The Accounting Podcast

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Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] One of the best things that we could do as a profession would be to not require people to be accounting majors to become CPAs. And the reason I say this is because there are many, many, many ways to learn everything you need to know from an accounting major without going to an overpriced, traditional college or university.

David Leary: [00:00:29] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:35] Hello and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, the number one podcast for accountants in the world. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:42] I'm David Leary. Blake, did you watch any NFL football or even college football this weekend?

Blake Oliver: [00:00:47] Uh, I did catch, uh, Georgia game. I don't watch NFL, though, because I've watched you watch the bills for so many years now that it I just, you know, why why would I follow a team that is inevitably going to just constantly lose and make me miserable? So no, I prefer.

David Leary: [00:01:04] Miserable right now because they lost last night. So yes, I'm very miserable well into it. Obviously huge NFL sponsor has a new commercial, and maybe I think tax pros might be a little miserable after seeing this commercial. Oh no. Play that here.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:20] Yeah. Let's put this on the screen. Here we go.

TurboTax Ad Clip: [00:01:23] You're leaving me.

TurboTax Ad Clip: [00:01:24] For a TurboTax expert who charges me less but gives me more? Sing it. Adam, a tax pro.

TurboTax Ad Clip: [00:01:30] She's been thinking twice. Best believe TurboTax.

TurboTax Ad Clip: [00:01:33] Will be your prize. This is a tax break. Oh.

TurboTax Ad Clip: [00:01:40] It's time to move on to a TurboTax expert. This is a tax breakup this fall, switch to a TurboTax live expert and we'll beat the price you paid your pro last tax season.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:52] Ooh. Ouch. Break up with your tax pro. That's the message coming out of TurboTax and Intuit.

David Leary: [00:01:59] Yeah. So in three days, it has 1.1 million views on YouTube, and then probably tens of millions of views across all the NFL games they had at broadcast on this weekend. Wow. And you look at that person in the video who's playing the actor who's playing the accountant. And I'm like, that looks, tastes, smells like the typical probable Intuit customer for the last 30 years that bought Pro series and the shirt. And to make a commercial that's so direct like that is a little shocking.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:33] Yeah. I mean, they actually have the tax pro at the desk in the commercial looking heartbroken that his client is breaking up with him. Intuit is going to have a lot of explaining to do at Intuit Connect. I don't understand how they do this. I know Intuit is a big company, but you would think that the accountant team, the tax accountant team, would have some say over the messaging that the TurboTax direct side of the business is putting out there. You don't want to be trashing your customers.

David Leary: [00:03:04] Yeah, that's what it feels like. It's trashing your customers. So there are some details to this so they'll beat the price of any certified tax return you had prepared by a CPA or a licensed tax preparer for your 2023 personal tax return, including. So we could do this, Blake, possibly for a TurboTax full service or TurboTax verified pros, but excludes TurboTax full service business. So you and I can't do it for our business return, but you have to sign up and lock in this discount by December 20th of 2024.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:37] I want to make sure I heard you right, okay. They will beat the price of any tax professional.

David Leary: [00:03:42] By at least 10%. So for personal return.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:47] Okay, so let's get one of our listeners who's a tax professional to give us super low ball pricing. Quotes for next year's tax returns and then we'll take those to TurboTax.

David Leary: [00:03:59] So if they run the same promotion in 2025, or somebody to create back receipts, I guess for the old the old returns.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:06] Yeah. Yeah. Wow. I mean, what else can we say about this? This is this is probably the most direct attack Intuit has made against tax pros. I remember years ago when QuickBooks was came out, they were like, break up with your accountant for bookkeeping or something like that, or you don't need an accountant to.

David Leary: [00:04:30] Do the books, write a check. You can do QuickBooks, right? Very simple.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:34] But that didn't go over well back then. You think they would have learned and.

David Leary: [00:04:38] It created more work for accountants than ever. The only way I could think of spinning this if you're a solo tax firm, right? You're just a one person shop. Yeah. It may not make sense to run your one person shop. It might be better to go be a TurboTax Live professional so you get the Intuit health care benefits you get. Yeah, the Intuit stock, right? You may there might be some benefit here, but it's just so blatant. It only has a bad taste.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:04] Only on the super low end, because we know well we don't have the exact pay rates for these Intuit full service tax pros, but I have a hard time imagining it's more than like 30 bucks an hour, so you can easily make a lot more money than that if you know how to market yourself. If you know how to sell. I mean, you have to be a business owner, and there's a lot of people who want to do tax at the low end of the market that don't want to do that or don't have the background to do that. So they make good, you know, they they make great TurboTax live employees.

David Leary: [00:05:38] But it's it's it's it's your base. You're attacking your base that have built you for the last 30 years. Now, there could be some insights to this on why they're doing this or what's going on Intuit's head. Okay, Intuit had their Investor Day last week, and the deck has, you know, 200 slides in this deck. But if we just focus in on what they think about tax. So the if you think about a typical tax year or last year, there was 158 million tax returns, about 73 million are DIY. And of that 73 million TurboTax, I don't know the exact number. It probably does about 35 to 40 million of those. Right. So they kind of won the DIY space, but 85 million are done assisted if you want to call it that. Right. Using a tax professional. And then TurboTax has none of that market in the grand scheme of things. And then they had another slide the way they view the market. So they view consumer tax still as a $29 billion market. And business tax is a $13 billion market. So they look at tax as $42 billion and like they barely have any of that market. So they're they're viewing this as like there's this space for the taking. It's just sitting out there. Yeah. And that's what's motivating to do this. It's I'm sure it's somebody does the math and they're like, hey, if we can win, you know, another $10 billion in tax revenue, no matter how much we piss off accountants, we might be okay. I don't know.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:10] Well, I'm curious to know what the tax pros out there listening right now. Think about this. Let us know in the live stream in the chat. If you're here joining us live, what do you think about Intuit's messaging. And if you're listening on the podcast, send us an email. The accounting podcast at earmarked me. We'd love to hear from you. Welcome to our live stream, viewers. Welcome to the chat Joseph Tyler JP Chattin Stacy. Stacy has some thoughts on this. Stacy says Intuit branching into this market seems no different than AI innovation. We know that the market will trend toward AI automation, which will force firms to migrate up market. Whether it's Intuit or another AI product firm, servicing compliance based clients will face the most competition. What do you think about that, David?

