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Why the Most Profitable Accounting Firms of the Future Might Have No Employees at All

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One guy. Zero employees. He spends 70% of his budget on technology.

Sam Leon runs The Millennial CPA in Richmond, Virginia, where AI does most of the tax prep work while he reviews and signs off. He just landed on Accounting Today’s 2026 Best Firms for Technology list, not by building a bigger team, but by proving you don’t need one at all.

Meanwhile, KPMG is shutting down its entire federal government audit practice after losing a $60 million Pentagon contract. They’re reassigning 450 employees and cutting another 400 from advisory. The old work is shrinking. The new AI, cyber, and forensics work is growing fast.

On this week’s episode of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary discussed what these stories mean for the profession. They explored how AI is making the “firm of one” model possible, tested the new QuickBooks and Xero connections to Claude, and wrestled with a big question: If AI can replace so much labor, what happens to the people and the economy that depend on them?

 

The Solo Practitioner Who Turned AI Into His Staff

Sam Leon took a simple but radical approach to building his firm. AI handles the grunt work of tax return preparation, including creating workpapers, doing year-over-year comparisons, and mapping QuickBooks data to tax forms. He reviews everything and signs the returns. That’s it.

“I see AI as coming together to be a total tax preparer, and whoever signs the returns is the reviewer,” Sam told Accounting Today. He thinks of the AI as his junior preparer while he’s the senior reviewer.

The time savings are wild. Work that would take a human three to five hours, such as creating detailed tax workpapers from QuickBooks exports, takes AI five minutes. And Sam has no plans to hire. “I won’t hire until I hit a wall with my AI preparers and AI workflow managers,” he said.

Blake validated this approach based on his own daily use of Claude Cowork. “To do it as an individual is totally possible,” Blake said. “And so I expect we’ll see more of these firms of one, and you’ll be able to scale up and make a lot of money, because you don’t have to hire employees.”

David connected this to a broader trend he calls the “minimum viable-sized company.” The old playbook was simple: raise money, hire people, grow. “You don’t need that anymore,” David said. “The future winners are going to be small, highly efficient teams with strong strategic clarity. Not large organizations.”

Of course, there are questions. How much revenue does Sam actually make? How does he handle client communication and invoicing? Is he a software engineer or just really good at prompting AI? Blake and David want to get him on the show to find out.

The Tools Are Getting Easier, But Still Have Limits

Right now, Sam’s model works because he’s willing to configure AI tools himself. But that’s changing fast as AI gets built directly into the software firms already use.

Canopy just launched an AI “Coworker” feature across its practice management platform. David was initially skeptical when he saw the sample prompts, which included things like “list all my clients,” that you could see with one click anyway. But Blake highlighted the real value: scope-creep detection that analyzes your billing and emails to spot when you’re doing more work than you’re charging for, automatic workflow updates when disaster declarations change filing deadlines, and meeting notes that automatically create tasks with assignees and due dates.

“These AI agents in practice management are going to be hugely important,” Blake said. “They’re going to make practice management ten times more valuable.”

The big platforms are also opening up to AI. Intuit just released connectors linking Claude to QuickBooks, TurboTax, Mailchimp, and Credit Karma. Xero has one too. But Blake tested both and found them pretty limited. You can pull basic reports and import transactions, but you can’t actually analyze transaction-level data yet.

“If they don’t make connectors more robust, they’re kind of useless,” Blake said. Still, the direction is clear. As David put it, “Claude becomes like your central gear that’s spinning data out to these other spots.”

KPMG’s Federal Exit Shows Where the Profession Is Heading

While solo practitioners are using AI to do more with less, KPMG is learning what happens when you can’t adapt fast enough.

The firm just lost its contract to audit the U.S. Army. It was a $60 million annual deal they’d had for over a decade. The Army has never passed an audit, and now the Pentagon wants to restructure the whole approach. KPMG responded by shutting down the entire federal audit practice and reassigning 450 people.

But that’s not all. They’re also cutting 4% of U.S. advisory staff, or about 400 people, mostly in regulatory risk and financial services consulting. These cuts continue a pattern that started in 2023.

