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So this is why this is the number one reason why I believe that crypto as it's currently implemented
cryptocurrency can't replace the US dollar as a currency because without trusted intermediaries
to reverse transactions like this your average investor in crypto your average user is going to
get scammed out of a lot of money. Coming to you weekly from the on pay recording studio.
Welcome to the show, I'm Blake Oliver, and I'm David Leary. Hey David, I'm back from San Diego.
I was in San Diego doing a keynote for a Lineal Global. They are one of the largest accounting
associations, associations of CPA firms, accounting firms in the world, and they had a financial
institutions workshop for CPAs who specialize in basically banks. A lot of bank auditors were there.
Small group, really fun. It was in the gas land district, and I got to go and do a little sightseeing.
So I went over to Coronado Island, and I went to the hotel Del Coronado, walked around there.
It was beautiful. I've never really gone inside. I've never stayed there, and I've never
really got a chance to just like, I always went to the beach there and saw it from the outside,
but it's beautiful inside. I highly recommend anyone go, and if you do go, go up to the second floor,
and by the balcony that overlooks the lobby, there's this stained glass that's from the original
construction of the hotel in 1888, and it's been restored, and it's a depiction of the crowning,
which is Coronado, Coronation. Craig, I remember you on that hotel. What's the elevator?
There's an elevator operator still after the elevator? No, they've automated it, but it still looks
like an old one. So it's got the bars instead of, but they've put glass around so you can't stick
your fingers through and chop off your hand, because we don't have as much sense these days.
My brain says 15, 18 years ago when I stayed there, there was somebody still operating the elevator
for you. Oh, yeah, yeah, it's possible. I mean, that thing looks ancient.
So it was fun. I did my talk about artificial intelligence and how I believe it will
transform and save the accounting profession in a very positive way,
adding in a little twist on financial services, where all that's going to go.
He said different bank auditors? Yes. Do you get any insights scoop on SVB or any of that stuff?
No, we have a little bit of a debate about SVB and the responsibility of the auditors,
in identifying the bond risk. But, no, nothing, nobody was working on SVB. That was KPMG.
So these are smaller firms. But I did hear an interesting story from one of the partners there.
I believe his firm is in Columbia, Missouri, and he was telling me how one of his managers,
directors, senior manager, went on maternity leave. And while she was on maternity
leave, the partners voted her in to the partnership. So when she came back, she was going to be a
partner. And she came opposite of stories I've ever heard before. It's usually,
right? It's usually you get fired somehow during maternity leave. The profession has changed
for the better it seems. So they offered her the partnership. And when she came back and she turned
them down to go open a daycare center, a franchise daycare, the kind that has 200 kids.
And the economics of it, well, anyone who has young children knows that it's very difficult
to find daycare right now. So if you do it the right way, apparently it can be very profitable.
So that's what she's going to do instead of being a CPA firm partner. Turn down being a CPA
firm partner to go open a franchise daycare. The math could make sense because half a partner
salary would have went to pay the daycare anyways if you've ever had to pay for daycare. So this
actually is might be a smart idea. Yeah. Well, you know, for daycare, open daycare center.
So it was great talking with this small group because all the stuff we've been talking about on
the show, they validated it, right? The talent crunch that can't find enough people,
uh, non-people to do the audit work. And so yeah, they were very eager to hear about how AI could
transform things in the near future. And um, I guess I wanted to kick off our discussion
today with a fun video, David. You know, we've been doing lots of amazing things with AI recently.
And sometimes you just got to enjoy it. So I spotted this with me.
Bobby. We'll go. The listeners can't digest this, but it is Arnold Schwarzenegger's
face merged into Whitney Houston's body and face. Yes. Correct. And obviously his voice,
which you could hear, singing the words to that famous song. And uh, this was posted by John
Weth W T H on Instagram. He said, AI has bigger fish to fry than us. So I've been experimenting
a little bit with AI and video creation myself, David. And I wanted to make, I want to play a
video for you and our listeners and our live stream viewers. Um, that I created entirely with a
prompt in chat GPT. I, I asked chat GPT to create a short video for me on the topic of the
importance of auditors. And I use the Wikipedia plugin and the cap cut plugin. These are plugins
that you can get for free in chat GPT premium or plus I guess is what they call it. You enable those
plugins and chat GPT can go out to Wikipedia and pull a page and then create an article for you
or a script for you, which is what I asked it to do in terms of 12 year old could understand.
And then it can make a video with that script, all with AI. So that cap cut, you said,
what is it called? Cap cut. It's a video, online video editing.
I'm doing it. Okay. Yeah. For like social media videos, it's very popular with TikTok. I think
it might be owned by the same company. They created it to help TikTokers create videos.
I might dance. Okay. Yeah. So, so literally I, I put the prompt in with two instructions.
Instruction one was write a script on the importance of auditors, put it in language
of 12 year old can understand. Number two, use the script to create a video with cap cut.
And here's the result. Auditors are like financial detectives who make sure companies are honest
with their money. The examine a company's financial records to ensure everything is accurate.
This builds trust between the company and its investors or customers. Auditors must be
independent, meaning they can't have personal or financial ties to the company they're auditing.
