The Accounting Podcast

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Blake Oliver: [00:00:04] Only 37% of US tax filers say they'd consider using AI to file instead of hiring a tax professional. Now, 37% sounds like a lot, but that's actually down from 43% in 2025. So taxpayers have lost trust in AI.

David Leary: [00:00:21] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:29] Hello and welcome back to The Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver.

David Leary: [00:00:36] And I'm David Leary.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:37] Breaking news David, the Supreme Court has struck down Trump's global tariffs in a 6 to 3 decision.

David Leary: [00:00:46] His his stacked Supreme Court shut this down.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:49] That's right.

David Leary: [00:00:49] Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:00:50] No surprise to me though. We have on the show talked about this many times. I went back and looked at our transcripts and at least three episodes. We talked about Trump's tariffs, and I always felt that the Supreme Court would ultimately strike them down as overreach. The executive are taking more than his fair share of power in our government, because it is Congress that has the power to levy taxes. And that's exactly what they decided in this decision that came out. Uh, I guess it was yesterday published today, breaking news. This Friday, February 20th, the Supreme Court held that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act does not authorize the president to set or modify tariffs, which are a form of taxation on imports. Tariffs are taxes. The Constitution vests the power to impose taxes and tariffs exclusively in Congress in the legislative branch, not the executive branch. Chief Justice Roberts wrote for the majority and emphasized that the act's text contains no explicit reference to tariffs or duties, and can't reasonably be interpreted to grant such authority. And using the major Questions doctrine, he and the majority ruled that sweeping economic measures like tariffs require clear statutory authorization from Congress. The emergency powers doesn't meet that standard, and it was a coalition of conservative and liberal justices that came to this consensus, this majority decision.

David Leary: [00:02:30] And this is speaking as of two hours ago. It's fairly quick this morning. It happened this morning.

Blake Oliver: [00:02:35] This morning. Yeah. Um, Justices Thomas and Kavanaugh dissented. They argued that tariffs are a traditional tool of import regulation, and that there are other statutory authorities beyond the EPA that could justify the tariffs, even if the EPA was the wrong vehicle in this case. And now the big question is who's going to get a refund? Because so far, the administration has collected something like $133 billion in tariffs. And so I'm curious how many of these small businesses, midsize businesses, big businesses are going to go for refunds. And that's not quite clear how that's going to happen. The court invalidated the tariffs, but they didn't lay out a refund mechanism or order the Treasury or CBP to cut checks across the board. So that decision, how that's going to happen, is going to be left to the lower courts and customs procedures.

David Leary: [00:03:40] Because Trump, in the typical Trump blurt, where he just says everybody's going to get $2,000 because of this, that's probably not accurate, but it would make sense for if you're a small business to use, submit documentation of what you paid, and maybe you get a percentage of that back. I paid $1,000 in tariffs. I should get $900 back or something like that. That could make sense.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:00] So who's going to get the refund? Potentially it's the importer of record. That's the party that paid the duties to the CBP, the Customs and Border Protection Agency. So that's the party that can claim the refund. And the importer, even if they passed the cost along in pricing and contracts, is going to get that money back. So that's that's a big deal. That's pure profit. Straight to the bottom line for these companies that paid those tariffs.

David Leary: [00:04:31] Okay. So I just want to follow the logic on this. I'm the importer of record. I go to pick up my freight from the dock. I have to pay $1,000. Right then. Right. Correct. To get that. So I paid $1,000. Now, eight months later, there's going to be some sort of tax form, and I'm going to get that $900 back.

Blake Oliver: [00:04:51] Well, $1,000 potentially so.

David Leary: [00:04:55] So was any money really actually collected at all?

Blake Oliver: [00:04:57] Well, no. If it gets refunded, like, this is all. It's all.

David Leary: [00:05:00] Oh this is the oh this is going to be a refund. Not like not okay. Now I follow this. This is uh, the rulings going to this is we're talking refunds not rebates from having the overage. Okay.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:11] So $133 billion that US businesses have paid to the federal government could be refunded.

David Leary: [00:05:20] So I like the word reversed better than refunded because refunding confuses me with taxes and refunds and all that, but it'll be reversed essentially.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:29] So I was curious is this a big opportunity for accounting firms? Irc uh, what was the other one? All that stuff that all that COVID stuff.

David Leary: [00:05:41] The stimulus is happen. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:05:43] It's like accounting firms are really well positioned to help clients get money. Free money. And essentially, this is free money. I mean, in the form of refunds to those who already paid it. And so I think there's a big opportunity, I think, that smart accountants are going to jump on this. The midsize firms, in particular in the United States, could stand to earn huge fees helping clients reclaim the tariffs they've paid.

David Leary: [00:06:13] And you should do it because just like the ERC mills and the PPP Mills just popped up everywhere, there's going to be tariff refund mills that pop up in your clients. So beat them to the punch.

Blake Oliver: [00:06:23] We should start a company, David. That just helps businesses get their tariff money back. What do clients need in order to claim these refunds? It's going to be, uh, affected entries by the importer of record, identifying that, determining the liquidation status. Quantifying the refund exposure. Supporting protests. Administrative claims litigation, reconciling tariff payments to financial statements. So the firms that do a lot of trade compliance, international stuff salt. International tax practices they're they're ready. I mean that would be that would be those would be the teams that know this stuff already. Firms with strong data teams that can process these data sets bring in I mean this is a lot of tariffs, right? If you've been importing for months and months and paying these tariffs, you got to figure out how to claim the refund. You got to support it.

David Leary: [00:07:21] And hopefully you have if you already pay attention to your clients and you're doing the bookkeeping for your clients, you know these numbers already. You have this data.