Instead, KPMG is investing in AI, cyber, forensic services, and managed services. Traditional audit work is shrinking, while tech-enabled services are growing.

The Big Risk 

If companies use AI mainly to eliminate jobs, who’s going to buy their products?

Christine Kuglin and Bright Ikwetie wrote about this in Accounting Today, calling it the “AI efficiency paradox.” Businesses get more efficient by replacing workers with AI, but they’re also eliminating the incomes that drive consumer spending. It’s a potential death spiral. Less spending means less revenue, more layoffs, and more AI. Rinse and repeat.

The economic data is confusing. Weekly jobless claims just hit 189,000, the lowest in more than five decades. Yet manufacturing employment is down 88,000 jobs year over year. How can unemployment be so low when we keep hearing about layoffs?

“Is this just lagging?” Blake wondered. “Are these workers just finding jobs in other parts of the economy or maybe working for themselves?”

For accounting specifically, the demand for talent remains strong. Intuit analyzed LinkedIn data and found that both tax and accounting roles are “very hard to hire” nationally. They’re actively recruiting with flexible, remote-first benefits, which is exactly what the Big Four firms are cutting.

What This Means for Your Firm

The lesson from Sam is that one person can now deliver what used to require a team. The same principle scales up. A small firm can compete with a large one, and a mid-size firm can offer enterprise-level services.

But don’t use AI just to do the same work with fewer people. Use it to do work you couldn’t do before. As Blake put it, “The growth opportunity in accounting is advisory-type services. And AI paired with expert humans is just so incredibly powerful for doing advisory work like fractional CFO services, M&A advisory, and cost segregation studies.”

David sees another opportunity in helping clients “vibe code” custom apps instead of stacking expensive SaaS subscriptions. “I am confident that accountants could vibe code,” he said. “The old stack of app stacking is going to go away. You’re just going to help your client build the app they need.”

The tools are here. The demand is there. The question is whether firms will use AI to shrink or to grow. Firms that use AI to expand what’s possible rather than just cut costs will set the terms for everyone else.

Want to hear Blake test the QuickBooks-Claude connector live? Curious about how much Sam actually makes? Listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast for all the details, plus discussions on new IRS whistleblower rules, tariff refund lawsuits, and why procrastinating on AI adoption might actually pay off.

Why Are Big Four Firms Laying Off Partners When There Aren’t Enough Accountants to Go Around?

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The accounting profession is facing turbulence on multiple fronts. KPMG is laying off roughly 100 audit partners in the US, while the best artificial intelligence available still gets one out of every five accounting tasks wrong.

In episode 485 of The Accounting Podcast, hosts Blake Oliver and David Leary unpack these converging stories that show the challenges and opportunities facing the profession. From venture-backed firms abandoning their “automate everything” model to a heated controversy over CPE standards with NASBA, the episode paints a complex picture of an industry in transition.

The Hard Truth About AI’s Current Capabilities

A new benchmark study from DualEntry tested 19 AI models across 101 real accounting workflows, and the results are interesting. Claude Opus 3.5, the current darling of AI enthusiasts, achieved the best performance at 79% accuracy. GPT-4o from OpenAI came in slightly behind at 77%. For context, GPT-4 scored only about 40% on the same tasks. It’s progress, but still nowhere near the reliability accounting demands.

The tests covered transaction classification, journal entry creation, bank reconciliations, and month-end close procedures. As Blake pointed out, the problem compounds. “It’s not like you’re automating 80% of the work because you have to clean up that other 20% the AI messed up.” Those errors cascade through financial statements and create cleanup work that erodes efficiency gains.

David put it in relatable terms. “If you had a human employee and ten hours of the week their work was just wrong, you’d probably freak out.”

The gap between 79% and acceptable accuracy for unsupervised work remains enormous. AI can assist and accelerate, but it can’t yet operate independently in accounting.

Tech Firms Abandon the “Automate Everything” Dream

The accuracy issue explains why venture-backed accounting firms are abandoning their original models. Decimal, which raised significant capital and even acquired KPMG Spark’s client base, pivoted away from providing services directly. Instead, they franchise their technology stack to independent firms that handle the actual client work.