This ensures their report is fair and unbiased. If auditors aren't independent, it could lead
to mistrust in the company's financial statements, which is a big issue. That's it. I only gave it
a hundred words. But, you know, it's not terrible. I mean, it is terrible. But it's also
the ice cream truck music really takes away a lot. It didn't pick the best music. It did better
on another one that I did on on financial. What was it? I did financial services. Do you want to see
that one? Before you do that, I was just a comment on this. Like, I could see it the level you've done.
If you were a high school professor or a teacher, you wanted to, instead of you building a
slide deck and saying those things yourself, you could just hit play and let this play and it would
be less the music. It would accomplish that, I think. So, here's another one I did. I asked it to
do one on the importance of management accounting for a presentation I was doing for the Institute
of Management Accounts. I think it did a better selection of the music on this one. Now, remember,
I didn't tell it what kind of music to pick. I didn't tell it anything. I had it draft the script
and make the video. Oh, and our listeners can't see it. If you can see it on YouTube, you can't
see it on the podcast. It's it's taken free stock photos and added them to every slide and added
captions. And that voice, by the way, is completely generated by AI. Management accounting is crucial
for any business. It's like a toolkit that provides valuable information to managers.
This information helps in making informed decisions, such as launching a new product or finding
ways to save money. It's not just about counting dollars. It's about planning for the future and
improving the business. In short, management accounting is the brain of a business,
gutting it to make smart moves. I thought that was pretty good. It's that that it's I think
something the voices have a tone. Yeah, right. Everyone just stop and remember this is year one
of generative AI. This is year one. Imagine what it's going to do in future years.
You might be able to design an entire presentation, just giving it an outline or talking with it.
So anyway, I want to play that stuff for you. David, you know, I was gone for a couple of days.
What is new in the world of accounting and tax? I saw we might have a government shutdown.
Government shutdown's been in the news this week. So if you remember, it's great because like the
articles, they're loose in 2018, 2019, but there was a shutdown before. And the IRS did shut down.
And there's, you know, there's some stock footage of like, you know, tape over the doors of the
IRS offices and, you know, some dramatic things, B-roll footage like that from 2018, 2019.
So I was just trying to figure out, is the IRS going to shut down again? And a week ago,
the IRS union said they were getting memos. They say there was not going to be a shutdown. So
that was a week ago, the IRS was safe from the government shutdown. Well, because they got all
that funding, right? That 80 billion dollars. Yeah, there's a tie to that cream of safety net.
That goes into effect October 1st, which is basically the day after the shutdown. It's very,
like that part still being debated and argued over. But as of yesterday, they're saying that there
will be a partial close now. But this is, so we still have what eight days before the 30th,
right? So I'm sure news will continue to change. And so as soon as we put this out, it might be
completely different. But what I went on is I started to deep, to go down these paths, right?
About like, when else gets shut down? Like, how does it impact things? A couple, like, you know,
the Pentagon has 80,000 civilian employees. But the one that caught my eye is the SEC.
The SEC furloughs 90% of its 4600 employees. How many? 90% of its 4600 employees.
On October 1st. Yeah. If they don't, if the government shuts down, shuts down. And I just feel like
that's kind of important. Now, the Federal Reserve, they're not tied to the budget because they
basically make money on their industry fees and the fees they charge banks. They don't have any
room, or there's no possible shutdown. So Federal positive insurance or common control
of currency, they're all going to continue as normal things like that. And then time
about people who still get paychecks, right? So, you know, air traffic controllers will still get
paychecks. They'll still be operating. But they will stop training new ones. Well, that's not good,
because we were just talking about how there's a huge shortage of traffic controllers. And then
this was kind of interesting. Criminal prosecutions, including two federal cases against foreign
President Trump would continue. It's funny how they called that out so specifically. But most
civil litigation would be postponed. FBI, Drug Enforcement, Secret Service, they remain on the job.
But then I was like, well, what about other government employees, including the representatives?
So our Congress people will still get paid, Blake. If there's a shutdown, of course.
They'll still get paid. But other government employees will not get paid. It's mind-blowing,
right? Yeah. But here's not mind-blowing. It makes total sense.
But there is a great Democratic rep Angie Craig. She introduced a new bill to strip away paychecks
for members of Congress if there's a shutdown. Okay. We'll see if that has a shot.
So basically, it's going to be one day's worth of pay for every day the government shutdown
is occurring. That's her proposal. But at the end, if they go back to work, they just get paid
anyways. So they're going to give them the difference in the money. So it's temporary. Now,
what's funny about this is the name of the bill. You ready? Now, listen carefully here. It's
my constituents can't afford rebellious tantrums. Handle your shutdown act. Also known as the
McCarthy shutdown act. I like it. Should name the bill. Basically, the McCarthy shutdown act.
