The Accounting Podcast

Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding!

Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] Dm research poll result, a survey that shows that 61% of Washington voters support a 9.9% millionaires tax on income over $1 million. 29% are opposed. 61% support it. And what's surprising here is that the support isn't just Democratic. A majority of self-identified Republicans 54% back it, too.

David Leary: [00:00:28] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:35] Hello, and welcome back to the Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:41] And I'm David Leary. And Blake, I have a confession for you today.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:46] A confession.

David Leary: [00:00:47] I sent you. So, as we've been one of our goals this year is we want to offer our employees health insurance. Mhm. But we want to survey our employees. And so I created a survey and I sent it to you yesterday and you replied back like looks great or something like that. I only spent maybe 3.5 minutes on it on the survey, and that's start to finish to where it's a full Google form survey that's done, done, ready to be sent to all the employees. And maybe think about your little chart, your, uh, the time it takes for AI to do something.

Blake Oliver: [00:01:16] Yeah. The the time horizon of the ability of AI to complete tasks with, like, high accuracy.

David Leary: [00:01:23] Yeah. And this was one of those things where I started with nothing, and I needed a result and end to end did everything for me. First, I tried to do it with, uh, ChatGPT. And ChatGPT created the survey for me because I said, hey, I want to offer health insurance to my employees. Can you help me create a survey to understand their needs before we go shopping for health insurance plans? It creates a survey. And then ChatGPT goes on to say, hey, would you like to, uh, turn this into a Google form? Of course I'd say yes. Well, then it did it, but it gave me all this code. Then it tells me like, go to Google Code and paste this code in and it just wasn't working. So I struggled for I wasted two minutes doing that. Then I said forget it. I went straight to Google Forms. Google forms has Gemini built in. I pasted the survey questions and answers from ChatGPT and it just built the Google form. I didn't have to do all that. You know, when you build a Google form, you got to like create the field, put the option, create the field, put the option. All that tedious work that takes like an hour. I didn't do any of it. So in like three minutes I built our employee health insurance survey end to end.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:29] That's amazing. Yeah, I've heard that Gemini has gotten really good. Google actually just launched this new feature called Personal Intelligence and it connects your Gmail, your photos, YouTube, and search into Gemini with one click. And then you can prompt Gemini, and it has access to all of that without you having to go tell it what to do. It'll go search through your photos. It'll go search through your Gmail. Chatgpt has something similar like that already. You can connect your workspace account and it'll search your your Gmail and your drive and it's just amazing. It's such a great feature. Like I recommend all of our listeners who have ChatGPT subscriptions give that a shot because it's just it's so great when you have a question about like a client or a project you're working on just to have it, go search your email history.

David Leary: [00:03:19] Well, beyond that, search all the company's documents to get the full picture of that client before you take the next step. Because yeah, once your firm gets big enough, you don't realize three other people also have relationships with that client have done something. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:03:32] So, David, um, let's thank our sponsors. And then I have a follow up to our, uh, your your discussion last week, our discussion last week about the IRS agents with guns, the defunding of the IRS. Um, who are our sponsors this week?

David Leary: [00:03:49] Sponsors. This week we have digits on pay UNC Kenan-flagler business school and tax bandits. Let's be honest, accounting software hasn't changed much in decades except for rising costs and declining service. Now there's finally a reason to switch and never look back. You can now do your bookkeeping on digits. Digits is AI native accounting software that works for you, not the other way around. While other platforms just slap ChatGPT on old workflows and call it AI, bookkeeping demands a more than a chatbot. It demands precision, auditability, and trust. Digits rebuilt ledger software from the ground up with probabilistic probabilistic categorization and human review prompts the result. Over 95% of transactions auto book with unmatched accuracy and 54% or better 54% better than ChatGPT style models, so you can close faster, stay in control, and finally stop wrestling with your accounting software. Low value clients are now high value for years. Four years worth of cleanups can now just take two hours. All while your clients get visually stunning reports, streamlined collaboration and insights they need to make better decisions. To see why hundreds of firms are making the switch to digital, head over to The Accounting Podcast. That is Accounting Today.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:08] Thank you. Digits. David. The IRS Advisory Council is blasting the defunding of the agency. They released their annual report on Wednesday, and they highlighted that more than half of the $80 billion that was allocated to the IRS under the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act has been rescinded. That's about 42 billion since 2023, including nearly all funding for enforcement. As part of this, the IRS has lost more than 25% of its workforce due to multiple reduction programs. The programs included the programs that help the IRS lose 25% of its employees included the Voluntary Early Retirement Authority, reductions in force and deferred resignation programs. Over 2000 IT workers have departed since January of 2025. The newest workers and probationary periods were ordered to be dismissed, and Doge itself also did several workforce reduction initiatives. The report emphasizes that more IRS employees will be needed to implement the One Big Beautiful Bill act, which includes more than 100 tax law changes, and as a result, the IRS has to issue new guidance. They have to prepare their workforce, they have to modify technology systems, they have to do process updates. And all of this has to occur among these budget cuts and the suspended technology investments. So how is tax season going to go this year? We don't know. Uh there's some data here on, um, on how firms feel from CPA Trendlines. They do their busy season barometer survey and they've just started it. They found that most firms feel about as ready as last year, but the readiness is very different depending on firm size, revenue mix, pricing, power, technology adoption, workflow design, staffing stability and client behavior. There's a lot of variability here. 44% of firms say that they feel about as ready as last year. A third say they are somewhat more ready or totally ready in about a fifth say they are less ready than this time in 2025. How does firm size correlate with this? Well, the larger firms, more than 25 professionals, they are reporting a more stable outlook. That's attributed to deeper staffing, more refined processes, establish calendars and workflows.

David Leary: [00:07:54] Or naivety of leaders to understand how their orgs really are. The state of their actual org.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:00] The people taking the survey. Perhaps smaller firms which are 1 to 10 employees. They have the most volatility, according to the survey, both the most optimism and the most anxiety and disruptions hit harder for them. Late documents absences compressed review cycles. When you have fewer people, you got less redundancy. When problems happen, it hurts more, and CPA Trendlines noted, based on the survey data, that the readiness isn't about effort, it's about whether implementation is finished and being used when it comes to processes. Here's something interesting the revenue mix makes a big difference. So this may come as no surprise, but tax prep heavy firms feel more exposed because their busy season experience depends on client.