Blake Oliver: [00:07:30] A lot of opportunity for fixed fee project work, hourly advisory work, maybe success based components. If you can do that based on the rules for CPA firms, can you claim a percentage of the refunds? So let's just do a thought experiment. It's $133 billion. If accountants charged a small single percentage fee for this service, we're talking 1 billion to $10 billion in services revenue just for collecting these these, uh, these tariffs, helping get the refunds. So I'm going to be watching for this. I bet, like you said, David, we're going to see startups that just focus on doing this. The folks who are doing ERC and PPP, uh, and it's a it's a humongous opportunity.

David Leary: [00:08:22] So but the government knows who paid. They could just reverse the money. Like, why do.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:29] You think they're.

David Leary: [00:08:30] Going to file different forms to request to get the money back? It doesn't make sense.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:33] Do you think Trump's going to make it easy?

David Leary: [00:08:35] Of course not.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:36] Of course not. Right. So, um, I'm curious if contingency fees are going to be possible for CPA firms because that would be the way to do this would be just charge a percentage and get it back for the clients.

David Leary: [00:08:53] So yeah, put a tariff on those tariff refunds.

Blake Oliver: [00:08:55] Um, I want to play just a little clip, you know, because I want to brag a little bit about, uh, you know, being right on this one. So here's a clip from episode 453 in which we talked about these tariffs. The Federal Court of Appeals has ruled that the Trump tariffs are unconstitutional, but they have stayed the order to suspend them until the Supreme Court can hear this case. So this case is going to the Supreme Court. The appeals court found that the president improperly used the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to implement many of these tariffs, and they said it doesn't give the president authority to impose broad sweeping tariffs like those enacted this year. And that's because the court determined that the Iipa lets the present regulate imports during declared, declared emergencies. But the statute's text and its legislative and its legislative history never mention tariffs, duties or taxes. Other trade laws do contain explicit tariff powers and detailed limits, but this law does not. So the lack of the specific language means Congress did not intend to delegate broad tariff setting power through this bill. And for our constitutional history buffs, a reminder that setting tariffs or taxes is a power reserve to Congress, not the president. That's under article one of the Constitution. And in order for the president to be given such authority, Congress has to do it clearly and explicitly, which the court is saying that the Iipa fails to do. My hope and my feeling is that this should stand. The Supreme Court should uphold this because, I mean, you know, I'm no constitutional lawyer, but imagine if the president could just take broad authority with everything like this.

David Leary: [00:10:54] It's like when Biden did the student loan stuff.

Blake Oliver: [00:10:57] Yeah, that was crap.

David Leary: [00:10:59] Like, the argument was Congress controls the purse. So yes, you have to say the same thing for tariffs. Yes. Congress controls the purse.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:07] Yeah, I, I, I'm not a fan of the, you know, super powerful executive. There's a reason that we have separation of powers in this country. And I just feel like I know more Americans need to take us history class or a class on the Constitution or something like that, because that's what has preserved our democracy for so long. And we cannot allow the executive of any party to continue to expand the power of the presidency. I mean, we saw this with Obama, too.

David Leary: [00:11:40] For 30 years. It's been slowly happening more and more. And Trump's really pushing for it harder.

Blake Oliver: [00:11:45] Trump's pushing for it. And you know Trump's attitude like people really don't like that the way he presents it you know. And but like I what I'm trying to say is like Obama, the nice guy did the same kind of stuff, especially with like all the drone strikes and the war powers. I mean, he he basically took away a lot of war powers from Congress.

David Leary: [00:12:07] Well, the executive orders, it's like it went from three to 7 to 20. And then every president just keeps undoing the previous executive orders and creates their own 10 or 15. And yeah, it just it has to stop. You nailed it, Blake. You predicted it or I don't know if you predicted you made a case, an argument for that. Um, I'm going to toot our horn as well. So if you remember, about four weeks ago, I kind of drew the dots between Ice and the IRS, and we just discovered they were sharing data. Well, apparently we were four weeks ahead of ourselves because now, finally last week, all the mainstream media Accounting Today everybody else has picked up on this story. So listeners. We're giving you the news before things happen. We're not predicting the future, but we're kind of on the pulse of what's happening or is going to happen in the news. We're beating them to the stories. So.

Blake Oliver: [00:13:00] David, let's thank our sponsors. And then after that, I want to address some of the comments in our live stream here on YouTube.

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Blake Oliver: [00:14:21] And President Trump has already responded to the Supreme Court decision. He said that he's going to impose a 10% global tariff under a different authority. He's going to use section one, two, two of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to impose tariffs for up to 150 days. And during that time, Trump said they would also begin new tariff investigations under section 301 of the Trade Act, which can result in more permanent tariffs. So I guess they're not going away anytime soon.

David Leary: [00:14:55] He's going to do a different tariff same same percentage, but it'll just be different. And then if that one gets struck down he'll go down the other possible window or doorway and do another different tariff.

Blake Oliver: [00:15:05] Welcome to our YouTube livestream viewers. Ibis. Ibis great to see you. Three coffee emojis there. We've got tea done first to hit that like button. Dre the dream says. Great to see you gents again. We've got boring accountant here with four coffees. Uh, our cola says. Cheers, guys. It's an after hour drink for me. Hello from Croatia. Great to see you. 206 asks what if the importer of record past the increase to their buyer? Do you think they would want some money back? I think they would want some money back. It's a question as to whether or not the buyer is going to be able to get that back from the importer. I suppose it depends on what your agreements and your contract said. My guess is going to be that no, in most cases they won't be able to get it back.

David Leary: [00:15:57] But unless you line itemed it when you sold it, you unless you call that out as a separate line item.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:02] Yeah.

David Leary: [00:16:03] But then the only way people would ask for it. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:05] But then contractually, if you charge that as a line item on your invoice, do you have to refund it to your buyer? I guess that's a question for the lawyers.