But yeah, at least that's doing the right thing. But if they're still going to get,
they're still going to be made full. I mean, senators get 190,000 a year. Federal legislators get
174,000 a year. If they're still made full, there's no penalty to this. It's all optics and
pandering. But hopefully, hopefully, the IRS will not get caught up in this. But I don't know,
my suspicion is it will because when they've raised the debt ceiling, right, that's when the IRS
got they moved the levers and took some of the money away. We'll see if the IRS makes it through
the next eight days here. More IRS news. The AICPA said in their most recent town hall that their
sources at the IRS believe that 95% of new ERC claims are ineligible. And that's new. I had not
seen that in any other news source. So the AICPA is is making news here. I find that number to be
shockingly high. And I want to thank Dan Choden on Twitter for posting this and calling this out.
He said exactly this news. And he took a screenshot of the town hall. And I went and I was actually
listening to it at the time, but I didn't catch that bit. And I wonder how accurate that is. Like,
how could the IRS possibly know this without actually reviewing the files? Are they sampling
them or something? Is this just somebody's opinion at the IRS? If there are really that many,
there are 600,000 new claims in the last few months. That would mean, you know, go ahead, David.
My guess is 5% of the claims coming in are from like legit accountants and accounting firms.
And the other 95% are just coming in from these mills. And so it's very easy for them to know where
they're coming from. Well, that's my guess. It's that obviously obvious and blatant now. I
wish the IRS had this number. It's weird that the AICPA dropped the number, but it is completely
it's unfathomable. It makes sense why they shut it down.
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So I was listening to this town hall on my air pods walking around San Diego after I did
this keynote yesterday, and I walked up from the gas lamp district up to, what do they call it,
Balboa Park. I was walking around Balboa Park listening to the town hall, and they covered
the C-P-A pipeline issue in the town hall this time, which is great because they don't always
talk about it. But again, they save it until the last 10 minutes of an hour-long session.
And I'm thinking to myself, come on, isn't this the number one issue that is facing the accounting
profession right now is talent and getting young people into the profession? And it's constantly
pushed to the very last part of the town halls. And the thing that really irritated me this time
was that before talking about pipeline issues, the featured discussion was with Alan Colton,
great wonderful person, Alan Colton, on M&A and PE, and they talked with him for 20 minutes
about basically how to sell your C-P-A firm, you know, whether that's going to be private equity
or merging up or something else. And it was all about getting out selling your firm. It was the
topic, right? That's what M&A is about. That's what private equity is about. And 20 minutes on that,
and then after that, five minutes on the pipeline issues. So four times as much time in this town hall
dedicated to M&A selling your firm versus the pipeline. Now we did get some news out of the
pipeline segment, the five minutes they dedicated to it with Mike Decker. We found out that there's
the committee, the national advisory, I forget exactly what it's called, pipeline group,
consists of over 20 people from throughout the profession. And somebody we know is on it, David.
It is Jennifer Wilson of convergence coaching. She is helping to run this with somebody from
aprio. And so I'm really excited because we've been wanting to get Jan on the show. And we've we just
haven't been able to schedule it. So I hope we can get her on the show and talk about the pipeline issue.
But yeah, I think I think I wish I wish AICPA would spend more time on this because I don't I think
it's it's like it's the number one issue. It should be at the front of every town hall.
Well, don't they have it just like we do for and people are in it right now who are watching the
live stream. They're in the chat room. Chat is up. Right. Doesn't a lot doesn't the town hall have
a chat stream that people can do live chats in there and chat with each other? I don't I don't know
if you can see anyone else's chats like I don't know how that works. Oh, I it may be often
for sure, but I was in the impression that like people start really asking questions about 150 hour
rule in the chat. So if you put it at the beginning of the thing, it's just going to fuel the chat room
for an hour. And so if you keep it the end, you know, people people have tipped off by that. Yeah.
Yeah, fuel on the fire. Hey, thanks everyone who has joined us today in the live stream. We've got
Hector Garcia here celebrity in the chat. Yalena's here. David Hall, HK Geek, Julio. Thanks everyone
who's commenting. Thank you all for joining us. If you have a story that you think we should be
talking about that we missed, let us know. We want to hear from you and you can get notified when
we go live by subscribing to us on YouTube. And we I think we recently passed 2000 subscribers
on YouTube. So thanks everyone who hit that subscribe button hit that like button. It is now a huge
source of views for us. It's the number one fastest growing podcasting platform. And I think we
had something like 30 40,000 views on YouTube last month alone. So a lot of the the reels, right?
The telephone style videos. They call them the short. Yeah, those are great. We've been doing
really well. Yeah, we've got 14,000 views. I have another IRS story that kind of even ties into
the the pipeline problem a little bit. Okay, well, we'll do that and then we'll get to my
could AI replace the history. So the IRS has posted 3700 new job postings because the IRS now
wants to not audit small the the $400,000 people they want to go after bigger more complicated
businesses. And so they want to hire new agents that are specializing in large corporate and complex
partnership compliance. So 3700 new vacancies are divvied up against 250 IRS offices nationwide.
Base salaries are between 98,000 and 158,000 say that again. So 3700 new jobs 3700 base salaries
from 98,000 to 158,000. Wow, that's not bad. What are the qualifications for these roles?
How much experience do you need? What are they? So that's really interesting. They want you to have
one year of specialized experience. And that you at least got a high school degree, right?
