sell Microsoft consulting type services and they implement Microsoft Copilot AI type things, but they also audit Microsoft?” David asked.

Blake acknowledged the concern. “These firms are audit firms, but they’re also consulting firms. And consulting teams are some of the biggest resellers now of the technology their clients develop.”

Change may be coming whether firms want it or not. With Microsoft cutting 15,000 jobs in 2025, David predicts inevitable pressure on audit fees. “They’ll go back to their auditor and say, ‘we don’t want to pay this much for our audit. We want you to use AI,’” David predicts.

What’s Next for the Profession?

The AICPA is seeking comments on ethics rules updates for alternative practice structures—the arrangements that enable private equity investment. But there’s a catch. Despite announcing the comment period weeks ago, the actual exposure draft won’t be available until December 29.

“Today is the 23rd,” David pointed out. “If it’s not done today, when are they doing this? Christmas Eve, Christmas Day?”

David predicted the process could drag on. “This could take a decade,” he suggested.

The accounting profession is under pressure from private equity reshaping firm culture, chronic underpricing in tax prep, and billion-dollar audit relationships raising independence questions. For practitioners, there is a clear need to raise prices and watch the PE developments carefully.

For the complete discussion, including a story about a Scottish police officer’s heroic retrieval of evidence from a toilet and concerns about IRS readiness for tax season, listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast.

Two Stories That Expose How Accounting Credentials Get Weaponized for Fraud

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What happens when professionals look the other way? In this episode of The Accounting Podcast, Blake Oliver and David Leary dive into two jaw-dropping cases that show what happens when accounting credentials get tangled up with crime and fraud.

First, they discuss a Wall Street Journal investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s inner circle that somehow flew under the radar until recently. Then there’s the startup founder who allegedly blew through $2.2 million in investor money on her wedding while pretending to be a CPA. Both stories raise serious questions about trust and accountability.

Epstein’s Financial Fixers

“Epstein wasn’t a one man operation,” Blake reads from the Wall Street Journal investigation. The convicted sex offender had help from his CPA, Richard Kahn, and lawyer, Darren Indyke, who kept his financial machine running for years.

The story starts with a letter Kahn wrote in 2016. He described a “very healthy marriage” between two women, saying he’d personally witnessed their passion for each other during meetings. He even had it notarized. But the marriage was fake. Epstein had pressured an American woman he’d abused into marrying an Eastern European woman to help with immigration papers. Kahn’s letter gave the scheme legitimacy.

David was baffled. “Has any other CPA on the planet been asked to write letters like this before for an immigration proceeding?”

Good question. This wasn’t normal accounting work.

Kahn became Epstein’s in-house accountant in 2005 after Epstein tried out three candidates from a recruiting firm. By 2008, Kahn and another accountant had set up HBR Associates, a firm with only one client: Jeffrey Epstein. Their office was a one-bedroom apartment in Epstein’s building, right across the hall from lawyer Indyke’s office.

Both men provided way more than typical professional services. They managed payments to women in Epstein’s orbit, covering doctor’s visits and rent. When banks cut Epstein off, they found new places to open accounts. They withdrew cash in amounts under $10,000 to avoid reporting requirements.

The money tells its own story. Between 2011 and 2019, Epstein paid Indyke over $16 million and Kahn more than $10 million.

“That’s a lot of money,” Blake notes. “That’s more money than you would expect to receive for those kinds of services.”

Both men claim they didn’t know about Epstein’s crimes. They say they never witnessed abuse and no one reported it to them. But neither was questioned by federal authorities during the Epstein-Maxwell investigation.

“That is insane to me,” David says. “How do you not question the CPA and the lawyer? That’s the inner circle.”

“This is the sort of thing that makes me think the conspiracy theorists are right,” Blake responds. “It just doesn’t compute.”

Now, Kahn and Indyke control Epstein’s estate as co-executors, managing assets worth over $100 million. They’re also beneficiaries of a trust that will collect whatever’s left after all claims are settled—potentially tens of millions each.

The Fake CPA’s $13 Million Con

The second story hits closer to home for the accounting profession. Shiloh Luckey founded a startup called ComplYant App, Inc. in 2019, positioning it as a tax compliance app for small businesses. She raised $13 million from venture capitalists, including a firm co-founded by David Sacks, cohost of the All-In podcast.

Luckey told investors the company was earning $250,000 in monthly recurring revenue. The actual number was $250. Not thousands. Just $250. The company averaged fewer than four new subscribers per month despite having about 50 employees.