David Leary: [00:16:13] People might ask for it.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:15] They might ask for it.

David Leary: [00:16:15] Legally. They have to. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:16] Yeah. Boring accountant asked the same question. The tariff clawback only goes to the importer paying the tariff, not the person's or final buyer who the cost was passed on to. And yes, that seems to be what the decision is going to, or the effect the decision is going to have. All right, David, where do we go next from here?

David Leary: [00:16:39] We could stick to IRS average refunds, or we could have lots of AI stories like.

Blake Oliver: [00:16:45] It's up to you. You pick.

David Leary: [00:16:46] Um, let's quickly knock out the IRS refunds. So, um, per the IRS, the average refunds on early returns this year are up $200, um, compared to the same time last year. So. But even though they're up nearly 11%, they still fall short of the White House's, uh, pledge, if you want to call it that. They wanted to have refunds, averaging $1,000. Now, it doesn't mean this won't happen by the time all the returns are done across the board. But my my assumption is right. The people that are getting a refund are probably going to file earlier in the season. So you would expect this. You would expect it to be higher, right? And the other thing that they didn't release yet, which is kind of slightly disturbing, is that this is just the average. It is not the median. So this could be skewed by 2 or 3 super rich people getting monster refunds. And that's bringing up the whole average, right. So they have to release the median, which historically has always ran below the average. So even though the average right now is people are getting $200 more, most people probably are not getting $200 more. Most people are probably getting equal to less. And I think I saw somebody on Twitter say, like in their own office, they're starting to notice that the difference isn't what they thought it was going to be like. The the marketing of refunds versus the reality when they start doing people's returns are not reconciling. And I would love for any of our listeners, if you have data like that, let us know how it's going in your firm and the refunds.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:13] Since we're talking about taxes, I have a story about taxpayers and how much they trust AI versus tax pros for tax preparation.

David Leary: [00:18:21] Great story. It's a great one.

Blake Oliver: [00:18:23] And the good news is that AI tax prep is losing ground. Good news for the tax pros out there. I spotted this in CPA Practice Advisor. The source of this data is Invoice Homes second annual US Tax Filing report. Based on a census wide survey of 2000 US tax filers that was fielded in early January. Only 37% of US tax filers say they'd consider using AI to file instead of hiring a tax professional. Now, 37% sounds like a lot, but that's actually down from 43% in 2025. So taxpayers have lost trust in AI younger taxpayers. They're more open to it. Half of millennials and 46% of Gen Z would consider it versus 40% of Gen X. In general, taxpayers are just not confident that they can file taxes accurately at all. Just 42% of respondents say that they're confident, which is basically unchanged from 2025.

David Leary: [00:19:28] Why do you think this has gone down? Because maybe more people are just utilizing AI more and touching it and realizing, yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:34] I think people are getting burned. Yeah.

David Leary: [00:19:37] Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:19:37] Like the more you use AI, the more you recognize its failings. And so at first everybody was really excited. But then you actually dig into what it creates and you realize there's errors and taxes are complicated, and small errors can compound and create big problems. Continuing on in tax, here's another opportunity for accounting firms. The creator economy is now a $205 billion global market, $205 billion and 7 in 10.

David Leary: [00:20:11] Half of that is just Mr. Beast.

Blake Oliver: [00:20:13] I think maybe 7 in 10 creators say that finances are their biggest business concern, and about a quarter say that taxes are their biggest stress. Big opportunity for accountants and tax professionals. And the problem is that most creators were people like you and me, David, who had regular 9 to 5 jobs with W-2s and assume that taxes are handled for them as a result. But then they get hit by a surprise tax bill because they never paid quarterly estimates or tracked their expenses. And of course, once you hire an employee, things get really real. You've got the payroll taxes, the withholding unemployment insurance, all that. And so this is a another big opportunity for accountants when it comes to marketing and building a niche. Online creators, digital creators, podcasters. Uh, I mean, that's.

David Leary: [00:21:11] Because they're probably all just getting 1099 for different marketing deals. They did. They're not on anybody's payroll, so they're not paying any withholding along the year.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:18] Exactly.

David Leary: [00:21:19] And then it's a big surprise at the end.

Blake Oliver: [00:21:21] And it's actually not that complicated. If you do the bookkeeping for these creators. We're just talking cash basis. Right. Income expense. There's all these new tools to automate that kind of work. It would be possible to offer a service to creators, set them up with their S Corp, track their expenses, their income, make sure they're paying themselves enough of a salary. And it's really just the same thing we've been doing for solopreneurs for a long time, just targeted toward this new market. So take a look at that. If you're looking to expand your practice or get a wedge in a niche, seems like something that would be actually not that complicated. Any more tax news from you, David.

David Leary: [00:22:13] Uh, kind of. I don't know if this tax news, but it's tax related for your firm. Um, you talk about providing services, you basically say, hey, you should do this service for these content creators. Well, here's a question. Should you provide Uber trips to your tax office for your clients? And the reason I'm asking that is because Intuit is rolling out a new TurboTax tax campaign with Uber. They're going to offer free Uber rides up to a $25 value to drive you to one of their 600 expert offices, or their 20 new retail locations. Ultimately, their goal is to eliminate friction from paperwork to transportation, right? There's going to be AI that does some of the data entry, but for a lot of people, they still want to meet with somebody. Hey, we'll drive you to the office. You have the meeting, take the Uber back. Like they're providing that full end to end experience.

Blake Oliver: [00:23:00] I wonder why Intuit is doing this. Expanding into physical offices. It seems like a very costly thing to do. You got all that rent, you got to hire all these people. Turbotax is a huge money maker because it's just software that people use on demand. It's a SaaS business. And yeah, you can pay to get a tax pro, but having people Zoom with a tax pro essentially is like way cheaper than having them come to an office. I don't I don't really get it. Do you have any insight.