David Leary: [00:08:52] Anything goes wrong. You're you have a it's going to impact your bottom line and your revenue and your your and.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:58] Your workload.

David Leary: [00:08:58] Your your accounting firm to be a continuing entity. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:03] The firms that have more recurring revenue, which could be bookkeeping or advisory or client accounting services, they report more stability because the work is spread out throughout the year. And client communication.

David Leary: [00:09:15] Difference in those two numbers.

Blake Oliver: [00:09:18] Uh, I don't know what the difference is, but that's that. Like, there's a big CPA Trendlines is saying there's a big difference. Big difference. So if you if you if you are a tax prep heavy firm and you want a, you want to be more confident going into tax season, do the bookkeeping work, get the documents throughout the year, and then you're less stressed out. Firms with higher revenue per client and stronger fee structures are more likely to feel prepared. Obviously, they can invest more in staff, tech and process when they've got more money. The higher volume, lower fee models are more vulnerable to bottlenecks. Technology. The firms that are feeling ready. They're using portals. They're using task tracking, communication automation. The less ready firms are dealing with manual workarounds. Limited automation, undertrained staff, poor integrations. A recurring theme is the difficulty getting everyone aligned and client conditioning, uh, making clients, making sure that clients understand their role. That's a big determinant of readiness as well. So clients, firms that have clients that are using portals that have deadlines, they feel more prepared. It's when the clients are late or inconsistent. You're waiting on work from them. That's when the firms feel uncertain because they don't know when they're going to get, uh, what they need.

David Leary: [00:10:41] And I imagine that's even that's worse. If you have a, a recurring relationship with them, month by month, quarter by quarter. That's the only way to really train your clients to be on the same timeline as you. If you if you're just a once a year, go to my portal and upload stuff. The odds of them doing it on the date you want are very, very low.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:01] So, David, I know that you have a story here today about something to do with like bar codes and tax returns. Yeah, like an act in Congress.

David Leary: [00:11:10] I feel like it's a pointless act, but I'll get into that. So the the House Ways and Means Committee unanimously advanced a bipartisan bill aimed at modernizing modernizing IRS paper tax return processing by using bar codes and scanning technology. The Bar Code Efficiency Act, and it's an acronym, uh Barcode Automation for Revenue Collection to organize disbursement and enhance efficiency. So it's literally like the acronym for that long.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:36] Bar code is okay barcodes acronym.

David Leary: [00:11:39] Um, so what it does, it does two things. One, it requires scannable barcodes on electronically prepared, but paper filed returns. And then it mandates the IRS to use barcode scanning and OCR unless slower or less, because it's the other way. It's why is this sentence so bad? Mandates IRS use of barcode scanning and OCR unless slower and less reliable. I don't just forget that. It's just requiring them to think. What they're saying is OCR.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:08] It's requiring the IRS to use barcodes unless for some reason that's slower than another method.

David Leary: [00:12:13] Yeah, it's yeah, it's kind of off. Now here's why this is pointless because the bill does not set a go hard live date. It directs the IRS to adopt barcode and OCR technology, quote unquote, as it becomes operationally feasible. So you cut the IRS budgets, you cut the people.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:35] Right?

David Leary: [00:12:35] And now you're going to tell them they must do this, but you don't give them a go live date to actually get it done. And you don't give them funding to do it. This is insane. It's pointless. It's a pointless bill.

Blake Oliver: [00:12:47] And it just seems like a strange use of technology. So we've got these returns that are prepared electronically in tax software, and they are printed to paper and then mailed to the IRS and the current system. The way it works right now is insane. Irs employees sit at keyboards and they manually type in all the data from the paper returns, even if the return was printed. Yeah. By software. And so I guess the idea with the barcodes is that the, the data, the numbers on the forms are now encoded in these barcodes that the IRS can just scan. So that would eliminate the manual data entry. But wouldn't it just be better to require the returns to be filed electronically in the first place?

David Leary: [00:13:36] Well, and that's what I'm wondering. So I'm trying to put this out to like the real world from the experience. I think in the past I've been too late to e-file with TurboTax and you print out your return. And then I got to go put it into an overnight envelope and get it postmarked in time. Right. But I feel like if I remember correctly in TurboTax it would print your return looking like a typical paper return, but it always had like a cover sheet that was like just the raw numbers. It was just like like in computer fonts.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:04] Yeah, yeah, the box number and the number exactly the value that goes in the box.

David Leary: [00:14:08] And my assumption is that page would just get scanned and utilized. So do we need a barcode if that information is already in a scannable page that's included with the return.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:18] Right. Why doesn't the IRS just have like a system for scanning the return and grabbing the numbers and putting it into the into their software, into their database? Why do you need barcodes? Yeah.

David Leary: [00:14:30] It's like. And then would any of this be necessary if they just had direct file. If people like like like like we're, we're we're over here saying don't do this, but do this. Even though you were working on the solution for this.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:42] Yeah.

David Leary: [00:14:43] It's insane.

Blake Oliver: [00:14:45] In the live stream says I disagree that the IRS needs funding to implement this. The federal government should go to complete electronic return filing, right? No need for bar code technology and putting in all this expensive hardware and scanners just require the tax returns to be filed electronically.

David Leary: [00:15:04] But they have stupid dogma like, oh, you can't upload, you can't e-file it. After this certain day, the E file servers are turned off. They have this dumb ways to not file it electronically. Sometimes you have to print it.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:16] David, I have a interesting, fascinating story about the IRS Criminal Investigations Unit.

David Leary: [00:15:24] I have one as well, so I'll let you go first.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:25] Okay. So did you did you follow this Brown University shooting?

David Leary: [00:15:30] I did not follow that. I have a completely different IRS criminal investigation story. So you go first on the brown one.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:36] So, um, there was this, like, this Brown University killer killed Two Brown University students and wounded nine others in Providence, and two days later they also killed an MIT professor at his home in Massachusetts. And so there was a manhunt, right? The, the the feds were trying to track this person down, and it was actually the IRS criminal Investigation unit that figured out where this person was. Um, so how did this work? How did financial how did the Criminal Investigations Unit do it? A Reddit user named John spotted the killer last name Valenti, acting suspiciously on Brown's campus, and posted about seeing him in a Nissan van with Florida plates. Irs, CIA agents then analyze financial records, while FBI agents and local law enforcement reviewed the surveillance footage. Valenti had used a European SIM card and technology designed to make him difficult to trace. So they were they were struggling to trace him through cell phone records.