David Leary: [00:07:58] Ai everything's going to have to keep going up. We've talked about this before. You can't have enough staff to do all the tax returns that need to be done. That's true. You don't have enough bodies. The other insight that they had, they were talking about disrupting assisted tax, and they had this insight that I thought was really interesting to at least share with the show. 6 million searches a year are for a local tax expert, and when filers their five x more likely to pay if they're connected with somebody locally. So it's an interesting piece of data. Is Intuit going to try to match people more local in their platform going forward?

Blake Oliver: [00:08:35] So you mean if the tax pro at Intuit is local?

David Leary: [00:08:39] Exactly.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:39] So is more likely to go through the.

David Leary: [00:08:41] Process and pay? Yeah. Wow. So I think that's something as you think about your own firm, right? If 6 million searches a year are looking for a local tax expert expert, how do you maximize that search and take advantage of that? You know, through Google ads or Google, um, what's the Google reviews? Right. The stars. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:02] Actually, this is one of the things that a lot of accountants miss is that even if you're a virtual firm, local listings are still super important because people want a pro, even if they're virtual, they want them in their metro. They want them nearby. It provides a measure of comfort. And so Google local listings like Google Maps and all that stuff that's geographically based is super valuable. And I know a lot of smaller firms that do this well. And you can kind of game the system by setting up virtual addresses in different cities that you want to target. And you then, you know, can locally advertise that you have an office there if you have like a coworking space, right? If you have a WeWork space or you have a Regis space, and you can take advantage of basically having a local presence without actually having to be there all the time. So it's something worth looking into.

David Leary: [00:09:56] I feel like to find it. Proadvisor website has always it's still zip code. You go there today, it's still zip code. Yeah. And I know that goes against this concept of qbo. And accountants can be everywhere and you can have your clients be remote. But obviously the end users that are searching for accountants want zip code first. Yeah, it's the only search box you type in your zip code or city. Yeah, local is important.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:20] Edgar says David is correct. I paid to get leads for California markets while being in Arizona. Very few were willing to work with me because I was not local. Local still matters to people psychologically, but they're not going to come to your office. They just want to zoom with you. But they want to know that you're across town. It's funny how that works, but I.

David Leary: [00:10:42] Kind of.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:43] Local. Yeah. I mean, if something goes sideways, I want to be able to go to that guy's house. You know, like, I feel like that's the mentality. All right, David, it is time to thank our sponsor on pay. Forbes and CNBC rank on pay number one for small business payroll. On pay really knows how to get payroll done right for every client you serve, no matter how complex their software is, easy to use and backed by outstanding service levels. And we use it ourselves here on the podcast. And at earmark, they handle new client onboarding for free and have experts on call to keep you and your clients on track. The system includes multi-state payroll, local tax filings, integrated HR tools, and more with no hidden fees. When you join on Pays Partner program, you get a custom dashboard to easily manage all clients in one place, plus gain exclusive perks like revenue sharing or discounts, free payroll for your firm, co-branding opportunities, premium swag, and more. Onpay helps you run your practice efficiently while providing exceptional payroll that your clients can count on. To learn more about using Onpay for your firm and clients, that could be farms, start ups, restaurants, bars, doctors, nonprofits, gyms, franchises, dentists, you name it. Head over to The Accounting Podcast dot promo slash Onpay. That is The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash onpay.

David Leary: [00:12:06] And that reminds me I have to run payroll this week. I haven't done it yet.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:09] And now, uh, let's talk about IRS tax audit rates, which the IRS can't figure out how to measure. This is going to take us back to the Inflation Reduction Act, which allocated $80 billion to the IRS for customer service improvements and enforcement enhancements. The amount was reduced to just under 58 billion, with 24 billion earmarked specifically for enforcement activities. 24 billion for enforcement. But there was a catch to that. The Secretary of the Treasury in the Biden administration directed the IRS commissioner to not use the additional resources to increase audit rates for small businesses or households earning below $400,000. That was the promise. No increased audits if you make less than $400,000. And that, of course, was greeted by a skepticism on the other side of the aisle. And that skepticism appears to have been warranted because the IRS cannot figure out how to measure the audit rates above or below $400,000. So then how can they stick to their commitment not to audit more under $400,000?

David Leary: [00:13:23] And is that because that $400,000 is not so black and white, is it? It seems to be on the surface, really easy. Well, let's dig into over to the audit.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:32] So the IRS picked 2018 as the baseline, but they can't even calculate the audit coverage rate for that year, so they can't establish a baseline. For some reason, uh, and they're not sure what types of examinations to include. Should this include non-discretionary audits of amended returns in their audit rate calculations? They haven't decided how to do that because there's all sorts of different kinds of audits. There's automatic ones. There's ones that are not automatic. Right. What what counts. And I don't know if they even call them audits. Examinations is the word that's used in this this article on CPA trendlines. So the other question is what if a taxpayer appears to understate their income below the $400,000 threshold they send in a return that shows income of under $400,000, but their actual income is higher than $400,000. They lied on their return. Does that taxpayer count as somebody making less than $400,000 a year? You can see how they're not in the data because this is relying on self-reported data. So which 400,000 are we talking about the real number or the reported number because you don't.

David Leary: [00:14:54] Know the real number until after the audit.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:56] Exactly right. You have to measure it. You have to do the audit to figure out what the real number is. At least the IRS does. They have to do the examination.

David Leary: [00:15:06] So if I had to guess, I human nature, lots of people are going to finagle their numbers to come in under that 400,000. So in a weird way, audits of people 300,000 to 400,000 are going to go through the roof.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:21] It's possible. Right. So yeah, exactly. If people are right at that $400,000 threshold, I would audit them more. Yeah. Because they might be gaming the system. Now, there's also a problem with the definition of small business because this is applying to both small businesses and individuals. How do you define small business. Neither the directive from the Treasury or the US tax code clearly defines what a small business is. The IRS current definition is businesses with less than 10 million in assets. But the Small Business Administration has a different definition, and that can range anywhere from revenue of 1 million to $40 million, or from 100 employees to 1500 employees. What is it? Is it asset based? Is it revenue based? Is it headcount based? Nobody has defined this.

David Leary: [00:16:13] They could just do it to use QuickBooks. And then if you say yes, they put you in one bucket.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:19] So the IRS has given up this year and isn't going to try to do it until 2025. Can you hear me, David?