They're kind of grade grade 12 level, right? And that you can demonstrate some professional
accounting or auditing work in the past. But essentially, they don't really care what kind of
degree you have. But they do want you to have at least 30 semesters of accounting coursework.
But it's it's definitely a lower requirement than obviously sitting for the exam. And look at
the money you'd make. Yeah. Like if you're an accounting major, this is this is very viable. I mean,
the government job 90, 100 grand a year. It's pretty good. Hey, I want to say since we got
Hector here that everyone needs to go listen to Hector Garcia's new podcast with Alicia
Katz Pollock, the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast. Congratulations to Hector and Alicia
for ranking on chartables top 200 podcasts globally. It's a huge accomplishment. I don't think
we've ever done that David. This show is rocketing up the charts. And I am so happy and honored
to be helping to produce this show as part of earmark media. And we we have worked with Hector
and Alicia to bring their vision to light. It is the unofficial take on everything QuickBooks and
into it. And who better than Hector and Alicia to do this. It's it's really great. So go subscribe.
You can do that at we have a new URL for it. It is qqb.show. So head over to uqb.show and check
it out and subscribe. They've got a new episode episode four is about into it betting big on AI.
So you know, we cover that in a few minutes here on the show because we jump around to a lot of
different things. Hector and Alicia dig in for an entire episode 40 minutes on this topic. So
do not miss it. All right, David. Should we talk about AI and CEOs? AI stuff. My my slightly cheeky
headline for this episode or title of this episode is could AI replace CEOs of CPA firms.
And it was inspired by this article here on insider. The modern CEO job is completely broken,
but AI could make executives useful again. And the basically the just to this story is that
the role of the modern CEO could be easily done by existing technology. CEOs are often highly
paid figureheads who make decisions based on inputs from consultants rather than contributing
meaningfully to the company's bottom line. And could we not hold CEOs accountable the same way
as other employees or replace them with AI. They could provide quicker answers, continuous self
improvement, operational efficiency. The CEO role is often very vague and generic. And companies
could save a lot of money if somebody built a CEO GPT and just had it, you know, do all the CEO
stuff. So former CEO of into it, he came from GE Steve Bennett back in the day. He actually
almost drove into it in the ground, but that's a that's a whole story for another podcast. But he
used to brag about how many holes a golf he played a year. Oh my god. And he and the CEO of Sun
Micro Systems, who is next door to into it. And there's a golf course right behind both campuses
there. And they would golf literally four days a week probably, maybe more. And his point on this
was, well, as a CEO, the way you know I'm doing my job is I've gotten my C suite,
all executing right where I don't have to do the work. So yes, could AI replace what he's doing.
Yes. Well, it's in robots golf. So it's the CEO of earmark. I'm sort of biased because I don't
think an AI could do my job quite yet. But I think there's parts of it. It could really do like a
significant part, which is simply following up on the status of projects. I feel like my job so
much of my job is just going through our notion database of every project that everyone's working
on and asking for status updates. And I need to figure out how to automate that. I was talking with
Liz Mason, my friend here in Scottsdale, who runs high rock accounting. And she was telling me she's
done this to some extent with her own project management software where if there's not an update
in there for X amount of hours or days, it will then post on her behalf into the project asking
for the status update. So I might do that, David. Don't tell anyone else at earmark that I'm doing this.
But I can see as a leader like what it's had there's so many things. There's so much input,
so much noise. What as a CEO of a company like what should you look at next? And so if AI can help
you bubble that up, that makes sense. So I think like the if the CEO is just doing that kind of like
management of like an ongoing business and not trying to innovate inside the business, then yeah,
I think actually AI could probably do a better job than a lot of CEOs who are just like figureheads,
you know, and keeping the business going steady. But as soon as anything changes, you know, then
that's where the creativity comes in. That's where the vision comes in. So I think the article is
a bit tongue in cheek too. Should we go to remote work? I wanted to talk about that last week and we
just like never got to it like over many weeks. Yeah. If you have a remote work story, I have one
as well. I don't know if you have more than one. I have well, so I have a tie in banking and
remote work. They're starting to come together. And I'm making this connection now. I'm not the only
one. People started writing about it. This started with Jamie Diamond, who has been critical about
remote work speaking yet again. There was a September 7th article on the street.com covering how Jamie
Diamond CEO of Chase has issued a stern warning to employees about returning to the office full time.
He said that those who don't want to commute should not expect to have a job at JP Morgan.
He said that 60% of their employees are back full time, 30% at least three days a week and 10%
remain fully remote. Managing directors were required back full time in April. And Jamie Diamond
is one of those people who believes that you cannot collaborate effectively remotely. And you can't be,
I think he said, to paraphrase, you can't be an effective leader if you're not in the office.
Now, why is he so set on, you know, getting his people back in the office? There's another guy
who has been criticizing remote work. And that's Mike Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg
was quoted in fortune as complaining that remote workers are playing golf all day.
Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that remote workers are essentially on
vacation and that golfing has increased during work hours. And it's true. A Stanford University
research paper found that post-pandemic golf course visits have indeed skyrocketed during week
day, mid-afternoons. However, the researchers have noticed that they have noted that this increase
in golfing has not directly led to a drop in productivity as long as employees make up their time
later in the day. But Bloomberg doesn't pay attention to the research. He thinks that because
people are going out and catching a game of golf, maybe eight holes here and there in the afternoon
that they are not working. And it's shocking to me that these smart guys are just not looking at
the data because productivity has not dropped with remote work. If anything, it's gone up slightly.
So why? Why? I'm worried about their sea sweets. If those two aren't golfing themselves,
I worry about the sea sweet of his sea sweet if he can't go golfing himself.
So what's why what are these guys have such a problem with remote work other than being like old
and crotchety and not being able to, you know, do a Zoom call? Because they want to walk,
do you want to look to see if people out their desk? Are you at your desk or you must be working?
Well, they want that kind of a management style. It might have something to do with commercial
leases and occupancy and buildings. Chase has invested heavily in commercial real estate,
including a new 1,400-foot tower in New York for 15,000 workers. Vacancy rates could cause issues
with loans and property valuations. So maybe it's these rich guys with a lot of real estate,
commercial real estate saying, uh-oh, we need to do something to get occupancy rates back up because
if we don't, we will not be able to refi our commercial real estate loans when their balloon payments
come due in six to seven years. And this is something that I did not realize was such a big deal.
This could be the ticking time bomb in our economy right now. I think it is. It's that a lot of
banks, especially midsize banks, but you know, bigger ones to have a lot of loans on commercial
office space, commercial loans. And if those buildings don't generate enough rents,
now the interest rates are up. They will not be able to refi. And most commercial loans
are not made like a traditional 30 year home mortgage where it's the same payment for 30 years
and then you're done for the whole loan. It is, it is like six to seven years. And then at the end
of that six, seven years, a balloon payment of lots of money is due. You got to pay off that whole
loan. So the loans only for like, you know, a portion of the amount. And with interest rates going
up really fast dramatically, the, the new payment, it's just like in the financial crisis when people
couldn't pay their home mortgages because the payment was so high. Now the rents are coming down
because occupancy is down. So the rent collections may not be enough to pay the loan. And that's when
the owner of the building walks away. And the banks are left with the keys.
So your assertion is that Jamie Diamond and Bloomberg, because they are overly exposed,
they have a risk in owning too much commercial property, if they convince all their CEO friends to
make employees go into the office and pay rent for an office space, that's going to help reduce some
of the risk. That's your assertion. I think that's a, I think they have a motivation to encourage
people to go back to work for that reason and to, you know, try and use their position as leaders
in business to get other business leaders to do this. But it's definitely not working with accounting
firms. I keep seeing articles about how accounting firms are downsizing their office space,
where it's your KPMG in Philadelphia is moving out of 1601 Market Street and they're cutting their
office space by 38%. And BDO is looking for smaller office than their current digs at Hines 57
Center Downtown in Pittsburgh. And you'll see these. I think I've seen these articles go by
in the feet to move to office, close down, small office, downsize yet. It's not many moving up
to bigger offices. No, they're not. This episode of the Cloud Accounting Podcast is sponsored by
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And you know, it's funny, the big fork do studies on remote work as well. So like actually
accounting as a profession, we are leading the way with remote work and I think it's got to be
because auditors have always been really basically remote, right? If you're an auditor, you're almost
never back at your home office. You're always on site. And so we're we're adapted to this.
And a new Deloitte study published in September found that of 2000 more than 2000 US consumers,
56% of employed adults worked remotely or in a hybrid manner over the last year.
And of those 45% said working from home improved family relationships and 40% reported
improved emotional well-being. Additionally, 8 and 10 hybrid workers said their relationships
with family members, colleagues and managers improved or remain the same compared to when they
worked entirely in the office. The preference for fully remote or hybrid options over in-person
work has increased with 37% preferring in-person work and 28% preferring an even blend of remote
and in-person. Remote education is also gaining in popularity with 52% of respondents who learned
remotely wanting to continue learning mostly or completely remotely in the future. Hey, and that's
good news for your mark. Yes, remote where you can earn CPE for listening to podcasts without
having to go to an in-person conference or seminar. By the way, if you're listening right now
and you didn't know, you can earn free continuing professional education credits, both Nazba and
IRS approved with the earmark app. You can get your Nazba CPE for listening to the accounting
podcast and you can get IRS CE for listening to shows like federal tax updates. And I mentioned
Hector's show the unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast. You can get CPE now for that too.
The IRS CE we can only give out for federal tax topics and ethics topics. So it's more limited
but the Nazba CPE we have over a thousand courses now in the earmark library and it's free to use
for one a week and then if you want to support our work and unlock and unlimited yourself
and get rid of the ads in the app, you can subscribe for $130 a year at this time. That may
be going up later this year. So grab it while you can because once you lock in that subscription,
it will continue to renew at that price. So you're grabbed further into the pricing?
At this time, we have decided that everybody who supports us early on gets to keep the price.
So we've got folks who are still in at the $100 a year and I don't have any plans
I don't have any plans to change that. So it's a thank you to everybody who supported us early on.