David Leary: [00:16:45] Because historically, that's how they would triangulate. Somebody's location. Is the cell phone towers. Cell phone. Gotcha.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:50] Irs-ci discovered that Valenti had rented a storage facility where he was ultimately located. He killed himself as local law enforcement searched the storage facility. But it was the irs-ci unit that, um, that found him. Got him there tracking the money. That's how they did it.

David Leary: [00:17:11] This is good. So at least some parts of the IRS are still functional, regardless of cuts. I have a story that possibly is the result of cuts.

Blake Oliver: [00:17:20] I'm going to pause you, David. And first we're going to thank our next sponsor on pay. Are you tired of payroll headaches getting in the way of the client experience? You want to deliver manual workflows, creating bottlenecks, compliance nightmares, and endless support calls that go nowhere. There's a better way for your team and your clients. On pay is the payroll partner that accountants and bookkeepers actually love. Why? Because it's easy to use, packed with value and backed by support that actually supports you. Their team gets rave reviews for being fast, expert, and actually reachable when you need them. Onp handles the heavy lifting. You get a dedicated onboarding coordinator who sets up worker profiles and transfers year to date data from previous providers, all at no extra cost. Their seamless QuickBooks and Xero integrations eliminate manual journal entries, and they support any type of businesses you serve, which could be farms, restaurants, nonprofits, you name it. Omp can handle unique requirements without adding complexity, and on Pei keeps pricing simple to everything your clients expect from multi-state filing to off cycle pay runs is included. No hidden fees, no surprises. For a limited time, earn up to $10,000 when you switch clients to Onp, add three clients and run payroll by January 31st, 2026, and you'll get $1,000. Then earn $200 for each additional client. To book a demo. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That is Accounting Today promo. A.

David Leary: [00:18:53] Yep. So I don't know if you saw this come out. A former SBA and IRS employee has been charged with running a multiyear scheme that stole more than 3.5 million from federal Covid 19 relief programs.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:05] How much?

David Leary: [00:19:06] 3.5 million.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:08] One person. Wow. Okay.

David Leary: [00:19:09] One person. Uh, prosecutors. So this is a press release from the US Attorney's Office of Northern District of Georgia. Prosecutors say that Attila Williams exploited insider access at both agencies to approve fraudulent applications, recruiting application applicant accomplices through Instagram and paying kickbacks. So imagine this fraud went down. Here's the Instagram video. You could get your share of your Covid relief money, and then she gets a client, and then she goes in and approves the application. The application side and then gets a kickback from the client. Wow. And so this happened for roughly three years. Spanned multiple pandemic programs. It touched the loans paycheck PPP program, the Ido advance Grant grants, and then the employee retention credit. So she touched all the different pandemic fraud possibilities that touched all the programs. First, she obtained a job at the SBA, then later at the IRS, and used that insider access to approve the claims. Um, so really what this does, though, this exposed the lack of internal controls. Like, if one person can approve fraudulent pandemic fraud.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:20] And just go in and choose which ones to approve. Right.

Speaker3: [00:20:23] Where are the there's no controls.

David Leary: [00:20:25] At the federal level. And I know this ties back to the story last week. They're going after Minnesota when arguably the system was set up to and you could argue encourage fraudulent behavior. But maybe it's not so much that it could be more like Hanlon's Razor. The whole like don't attribute malice explained by incompetence.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:44] Here's one way the system could have prevented this, like an internal control could have prevented. This is randomly assign applications to reviewers, don't allow them to go in and pick and choose which ones to review and approve. But I guarantee you that wasn't part of the system because, like you said, a lot of these ancient systems that SBA, IRS are using, these government agencies are using don't have those internal controls or they've been disabled for convenience.

David Leary: [00:21:15] And did, uh, why didn't, um, Doge detect any of this? Right when they were doing all their efforts? Did they detect any frauds? Like, like it's amazing how this went on. And I mean, ultimately at the end, there's no you keep cutting everything. There's no internal controls to find this stuff. You've run out of bodies to do the work.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:36] Well, this is not an internal control, but this might help catch some more fraudsters. The IRS whistleblower office has introduced a digital version of form 211 application for Award for Original Information, which is the form that allows individuals to report tax compliance electronically rather than only by mail. Now. So it's the whistleblower form. You can you can file it electronically. You don't have to mail it in.

David Leary: [00:22:03] So I used to have to fill out a paper form to to Whistleblow.

Blake Oliver: [00:22:07] Yes. Uh, and it might be worth your time if you are aware of a fraud, because since 2007, the IRS whistleblower office has paid out more than 1.4 billion to whistleblowers and collected more than 7.86 billion based on whistleblower provided information. So they're given a good chunk of that money back to the whistleblowers for reporting it. Enhancing the taxpayer experience is one of the top priorities of the IRS Whistleblower Office, said Acting Whistleblower Office Director Eric Martinez. With the launch of the Digital Form 211, whistleblowers can easily share what they know with the IRS from their phone or laptop. Paper submissions via mail will still be accepted.

David Leary: [00:22:56] Assuming that somebody in charge is not just allowing some to get through and not other whistleblowing. Complaints to get through depends on the oversight of that, even that program.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:06] More IRS news. Britney Spears is fighting back against a $600,000 tax deficiency notice from the IRS for 2021 tax year. She's claiming that the agency made calculation errors on both her income and deductions. Spears argues the IRS incorrectly adjusted her share of income from Shiloh, Standing, a company that her father, Jamie Spears, established when her conservatorship began by almost $1.4 million, and she's also disputing an adjustment to her deductions totaling $334,000. The IRS assessed a penalty of $120,000, which Spears is also challenging. She has petitioned the court to rule that there is no deficiency in her original tax filing.

David Leary: [00:23:53] Did it say specifically where they had beefs of or they're just saying that this number was underreported and this number was overreported, or they giving examples?

Blake Oliver: [00:24:01] I don't have the details on that.

David Leary: [00:24:03] Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:04] Guess who supports a millionaires tax in Washington state, David. Republicans.