David Leary: [00:16:26] Yes, Maybe the Verizon outage is affecting you.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:29] Oh, yeah. That. This morning I woke up and my phone had no service. It still has no service. Sos. Um, there's a nationwide Verizon outage or something going on. It's funny. My phone prompted me to try sending a text via satellite, and so I was walking my kid to school as I was walking back. I was holding my phone up to aim at the satellite. It like tells you how to face. And then it tried to send the message, but it didn't work. And I imagine that's because every single person in Phoenix is trying to send satellite text messages right now. But I haven't sent one yet, and I really want to try it to see if it really works, you know? Uh, Tyler in the chat says, just from my perspective, people under 400 K have increased as well, despite what headlines are saying. Edgar says I tend to vote conservative, but I agree with having more enforcement of the tax code. A lot of people I know of are underreporting. If people paid what they owe, we would not have to raise taxes. And that is the tax gap, which is I forget what it is right now, but it's like billions and billions of dollars. So the IRS is not going to even try to calculate audit coverage rates until 2025. And I don't see how they can meet this directive without clearer definitions. So maybe the Treasury, maybe the Biden administration should, like, give them a definition and then they'll just calculate it, make it something easy to.

David Leary: [00:17:58] Calculate based off of reported box won wages or in k-1s. And like some sort of total like that, I probably have to happen not just.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:06] Like for businesses. I don't even know how they could possibly do this because it's self-reported. Right. So are you going to just say if somebody reports less than $400,000 in income, then, you know, we're not going to increase the audit rate. That would probably be the simplest thing to do if they actually want to comply, is just go based on reported income and say, for all these returns that are under 400,000, you know, here's what we did in 2018, and we're going to do the same percentage in 2024 or 20 23 or 2025, whatever it is. So but, you know, of course that's not going to well, I'm not going to say it's not going to happen, but it seems unlikely that anyone would do something so efficient in Washington. All right.

David Leary: [00:18:52] What else is new? I can't the I figure this out. The IRS.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:56] They don't they still have to modernize their whole database. Right. They're still operating on these, like, mainframe databases that can't be accessed via the cloud. They're working on it. I met a guy in my neighborhood who is part of the team at Deloitte that's working on it. But, you know, who knows how long that's going to take? I think it was Deloitte, drew says. Phew. Thankfully won't be a problem for me as I'm under 400,000 of income by a few miles. All right. What's next? David? We got follow up that we could do about it.

David Leary: [00:19:34] Why don't you walk out the follow up and then jump into do an ad and do listener mail?

Blake Oliver: [00:19:39] So last week, we covered the death of a 26 year old accountant working at EA in India in Pune. And EA has just gotten hammered on social media because the mother of Anna, this employee, wrote a letter, an open letter to the head of EA India and said that nobody from EA went to her funeral, blamed EA for causing her anxiety and overwork that led to her death. And what other people are saying on Twitter in India who work at EA does not support EA. It supports the mother and Anna, apparently overworked. There is even far worse than it is here. And of course, Yui's response to this letter was widely mocked as insensitive. Um.

David Leary: [00:20:36] Now, just to clarify, there was a small paragraph they released before. Is this now a follow up response to the original small teeny response?

Blake Oliver: [00:20:45] Well, let me let me read this. Okay. Um, that her promising career was cut short in this tragic matter is an irreparable loss for all of us. While no measure can compensate for the loss experienced by the family, we have provided all the assistance, as we always do in such times of distress and will continue to do so. We are taking the family's correspondence with the utmost seriousness and humility. We place the highest importance on the well-being of all employees, and will continue to find ways to improve and provide a healthy workplace for our 100,000 people across EY member firms in India. What do you think?

David Leary: [00:21:17] It's. I think when there's small response from me for going. Concern said it best when they said. They said nothing's going to change without saying nothing's going to change.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:28] The company denied that work pressure could have led to her death. We have around one lakh employees. There is no doubt each one has to work hard. Anna worked with us for only four months. She was allotted work like any other employee. We don't believe that work pressure could have claimed her life. That's the EY India chairman Rajiv Memani. As he told the Indian Express.

David Leary: [00:21:51] I guess if you're EY, there's probably legal reasons. You cannot, even if people believe it at EY and say, yes, we have a lot of stress, we're sorry. It probably caused her death. They can't even say that because of legal reasons. They have no choice but to.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:05] Yeah, well, at a certain point, keep them unrelated. Maybe maybe respond to the, you know, PR disaster with like human emotion and care rather than protecting your ass, you know? Yeah. Um, it's not going over well. So, uh, I don't know. Will this have any impact? Maybe. Maybe not. Moving on. Actually, I know I have something related. Uh, here's an example of one of these Twitter posts from other people. This is from Jayesh Jain on Twitter. Jayesh said with E case getting some lights, I would like to share my personal experience at Deloitte, attaching some screenshots of chats with my teammate, a friend, where we were discussing the work in our health at 5 a.m. in the morning. We used to work for around 20 hours and they won't even let us charge more than 15 hours. I can totally understand what Anna would have gone through. Always remember you are just an employee number for them, but for your family you are everything. Corporate life is tough. Glad that I was able to get out from there in time. 20 hour days.

David Leary: [00:23:11] And this is a like you said, is a repeated story. It's sounding like the Big Four culture in general at India is way worse than it is anywhere else.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:22] Yeah, I mean, but it's pretty bad here too, right? I mean, like, there's probably people at EA who work those kind of hours. I feel like it's worse in investment banking and in deal making and M&A and all that stuff. But you know, there's consultants at these big firms here in the US who are probably working those crazy hours, but maybe they're just not complaining as much because they're making a lot more money than the accountants. Yeah. That's the thing that really pisses me off is that like the accountants at big firms get paid such relatively low salaries and they get asked to work crazy hours. Like if you're going to work people 70 to 80 hours a week, at least pay them well. Right.

David Leary: [00:23:57] And then again, where's the CPA in this?

Blake Oliver: [00:24:01] Yeah, they're an international association.

David Leary: [00:24:04] Last I checked, the AICPA is partnering with educational companies in India to produce, like, 40,000 CPAs. Is maybe a month, I don't know. Every 90 days. Every quarter? Yeah. It's ridiculous numbers.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:15] That's a really good question. Where is the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants, as they now call themselves on this issue? You think they would be advocating for appropriate work hours? You know, this is this is an example of the problem in the profession that is keeping people out of it. You want to increase you want to increase people going into accounting. Maybe don't kill people who go into accounting. Yes. Yeah. Keep them alive. Yeah. All right.

David Leary: [00:24:47] I have another follow up story if you want to do that quick. Let's do.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:50] Our second.