“You can’t have SaaS valuations and raise money when you’re a human service business,” David explained, listing the other casualties, including Bench, ScaleFactor, Visor Tax, and Botkeeper. “We’ve seen this over and over again.”

Pilot made a similar move about six months ago with its “local partners” program that lets small practices use Pilot’s technology rather than Pilot doing the work itself. The technology is valuable, but human expertise is still essential.

Meanwhile, traditional players are moving in. H&R Block’s new CEO wants to transform the company from a once-a-year tax relationship to a year-round partner offering bookkeeping, payroll, and business support. Collective is buying OpenLedger. Even a fractional HR provider Austin Alliance Group wants into the bookkeeping space.

This sparked an interesting debate between the hosts. When discussing whether AI will handle routine work while humans focus on advisory, David pushed back. “I think it’s the opposite. Humans will be more involved in the data entry and the compiling of data. AI is really good at just taking scattered numbers and data, unstructured data and summarizing it, which arguably is advisory.”

Blake disagreed, pointing to a real-world example. A San Francisco store let an AI agent named Luna make operational decisions. Luna understaffed during busy periods, over-ordered candles, and lost $13,000. “AI doesn’t have memory the way people do,” Blake explained. Without context and accumulated experience, AI struggles with strategic decisions.

Big Four Layoffs, Demotions, and Massive Fines

While tech firms pivot, the Big Four face their own challenges. KPMG cut roughly 100 partners from its US audit practice (about 10% of audit partners) after too few accepted voluntary early retirement. The firm calls it “multiyear rightsizing,” but as David asked, “Does audit demand ever actually decrease?”

The situation is similar in the UK, where KPMG and EY started demoting equity partners to salaried positions. “Getting to partner at a Big Four firm used to mean a job for life,” Blake noted. Now that security is disappearing.

PwC faces different troubles. They’re paying a $166 million fine related to their audit of the China Evergrande Group, the collapsed property developer accused of inflating revenue by $82 billion. PwC audited them for over ten years before resigning in January 2023. As David observed, they probably made far more than $166 million from the engagement.

PwC is also ending its fully remote option for US tax staff, requiring three days in the office starting July 2026. Going Concern speculates this might be a way to thin headcount without announcing layoffs. Remote workers either need to relocate or quit.

The NASBA Controversy: A Debate Over CPE Standards

One of the episode’s most heated discussions centered on a demand letter Blake received from NASBA regarding comments he made at an AICPA conference. While demonstrating how to use AI to create CPE courses, Blake suggested the traditional approach of creating learning objectives first, then content, was “backward.” He argued it made more sense to let experts teach, then create the objectives based on what they teach.

NASBA’s letter accused him of making “unfavorable, unprofessional, or inappropriate comments” and demanded he cease such remarks immediately.

“If there’s any place for a discussion about NASBA policies, it should be at a conference with 200 L&D people from all the big accounting firms,” David argued. The hosts expressed frustration that NASBA treats different pedagogical approaches as inappropriate rather than worthy of professional debate.

“The pendulum has swung too far towards regulation and too far away from learning,” David said, noting how CPE often becomes just checking boxes rather than actual education. Blake shared a copy of his response to NASBA on his blog. In it, he asks NASBA to explain why expressing a different educational philosophy constitutes unprofessional behavior.

Where the Shortage Hits Hardest

A new index from Sam’s List reveals which states face the worst accountant shortages. Nevada tops the list with just 1.75 accountants per 1,000 residents and 139 professionally prepared returns per accountant, the highest ratio in the study. Nevada’s accounting workforce also fell nearly 30% from 2019 to 2024.

“Sounds like it’s a state accountants don’t want to live in,” David observed. “Accountants probably don’t want that Vegas gambling lifestyle energy.”

While Nevada has the worst per-capita shortage, Texas needs almost 25,000 additional accountants. This puzzled the hosts, given Texas’s population boom from high-tax states. “Are the benefits just not that good, and accountants see through it?” David wondered.

On the flip side, Washington, D.C. has nearly 14 accountants per 1,000 residents, almost ten times Nevada’s rate. New York has a surplus of 27,000 accountants above the national baseline.