David Leary: [00:23:28] At the end? It's it's it's experience right. And and I've said this before and I know all our listeners are tax pros. Hate it. But my experience using a tax pro is more work than when I did my taxes myself on TurboTax. Right? And arguably I was more confident in the results. And what it is, is Intuit understands customer experience, and I think accounting firms don't. For if you think about TurboTax, it's all about the endorphin hits along the way, like, oh, I got this free Uber ride endorphin hit. I met with the person. Oh, it feels like a Apple Apple Store experience when I go into this new TurboTax experience, right? It's all about the experience. And then if you think about even using TurboTax, you put in your W-2 and it says you owe money and the numbers, there's this animation endorphin hit. Then you put in, you have children, you get some deductions, and it says, oh, now you're getting a refund. You keep getting these endorphin hits in this experience. In the meantime, in comparison, I'm working with my accounting firm. Here's the email. It's in my subject line or my email right now. Subject line reminder you have outstanding task. And then I open the email in a giant font. Font. It says outstanding task to complete. It's a horrible experience. It creates anxiety. It's not an endorphin experience. And at the end of the day, and I'm going to die on this hill, it's because accounting firms are focusing on their internal processes too much and not the customer experience. Hey.

Blake Oliver: [00:24:46] Well, hey, you know, I've talked about my mom's tax experience with a traditional, like, mid-size firm in the past. She was happy to say that this year the PDF tax organizer is fillable so she can open the PDF on her computer and type the type the information.

David Leary: [00:25:01] They convert it, they just convert it.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:02] Yeah, yeah. Except she she complained that when she clicks into a box in the organizer to put in the number. It was something about like the starting and ending balance of her mortgage. Uh, like it didn't format properly. She couldn't add, like, the money sign or commas. It's just the number which made it difficult because it's a big number. Right.

David Leary: [00:25:24] So decimals are kind of important.

Blake Oliver: [00:25:26] But they added a little note option like a write a note to your CPA on the on the right hand side so she could fill it in there properly and like add a note. But yeah, that's where we're at when it comes to technology in a lot of firms is literally like a fillable PDF is is where we're at.

David Leary: [00:25:41] Yeah. And honestly, like and I think I've told this story before on the show maybe maybe not. But when I worked at Intuit in the early days, floppy disk days, we're going back in time. Floppy disk would get with the with the tax table. Payroll tax table updates would be on these floppy diskettes, but then they would get broken in the mail. They weren't they weren't very reliable. People would call tech support. And then I would go get a new disk for them. I'd put a post-it note on it with their address, and I'd go up to a counter, a shipping counter and say mail this to this address on this post. Note. And that was it. I went back and I helped more customers. Well, at companies, departments tend to solve for themselves. So the shipping department was like, well, we have to do all this work. I have to type in the addresses, I have to do all this work, and I have to pick out what's being shipped and put it in an envelope and package it. They just took all that and they made me do it instead as the tech support rep, because they solve for their internal team. And I had to learn all I had to like, I don't know which shipping options to choose and budgets and all this stuff. Like this is what happens with things at firms. It's like, oh, we're busy doing all this work. Maybe if we can get the clients to do this. And that actually creates the anxiety, right? These, these to do lists like I have not been to one of these TurboTax stores. There's one in Phoenix. We should try to go to it Blake and just yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:26:54] Let's do our taxes there.

David Leary: [00:26:56] Let's just go see what the experience is. I'm imagining it's like those Capital One banks where there's a coffee bar and you can relax, get a cookie. It's an experience, right? And that's what Intuit gets that I think most firms don't get.

Blake Oliver: [00:27:08] They focus.

David Leary: [00:27:09] On release versus the.

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David Leary: [00:29:31] And so just to rewind a little bit, people have always suspected this was happening. And now they're because they're now they're tracking the data. Now there's proof.

Blake Oliver: [00:29:37] And now we have now we have proof. It's being disclosed in the financials. Boeing. They paid twice as much tax in Germany as in the US. Pepsi. They reported less than 10% of pretax income in the US, while 50 over 50% of their revenue was generated in the US. Tesla. They paid $28 million to the US government versus 751 million to China. Take that and do with it what you will.

David Leary: [00:30:09] It feels like this. Like if Trump gets a smell of this, he's going to want to like force countries not to tax our companies. You could see some smell of this happening. Like.

Blake Oliver: [00:30:20] More tax news. The IRS has fallen far short on its paperless processing goal. No surprise here given the staffing cuts. This is according to a new Treasury inspector General for Tax Administration report, as covered in accounting today for filing season 2025. Going on right now, the IRS had planned to digitally process all paper filed forms nine, 4941 and 1040. That represents 78% of all paper filed returns. In actuality, contractors have only scanned about half a million paper filled forms. That's 5% of the goal. So IRS still drowning in paper, not making progress on digitizing, digitizing, digitizing them.

David Leary: [00:31:11] It seems like this should just be like a one time hit. Like staff up, scan it all and then cut back. But they cut back first. It doesn't make sense.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:18] Scan it all and stop letting people file paper returns. That's true. I think that would be. The other thing is you gotta. You gotta deal with the supply side of this.

David Leary: [00:31:26] Yeah. The inbox never goes down. You just keep scanning.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:29] More text news. Remember that gambling loss tax deduction problem? Somehow in one of these bills, uh, was it ob three?

David Leary: [00:31:39] It might have.

Blake Oliver: [00:31:40] Been somebody some some some, uh, somebody who doesn't like gambling in Congress snuck in this change to the gambling loss deduction that limited it to 90%. And that's created this the situation where even if you break even as a gambler, you're going to owe tax because you can only deduct 90% of your losses against your winnings. And sad news for Las Vegas and for gamblers, is that the bill to reinstate the full deduction for gambling losses failed to move forward in the US House. So it looks like this is just going to be the situation for a while now, which I think just reinforces the need to track your winnings and your losses. If you work with clients who do a lot of gambling, um, to get them the most deduction they can because.