David Leary: [00:24:51] Ad. Let's do the second ad first, then more follow up. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:54] Perfect. Thank you. Ignition. Our sponsor for this episode. Imagine increasing your revenue by an average of 24% in just 12 months. Think about saving 18 hours every week. Picture 91% of your payments being collected automatically without you having to chase down a single client. Ignition makes all of this possible. It starts with digital proposals and engagement letters that clients can review and sign online within minutes. This means you kick off every client relationship on the right foot, with crystal clear clarity on the scope of work and fees. Then ignition takes care of automatic payments and billing when a proposal is signed. Payments become automatic. No more late payments, no more invoicing hassles, just a smooth, seamless process that lets you focus on providing top notch service. And when scope changes, all you have to do is adjust your services or bill instantly for any ad hoc work. But that's not all. Ignition connects with your favorite apps, automating workflows that spring into action the moment a proposal is signed, and with business dashboards, you gain full visibility into your sales pipeline, upcoming client renewals, and revenue forecasts. It's time to reclaim your revenue and your time. Stop doing work for free and start engaging clients with clear scope, pricing and terms from day one to discover how ignition can revolutionize your practice, head over to The Accounting Podcast promo slash ignition that is The Accounting Podcast dot promo forward slash I g n I t I o n. And now let's play another game of news roulette. Accounting. News roulette. Uh, we can talk about the state of AI in accounting. I've got some survey data on who's using it. Uh supermicro. Stock has plunged. We talked about that on a past episode. The fraud, the alleged fraud that Hindenburg.

David Leary: [00:26:47] We can talk about that really quickly because it's. I mean, you almost basically covered all the news right there for for supermicro. But the reason it dropped is because the US Justice Department looks like their San Francisco office is looking into the ex-employees claim that the Hindenburg research used to make a lot of these claims Essentially a few years after settling their previous allegations and charges. So the ones from 2020 where they resolved their investigation with the US, with the SEC, they paid a $17.5 million penalty. They didn't admit or deny anything. And basically, the ex-employee Bob lungs claims is that they just went back to old habits. So they they paid the fine, they investigated. So now a new investigation has started again.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:33] And over the last six months, Supermicro stock is down from 1037 to 417 418. That's quite a drop. All right. Let's talk about what did I say. The state of AI in accounting. So carbon put out some data. They did a survey on on who's using AI. So a significant majority 71% over two thirds of accounting professionals anticipate that I will bring substantial changes to the accounting industry, but only a quarter of accountants are investing in AI and training for their teams. That's the stat. So 82% say that they're excited or intrigued by AI, but only 25% are investing in AI training for their teams. I mean, why is this happening? Probably lack of time. You're too busy doing things the same way. How can you invest in modernization? How can you invest in technology? You're too busy. This was always the biggest problem for me in public accounting. Being too busy. You have to make time before you can improve. You have to. And that's the hard part. You have to cut the work you're doing. And that might mean taking a revenue hit. It doesn't have to though, because there's plenty of people out there who will prove to you that you can raise your rates, work with fewer clients, make the same amount of money, and have more time.

David Leary: [00:29:10] And it's not just implementing AI. It's implementing anything to make your firm better, right? You just get stuck in the weeds of the work. Did you have anything more from that study?

Blake Oliver: [00:29:21] Uh, there's a few more stats in here that might be of interest to our audience. How is AI being used in accounting? Number one is communication. Writing emails. 59% of accountants are using AI to compose emails, which, uh, to me is like the definitely if you're not doing that, try that. I'm using Super Whisper, an app on my Mac where I can dictate emails and it writes them in beautiful language. That sounds like me. That's all cleaned up. Grammar and paragraphs and all that good stuff.

David Leary: [00:29:51] Well, Gmail, outlook, uh, almost every third party email tool now has some sort of AI writing wizard built in now.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:59] So even if you're just copying and pasting, it could save you a ton of time. Task automation is number two. 36% are using AI to automate their workflows. We do that at earmark. We have a ton of AI automations that we've built that are fantastic. One thing that's really easy to do with it is just parsing unstructured data and turning it into structured data. So you can create a zap with Zapier, where you've got this big blob of text, like an email, anything. It's just text, and you send it to OpenAI and they have a they have a built in Zapier configuration that's like an extract structured data. And then you can tell it exactly what you want. You know, I want this and this and this and this, and here's what each of those things are. Go get it for me. And it'll return those that data in that field as you want it.

David Leary: [00:30:59] Yeah. Because you get something from this customer or this client or this customer and it's never consistent. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:06] And it's super accurate. It doesn't hallucinate at all in our experience using it for months and months now. And you can use the cheapest model for mini, which is like insanely cheap. Like we barely spend anything on it. And you can do this extracting structured data from unstructured data. So if there's anything that your team is doing where they're getting like PDFs or emails or documents, and they're having to put that into columns and spreadsheets, you can automate that now. Number three, research, which I think is surprising actually, because 31% are using AI for research. But that should be way more. And I highly recommend perplexity AI. And guess what? Actually, this is funny. Uh, Cruise Consulting reached out. Apparently they have a relationship with perplexity. And they have a code for anyone who's interested listening to this show to get a free perplexity enterprise account for like three months. Yeah. Three month free trial of perplexity. Perplexity enterprise pro for up to 50 seats. That's worth like 20 bucks a month per person, I think, is the going rate. Uh, perplexity is a customer of cruise. They do the accounting. Cruise consulting does the accounting for perplexity. And they listen to the show. So the code is, um, cruise with a capital K, capital K cruise number three, lowercase M50. And I am going to put that in.

David Leary: [00:32:40] You're going to paste it I started typing it.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:41] I'm going to put it in here. Thank you. To cruise I'm trying to paste it in. Let's see if it works. There we go.

David Leary: [00:32:49] Awesome. So this is not just an affiliate link of cruise. And cruise is really their it's actually their client it.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:56] So um, if you haven't heard of perplexity, think about it this way. You type in a query. It does a Google search for you. I mean, it's not actually doing Google searches, but effectively. Right. That's what you would do. And then what would you do? You would go click like the first ten results. Or maybe 20 results. And you'd have to read through all those pages. And then your brain would synthesize. The information and come up with an answer. Perplexity does that for you. It reads all the pages. And gives you the answer. And then you can click through to the citations. It cites the source of every. Answer. It gives you every sentence that has a fact.