Looking Ahead

The picture emerging from these shows AI is transforming accounting but not replacing accountants. The 79% accuracy ceiling, the pivot of tech-first firms, and the Big Four’s struggles all point to the need to find the right collaboration between humans and AI.

For firm leaders, the franchise and partnership models emerging from companies like Decimal and Pilot may offer a more sustainable path than pure automation. For individual practitioners, the message is encouraging. While AI raises the floor on routine tasks, human judgment, experience, and adaptability remain irreplaceable.

Listen to the full episode of The Accounting Podcast for the complete discussion, including more details on the NASBA controversy, state shortage data, and whether Kentucky’s elimination of the 150-hour rule signals the beginning of the end for that requirement nationwide.

When Tax Day Was Party Night at the Post Office — And Why AI Is About to Upend Everything Else About Accounting

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Before tax e-filing took over, April 15th was a public spectacle at American post offices. As Blake Oliver and David Leary discussed on their Tax Day episode of The Accounting Podcast, crowds would gather until midnight, with live entertainment, giveaways, and even Playboy offering “stress relief massages” in pink booths. In Philadelphia, there was a “dunk the IRS agent” booth for charity. Radio stations broadcast live. Fast food chains handed out samples. It was America’s weirdest annual party.

Those days are gone — 94% of returns are now filed electronically. But as the hosts explored in this wide-ranging episode, the accounting profession faces disruptions far more profound than the shift from paper to pixels. Within three years, KPMG expects routine audit testing to have “next to no human beings” doing the work. Hobbyist developers are cloning QuickBooks with AI over a weekend. And a third of workers aren’t even checking AI outputs before they submit them.

The IRS Can’t Keep Up — With Rules or Technology

The profession’s struggles with rapid change start at the top. Just five days before the filing deadline, the IRS finalized which jobs qualify for the new no-tax-on-tips deduction. Podcasters made the cut (Oliver and Leary were pleased), along with tattoo artists, ice sculptors, and golf caddies. Accountants didn’t.

“Five days after they finalized these rules to implement them for our clients,” Oliver noted with frustration. The deduction allows eligible workers to exclude up to $25,000 in tips from taxable income, but mandatory service charges don’t count. “This could be the death of the automatic gratuity,” Leary speculated, since those forced tips won’t qualify.

Meanwhile, Americans are spending 11.6 billion hours completing federal compliance forms — mostly tax returns. The value of that labor? Over half a trillion dollars. “That’s material,” Oliver said, noting it represents a significant chunk of the economy devoted to paperwork.

The IRS’s own modernization efforts tell a cautionary tale. The agency had 126 AI projects running as of last summer, up from just 10 in 2022. But after losing 25% of its workforce, 61% of those projects remain unfinished with no plan to close the skills gap. Even more puzzling: the IRS killed its Direct File program despite it costing only $16 million instead of the estimated $61 million and growing 78% year-over-year. “The program was gaining traction and was less expensive than they thought it was going to be, and yet it got canceled anyway,” Oliver observed.

The Big Four’s Radical Restructuring

While the IRS struggles with basic modernization, the Big Four are racing ahead with AI automation that could eliminate thousands of jobs and upend the billable hour model that has defined the profession for decades.

KPMG is moving fastest. They’re piloting AI systems this summer and deploying them next year for routine testing of transactions like payroll, receivables, and cost of goods sold. “Within 2 or 3 years, routine testing could become the first major audit area with effectively no human audit team directly doing the work,” Oliver quoted from KPMG’s audit chief digital officer. “Next to no human beings.”

The other firms aren’t far behind. PwC’s evidence-matching tool now processes 30 client document types, up from six months ago. EY is testing something even more futuristic: AI audit agents that talk directly to client AI agents to gather documents and prepare workpapers. Only Deloitte is publicly pumping the brakes, emphasizing AI should “augment not replace” human auditors.

The numbers are stark: Big Four leaders expect 20-30% of a typical audit to be fully automated by 2029. KPMG UK is already cutting 440 audit jobs. “I don’t see any other outcome than the Big Four just cutting massive numbers of staff jobs,” Oliver said. “If they do this right… that’s 20 to 30% of their billable hours. What are they going to do? Just raise their rates 20 to 30% to compensate?”