David Leary: [00:32:34] A lot of that's not tracked very well.

Blake Oliver: [00:32:36] Yeah, right. Although a lot of gamblers like who do a lot of gambling are really meticulous about tracking it. Right. Because they want to they want to know how they're doing. Like they're they're almost like it's like there's like a crossover between finance bros and like, poker players. True. I'm just going to keep going here with my tax news. Kim Kardashian has a clothing company called Skims, and they just agreed to pay a $200,000 civil penalty to the state of new Jersey to resolve allegations that the company charged sales tax on clothing items that are supposedly supposed to be tax exempt in new Jersey. New Jersey generally exempts everyday clothing and footwear from sales tax, so charging tax on those items would raise consumer prices unlawfully. The Division of Consumer Affairs alleged that the practice violated the state's Consumer Fraud Act. Skims, the company, said a technical error caused sales tax to be collected on certain tax exempt clothing for new Jersey customers, and they remitted that sales tax to new Jersey. They fixed their systems, contacted the affected customers, and they're providing full refunds for over collected amounts.

David Leary: [00:33:49] But to accuse them of fraud, they didn't. They didn't charge people tax and keep the money. They they thought they were doing the proper diligence. And they passed it on to the state of new Jersey. It seems a little bit of a stretch to accuse them of doing some nefarious thing.

Blake Oliver: [00:34:02] Well, you know, it's Kim Kardashian.

David Leary: [00:34:04] So it's a takedown, I get it. Um, I saw a tweet from the Morning Brew this week that really stuck with me for a lot of the week. And I'm going to read the whole tweet because it's easier just to read it than to try to summarize it. Um, it has to do with the billable hour, but it has to do with law firms. Um, to summarize, at the high level, partners at law firms are raising their own rates because there are less billable hours due to AI. So this is the tweet from Morning Brew. Big law. Is is billing like it's selling Taylor Swift tour tickets? Top partners at elite firms are now charging up to $3,400 an hour, with Niche specialties pushing $6,000 an hour per pursuit data. Among the 50th largest firms. Partner rates jumped 16% last year, and even junior associates can run clients $1,400 an hour. A decade ago, $1,500 an hour would have been pushing it. Now that's clearance pricing, but it's not the quality of the work that's changing, it's just who's doing it. Ai firms are increasingly leaning on AI to help with workflow workloads, but if there's less work, there's fewer billable hours, and they've got to make up the difference somehow. Just three years ago, only 3% of firms used gen AI daily. Now it's more than 26% per Thomson Reuters Institute research. But a reliance on AI isn't the only explanation for the attack sites. There's also a high stakes of major litigation and deal making and intense, intensifying warfare talent that's driven up firm costs and, maybe more than anything, a healthy dose of ego. So clients are paying superstar prices when they could just cut a hefty deal with ChatGPT subscription and ask some very pointed questions. And this makes me think about firms. If you're you've talked about this before, you've reached partner and you have the boat, you have the unhappy wife, and kids like you reach that level. So I guess with Big Law, you're a partner of law firm. You have a lifestyle you want to maintain. If there's less billable hours, how do you maintain that lifestyle?

Blake Oliver: [00:35:56] Gotta raise that billable rate. If you're not willing to change your business model. I think this will backfire in the long run is the rates are going to keep going up and businesses are going to say, wait a minute, why am I paying? How much were you saying, David? Thousands of dollars per hour.

David Leary: [00:36:10] $3,400 an hour.

Blake Oliver: [00:36:12] Why am I paying $3,400 an hour for legal work that's being done by AI? I just drafted an agreement with AI. I've got enough stuff connected into my ChatGPT Google Drive previous like legal agreements that I've done, um, like, you know, speaking engagements or something else like that. I can literally now take an email thread about something that I'm working on with a prospect, and I can drop it in to my ChatGPT project and I can say, pull out all the terms. Ask me questions. Let's clarify what exactly I want in this agreement, and then I can tell it to draft the agreement. I just did one the other day. Flawless. No changes. I can draft legal agreements and review them all on my own. This is stuff that I would have paid a lawyer to do in the past, or I would have had to use a template and take hours and hours to do it. Now it's happening in minutes and it's really, really good.

David Leary: [00:37:16] It's part of the $200 a month GPT subscription we have.

Blake Oliver: [00:37:19] 30 bucks a month? 30 bucks a month. You don't even need to pay 200 a month for that. So I think these law firms are in trouble because what is the law? It's just the interpretation of really complex language and the application of it and translation of it. And that's what these llms are really good at. So I don't know. I mean, I'm sure those, like, superstar lawyers are of course, going to be in demand and we'll be able to charge those rates. But I wonder what's going to happen on the bottom end. Here's another story about AI David and Big Tech and Gap. Oh my God. It's like my favorite things altogether. Technology AI.

David Leary: [00:38:04] And gap.

Blake Oliver: [00:38:05] And gap. This is a story in the Wall Street Journal called Big Tech accounting creates a blind spot in the AI boom. We've all heard about how these big tech companies like Facebook and Google and X are investing in massive data centers to power their AI tools and chatbots. Well, that is driving a capital expenditure surge that is turning historically asset light software companies into asset heavy businesses. What does that mean? It means that depreciation expense is set to jump sharply, but investors can't easily see depreciation on the income statement for these tech companies. And that's creating a growing transparency and forecasting problem. Because depreciation is now becoming more earnings relevant. And yet we can't see it clearly on the financials. You cannot find depreciation as a standalone expense line on income. Statements of alphabet the company that owns Google, Amazon, meta, Microsoft or Oracle. And it's a broad issue across the industry. Companies also vary how they embed depreciation into expense categories, whether it's in Cogs, R&D, G&A. So it becomes difficult to model gross margins if depreciation is in cost of goods. It becomes difficult to model operating expenses trends if it's embedded in R&D or general administrative. So. This is making things difficult for investors. It's tough to value these companies now given how much capital expense they have and the related depreciation. There's also that issue we talked about in the past where these companies are extending the useful lives of depreciated assets going from 5 to 7 or more years, which reduces their current period depreciation and boosts earnings. And that's also.