David Leary: [00:33:33] It's perplexity connected to all the tax code and all. Legal rulings that I might want when I'm trying to research or decide I can go out and search.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:42] It will. Well, you might have to tell it where to go, but if it's publicly available, it can go search it. So. If the tax code is online and publicly accessible then? Yes. So, for instance, I had a user of earmark send a message to support asking about the length of our courses, because apparently in Alaska there is a rule that CPE courses must be one hour or more in length. Otherwise they are classified as microlearning, and you can only do ten hours of microlearning in your 80 hour, two year renewal period. And I was trying to figure out where does this come from? What is the definition of length? All that. And I asked these questions into perplexity. And at first it gave me sources that were like other CPE providers who have put up pages on their websites with all the requirements. And I didn't want that. I wanted it to go to the source. So I said, show me, find for me the statute in Alaska with this rule. And it found for me the text it sent me to a PDF that's available online with the statute for the accountancy laws in Alaska. And I was able to go in there and find out that there is no definition of length in the statute, is the definition Naspa's definition of length, which is a 50 minute course, equals one hour, or is it the audio video duration? They did not define it in the law, but I was able to do all that.

David Leary: [00:35:21] Research an urban legend. So this listener or the well know.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:25] I have to find out how the State Board of Accountancy is actually interpreting this law because their interpretation, you know, ends up I'm not going to sue the state Board of Accountancy. She's not going to sue the state Board of Accountancy. So however they interpret it is really what matters. So I have to go reach out to them. But at least now I understand what the statute says. And I was able to figure that out in minutes thanks to perplexity. Now, I'm not a tax guy, so I don't know how well this would work for tax, but I assume that it's going to work similarly. You may have to instruct it to go find the statute in your particular jurisdiction, because otherwise it will probably go for the low hanging fruit, which is articles and blogs that people have written. But it will do that if you ask it to. And you got to pay for the pro version to get the enhanced search. It's 20 bucks a month.

David Leary: [00:36:10] But I imagine.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:11] You use that code.

David Leary: [00:36:12] If you have your team doing it for most of the things your team is working on. It's probably going to be good enough for them to to not ask you questions. Exactly.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:23] And that's what people have to get in their heads. Is that you as the expert tax pro with 20 years of experience or whatever for you, this probably won't be game changing because you know a lot of this stuff already, and you take the CPE every year so that you have it all in your brain, all the new stuff, you know, everything, right? But for your staff who are new. They have very basic questions. Perplexity can answer this stuff for them. And then you just got to teach them how to check the source. And it could probably intercept 8,090% of the questions your team is asking you. I mean, imagine how much time that would save you.

David Leary: [00:37:01] So and that's the way to think about these investing in these tools for your employees.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:05] It up levels your staff. And the less experienced they are, the more it up levels them. So and it can take a below average performer and make them above average. That's the way to think about this. And so like that's what a lot of you know leaders are missing when they look at AI. They try it and they're like yes it's okay. It's not that impressive. Well yeah. Compared to you who are at the top of your field, it's not impressive. Yeah. But it's certainly going to help Intuit train up all those TurboTax live experts that they're hiring. Actually, there was a bunch of stuff when we did it. You know, we used TurboTax live to do one of our returns, and we put that on YouTube and everyone should go watch that. If you want to see what the process is like. Go check out The Accounting Podcast on YouTube and look for TurboTax full service live review. You just search for that. You'll probably find it. Uh, probably put business in there as well. And it was kind of amazing. Like some of the questions, like some of the stuff that our tax preparer was telling us was just wrong. It was stuff that would have been easy to research with a tool like perplexity. So like this tool is going to up level. A lot of those folks who are doing very basic returns.

David Leary: [00:38:20] And uploading your team is going to let you not have to be so involved in the weeds of that work. And so I saw a great opinion piece this week from Tom Walton. He's a virtual CFO at summit CPA Group. And just the first sentence really sums up what he talks about. Many accounting firms run up against dreaded profit plateaus for a simple reason. The owner is too involved, Right. And he gives this great analogy about restaurants and chefs. Right. If you can't grow your restaurant, if you're in the kitchen, you know, cooking, right. And this is what separates mom and pop restaurants from Wolfgang Puck. Wolfgang. He handed over the day to day operations of the restaurant to his sous chefs and everybody else, all the other labels, the staff that might work inside of a a restaurant operation. And his argument is that CPA firms are not any different. And what I really liked about his article is he outlines nice clear bullets. The six bullets and two questions on how to keep it framed. So you should start asking yourself the following questions. What client or accountant account facing task am I currently handling that should or could be delegated? How much of my time is spent on client work versus strategic planning and business development? Am I the only person in the firm that can perform certain tasks or make decisions? What are the long term goals of the firm and what is my role in achieving them? Do I have clear understanding of the strengths and capabilities of my team, and what processes or systems can I implement to improve to make the firm more efficient without my direct involvement? And he said, you can really just keep this frame to two questions.

David Leary: [00:39:56] Am I the only person in the firm who can perform certain tasks or make specific decisions? And then the second one is, what processes or systems can I implement to improve or make my firm more efficient without my direct involvement? And I think this I example Blake is exactly that, right? Given I tool search to your junior employees so they don't have to ask you the questions. Get yourself out of the weeds. You go do the strategic stuff. But it's a great article worth checking out and the link will be in the show notes.

Blake Oliver: [00:40:23] And with the release of OpenAI's new zero one model, we are going to start seeing AI being able to do the review work. First level review on returns and first level review on bookkeeping month end and closes and financial statements and catch a lot of the errors that a manager, director or a partner would have caught in the past. And that is going to save us a ton of time. Reviewing the work takes almost as long as doing the work in many cases. So. I know that only 25% of firms are actively training staff on AI, but, uh, I don't know, like, I don't know how else to convince you to do it. It's worth it. And if you don't do it, you are going to be like so slow that you are going to lose all your clients to other firms or to intuit you will be that guy getting the breakup call.

David Leary: [00:41:20] Yeah, there's probably 4 or 5 year window here where if you don't figure out how to adapt. Yeah, probably over I think it's very quick.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:28] Yeah. Maybe ten but not more than that.

David Leary: [00:41:33] Definitely into it. I mean, based on their Investor Day deck. A lot of their things. Their goals are 2030. So that's only, what, seven years, six years out? Yeah. They have a lot of these very aggressive goals. Let's do the last another ad here Blake.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:46] Okay I'll let you do this one.

David Leary: [00:41:48] Got it. So this ad sponsors financial sense and it's for their new conference. Workflow con 2024.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:54] Oh, I'm going to be there.