Luckey allegedly represented herself as a CPA even though she wasn’t one. And according to the FBI and SEC, she spent $2.2 million of investor money on personal stuff, including a Caribbean wedding, a house, Super Bowl tickets, and luxury trips to Aspen, Miami Beach, Turks and Caicos, and Lisbon.

When ComplYant shut down in 2023, those 50 employees lost their jobs. They waited seven weeks for final paychecks and discovered their 401(k) contributions were missing.

The kicker? Luckey is currently on TikTok giving financial advice to nearly 24,000 followers. She’s even launched a new startup called HabitLoop, described as a digital financial assistant.

Other News From the Episode

The hosts also covered several other developments in accounting and finance, including:

  • Cannabis businesses can finally deduct regular business expenses now that marijuana is being reclassified as a Schedule 3 drug. Previously, they faced effective tax rates of 60-80% because they couldn’t deduct basic costs like rent and payroll.
  • Trump announced a new Tech Force that will hire 1,000 people to build AI infrastructure for the federal government, working with companies like Microsoft and Amazon.
  • Intuit partnered with Circle to integrate stablecoin payments into QuickBooks, potentially cutting out traditional banking rails for payments.
  • The IRS Criminal Investigations unit identified over $10 billion in financial crimes this year, including $4.5 billion in tax fraud.
  • A lawyer is suing the IRS to recognize her golden retriever as a tax dependent, arguing the dog meets every requirement except being human.

The Bigger Picture

What’s striking about both main stories is how they expose vulnerabilities in the accounting profession’s trust-based system. In one case, a real CPA operated at the center of a criminal enterprise while claiming ignorance. In the other, someone falsely claimed CPA credentials to defraud investors.

As Blake pointed out about the Epstein investigation: “It just doesn’t compute.”

These stories are reminders that the accounting profession’s credibility can be weaponized, either by those who hold credentials and choose to look the other way, or by those who fake credentials to exploit the trust that comes with them.

Listen to the complete episode of The Accounting Podcast for more, including details about AI-powered invoice fraud and why white-collar workers are getting nervous about their job prospects.

From OnlyFans Audits to AI Cheating Scandals: Inside Accounting’s Strangest Week Ever

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In episode 465 of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary tackle one of the most bizarre unintended consequences of recent tax legislation: IRS agents may soon need to review OnlyFans content at work to determine if digital creators qualify for tax deductions. This absurd scenario perfectly captures the chaos unfolding as artificial intelligence and new regulations collide with traditional accounting practices.

The IRS’s Awkward New Job Requirement

The new “no tax on tips” deduction allows digital content creators to deduct up to $25,000 from their taxes. But conservative groups successfully lobbied to exclude “pornographic activity” from this benefit, leaving the IRS to determine what qualifies as pornography—a definition the Supreme Court has never clearly established.

“Are IRS agents going to have to sit in their offices at work and look at OnlyFans accounts and determine whether or not this content qualifies?” Blake asks. “Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously said, ‘I know it when I see it.’ So that’s my question.”

The timing couldn’t be worse. The IRS just closed hardship telework requests, forcing employees back to the office while the agency faces a backlog of over 8,000 accommodation requests and has lost 25% of its workforce through voluntary separations this year.

David raises another complication: “If somebody did one video that got determined to be pornographic, do you lose the whole deduction or can you claim all the other days that you got tips?”

Tax professionals face their own dilemma. “Let’s say you get a client who says they want to claim the tips deduction, and they’re an online creator,” Blake explains. “Are you going to check out the content and decide whether it qualifies?”

When AI Meets Ethics—The KPMG Scandal

While the IRS grapples with content moderation, KPMG Australia is dealing with its own technology-related embarrassment. Multiple auditors were caught using AI and group chats to cheat on mandatory compliance training during 2023-2024. This happened after KPMG had already paid a $50 million fine for exam cheating from 2015-2020.

“AI is really good at taking these kinds of tests,” Blake notes. “Just copy paste all the questions into ChatGPT and you’ll pass in a heartbeat.”

The consequences were light: formal warnings for most, one verbal caution, and one person who left months later. The firm didn’t report the incident to regulators.

“They got fined $50 million for it before and then they just continued to do it,” David points out. “So the fines don’t work, obviously.”

The PCAOB is now warning it will closely scrutinize AI use in accounting firms. They’re particularly concerned about private equity-backed firms, fearing pressure for short-term results will compromise audit quality when combined with AI automation.