And we've got over something like 700 individual subscribers now to earmark. Thank you everyone
who supports us. And we've got thousands of subscribers through our partnerships with
associations like the Maryland Society of Accounting and Tax Professionals. All their 1500 members
get free CPE through us unlimited subscriptions through a partnership with them. And we're working
on other groups. So if you want to, you know, for your association, if you're listening and you
want to offer earmark as a benefit to your members, reach out to us at earmarkcpe.com.
You can just email me Blake at earmarkcpe.com and we'll be happy to talk to you about that.
I have another headline on working from home. So this was a study from Microsoft and Cornell
University and they they used multiple datasets and one of them was Microsoft's own employee
data on commuting and total working behaviors. But so the headline essentially people who were from
home all the time cut emissions by 54% against those in office when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions.
That's incredible. So more than half by working from home. Yeah. The vast majority of that obviously
is the car, the commute. Yeah. That's pretty major. So there's an ESG reason for remote work.
Yeah. But it's better for the environment, which is almost obvious, right? And if I'm
thinking back to when the pandemic, we had that lockdown. But everybody's 100% lockdown.
And nobody's driving anywhere. If I remember correctly, like there was measurable differences in
cities and air pollution and air quality and vegetation and birds were flying around. If I remember
correctly. So yes, if people aren't driving cars, it's always going to be better. And then they
can kind of get into just maybe your hybrid, right? So just one day of remote work a week reduces
emissions by 2% over the year. Wow. Just just one day a week. And then two to four days two or
four days a week reduce your individual emissions by up to 29% versus onsite workers. So just two days
a week is a matter of a third of your emissions could be eliminated. So I think that's and then the
focus as far as in the office, people are worried about like, you know, IT devices, right? So your
computers and your phones and all that. Yes, it's all the multiple screens. It's all using electricity,
us live streamer or internet. But it's it's almost nominal. Like instead, the focus should be on
the commute air conditioning and heating. Like those are your big, the big energy sucks that can be
managed by working for mom, right? Because you work home now. You have a less smaller office to
cool as well for the more people work for mom. That's right. There could be ripple benefits to this.
We haven't talked about blockchain in a while. And I have to highlight this fraud, this scam
for our listeners, Mark Cuban lost $870,000 in a crypto scam. Yeah, that Mark Cuban owner of the
Dallas Mavericks shark tank shark, $870,000 he got scammed out of. His wallet was drained of
stable coins. The scam was flagged by blockchain watchers who noticed the suspicious activity in
Cuban's wallet, prompting him to move his other holdings to safety. So he could have lost millions.
But thanks to fans of his, he didn't. And he only lost $870,000.
So he has a crypto wallet. He's got his, his coin in there, Bitcoin River. He's got his crypto wallet.
You have to have that huge password hash to get into that. And so somebody was able to get in
there and start moving the money out, not by cracking his password. They did it by how they got him
to download a fake copy of the Metamask crypto wallet. So he downloaded fraudulent software to
manage his crypto. And hey, we have a better wallet. Use ours. Yeah, or they put the money in there.
They impersonated the company he was using and he downloaded their update, which had a backdoor
into it. So this is why, this is the number one reason why I believe that crypto as it's currently
implemented cryptocurrency can't replace the US dollar as, as a currency. Because without trusted
intermediaries to reverse transactions like this, your average investor in crypto, your average
user is going to get scammed out of a lot of money. If a guy as smart as Mark Cuban can get
scammed out of $870,000, what chance do the rest of us have? And so it can never be used as a
cryptocurrency until somebody fixes that figures that out. Like the cryptocurrencies that rely on,
you know, completely distributed third party verification. And there is no person in the middle,
no trusted bank or whatever that can reverse the transactions. Like that's there's no way to undo
this sort of thing. And there was a quote from Cuban here in the article that I want to call out
because he said something actually, you know, meaningful here. He said, the whole point of the
blockchain is that it's 100% public. Cuban who conceded the lack of anonymity can claim that he
has got a lot of wallets and that 99% of what he is doing is learning. He concluded that the technology
does need to be easier so that celebrity, not anybody can do it. So until the technology improves,
it's not going to take over the world. And everybody's learning budgets are different. We talked
about this before as far as like the percentage of the guys that went down in that sub in the
percentage of the income and how it was you were I spending $200 on something exciting. It didn't
matter in the same thing. I got $100 in crypto spread across a couple wallets. He just, he's
learning with a hundred grand. Yeah. Sorry, 800 grand million bucks in crypto. Yeah, for him,
you know, maybe that's no big deal. Continuing on in crypto news, Tether, remember Tether, David?
Yes. The stable coin, the number one stable coin in the world that has never gone through an audit.
Still, I haven't heard any news about it. If anyone knows if they've finally been audited,
let me know. But it's, you know, tens of billions of dollars in value that has never been audited.
They are back to their old tricks. They are lending out stable coins again. And they promised
that they would not do this. Last year, they said they would wind down their lending of stable coins.
They haven't done it. And guess what? When you lend out stable coins, you are by definition no longer
a stable coin because it means that your stable coin is not one-to-one backed by US dollars.