David Leary: [00:40:09] I think we covered a story about Facebook building a data center. And there was some game like that happening on Facebook's books I think.

Blake Oliver: [00:40:17] Yeah. And so you know, what's the solution. Well it's to do what railroads do. And that was the industry that invented depreciation. Union Pacific Norfolk Southern, as pointed out in this Wall Street Journal article, they include depreciation as a distinct operating expense line on the income statement, which is where I learned in accounting theory. It should go. I'm surprised that it's not required. Now that's going to change. There is a new standard that was approved in 2024 that will require quarterly expenses to be disaggregated into five categories that includes depreciation, amortization and employee comp. But the new rules won't apply for most companies until 2025. Early adoption is possible, but uncommon. Let's put this in context. Let's give some numbers to it. The five biggest hyperscalers, these big tech companies, they reported a 146 billion in depreciation and amortization for 2025, of which 104 billion was depreciation. It's a lot of money.

David Leary: [00:41:29] And it's.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:29] Fast.

David Leary: [00:41:30] They weren't making these kind of deductions and expense claims a decade ago. It came on quick. This is something new.

Blake Oliver: [00:41:37] And and it's expected that this is going to approach nearly 400 billion in combined depreciation and amortization by 2029. So in just four years, it's going to triple.

David Leary: [00:41:51] Did you see, uh, KPMG Australia find a partner for using AI to cheat on a test on it. They were taking a test on AI and they used AI to cheat on the test. And so they find that partner $7,000.

Blake Oliver: [00:42:05] I always know I always want to win. A story in accounting has gone mainstream when I see it on Instagram. And that was like an Instagram post. I don't know what it's like morning brew, something like that. Yeah. So tell me about this this partner.

David Leary: [00:42:16] So KPMG Australia found one of its senior partners $7,000, after discovering the partner used artificial intelligence to cheat on an internal AI training exam. The unnamed partner was forced to retake the test. Now, in my opinion, is he passed the test? If you know how to use AI to cheat on the test, you've passed the AI test. Obviously you have the skills to use the AI, but remember, let's rewind a little bit. Months ago, KPMG publicly claimed they plan on spending $2 billion on AI globally. So this just like now you're going to spend all this money on AI, you're making this huge priority for your company, and then you're going to find employees that are utilizing it. It just doesn't it doesn't reconcile. But I think this could also be because wasn't KPMG one of the companies in Australia that got fined for cheating on ethics exams? Yeah, maybe they're trying to proactively look like they're doing the right thing when they catch cheating, I don't know. Congress $7,000 to a partner.

Blake Oliver: [00:43:18] Yeah, right. That's like a dinner out. All right. Um, remember we talked about the Department of Defense and how they've never passed an audit. They've never been able to to be audited. They've never gotten a clean. They've never gotten an audit opinion because they their systems are are mess. There's an effort in Congress to revive efforts to penalize the Department of Defense for its continued audit failures. Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, has put forth the Receipts Act, the reviewing every check and each invoice Purchasing Troops Supplies Act, the Receipts Act. In this bill, if the Department of Defense does not achieve a clean, full audit by December 2028, it would be required to transfer the Defense Finance and Accounting Services non-defense payroll and finance functions to another financial provider. Future Pentagon and service level comptroller nominees would also have to be CPAs and have previously served as CFOs of audited, clean, audited federal, state agencies or public companies that achieved a clean audit during their tenure. Now, if the DoD does pass an audit by 2028, then the bill would grant them greater reprograming authority. So there is a carrot in addition to the stick. The defense secretary could transfer up to 10 billion, or 1% of the DoD's total budget in the following year, and military services and defense agencies would receive higher reprograming limits. And it would also eliminate several long standing audit related reporting requirements if the Pentagon achieves a clean audit. Clean audit. This was reported in the Federal News Network.

David Leary: [00:45:11] Let's jump in and read our next two ads back to back. And then we can wrap up in some other other stories, because I do have an interview with Don Brolin that I want to play at the end of the episode. So I don't want to lose track of time here. All right. I'm going to jump in and take.

Blake Oliver: [00:45:24] The first one. Yeah. On pay is next.

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David Leary: [00:47:53] I think both of us had one story that we brought the same story, so we should probably talk about. It was about how 2 to 3 hours is the average amount of focus time workers get a day. Did you already you have that story too?

Blake Oliver: [00:48:04] Yeah, I saw that one.

David Leary: [00:48:06] Let's talk about that one. So a new Hubstaff study finds that the average worker only gets 2 to 3 hours of true focus time per day, and focus time is defined as uninterrupted work. Right? No meetings, messages, switching between tools. You're just it's you know, it's that that glory time of the week when you actually get something done. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:48:24] When you have a chance to actually do work.

David Leary: [00:48:26] Do work. Right. Um, they analyzed data from 140,000 workers across 17,000 organizations, and they said that the productivity struggles weren't about effort. It's about constant disruption. Meetings, tools overload, fragmented schedules. You know, just eat into deep work. And then AI adoption is rising, but it's not meaningfully changing how employees are spending their time. So you might and we've talked about this like you might be trying to use AI, but you still have to do all this management. So you're still distracted. You're thinking about is my AI still is it doing the work when I'm not doing the work right? And so you're not getting that AI is not giving us that yet. The other interesting part of this survey is workers, on average, use 18 apps a day. That's which I started like counting. Yeah.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:12] Yeah.