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Blake Oliver: [00:43:22] All right. Sounds like you're losing your voice a bit there. So I'll take this next story, David. And it is one of my favorite topics. Changes to CPA licensure. We reported last week that Nasba and AICPA proposed a new competency based framework for CPA licensure, as they are calling it. And I have to make a correction. We got something wrong. But it's not our fault, David. It's because the way they described this new model, they hid the fact they hid something in it. This was pointed out to me by I think it was Jack Castonguay on, on Twitter or on LinkedIn. So this new competency based model, like the way we thought it was going to work, is that it's 120 hours bachelor's degree, and then you do a year of experience. And then there's this like competency form that your manager fills out that certifies oh yeah the little checklist. Yeah, yeah. Check this this this this this. It's like a two page, three page form and then you're done. And my criticism was wait, so we're going to 120 plus one year of experience plus a meaningless form. That's stupid. Why don't we just go back to 120 and two years of experience the way it was for a long time, and it worked really great. And that's how most of the CPAs today were licensed. And Jack pointed out, actually, no, it is two years. It's two years plus this stupid form. And in their diagram and in all of the discussion around it.

David Leary: [00:44:54] Like a table, and it made it seem like one, it said.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:56] One. They're hiding the fact that it's two years because they're trying to save face. They don't want to admit that they're going back, that this whole 150 idea was a bad idea to begin with. So they didn't put two years on the diagram. They put one year. It's one year plus competency. But the competency thing is another year. Is this crazy or what.

David Leary: [00:45:18] And for manipulated they manipulated the way they present it. Yes.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:23] And Jack speculated it's because they're going to save face this way And like, come on, you know, this isn't medieval Japan. We don't have to save face. We. You know, this isn't like this is America. Just admit when you screwed up, admit you were wrong, and go back to what works.

David Leary: [00:45:44] And America has a comeback story. So even if you're wrong, you mess it all up. America loves a comeback story.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:49] And keep it simple. They want to create this competency based framework, which is paperwork. And if you do it ethically, it's a lot of work for the managers of these future CPAs.

David Leary: [00:46:05] You have one year of experience and then one year of competency experience for that checklist.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:11] Right. And the old model was just a year or two years of experience. And your supervisor, your, you know, manager signed off on it, who's a CPA. And it was just hours based. And this is now competency based. And so your manager has to evaluate you on all these different criteria. Who has time for that? I mean AICPA and Nasba must be so disconnected from the reality of working in an accounting firm that they think that these managers have all this time to do this work.

David Leary: [00:46:40] And shame on them, because this was presented as kind of a very encouraging possible new pathway. Yeah. And really, it's not that much different of a pathway. It's, you know, you're on the side of the road, right? It's not of the existing road. It's not really a pathway. It's just. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:58] They're they're pitching this. They're spinning this as this like new innovative thing. And really it's just going back to the old thing but then adding a bunch of paperwork and oh by the way, the National association I.

David Leary: [00:47:08] Bought into it.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:10] Yeah. Well they did a good job, you know, covering it up. But Nasba, by the way, don't forget Nasba is going to spin up a whole new service to process all this paperwork. I wonder how much money Nasba is going to make from processing all this Paperwork. It's like we said, it's it's money or it's a power grab or something. But I would not if I were on a state board of accountancy or if I'm in a state society, I would look at this very skeptically, because it's a lot more complicated than it has to be. Just certify that somebody worked for two years, you know, define what that is. If it's hours worked or whatever, you know, come up with some simple definition. Don't make people fill out a form that they're going to basically lie about. Like, we know that if you create this situation with if you create this regime of reporting, it's going to be like these ethics scandals, like people are just going to be signing off on this stuff. There's not going to be any actual competency evaluation because people are too busy working. They don't have time.

David Leary: [00:48:09] For this alternative pathway. If you're just having people walk in the gravel on the side of the road, that's not that's not a new pathway. It's not an alternative path. So it's horrible.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:20] Follow up on this is that Nasba and AICPA have proposed modifications to the Uniform Accountancy Act, which is the legal framework that many, but not all of the states have adopted. And that is what created the 150 hour rule. The Uniform Accountancy Act getting adopted over the last 20, 30 years. Whatever. So they've they've put forward legislation, you know, model legislation. And the analysis of this is actually how I figured out what was really going on here. And there's something that really concerns me about this model legislation. Other than that this competency based pathway is a bunch of crap, which is that the education requirements still require for all three pathways, a accounting concentration or equivalent. And I think that is a big mistake. One of the best things that we could do as a profession would be to not require people to be accounting majors to become CPAs. And the reason I say this is because there are many, many, many ways to learn everything you need to know from an accounting major without going to an overpriced, traditional college or university. This legislation locks in the monopoly that colleges and universities have over accounting education, and it limits our pipeline because it makes it extremely difficult for career changers to enter accounting because they have to go back to school and earn, effectively an accounting major in order to become accountants, even if they have learned that on the job. And if Nasba and AICPA really wanted a competency based pathway, they would loosen up this requirement so that anyone with a bachelor's degree can take the CPA exam if they can learn the material.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:19] If they can learn accounting one and two and intermediate accounting and advanced accounting somewhere else on the job, or from a continuing education provider, or if they're really smart, just by reading the textbooks, if they can take the exam and pass the exam, that should be enough because the exam is hard. The exam tests you on all this information. If you can learn this material, why do we make people go sit in a classroom? And why do we make people pay an absurd amount of money to get an accounting degree? So that is what I would encourage the states to look at, is don't require people to have an accounting concentration in their education. You open it up to so many more candidates, people like me. There's a lot of really smart people in this world who, you know, didn't pick the quote unquote right, major and would love to have a stable accounting career, and for them, the starting salary of an accountant is more than they're making now, and perhaps more than they'll ever make. Because, like me, I chose a music degree that severely limits your earning potential. I discovered I was very happy to earn the salary of a bookkeeper or a staff accountant. When I switched from music, it like, doubled my income. So the march.

David Leary: [00:51:40] Were possibly on here, which is really scary that we're going to get an alternative pathway that's almost equivalently constricted or more constricted than it originally was.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:53] Yeah, I.