I can't believe they can get away with this. So they have 5.5 billion dollars of loans out there
as of June 30th, according to their quarterly financial update, which of course was not audited.
So we don't know if that number is for real or not. Yeah. And they said they were going to wind it down.
So the question is, why are they doing this, too? Also, they don't need to do this in order to
make money because they can rake in money hand over fist right now because people buy Tether
with US dollars supposedly. And then Tether goes and invests those US dollars in bonds, US
government bonds, which are paying pretty great interest rates right now, like four or five percent,
right? And so they can make four or five percent and they don't need to lend out this money. So
the question is, why are they lending out the money? And there's speculation online that it's because
there are people that are critical to the Tether ecosystem and the whole crypto ecosystem that
are underwater right now. And so Tether lends out the Tether to prop up the values of other
cryptocurrencies and the entire ecosystem because those people can then use the Tether to continue to buy
crypto when prices are dropping and prop up the prices. And that's the conspiracy theory that I
that's my conspiracy theory that I tend to buy into, which is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency
in the market is created by wash sales and this kind of a market manipulation where it's not
happening with actual dollars. It's with Tether that is ballooned out because Tether can just make
it. Actually, it's one player controlling the market prices. And I think I saw a headline fly
by this week about FTX, the 87 percent drop from crypto was basically FTX caused that to happen
before that the last they're basically responsible for it. So it's like these one one players really
just messing around the market and just playing God that makes any sense. Yeah, there is no free
market, which is crazy because that's the big argument about all the crypto and the Bitcoin and it's
yeah, no, it's actually controlled by very few whales. It's opposite of decentralized, right? It's
opposite of decentralized. Well, and it's worse than the centralization we have in the current
banking system because we don't know who the players are. They can be completely anonymous and they're
unottited and unaccountable to anybody. It's just yeah, it goes back to what I think you brought this
back before there was banking regulation and all these banks could just issue their own currencies
back in the day, right? It's kind of the wild cat. And you know, that's funny because I went to that
you know, Hotel Del Coronado, which was built during that time period in the 1888 when we had all the
wild cat banks out there, you know, propping up, well, not propping up, but as a result of like
all the oil and railroad, you know, industry in the Midwest and the West, where they couldn't get
financing, right? So they had to create these banks and all these banks just started issuing
their own currencies. And you had these crazy banking situations for decades until finally,
Civil War comes along and then the federal government puts an end to that at the end of the Civil War.
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Hey, we got listener mail. Shall we check in on how our listeners are doing?
Absolutely, and then comments too. Comments as well. Yes, so leave us your comments in the live stream.
David will be taking a look at those. I will look at the listener mail.
Let's see. I got a comment from Matthew who said subject 150-hour requirement,
Blake, nice article. Oh, this is referring to the article I wrote in accounting today
on the wild classes accounts take to get their 150 hours. Did we talk about that on the show yet?
I don't think that we did. No, but it was funny because I saw the article and I was like,
oh, man, somebody at accounting today took Blake's thesis and then I noticed it was your article.
Yeah. So this is an article that I published on accounting today last week.
And it was inspired by LinkedIn posts I did where I asked everybody to share the craziest
classes they've taken to get their 150 hours to sit for the CPA exam.
And I compiled the list from the LinkedIn comments and posted this or submitted this article
to accounting today. The one that inspired it, the LinkedIn post originally was beginning
walk slash jog. But we had many more come in vegetable gardening, pickleball, weight training for
women, whitewater kayaking, Alabama dinosaurs, environmental geology, history of rock and roll,
natural disasters, understanding jazz, golf, canoeing, scuba diving. A lot of physical activity
is interesting. I didn't realize so many colleges granted college credit for what, like recreation.
I mean, when you're told you need to complete 30-mar hours and the 30-marves can be anything,
you're going to pick those kind of classes, right? Naturally.
Right. I mean, you're going to do that if you don't have the money to pay for a master's,
which is why the 150 hours is discriminatory and exclusionary. And actually, there's an article I
want to share after we get to the listener mail about that in going concern that talks about how
the people who are most affected by the 150-hour rule tend to be minorities who don't want to do
the extra year of education. So they have to do these workarounds. And it's actually one of the
biggest reasons why they decide not to go into accounting, like 60-70 percent. But anyway,
I don't want to skip around too much. Let's do the listener mail. So Mike Matthew wrote in and said,
Blake, nice article. Yes, it's all theater. And yet the AICPA seems willing to oppose any challenge,
EG, Minnesota, to the absurd rule, even in the face of falling AICPA membership. Yeah, that's the
thing I don't understand is you would think that these associations would want more CPAs.
And the numbers that go in the wrong direction, they won't, you know, their dues are going to drop.
It's precipitous. Right. Going off a cliff here. Like, why? Why don't they?
So if you remember dues easily, just like, you don't have to be a CPA and you still don't.
Well, then it's like, why even have the CPA, David? You know, Todd wrote, you may have already
pointed this out, but I thought it was interesting that two of the presidential candidates for the
Republican nomination have an accounting slash accounting tech background. Nikki Haley began
doing bookkeeping work at the age of 12 for her mom's clothing shop. She graduated from Clemson
with an accounting degree, worked in corporate accounting for FCR, and later her family's
clothing business as an accountant slash CFO. Doug Burgham was president and chairman of Great
Plains Software. I had no idea he was running for president. I'm out of the loop.