David Leary: [00:24:08] Republicans.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:09] Republicans. Yes. So I saw this in CPA Practice Advisor. It's a reprint of Danny Westneat article in the Seattle Times. And the headline number is this Dem research poll result, a survey that shows that 61% of Washington voters support a 9.9% millionaires tax on income over $1 million. 29% are opposed. 61% support it. And what's surprising here is that the support isn't just Democratic. A majority of self-identified Republicans 54% back it, too. So Republicans are 54% in favor and 40% opposed. And the margin of error is about 4.4%. So even if the poll is off, it still means that half of Republicans support this millionaire's tax. By party. Democrats 71% in favor the Republicans, as I said, 54%. Independents or other. Just over half, 52%. Back it. It's popular this tax 9.9% millionaires tax is popular across age, geography, education and income ranges. Now Here's what's interesting. If they lower the number to $100,000, then the support drops to 36% and Democrats swing from being strongly pro millionaires tax to net negative. So Republicans also go net negative. So basically voters across party lines support a millionaires tax, but they don't want to tax themselves.

David Leary: [00:25:58] I wonder what because we talked about the California billionaire tax last week. I wonder what the survey data is for that. Is it much. It's based on your your reporting here, Blake. It seems like the higher they go after millionaire or billionaire, more people agree. It's okay. That's that's the direction of the data. But I wish there was a survey about the California.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:18] The big difference here is that I'm seeing is that, like, over the last few decades, we have seen the Republicans move from being an anti-tax across income brackets party to supporting taxes on the wealthy. And so now we have broad bipartisan support for taxing the wealthy, which I never thought I would see the Republican Party move that direction. But it shows just how much the party has changed under Trump when it comes to this matter. Tax the rich. But what's interesting is that doesn't happen under the Republican Party, under Trump, that hasn't happened. So let's talk about one more tax story before we move on. And this is this is a this is a great podcast episode that I heard, uh, the disruptors podcast at CPA Trendlines puts out. It's an interview with Brenda Cannon, who's the co-founder of Cannon and Associates. And the title of the episode is busy season is Self inflicted, self inflicted. We do it to ourselves. And basically the the interview is View is about a core innovation that Brenda Cannon made in her tax practice, which is based in Oklahoma. She was listening to Jason Stats back in 2022 and heard about this concept of scheduling tax returns.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:45] So instead of just letting all the work come in and then doing the work and trying to get it out on time, you you schedule when you're going to do the returns for each of your clients. And she implemented it. And I wanted to explain how it works based on this interview. It's great episode. Go check it out CPA Trendlines podcast. So the way it works, according to Brenda, is that clients get a calendar calendar link. Um, it was originally done with Calendly and Airtable, but now she uses scheduling software to do it. And there are eight appointment slots per day Monday through Thursday, so eight appointments available, uh, four days a week. Fridays she reserves for internal admin work in the firm. There are no slots available for the week. Three weeks before April 15th, that's reserved for extensions, and clients are required to submit all the documents on their chosen date. A team member reviews submissions the next day to identify missing items, and clients who don't schedule by the year end are marked inactive. So every client has a deadline individual deadline for when they have to submit their information.

David Leary: [00:28:59] Deadline the client sets themselves. So I'm trying to like I'm trying to put myself I just get these emails. It says upload your documents by this day, upload your documents by this day. Instead, I can say I'm going to be busy. I can upload them on January 22nd.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:13] Yes. And what I like about that is the choice. If I'm the client, I would feel better choosing my own deadline than being told I have to have everything in by this date.

David Leary: [00:29:24] And then you have the power as a firm if they don't do it like you chose the deadline, why didn't you upload it?

Blake Oliver: [00:29:29] And that means you're getting an extension. So clients no longer you no longer have clients complaining about you extending them because they basically chose to miss their self-imposed deadline. And no. Now as a result, they're getting the extension and the the impact has been great. Uh, being caught up every Friday. It removes the psychological burden. There's higher quality because there's fewer mistakes. Nobody wants you to work at their return at 2:00 in the morning. You're not doing that anymore. The preparers don't have to pick up and put down returns waiting for missing documents. And this is important. Somebody at the firm is going through and making sure that all the documents are there before anyone starts the return. The firm knows exactly how many clients they can accept because they've they've got their capacity planned out on their calendar. Only about 5% of clients left after implementing the new system. So that's pretty great, right? Massive improvement, very little client attrition.

David Leary: [00:30:32] And basically you're just calendar blocking out. You're busy. You're busy season right. You're the compression. That's the word I want to say. The compression is not there. You're just spreading it out.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:42] Um, uh, welcome to our live stream, viewers. If you have not joined us live, go to YouTube, type in the The Accounting Podcast. Subscribe. Hit that notification button. You'll get notified when we go live. You can join us and chat with us. Don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education credits for listening to this show and many other entertaining and educational accounting and tax podcasts. Audit podcasts as well. Go to earmark app. Sign up for free, create your free account. Earn one CPE for free every week. You can also download the app on the App Store or Google Play Store. And now let's thank our next sponsor, UNC. See. Let's face it, the job market is especially tough right now, but every industry needs accountants and accountants are always in demand. In fact, employment for accountants is projected to grow 10% through 2026 faster than most other professions. That's where uncW Kenan-flagler Master of Accounting program comes in. It's one of the top ranked Macc programs in the country, with 98% of students accepting a job offer within three months of graduation and earning more than those with just a bachelor's degree. If you're currently working full time raising children, serving in the armed forces, or living halfway around the world, they're highly flexible. Macc program can also fit your lifestyle. You can choose their 12 month on campus program or their online only option, where you have up to 36 months to complete your degree. Plus, you'll join the powerful 46,000 strong UNC Kenan-flagler alumni network connections that will serve you throughout your career. If you want to set yourself up for a lifelong career, pick the Macc program with proven ROI to see why you should get your master's in accounting at the UNC Kenan-flagler Business School. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast.

David Leary: [00:32:38] I think I have a funny story ish. Not funny, I guess. Um, so New Years Eve, I somehow got a little, uh, bout of pinkeye, and I was trying to, like, do, uh, you know, it's New Year's Eve, there's no doctor's offices open, there's no urgent care is open. But I was like, hey, there's a CVS by the hotel. So I'm in the car. And first I try to do what's that stuff? Teladoc. And it was.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:59] Yeah, the telehealth.