David Leary: [00:49:13] Yeah. Easily. Easily. Easily looking at my own stuff. Um, what was interesting were, um, hybrid teams report the least amount of focus time 31%. Remote teams report 41%. And in-office teams, it's 45%. So this doesn't feel like it's a. Oh, I'm at the office. I'm getting distracted more because it's not a big enough change. Right.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:36] But that that surprises me. I would have thought that the in-office workers would be the most distracted with meetings and.

David Leary: [00:49:44] Well, they are, but it's only a little bit. It's like 4%. It's it's not, it's not.

Blake Oliver: [00:49:49] They are. Okay.

David Leary: [00:49:50] Got it. They are. But it's not material. Right? Right. You would think like office would be like 10% distracted 90% of the time. So and that could also be if you think about it, if you're in person and you're sitting at your desk working, I have nonverbal visual clues not to interrupt you, but if I'm at home working, Blake, you just text me, you send me a slack message. You do this thing. You don't know if I'm in deep work or not. So that's probably explains why remote teams. It's about the same as in-office.

Blake Oliver: [00:50:18] All right, David, to take us out. You spoke with Dawn Brolin. What did you talk to her about?

David Leary: [00:50:23] Yeah, I talked to Dawn Brolin about, um, a nonprofit she created with some other accountants called the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation. And I've wanted to draw attention to it for a really long time at a high level. What they do is they help accountants and bookkeepers and tax professionals that have never been to a conference before, attend a conference and meet people. If you think about it, like a lot of everybody's on their own island out there, you're running a firm nobody. You're your spouse doesn't understand you. Your clients don't understand you. Your only friends might be listening to our podcast, I don't know. So you go to these conferences and you meet like minded people who are in the same struggles that you're having, and it's super important for people to change their lives. So I'm going to hit play on that interview and I'll take us out.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:51:08] Yeah. So the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation was born kind of out of an opportunity at Appy Camp back a few years ago. Um, Kate Johnson put the sticky note up and said, what if what if what? What if we could help people get themselves to an in-person conference for in-person learning to find their tribe? Because we we realize that being at Appy Camp and around close friends in the industry, uh, trying to better ourselves, you know, be better educators and better influencers to help other people, how could we expand that to people we didn't know? How could we help people come to a to an event where they could face to face, meet people where I found you, David, for example, and you know, the Heather Satterlee's and the Deb Devers and the Laura Redmond's. And, you know, we.

David Leary: [00:51:57] Have our tribes at these conferences, but that's only like 700, 1000, 2000 people at a big conference. And that's it. And there's 10,000 people on the sidelines that don't get to participate.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:52:08] Exactly. And we know and we know on average, it's around two grand Between 2000 and $2500 to for someone to go to a conference. Yeah. But you know so then tickets and things like that. So tickets, flights, hotel people have anxiety over you know what? I'm not a people person. I'm an introvert. I don't know anyone. I don't want to go somewhere where I don't know anyone. So what we decided was not only would we did we want to raise money to be able to financially support these people, but even bigger than that, to emotionally support them to we you know, we get on we get on a zoom with them. Once the awardees are picked, we have a meeting and we get together with them and we talk through their anxieties. Oh, so I haven't traveled on a plane for a long time. I don't even know what I should do. We give them travel tips. We we bring them to dinner at the conference. So we have one event where we we all go take them to dinner and, you know, get to meet them, get to know them, listen to their story and help them, you know, get through the anxiety and stress of travel or of meeting new people, or of sitting in a room with nobody they know. We want them to. To have a full experience, not just, hey, here's your ticket. Here's your flight. Good luck. You know, pick your classes and hopefully you pick the right ones, like we help them with that even to that point. Um, you know, find out what their struggles are in their business and help recommend what sessions that they go to. So we really help them come into the into the experience with support right from the beginning.

David Leary: [00:53:36] That's amazing. So since most people listening to this podcast are accountants, what are the numbers that you currently are doing with the accounting course?

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:53:44] So for 2025 we raised about $45,000. I say that because I round it's $44,932.42 because we like to be exact, as accountants. Right. Um, so we raise that much money. We had 39 donors. We sent 11 people. That was a low year. The year before, we sent four people to for conferences. That was 16 people that went to conferences. And we we feel like that's kind of, um, in a way, like not good for other people. Other people may want to donate. And that was one of Kates. Johnson's big things was, you know, people may not be able to donate $500, $1,000, $10,000, but they can donate 25, 50, 100. And every penny counts to help these people get there.

David Leary: [00:54:27] Yeah, because I mean, I think like when you go like your website says here, it's a life changing experience. And I truly believe that. And now it's like a real thing. You have a website, you have a place for people to donate. They can apply. Um, so the website, if you're listening, is accounting cornerstone. Org. And the minimum donations low. Right.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:54:45] There's no minimum. You want to.

David Leary: [00:54:46] Donate a.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:54:47] Donate a dollar. It's the ability for everyone in the industry to participate, to elevate the industry and the people in it.

David Leary: [00:54:54] How many times do you have to say no? And how how does that feel when you when you can't you can't bring everybody?

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:55:00] That's the hard part. Now the rule is, David, this is a scholarship, a grant, whatever you want to call it to someone who has never been to in person learning. That's the audience we're looking for. For people who are already been to a conference, they've already had the experience. This is for people who have never been to a conference. That's one that's the biggest stipulation. So when they apply. So we have this whole process that we go through. They apply for the conference and they have to put, you know, they have to fill in information like, you know, tell us a little bit about your story. What do you do? Do you are you a firm. Do you own your own firm? Do you have employees like we asked all these questions and the selection committee cannot see names. We can't see addresses. We can't see where they're from. We can't see who they work for. It's a full anonymous selection. And we we have between 60 and 70 applications per conference. And so we have to say no to a lot of people.