Leary had the line of the episode: “Agents are the perfect accounting firm employees. The partners are going to love them.”

The traditional career path is crumbling too. EY’s talent chief told Business Insider that linear career models are becoming “less relevant” as AI values skills over tenure. Oliver speculated firms might shift from hiring masses of new graduates to recruiting experienced professionals from industry, or moving to an apprenticeship model with smaller, more intensively trained classes.

Everyone’s Building Their Own QuickBooks Now

The disruption isn’t just coming from the top. A Reddit user built a full accounting system that runs inside Claude Desktop — no interface, just chat. You tell Claude what happened, and it updates your books. Another developer cloned QuickBooks Desktop using AI, creating a free open-source alternative. The motivation? “I didn’t want to pay for QBO.”

“You as an accounting firm had control over your tech stack and your clients’ tech stack,” Leary explained. “We’re a Xero shop or a QuickBooks shop… Now your clients are just building their own stuff. How do you as a firm manage this now?”

Oliver’s prediction, based on every past tech revolution: “We will end up with more work rather than less, because it will enable our clients to do way more accounting stuff that we’ll have to clean up.”

On the funded startup side, Juno raised $12 million to build AI tax prep that automates 90% of data entry while keeping CPAs in the loop. The key: transparency over autonomy, with source-to-return traceability and visual validation tools. Artifact launched Omni, which Leary called “a Zapier for accounting firms” — it trains AI agents to use your existing tech stack rather than replacing it.

Meanwhile, legacy players are scrambling. Xero published a blog post claiming to be an “AI native operating system.” Leary counted over 20 buzzwords and read them aloud in a devastating list: “AI native, intelligent SaaS, autonomous finance, system of action…” His verdict: “I don’t think this is written for customers. I think this article is written for the street in an attempt to move the stock price.”

The Quality Crisis Nobody’s Talking About

Here’s what should terrify every firm leader: 35% of workers rarely or only occasionally review AI output before submitting it, according to a Resume Now survey. Eighteen percent trust it straight out of the box. Only 40% review AI output every single time. And 15% use AI at work secretly without telling their manager.

“That should scare you as an accounting firm owner,” Leary said.

Oliver argued firms need systems with built-in controls: “If an employee is just generating something with AI… and they didn’t change anything or they didn’t spend any time looking at it, then flag that.”

The stakes are real. The episode covered two fraud cases that show what happens with weak oversight. A New Jersey preparer filed over 100 false returns seeking $170 million in pandemic credits, getting $55 million before being caught. A Pennsylvania preparer started a new $5.5 million fraud scheme while still on supervised release from a previous conviction.

What Separates Winners from Losers

A Hinge Marketing study of 133 firms revealed a massive performance gap emerging. High-growth firms are growing at 33% annually versus 9.6% for average firms. The difference? High-growth firms spend 9% of revenue on marketing (versus 5% for others), and over 90% use AI for content creation, automation, and research.

“If you have a firm that’s growing at 10% and you want it to grow at 30%, spend 10% of your revenue on marketing,” Leary summarized, though Oliver questioned whether it’s causation or correlation: “Is it just that the firms that are growing really fast have money to burn on marketing?”

The Reckoning Is Here

The accounting profession has always adapted slowly. As Leary noted, “Just ask Xero how it takes decades for them to barely make a scratch into the QuickBooks world.” But this time feels different. The changes are coming from every direction at once — Big Four automation, bedroom coders, funded startups, and clients building their own systems.

The irony is thick. Even as AI promises to make location irrelevant, EY is requiring US tax staff to work in-office 12 days a month. The IRS has 126 AI projects but can’t finish them. Firms are adopting AI while a third of workers don’t even review its output.

For firms willing to invest, experiment, and build proper controls, the opportunity is massive. For those hoping to wait it out, the message from this episode is clear: the profession that gathered at post offices until midnight to file paper returns is gone. The question isn’t whether AI will transform accounting — it’s whether the profession can maintain its core promise of trustworthiness while everything else changes around it.

To hear the full discussion — including the story of a disgruntled worker who burned down a $500 million Kimberly-Clark warehouse over pay disputes — listen to the complete episode of The Accounting Podcast.

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.