David Leary: [00:33:00] I'm just waiting on hold because none of the doctors are working on Teladoc either. So I couldn't do it. So I was like, well, why don't I just have ChatGPT draw me a prescription for an eye drop? So then I get this argument, because the GPT programs refuse to do it. Apparently they're they're they're restricted. They cannot create a prescription. Right. But after that we came home. I did see this article last week. Ai can now prescribe drugs in Utah.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:27] What?

David Leary: [00:33:28] So Utah has become the first state to allow artificial intelligence to refill certain prescription drugs, and the result of this pilot could influence how all AI powered healthcare is regulated nationwide.

Blake Oliver: [00:33:41] Okay, so they're not actually prescribing the drugs. They're just refilling just refills.

David Leary: [00:33:45] Yes. Okay. So the pilot program began last month under Utah's Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy. They're using a New York based startup called Doc Tronic. And the AI can, like you just said, can only refill prescriptions. The initial prescription must still come from a human doctor. But what's interesting about this, that caught my eye and how this rolls down is they have rules on who can and cannot create prescriptions. For example, an independent pharmacist is not allowed to create a prescription. So the trained professional is not allowed to create a prescription, but if your pharmacist is rolled up into what they call is a proactive or collaborative practice agreement acronym CPA, you are then allowed. If you're a pharmacist, part of this bigger agreement, you're allowed to create prescriptions. So on one hand they they owe you the professional are not allowed to do this. But we're going to let AI do this. And so what's next. Oh you're not allowed to represent somebody in court. Only AI is going to do it. Is this going to roll into other professions where decisions are going to be like, only AI can do this, but we're not going to let you, the professional, do this.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:57] I don't know, I guess it depends on how much the public trusts these professions. And I've got a story here about how trust in accountants is at historic lows. We're not alone. Trust in many professions has been dropping. This is from a Gallup poll. Gallup has been doing this poll since. I think it's like 1976. Yep. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:35:26] It's always like a category on Family Feud. Like who are the most. And it's always like tow truck drivers are number one or number two, right. Who the most untrustworthy professionals are.

Blake Oliver: [00:35:36] Tow truck drivers don't show up on this list, and I'm not sure that we'd necessarily classify them as a profession, but accountants are not at the top. We're number. Well, we're in the top ten. We're number seven. So, uh, according to the latest edition of this poll, the 2025 Gallup poll for honesty and ethics ratings by occupation, nurses have the highest rating. 75% of respondents say that they are very high or high trust. Then it's military veterans. At 67 medical doctors, 57% of people, over half say that they have very high or high trust in them. Pharmacist David, we were just talking about pharmacists 53%, high school teachers half at 50%. And then it starts to drop. We've got police officers 37%, accountants. We show up number seven on this list at 35%. And then it's funeral directors, journalists and labor union leaders.

David Leary: [00:36:39] Death and taxes. Right there, side by side. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:42] I mean, to me, this is just more evidence that accounting must be considered a profession. Over at the Department of Education, where they're trying to say it's not because here we are, we're we're, you know, we're right behind doctors. Not far. Well, I guess 57 versus 35, but, hey, we're way ahead of the lawyers who don't even show up on this list. And they're considered professionals. Now, how does this compare to where we have been in the past? This is where it gets to be a little worrying, because Gallup says that accountants are statistically close to our lowest point since the series began in 1976, which indicates this is a downward drift over time rather than just a one year blip. Historically, we've been closer to the 40% range in the early years of this survey, and now we're down at 35%. So I'm wondering what is the cause of this? Why has the count drifted downward?

David Leary: [00:37:46] I'm wondering the same thing. I hope you have an answer. Or maybe one of our listeners that's attending the live stream can put an answer.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:52] Well, you know, the CPA Trendlines analysis of this, the author suggests that it's that people view accountants as comparatively ethical versus other professions, but they don't really understand what CPAs and auditors do. So there's this misunderstanding with the public that auditors are supposed to find fraud, and that is not our job. And so whenever there is a massive fraud, Worldcom, Enron, etc., trust drops and it never quite recovers to where it's stereotypical.

David Leary: [00:38:27] Like the billionaires have really good accountants that help them get around the tax loopholes. You know, it's a question the general public could see that, yeah, that's questionable behavior.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:39] And, you know, this is part of a bigger shift. It's not just accounting. All professions are facing this. There's a broader environment of declining trust. And so the baseline of credibility is dropping among professions and the distance between us and the lower rated business uh, roles jobs is is narrowing here.

David Leary: [00:38:59] We got a nice comment here from somebody that said, it's basically because the TikTok finance influencer memes on how to get out of paying taxes. So it's the influencers that are making giving accountants a bad name. We need to get them banned.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:13] All right. I want to read some listener mail. David. May we pivot over to that?

David Leary: [00:39:20] Go to town.

Blake Oliver: [00:39:21] Okay, so this is from Morgan. No, actually, let's do Jana. By the way, if you want to write to us, send us an email. Uh, the accounting podcast at earmarks. That's the accounting podcast earmarked me. David and I read every email. Although sometimes we take a while to get back to you. We read them all. Jana said, I just listened to the January 5th, 2026 episode from about the 50 minute mark through the next two minutes, Blake and David discuss the industry push to focus solely on advisory, and instead how a firm should insist on doing the bookkeeping to make sure advisory is useful and doesn't take a ton of time getting the numbers right. The optimal strategy they describe of insisting on doing the bookkeeping work, along with tax and advisory services offerings, is what we are actually doing and I can say it works. They described our business strategy so closely that I went back and listened to that part of the podcast to make sure I heard it right. We make a comfortable living, spread our work out during the year, and the work we do is actually helpful for our clients. We deliver useful financial reports, keep up with all aspects of compliance, and make sure we walk with our clients through their business journeys. We do it for very few. We just do it for very few clients. I hope to see more accounting firms making this transition. I think it is the future, and I was glad to hear Blake and David's take on this strategy. Also, I've enjoyed listening to the show. It's very useful as an accounting professional and is also entertaining. Thanks.