David Leary: [00:55:57] Yeah.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:55:58] We are. We so desperately would love to continue to grow the number of people going to the conferences we select the conferences we think are best served by those people we're seeking out to attend. So we pick for, you know, four conferences a year. We'd love to go to five. So, you know, could we send them to more conferences? We could we kind of like for conferences because it's a lot of work to send these people like it's I have someone who.

David Leary: [00:56:25] Because you want to make sure you're there supporting them at that conference too. That makes sense.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:56:29] We want to make sure their support, um, and we want to make sure they have just the best experience. And we and the story is important. It's interesting. I talked to Joe David about this, the story of those who have been awarded in the past and the way their lives have changed. Those stories are going to be something that we really focus on in 2026, is telling the stories of the people we've already sent.

David Leary: [00:56:52] Do you have one off the top of your head? Tell me a story.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:56:55] We do, we I do. So there's there's one in particular. He I don't want to say his name just because I don't want to. He hasn't given me permission. But he went to the NEA conference. He has been all over social media. He has been involved in more conferences. He's gotten to know his tribe, and he sends us emails. He sends us letters. And our job now is and he's like, I get chills thinking about him because he's so vocal about how his life changed when he met the people he met and not us. It's not about you don't need to meet me. Go find your tribe. I'm very like. I'm like a niche.

David Leary: [00:57:35] No, this is great. I do appreciate you coming on and telling us about this, because I've always had on my list. I was like, help don promote the Accounting Cornerstone Foundation because I believe in my heart. I believe what you're doing is the right thing to do.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:57:45] Those experiences are priceless, and you're never going to get them in your office. And that's one of the reasons why it's so like, I'm so passionate about getting these people there. I think about the the George George from Smart Vault and who's now with financial sense. He's a friend of mine. Like I consider him my friend. I care about that guy. You, David. I've known you for so many years. You're a dear friend of mine. And so you realize that you can have friends that are accountants that actually are cool people. That's also fun. And, you know, that just expands your community of people that will care about you and help you through things when it's maybe not accounting related. And, you know, I know I found my tribe. I have people that I know I can call other accountants. And I realized there isn't any competition in accounting. When you're sitting in your office just doing your thing, you're like, oh, that guy down the street, we're competing against them. No you're not. We're not competing. But it just allows that personal connection. And it's a it is, David. And when we get them into the when they get into the environment, they find that tribe. And then they find their reunion every time they go to a conference. It's it's priceless.

David Leary: [00:58:56] What's next? Like what do you envision this becoming?

Dawn Brolin Clip: [00:59:00] I envision this becoming an opportunity for others to participate, to lift people up. We want to include more people. So what's coming next to us is having like a different committees that can help with, um, you know, mentorship. We want alumni. People have gotten the scholarship. We want them to help mentor the next people that are coming up. And we've we're at the point where we have numbers, right? We have numbers of people that have had that have been awarded the scholarship that we want to include. We'd like to turn over the board and bring on other people who have bigger visions than we have, um, and continue it. But I think that this is just a community opportunity for this industry to come together and help those that we don't even know yet that may have had a job that they were miserable at, went, started on their own. They don't know what to do or how to do it. We can help mentor them. We can help them move forward. But we I think we need more people. And that's what we're figuring out in 26, is to bring in more people. We need people to help us fundraise. We? I'm not good at asking for money. That's not my wheelhouse. I don't like talking about money I don't have. I don't mind giving it, but I don't like asking for it. So there's areas that we're weakened that we need to get stronger so that we can do more, do bigger, and do better for those people that are out there that need it.

David Leary: [01:00:17] So listeners, you can go to accounting, cornerstone, org, and there's three action buttons you can donate. You can nominate somebody or apply yourself. So participate in one of those three ways. It would really be a lot of support for the accounting uh, accounting Cornerstone Foundation. And and it's a very, very important thing.

Dawn Brolin Clip: [01:00:33] And if you're worried about AI taking over your job, AI will never replace the human interaction. It will never replace the human touch. It will never replace any of that. And so this is a way, I'll say, we can combat AI by continuing to promote the human aspect of what we do, and that is caring about others. That's why we're in this industry. We want to help people. We need to to take a step back and say, you know what? I bet I could donate something, or I can nominate somebody I know who has never been because they couldn't afford it. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are. We're here to help them get to an in-person learning, to get in front of people and get away from the computer and have human interaction again, which is something we thrive for. And if we don't need it now, we need it more than ever. And we need that human interaction. There's people out there suffering and people who are working in this industry working 70 hours a week, which is insanity. We need to help them get better so that they can have a life outside their firm as well.

Blake Oliver: [01:01:36] Great interview David. Thanks everyone who listened to this episode of the Accounting podcast. You can earn free continuing professional education for this episode. Our past episodes and many other fine accounting and tax shows. Go to your app and your web browser, or get the free earmark app from the App Store. It's free to create an account and free to earn one. Cpe every week. Subscribe to get unlimited CPE and access to premium content. Iris enrolled agents. You can also earn CE credits that we report to the IRS for our courses on federal tax and ethics topics. Search for that in the search bar. Look for the green or the purple IRS CE tag on the courses that offer CE credit.

David Leary: [01:02:24] Well, even better than that, Blake. As soon as you open the app now, right at the top, second to the top row is courses. Just for ease. We call it EA essentials, so you don't even have to hunt around for these courses anymore. They're prime real estate right in the app as soon as you go to the app.

Blake Oliver: [01:02:39] Fantastic. David, great chatting with you as always. Thanks to everyone who tuned in live. We'll see you next week.