The Death of the Billable Hour

Beyond scandals, AI is reshaping how accounting firms operate and charge for their services. The billable hour, introduced in the early 1900s as a management tool and dominant since the 1960s, faces extinction.

“When AI can review thousands of contracts in minutes instead of weeks, charging for time spent becomes economically absurd,” writes Rita McGrath of Columbia Business School in the Wall Street Journal.

Blake experienced this transformation firsthand as a freelance bookkeeper. “I billed hourly for keying transactions into accounting software. I then figured out how to automate 90% of it. I had a choice: bill 80-90% fewer hours and lose all my revenue, or switch my clients to fixed fees and take ownership of the process.”

The efficiency gains are already here. Ramp has AI approvals handling 80-90% of transactions automatically. Xero’s new auto-reconcile feature uses AI to match transactions with high confidence. According to OpenAI’s survey of 9,000 workers, employees save an average of one hour daily using AI, with heavy users saving ten hours weekly.

But not every company succeeds at this transition. Pilot raised $118 million at a $1.2 billion valuation, betting it could automate bookkeeping and achieve software margins. Today, they have just 2,500 clients and recently launched a partner program to offload the labor they couldn’t eliminate.

“The fact that they’ve launched a partner program indicates they’re trying to push labor costs out of the company so they can be a software company,” Blake observes.

The irony isn’t lost on David. “They have this headline, ‘Tired of endless QuickBooks updates breaking your workflow.’ But the very first app they list in their integrations is QuickBooks. It’s built on QuickBooks.”

AI Writing Reports Nobody Trusts

Companies are racing to use AI for financial reporting even while harboring deep doubts about its reliability. Twenty-eight percent of financial executives already use generative AI for external reporting. ON Semiconductor’s AI writes entire sections of management discussion and analysis. Hewlett Packard Enterprise plans to use AI for first drafts of financial statements starting in January.

“Take financial statements, drop them into ChatGPT and ask for the narrative. It does a spectacular job,” Blake says. “Taking numbers and turning them into a story that non-accountants can understand, highlighting what’s important, it’s really good at that.”

Yet Harvard Business Review’s survey of 603 business leaders shows only 6% of companies trust AI for core business processes. Most limit AI to low-risk or supervised tasks.

“The work accountants do requires near 100% accuracy,” Blake explains. “Research shows AI achieves 80% accuracy at 30-minute tasks but 100% only for tasks taking a few minutes.”

Meanwhile, Meta’s creative accounting for its Hyperion data center—using complex structures to keep it off-balance sheet—shows human financial engineering still outpaces AI. As the Wall Street Journal called it, “Artificial intelligence, meet artificial accounting.”

What Comes Next

Interesting research is challenging assumptions about what drives audit quality. Studies show offices with less competition deliver better audits with fewer errors. “Competition pushes down fees, which incentivizes auditors to cut corners,” Blake explains.

Another study found audit teams with more women deliver higher quality at lower fees, but only in supportive environments with good work-life balance and female partners.

President Trump, meanwhile, claims tariff revenue will eliminate income tax entirely. “We’ve taken in literally trillions of dollars,” he stated, though actual tariff revenue was only $258 billion last year versus $2.7 trillion from income taxes.

“Doesn’t anybody prep him?” David wonders. “He just makes up numbers.”

The accounting profession is at a crossroads. Will accountants become the quality control layer ensuring AI meets professional standards? Or will they cling to outdated models until technology makes them irrelevant?

To hear Blake and David’s full discussion, including details about the new Trump IRA accounts for kids and Senator Jim Justice’s $5 million tax settlement, listen to episode 465 of The Accounting Podcast.

The Week Accounting Lost Its Professional Status and Dating Apps Became Job Sites

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After 128 years as licensed professionals, accountants just got told they’re not in the same league as doctors and lawyers—at least according to the Department of Education. In this episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary dig into what this means for the profession, along with news about AI taking over audits, big firms making embarrassing mistakes, and job seekers using dating apps to find work.

The Professional Status Problem

The Department of Education wants to strip accounting of its professional degree status, which would slash federal loan limits from $50,000 to $20,500 per year starting in 2026. This hits graduate accounting programs hard, especially when states are already rethinking the 150-hour CPA requirement.

The proposal came from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, but as David points out, Congress didn’t actually specify which professions should qualify. “Isn’t Trump supposed to get rid of the deep state where these government agencies just make up the rules?” David asks. Instead, bureaucrats decided that medicine, dentistry, and law are professional programs, but accounting, nursing, architecture, and education aren’t.