David Leary: [00:40:54] That's a great email because it touches on two of the stories you covered, which was the readiness of firms, but some of the data, and that is exactly what she's doing with her firm. And then the other story, the Disruptors podcast, talking about spreading out the work.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:08] Scheduling.

David Leary: [00:41:08] Email summarizes the show perfectly.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:12] Here's another message that came in from Morgan. Morgan said Blake and David, thanks for having this show. I listen to it regularly. I was wondering if you know the popular opinion in the accounting industry of these 100% online accredited college degrees and what are your opinions? My job offers a 4500 stipend per year for any pre-approved colleges. I am definitely enjoying accounting right now and I figured why not get a degree? This online accelerated option is the most affordable, and I can avoid spending any of my income on college costs by using to by taking one semester per year. This college's semesters are six months, and you can take as many classes as you want, and it is competency based. That means if you already know the info and can pass the assessment, then you don't need to do the coursework. Many people complete several classes per semester this way and save a lot of money in extreme cases. I've heard of people getting an accounting degree with just two semesters. Is this a respectable degree? Is there a stigma within the accounting industry if I put this college on my resume, will that hurt me? For the record, I work at a warehouse with good benefits. My credentials include a master's in music performance, but I'm not good enough to compete, so that's not a career option. I also have a lot of Cashiering experience. All right, so, Morgan, I'll just give you my experience as another, uh, music performance major. I got my bachelor's in music, and then I wanted to I decided to become a CPA, and so I enrolled in basically the most affordable, convenient option I could, which was mostly online. I did Santa Monica College online to get my basic credits, and then I did a certificate in accounting at UCLA extension. And to answer your question about, is this a respectable degree or is there a stigma? My feeling is that unless you're trying to go to a big brand name firm like a Big Four, it really doesn't matter, especially if you're a career changer. Once you have your CPA, nobody cares.

David Leary: [00:43:13] Nobody cares.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:14] In my in my experience, where you know, when you're talking about like you're at a small firm regional firm going to work in industry at like a main Street type business, you know, you're not on Wall Street or whatever. Like, I don't think that people care. And I think in fact, um, it can actually be to your advantage to demonstrate that you are savvy and you didn't waste money on a degree that you didn't need. That's just my take. I would be really interested to hear what our live viewers think about these online degree options, where you can get it really fast.

David Leary: [00:43:48] And I think like they're legit. It's like Western Governors University, right? Is that the.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:52] That might be the one that Morgan's talking about. It sounds a lot like it.

David Leary: [00:43:55] Not like that. And then we even had somebody on the show. I was trying to see if it was your podcast on your podcast, but they might have been a guest on the accounting podcast somebody did in 18 months. They got their bachelor's and their masters and their CPA, and he did it through one of these programs. I just I can't find the episode. I wanted to put it in the.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:14] Yeah. So that episode, um, is it's one with Kenneth. And it was actually we did this on the earmark or on on this show, and it's Kenneth with a Y. Uh, no. Isn't it Kenneth? Uh, I'm going to find the episode number right here. Yeah, here it is. Okay. It's it's a bonus episode, so it doesn't have a number. It was September 19th, 2024. It's called how Kenneth got his CPA credits. In three months and 36 days. I'm going to put the link to the episode in the chat.

David Leary: [00:44:49] Perfect.

Blake Oliver: [00:44:50] And it's about, um, it's an interview that you and I did with Kenneth, and he shared how he got his bachelor's and master's degrees in just four months through Western Governors University. And he did it because they have the competency, competency based model. So you can challenge a course and just take the exam and get credit, and you don't have to sit through all the coursework. So he was able to do his bachelor's and master's in four months. And all four CPAs exams within six months. So like in a year. That's incredible. And he just had to go get his work experience.

David Leary: [00:45:25] And I guarantee you that doesn't make him any less of an accountant in any way, shape or form.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:29] No. You know, that brings up this other story I've had in my backlog for a while. David on Accounting Today. It's called the CPA exam. Failing is part of the journey, and it's a round up of experiences people have had with the CPA exam and an analysis of pass rates.

David Leary: [00:45:49] Can I ask you, did you fail any of the sections have to retake them. No not you're you're you're you're Uber nerd. You nailed it I know. Well, it's a stupid question.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:58] Uh, I know I passed them all on the first try, and I did it because I spent like a, I don't know, a decade of my life learning how to take and pass standardized tests because I wanted to go to an elite university. Right. And that's one of the ways you do it. And I don't know, I'm a good test taker. Okay. Um, and but like, a lot of people have trouble passing the CPA exam because they never really focused on that in school. And the CPA exam is, like, extraordinarily difficult because it's like so much material. You have to study every night and you have to be extremely diligent and focused. But if you do it.

David Leary: [00:46:41] Just the stress in the, um, the emotional toll, it could you could psych yourself out. Which makes it even extra difficult.

Blake Oliver: [00:46:49] It's it's like a, um, I mean, the amount of time it takes, right? The amount of the amount of grit it takes, it's it's very difficult because it's going to take you at least six months, if not a year, doing them all one at a time, right? Going through every few months. So you've got to like, study really hard every day for. I would do an hour or two every day without stopping for as long as it took me to pass, and I don't remember exactly, but I did it in under a year, and that's really hard for a lot of people, because we don't learn often how to do that in school, like somebody has to teach you how to be disciplined in that way. And actually, it was my music degree that taught me that. I learned how to sit in a practice room for as much as six hours a day practicing. And if you can do that and learn how to play sonatas and concertos and chamber music and and all that Bach cello suites, then, you know, sitting there and grinding away, learning the CPA exam is actually relatively easy and.

David Leary: [00:47:55] Easy.