David Leary: [00:51:53] Mean that that be careful what you ask for type scenario.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:56] Well, so here's the hard thing is that I guess if I step back and look at it, it's better than the current situation. But it's not good enough to change the talent crisis. It's too little. We need to do more. We need to streamline this further if we want to actually address this issue. And the problem is that the leadership has not quantified the impact of these changes. If they actually sat down and looked at what the shortage is and looked at who we need to bring in in order to make up that shortage, even with technology and AI. We don't have enough. And these changes aren't going to do that because it still relies on the traditional accounting major pipeline. And we have to go beyond that. We have to attract people into the profession who didn't major in accounting, because not a lot of people want to major in accounting. And actually, this would help improve accounting education, because I think one of the reasons accounting education sucks at so many schools is because these professors have a monopoly. If you want to be a CPA, you have to be an accounting major. So they don't have to do a good job. If they had competition from adjacent majors like finance. What if you could major in finance and then learn enough with an accounting minor to go take the CPA exam. That would force the accounting programs to do better.

David Leary: [00:53:19] So if you have a statistics degree or computer science, you have these other majors that you probably would make a good accountant.

Blake Oliver: [00:53:27] And here's the other problem is that a lot of the states to require specific courses. It's not just like an accounting concentration. They require this whole list of courses you have to take. And that limits accounting education too, because you can't modernize the curriculum. If you've got to have all these courses in the curriculum, like 80, 90% of the curriculum is predetermined. It's it's what is it? Prescriptive. Prescripted Prescripted it's already written is what I'm trying to say. And so there are all these, you know, professors out there who listen to our show that contact us and say we're trying to modernize education, but we can't find room in the curriculum. So just get rid of that. Not allowed.

David Leary: [00:54:09] Out, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:54:10] And that way the CPA exam can change and then the education can change to match the CPA exam. And if the accounting majors don't do it, somebody else will because they'll see an opportunity. We're going to create competition. Competition stimulates innovation. So stop locking everything down this way. This is actually the same problem we have with accounting standards is if we try to make a rule for everything. And so we end up with all these little rules. And now we have no flexibility to change. And that's what we've done with the whole CPA pipeline. It's so rigid there's no room to change. And now here's the other thing about this. This is actually really, really important. So if you've zoned out, you know, please come back and listen to my final rant. Uh, this is regarding substantial equivalency. And this is a big deal because the Uniform Accountancy Act is trying to increase NASA's power over substantial equivalency. That and this has to do with CPA mobility. Right. So the right of a CPA in California to serve clients in Arizona, or the right of a CPA in Arizona to serve clients in California all over the country? Right. It's substantial. Equivalency is the one thing in the UIA that basically allows us to practice across the country to, regardless of where your license now. It doesn't always work, and there's a lot of problems with it, but maintaining it. Right. That's the biggest concern that people have over changing the rules. One of the proposed solutions out there is that the states adopt automatic mobility. Meaning that instead of me having to go prove in every state that I am a substantially equivalent CPA who is licensed under similar requirements, that if Arizona licenses me, the other states will simply assume that I have the credentials.

David Leary: [00:56:08] Driver's license.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:08] Like a driver's license. Right. You can drive in any state if you're licensed in one of them. And so a bunch of states are moving toward automatic mobility because this simplifies the whole question of substantial equivalency. It doesn't have to be all the same. Right. If there's little changes, no problem. Right. It's not even about simplifying.

David Leary: [00:56:27] It's just just like the ability to drive from state to state is better for the overall economy of the country, the same as with accounting or accountants, right? They should be. It's just better for the entire economy if people can just work wherever with whoever they're working with.

Blake Oliver: [00:56:41] Right. So this new legislation, Nasba, wants to create a national licensing database to help track licensure pathways and facilitate mobility determinations. So they want to create a national database of certified public accountants, and then they want to tell you where and where you can and cannot practice based on the substantial equivalency. Isn't this something that, you know the state boards of accountancy are responsible for? This is a private corporation that is completely unaccountable to the public, and they want to create a national database of every CPA. And this is in the legislation.

David Leary: [00:57:30] Which that contract to create that database would probably go to one of the big four. So it's very it's very questionable at best.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:37] I mean I just I can't, I cannot uh, I kind of imagine this like it's not even a federal agency. This is a non-government organization. This is a private company. And yes, it it is supposedly controlled by the state boards of accountancy as a group. And they have some sort of board of directors, but in effect, it is unaccountable because no individual state can stop it. I mean, you know, the individual states say, oh, we have you know, we have final say in all this, but then they delegate this stuff to Nasba and then Nasba does stuff that is anti CPA. I'm really surprised that Nasba is even constitutional. Think about it. You have these states that license CPAs, these boards of accountancy which are state right. These are these are government bodies. And they have delegated a bunch of really important licensure stuff to a corporation, a private company. How is that constitutional? And these are really, really important questions. And it's freezing up all the potential for change. I mean, I think it's important that the states get together and they make decisions because they make decisions together, and that CPAs can operate around state lines. But the way this is set up right now, like, do we really want to give Nasba more power, the power to determine substantial equivalency with a national database of CPAs? I don't want my name in that database. I really hope the state of Arizona doesn't agree to this.

David Leary: [00:59:24] And it's just like bloat, administrative power. Right? It's just getting in the way, slowing things down, unnecessary bureaucracy.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:34] So yeah, it's it's it really bothers me. And if you are in a state society, um, if you're in a board of accountancy and you have an opinion on this, I want to hear about it. I can keep it. Off the record, we have actually plenty of listeners that I know of in both types of organizations. And, uh, we're helping to facilitate this conversation. So just know that you are not alone. And there are many, many in the profession who don't think that this is the right way to go and the best way that we can fight the power of these national organizations that are holding the profession back is to create automatic mobility and then deal with differences on a case by case basis, instead of having the current situation where it's like a opt in rather than opt out system. And if the states if enough states adopt automatic mobility, then Nasba doesn't have the power that it has now to like force states to to pressure states. Actually, I.

David Leary: [01:00:50] Love the way it's supposed to work. Right? Is the the states are supposed to voice their concerns to nasba who unifies this voice right upon their behalf. But what's kind of happened is Naspa is making its own voice and trying to shove that back down to the States.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:06] That's right. It's not working that way. It's not working the way it's supposed to. And if you think about this, this is just classic, you know, bureaucratic bloat is that's what happens when you create a bureaucracy. What is its mission? It ends up being to grow because that's how the leaders make more money. That's how they hire more people. They get bigger and they get more powerful. And I think this needs to go back to the States. And I think that Nasba has lost sight of its mission of growing the profession, promoting the profession, protecting the profession. I mean, isn't that the mission of all the state boards of accountancy?