AICPA President and CEO Mark Koziel calls this lack of recognition “common sense” to oppose, while NASBA President Daniel Dustin reminds everyone that CPAs have been licensed professionals since 1896—longer than many professions that made the cut.

During the livestream, one viewer made an interesting point: “If we are no longer professionals, that means we are entitled to overtime.” Blake expanded on this, noting that the Fair Labor Standards Act exempts professionals from overtime. Without that professional designation, Big Four firms might suddenly face huge labor costs for all those 50-60 hour weeks their CPAs work.

Students already questioning whether becoming a CPA is worth it will think twice when federal loan support drops by more than half.

AI Is Coming Fast, But Not Always Successfully

While regulators debate whether accountants are professionals, tech companies are betting billions on replacing them with AI. PwC announced it will have “full end-to-end AI automation for audits by 2026.” That’s not some far-off dream; they’re already using tools that auto-populate audit planning documents and analyze walkthroughs.

But the AI revolution has had some embarrassing failures. Deloitte produced a $1.6 million healthcare report for the Canadian government that included completely made-up academic citations. One fake paper was titled “The Cost Effectiveness of Local Recruitment and Retention Strategies for Health Workers in Canada,” which doesn’t exist. This came after a similar mess in Australia with over 20 fake citations.

“Deloitte’s website markets its AI and data teams,” David notes. “Deloitte should hire that team before they do any more AI work with clients.” The irony is that Deloitte sells itself as the company that helps others avoid exactly these AI mistakes.

Meanwhile, EY’s new leader Dante D’Egidio got promoted after cutting their audit deficiency rate from 46% to 9%. How? They fired clients, built support teams, and invested in technology. As Blake explains, “EY had too many clients and their staff and managers and partners were overworked. Quality went down.”

The OpenAI connection to accounting firms gets even stranger. OpenAI is investing in Thrive Capital, which owns Crete Professionals Alliance, a company that buys accounting firms and forces them to use AI technology. OpenAI will even send teams to work inside these firms. “This would be like Intuit buying accounting firms and making them buy QuickBooks,” David says. “People would lose their minds if that happened.”

The Job Market Reality Check

The economic news isn’t great. Small businesses lost 120,000 jobs in November while large companies only added 39,000. Three in ten companies plan to lay people off during the holidays. Americans are planning to spend $73 less on holiday shopping this year.

But there’s useful advice for job seekers. According to data Blake shared, 54% of workers got their current job through personal connections, while only 13% succeeded through job boards. Yet 60% of job seekers don’t use their network at all, mainly due to lack of confidence.

Here’s where it gets interesting: one-third of dating app users are now swiping for jobs, not dates. And it works: 88% made professional connections and 37% got job offers. “LinkedIn is the red water,” David observes. “You can’t stand out there. But if you say on a dating site, ‘Hey, I’m looking for a job,’ there’s nobody competing for jobs there.”

What’s Actually Changing

Beyond the headlines, several big shifts are happening. Xero is raising prices on developers specifically to stop AI models from accessing data. They’re banning developers from using their API to train machine learning models, the same thing Intuit did with QuickBooks.

Speaking of Intuit, the company now shares small business data with The Trade Desk, one of the world’s largest advertising networks. This lets advertisers target small businesses using QuickBooks data. “Your small business client data is now being sold to third party advertising networks,” David warns.

The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) quietly disbanded after cutting 300,000 government positions. They haven’t posted anything new since early October, and David suspects “Republicans are cutting away some of this bad press stuff.”

Looking Ahead

The hosts make some predictions for the coming year. David expects a partnership between OpenAI and the AICPA or CPA Academy by 2026 because “there’s just too much money” in CPE and they’re going to go after some of it. He also shared advice for young people: make a podcast interviewing professionals in your desired field. “If you’re in high school and want to become a dentist, make a podcast where you interview dentists. Even if nobody listens to your podcast, when you’re all said and done, you’ll know 40 dentists. And when you finish school, you probably have a good chance of getting a job.”

The accounting profession faces real challenges, from regulatory dismissal to AI automation to economic headwinds. But as Blake and David demonstrate each week, staying informed and adapting creatively matters more than protecting old definitions of professionalism.

Want to hear the full discussion, including details about PCAOB changes, tariff impacts, and why accounting firms might have to start paying overtime? Listen to the complete episode of The Accounting Podcast. You can even earn free CPE through the Earmark app while you listen.