Blake Oliver: [00:47:55] In a way. Right? Because there's not the physical component of the exhaustion of playing an instrument, but there's the mental stress. But, you know, I wanted to highlight the pass rates. So the 2024 pass rates. Audit and attestation 46%. Financial accounting and Reporting 41%. Taxation and regulation 62%. And then there's the new discipline sections. Those three different ones. They have different rates. Business analysis and reporting 41%, information systems and controls 63%. And tax compliance and planning 76%. So no section gets more than 76%. And a lot of them are like below three of them are below 50%. That's hard. That's a that's a that's a difficult exam. Um, and one concept I wanted to highlight in the article and I want to challenge is this, this this idea, it's in the title. Failing is part of the journey. And I hear this so often, you know, um, leaders at big accounting firms talking about how they failed a section so many times. And and it's almost like remembering it fondly, which I'm sure wasn't the case when it was happening, that it was like awful when it's happening to think, oh, I failed this part of the exam. And now I got to spend months studying again and take it.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:22] And I have been reflecting on this idea that failing is part of the journey for a while, because I didn't. And I think actually it's one of the things that we need to change as a profession. It's a mindset shift we need to make. We need to stop thinking that this is the way to filter CPAs, because the hardest part of the exam, it's not the material. The material is, is to be honest, to be fair, right? Comparing it to other exams I've taken like GMAT, um, the graduate school tests, like S.A.T., like AP courses even. It's not. It's not that difficult. Okay? We're not doing like advanced math. You know, we're we're doing algebra. Uh, we're adding, subtracting, dividing and multiplying. There's maybe a tiny little bit of statistics in there. Maybe it's not complicated stuff. It's just a lot of memorization and it's a real grind. And I think actually the reason it is that way is because that is what it used to take to succeed in accounting. In order to succeed in public accounting, you had to grind. You had to be able to go in there and work 60, 70, 80 hour weeks and not complain and survive.

David Leary: [00:50:44] So if you could get through that to pass the test, you were a good personality fit for the work you're going to do at firms, right?

Blake Oliver: [00:50:51] So the CPA exam, by being difficult in this way, was filtering for the type of people that could grind in the firm. The exam is a grind and public accounting is a grind. And so they lined up. It made sense. But I don't think that's how we should be filtering for CPAs anymore because the grind is going away. We don't need accountants to come in and do a bunch of boring, manual, tedious work that takes a lot of attention but is really not that intellectually stimulating.

David Leary: [00:51:27] And we don't need to do that doesn't make sense, because you have all these AI tools where you can just they have all the knowledge. You don't need to memorize things.

Blake Oliver: [00:51:34] Exactly. So as a profession, we made this change to the exam where we swapped out one of the four sections for like an optional choose your own adventure type of section. And that was our way to modernize it. But I think it needs to be bigger than that. The actual exam is still really testing grit more than it's testing knowledge. It's testing the ability to memorize and Eyes and retain large amounts of information. It's not testing the ability to analyze, understand, comprehend or direct the work of AI agents that are going to do all this kind of work, and we don't need to memorize so much anymore. We need to understand concepts. So I would actually like I would actually shorten the exam. I would make it much more. I would make it completely different. You don't need to memorize all these rules. You don't need to memorize like GAAP. You need to understand the concepts. But like all those details, we can go look it up. We don't have to. We don't have to go like waste time going to a library to look it up. That's when it made sense to memorize all this stuff, because going and looking it up would take too much time. But now it's easy to go look it up. So we should be focusing on other things. That's just my take on the exam.

David Leary: [00:52:54] So. So even if the powers that be agree with you, Blake. It'll be a decade before they change that. That's just the timeline of how it changes in this industry. So I want.

Blake Oliver: [00:53:05] To thank our sponsor of this episode, David. And that is Tax Bandits. If you're feeling the pressure of juggling 1099 W-2s and ACA 1095 forms, listen up. Tax Bandits is the solution you've been waiting for. They've got over a decade of experience and support 100 plus tax forms, including everything from your 94 series to those tricky state filings. Tax bandits handles both federal and state e-filing seamlessly. So your set no matter how many states your clients operate in Tax bandits is IRS certified, meaning they offer instant processing of your forms and provide real time status updates, ensuring accuracy and eliminating the risk of Be notices. For additional peace of mind, Tax Bandits goes a step further with ten matching USPS address validation and the Bandit Commitment, their promise to stand behind your filings. This commitment includes free retransmissions for rejected returns, no cost corrections for accepted forms, and a money back guarantee if a form can't be accepted or is a duplicate, ensuring your filings stay accurate, compliant and stress free from start to finish. Plus, delivering recipient copies is a breeze. Go with traditional postal mail or give clients online access to their forms. It's all about flexibility. As an accounting professional, you'll love Tax Bandit Pro's features like a secure client portal, team management tools, and full branding customization. Everything you need to streamline your workflow and provide top tier service. And when it's late, you're tired and you need a helping hand tax Bandit support team is actually there via phone, email, or live chat whenever you need them. If you're ready to take control of tax season and join thousands of tax professionals who trust tax bandits, head over to The Accounting Podcast bandits. That's The Accounting Podcast promo. I.

David Leary: [00:54:58] Have a story, I want to catch that. I think I've teased once or twice and we never actually get to it. But the concept of the story is basically you'll spend as much time managing your AI agents as the humans you managed. So you think about your manager at a firm. You're going to replace some staff with AI. You're you're not going to get the savings as the manager. You're going to still use the same amount of time. So are you familiar with Sastre?

Blake Oliver: [00:55:21] Yeah. Um, remind me, though, what they do.

David Leary: [00:55:25] Yeah, it's a community event blog site with discussions for SaaS founders.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:30] For software.

David Leary: [00:55:31] Software.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:31] Software startup founders.

David Leary: [00:55:32] Startup founders.

Blake Oliver: [00:55:33] Yeah, yeah, yeah. They do metrics too. Like what exactly they can tell you. Like what should my growth rate be or what should my LTV ratio be, that sort of thing.

David Leary: [00:55:42] And at some level, SaaS a SaaS business of its own, right. And their founder, Jason Lemkin, every time he has a learning, he tends to blog about it or share it on the site. Which makes sense, right? So in a recent post, he argues that deploying AI agents doesn't eliminate management work. It simply replaces people management with a different, more cognitively demanding kind of oversight. So at Sastre, where the roughly 60% of the team is now AI agents deliver massive productivity gains but still require about the same weekly management time as humans. But it's a different trade off. So the trade off is fewer emotional demands but higher mental load. And then you also get dramatically more output per hour managed. So if you're looking as a firm owner, you're going to roll out AI. You might have the same amount of work as the person rolling this out. It's not going to it's not going to help you. But in theory you should be getting this huge productivity boost. Boost downstream in your firm from doing this. Um, and think about it. The AI agents, they have high cognitive load. They can work 160 hours, eight hours a week. They're never going to quit. There's no drama versus humans where you're going to get that emotional labor, limited hours, you're going to have attrition. Um, the big mistake, he says, is to you can't treat AI as a set it and forget it. You have to have daily management of AI, daily management of it.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:10] And, you know, that's why I really like this new Zapier feature they've introduced, which is the human in the loop step. So you can now in any of your workflows, implement like a human in the loop where you can have a message go out to a person with the AI output for them to review and approve or edit before it goes into the rest of the workflow. And I can't wait to try that with ours, because I feel like right now we've designed these CPE course writing AI workflows where it all just happens, right? The whole course is generated from a transcript, and then only at the end do we do the human review. But what if we could insert the human review before we do other stuff.