David Leary: [01:01:49] So can you explain, I guess the tie between Nasba and the Uniform Accountancy Act. So they is this like a proposed legislation and then they take it to who to get passed. I'm trying to understand like who's passing this act. Maybe is my question.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:07] Oh the UAA. Um, so I mean, so the way it works is that AICPA and Nasba put out the Uniform Accountancy Act, and then they try to get the individual states to adopt it.

David Leary: [01:02:21] So in the states have their own legislation, say we're going to use that.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:24] Right. And so each.

David Leary: [01:02:26] State it's very top down.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:27] Yeah. They're pushing it through to all the states. Yeah. Um, I've got one more thing on this matter to take us out here. This is an email that was forwarded to me. This is an email that was forwarded to me by a listener that went from nasba out to board members and executive directors. Uh, I'm assuming board members and executive board members of state boards of accountancy and executive directors of, uh, state societies. And it's kind of a long email. Um, the headline is shifting to Automatic The Hazards of Redefining Mobility. And in this email, Nasba argues that implementing an automatic mobility provision could be viewed as an unconstitutional transfer of legislative power, allowing one state to dictate the qualifications for practice in another state without proper equivalency. So they're saying if you adopt automatic mobility Arizona, then that's unconstitutional because you're allowing California to determine the qualifications for practice in your state of Arizona. And I'm thinking about this, right. This argument. Couldn't you just flip that around and say that if a state current, the current situation is that the states have many of the states have delegated this question of substantial equivalency to nasba, a private company, a corporation. So, like, isn't that unconstitutional that they've delegated the determination of, you know, of the equivalency to like, a corporation, like it goes both ways, right? Yeah.

David Leary: [01:04:23] And I don't know if they really mean it's unconstitutional. I think that's just a no.

Blake Oliver: [01:04:26] They actually said that word.

David Leary: [01:04:27] Yes, they said it, but that's what I mean. They said it because it's a good marketing word. Like that's a very good strong marketing email. And this is just like the ones we saw from this blog post up from last February of 2023. The SBA has a whole website set up. You know, because of the Minnesota bill and this whole very threatening, what are the risks? You're going to lose mobility. They're still attacking this individual states that are on their own decision making. This is just another marketing email, but the word unconstitutional is very powerful.

Blake Oliver: [01:04:55] And here's why. This doesn't make any sense to me, because it's not like the states are giving up the right to determine the education requirements. They're just saying that by default, we are going to recognize a CPA from another state as being able to practice in our state, but they're not giving up the right to say no. You can't practice in our state. You're just dealing with it on an exception basis instead of requiring everyone to prove it. Just the same way, we don't require everyone to stop at a border crossing and show their prove that they're, you know, they they they took their driver's test to get their driver's license, right. That's the current situation in some states. So like this whole argument, like it's completely see through. Like, I don't understand if this applies to one state allowing another state to have automatic mobility, then how does this not apply to NASA? I mean, I think NASA is probably more unconstitutional than what we're proposing. I can't believe that the state boards have delegated this much power to a non-government organization that they, as individual states, really can't stop because it takes more than one state to get together to change what NASA is doing. So they've effectively created a federal agency that is unaccountable to taxpayers. We'd be actually be better off, right? We'd be better off if NASA was accountable to Congress or something. So that's all I got for this week. If you want to remember.

David Leary: [01:06:41] Yeah. You're right. There's no higher power. That's the boss of Nasba. Nasba is. The buck stops here and everybody else is just the underlings. And unless they all organize together and have an uprising, there's nothing anybody can do. And Nasba, like you said, is unchecked at the top.

Blake Oliver: [01:06:59] Luke in the chat says tax rules do differ between states, though. Driving rules generally not. Well, Luke, maybe you haven't driven in Arizona where speed limits are a suggestion, not a rule.

David Leary: [01:07:11] But they definitely changed because this is this is if you're an Arizona resident and you're driving to LA, it's you're basically at 75 miles an hour as the posted speed limit on I-10. This is an international highway that spans from LA to Miami. Same highway all the way across. It's 75 miles an hour in Arizona. And the second you cross into California, there's this little hill, and nobody in Arizona has plates on the front. Well, you you're still doing your 75, but it's only 65. In California, same highway. You never changed highways, and now you're getting a ticket. So they totally. The rules change and they're different. That's right. Just I don't know I may have gotten a ticket.

Blake Oliver: [01:07:47] Window tinting. Window tinting is big here in Arizona. My my window tint would be illegal in California. Do I have to un tint my windows when I go into California? No, I've never been pulled over for that. A random, not random. An anonymous LinkedIn user says Nasba and AICPA has lost touch with public accounting, and education is only one of the reasons we have a shortage on talent. Pay and hours is a big one. Nowadays, people are leaving public accounting because of the long hours and low pay. There are few careers that require so much education. Work until you drop and pay you so little. At least attorneys, doctors and tech professionals make a great wage by your 3 to 5. This is not the case for public accounting yet. We work these crazy hours. Yeah, and what is Nasba and AICPA doing about that? What is the last thing that any of these national organizations did about the long hours working conditions? Thanks everyone for joining us this week. As always, you can earn free Continuing Professional Education Nasba CPE. For listening to this episode, go to the earmark app, Earmark app in your browser or download the free mobile app for iOS or Android. Create your free account. Did I say free? It's free free, free, free and earn your free self-study CPE. Each course drops shortly after the podcast version of this show, so if you're watching live, come back in a few days. Maybe next week you'll find the course, but you can find all the ones for our previous episodes and you can earn CPE for those. And if you want to support the work that we do on this show and at earmark, please do subscribe. Just 150 bucks a year for unlimited access to all of our. How many courses is it now, David?

David Leary: [01:09:36] 1700.

Blake Oliver: [01:09:37] 1700 CPE courses based on podcast episodes and webinars. And you can do it on your phone. You can listen with the built in podcast player, do it in your car. Do it while you're washing the dishes, getting your nails done, going to the gym, literally anything that you do while you listen to podcasts. And it's really exciting. Just how much earmark has grown over the last year. We have more than doubled and we want to do that again. So thanks to everyone who has supported earmark and thanks to everyone who listens to this show and, you know, makes it possible. Oh, and thank you to the sponsors. Without our sponsors, we would not be able to do this or build earmark because, you know, that's how we pay ourselves. Yeah. While we build this cool startup.

David Leary: [01:10:25] So support our sponsors that support us.

Blake Oliver: [01:10:27] Yes. Please do. Thanks everyone, and we'll see you around here next week.