David Leary: [00:57:52] Gets off the rails, because when it gets off the rails, it gets off the rails.

Blake Oliver: [00:57:55] And that's what you have to manage. Is that, like, the AI will make these small mistakes that compound into big mistakes. Humans do this too. If you don't have proper oversight of people, then they're just doing their particular task. Then small errors can compound into disasters. So it's really fascinating to me how like the management of artificial intelligence is actually not that different than the management of people. And I imagine that's because the way that AI works is very similar to how the human brain works, with a few big differences. Llms and the human brain. Human brain is a neural network. An LLM is basically a simulated neural network. And so a lot of the same principles apply, and we aren't able to get away from management and oversight. So that job will always be there.

David Leary: [00:58:52] But this will. But the the difference is now management is somewhat more valuable because the output of our companies are going to receive is going to be four x. What it used to be like. You could argue managers weren't very valuable before because they didn't affect productivity that much.

Blake Oliver: [00:59:08] David, before we go, I want to highlight a comment here on YouTube from fairly stated, fairly stated says I am a PhD student and working on a similar paper about AI and mental bandwidth in the audit world. Have any burning questions you think would make a good paper? That's an interesting question. Mental bandwidth in the audit world. So this is just a thought, not necessarily a question, but I do wonder how AI is going to affect managers, directors and partners because we can have the AI doing all the grunt work. Right. But there's like you said, David, there's a lot of energy required to oversee to evaluate the work that the AI is doing, which it can't do itself. Ai is not conscious. It can't really it can't evaluate the work like a human can. And so it it pushes the mental load up from the staff to the managers, because we used to train the staff to learn how to like do this. Like the quality used.

David Leary: [01:00:16] To bear that weight.

Blake Oliver: [01:00:18] Yeah.

David Leary: [01:00:18] The seniors I got to get this right. I got to get this right. The grunts and the senior staff and the managers did it. But now the managers are going to have to bear that weight, right?

Blake Oliver: [01:00:25] Because the managers could trust their seniors had learned how to, like, review the work, to supervise the work. And so they didn't have to review everything.

David Leary: [01:00:35] But yeah, because I could get to that point where I'm like, Blake's on top of his shit. He's not going to make mistake. I trust Blake, but can you ever get to that point with the AI, or do you always have to review it?

Blake Oliver: [01:00:44] Well, and that's the thing is, you can get to it with like, tiny little tasks, the 5 to 10 minute tasks that we can say AI can do with 99.9% accuracy. But tasks that take an hour or two, the accuracy drops to 80% or less 50% even. And so then you have to review it all. And then trying to tell what's what's right versus what's wrong. I mean, that's a lot of work. Like it's a lot of mental energy required to sort through AI work slop. And so that's why it's creating so much review work. And so yeah, I think that I don't know, managers like I have a theory, right, that like life is going to get harder for managers in public accounting because they're going to be what's in between the AI doing all this work and the partner, and they have to somehow do that quality control, and they can no longer just trust that they've got the good people that are making sure that these work papers are right. You know, like the sign offs. Right. I, I know that David does good work. I can trust his work papers because I've checked enough of them. I'm going to just sign off on this one without really looking at it. Can't do that with AI.

David Leary: [01:01:54] Now you have to look at every single output.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:56] How could you do it? Maybe you could have, like an AI reviewer that looks at the work of the AI preparer and then gives a confidence score, and then you could review like a portion of that. I guess maybe it'll just really change how we do quality control. That could be it. I'm really curious, so fairly stated. I'd love to see your paper.

David Leary: [01:02:15] Your paper when it's done. Yeah, please.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:18] Alison says managers equal new entry level question mark. Can't get experience to manager without entry level. Entry has been absorbed by bots and offshore. How do you get new managers. Great question. I don't think we know. I think they're going to have to come from industry if we're not developing them in public accounting. And so that's going to change the whole career trajectory of public accounting. But it's also going to change the culture at these firms. Because if you're in industry And public health is trying to recruit you. You're not going to go back to work the crazy hours once you've got the work life balance in industry. So the public accounting firms are going to have to figure this out. They're not going to be able to like the people won't drink the Kool-Aid when they've had a break from drinking the Kool-Aid. Right. Like you leave after three years, you stop drinking the Kool-Aid and then you develop the experience. Now, to go back and be a manager or a director, you're not going to want to drink the Kool-Aid again.

David Leary: [01:03:16] True.

Blake Oliver: [01:03:17] All right, David, awesome. Great talking to you as always. Thanks everyone who tuned in live. Thanks everyone who tuned in on the podcast. Get free CPE with earmark. Go to earmark app. Create your free account. Earn one free CPE a week. Get that requirement done early in the year so you don't have to stress at the end. And if you want to support our work, subscribe for the low, low price of $170 per year. We had amazing growth last year. I was like, I'm putting together our numbers for 2025, and I can't quite say with certainty exactly what it is yet, because I'm still checking them all. But I think, like individual subscriber growth was over 80%. Really awesome job to the earmark team. And thank you to everyone who subscribed like users off the charts, 25,000 people now using the earmark app.

David Leary: [01:04:05] I think we're about to break our 200th completed CPE certificate or credit or.

Blake Oliver: [01:04:09] 200,000.

David Leary: [01:04:10] 200,000. Sorry, 200, 200,000.

Blake Oliver: [01:04:12] We have issued now nearly 200,000 CPE certificates. That's like if you value a CPA certificate at ten bucks, that's like $2 million of value. We're providing the world and it's worth far more, uh, in many cases. So millions of dollars of value delivered to our users, um, and someday to our shareholders. All right. We'll see you around here, everybody. Thanks for joining us. Catch you next time.