Great Plains Software developed accounting software for small slash medium-sized businesses.
It was acquired by Microsoft in 2001. It appears that the ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics GP,
evolved at least in part from the software acquired from Great Plains.
Note that my sources are Wikipedia and other online sources to take details with a grain of salt.
Well, you know, I use Wikipedia, so I'll buy it. Thanks, Todd. We need more accountants
in government. I think they could help. I got an email from Erica who said, and regards to the AT
article, good article, nice high-level summary of all the factors to consider. I happened to have
dinner with a state lobbyist last weekend and asked him who's talking about the CPA shortage in
the Idaho legislature, Crickets. Every time I mentioned the shortage to someone outside the industry,
they're always shocked. Apparently, we're the only ones that know, smiley face. Keep fighting the
good fight, Erica. Thank you, Erica. But it's getting mainstream coverage now outside of accounting
press. And then again, this is how it works with I think legislatures and legislative bodies
until somebody, and they have a lot of, that's just the way politics is, right? A lot of people in
political positions have businesses. They have side income, they're former business people. Until
the one day, they realize, oh, I can't get my business audited or I can't do this or I can't do
this because there's no accountants. That's when it's going to start hitting home, right? And
that's happening, though. Remember, we talked to in Minnesota. Linda Weedell, right? She said
smaller municipalities can't get stuff done. Yeah, because they can't get accounting firms.
That is going to drive it, I think. And also, if the associations start lobbying for it, right?
That would do it. They have influence. I mean, that's their main function, the state associations
lobby for the CPAs in the state. And that's what they put the money to use doing. Here is an email
from Ray. Ray said, two of your favorite topics, IRS and AI, unusually mentioned together in
the same sentence. I wonder if they'll get competent people to use AI and truly
cutting edge and innovative ways or if the IRS will underutilize AI, make a mess and waste lots
of time and money, I'd give it even odds. And he sent me this article here from Tax Advisor.
IRS vows new enforcement efforts aided by AI. Any continues? I do hope that the IRS pulls this
off and succeeds. Fair tax administration is good for everyone. In our voluntary compliance regime,
the risk of audit, whether actual or perceived is the strongest motivator. Those who follow the
rules should will have less to fear and those who do not follow the rules should will have more to
fear. Now, this article that Ray sent along is talking about how the IRS has a plan to focus more
tax enforcement efforts on the wealthy and that they are going to utilize artificial intelligence,
specifically to audit large partnerships, which is something that they have struggled to do with
human beings because it is very difficult to audit large partnerships with all of these K ones and
all of these entities that own these things. They it's just like a web of entities, right? It's not
easy. It's just auditing one earned income tax credit, which is what they are also actually going
to cut back on. They have said, so we don't really have details as to how they're going to do it.
I've seen this brought up in a couple different articles as a footnote kind of in the article,
but it's really them in the same way we talk about using your own company or firms using it.
You're trying to supplement labor, right? Just helping somebody be 20% faster. If it can help
like that, that's going to make a difference for the IRS. So let me read the couple paragraphs,
specifically about how they're approaching it. The two main efforts were full announced are the
pursuit of 1600 high wealth taxpayers who owe at least $250,000 each and using AI to focus on
large partnerships that the IRS previously did not have the resources to take on. Also,
we're full said the IRS will improve the tax system for middle and low income people by ramping
up efforts to take down schemes such as those that promise exorbitant earned income tax credit
refunds. So they're going to go after the promoters of the earned income tax credit fraud.
Not the individuals, which I think makes sense. It's like going after the ERC mills
would make a lot of sense as opposed to going after the individual ERC filers. If you shut down
the mills, if they had if they had done that before they got this flood of filings, then they
wouldn't have the flood of filings, would they? Earlier this year, the IRS said it was pursuing 175
millionaires who owed hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes. So far, the service has
collected tens of millions of dollars from 40 or so of those millionaires were full said.
So they've gotten to 40 out of 175 that they identified. And yeah.
I have a prediction. So obviously Congress is all, oh, AI needs regulation and everybody,
there's like the anti-AI crowd out there, but there's also the anti-IRS crowd out there. I think
you're going to see a bill introduced that says they are not allowed to use AI to do audits.
Like somebody's going to introduce that just to keep the IRS held down, essentially.
And they're going to argue, and they're going to get the votes from the other side of the aisle,
because that's how the aisle is like, we got a fear AI. So this probably won't happen because of
politics. Maybe. Here's more details on how they're going to use the AI for these partnerships.
First, the IRS will audit 75 specific partnerships with over 10 billion in assets on average.
And starting in October, the service will mail a compliance alert to hundreds of partnerships
with over 10 million in assets, where the IRS discovered discrepancies between end-of-year
balances compared to beginning balances in the following year. Large partnerships are, quote,
some of the complex cases the IRS faces, unquote, he said, quote, and it involves a wide
range of industries and activities where it's been far too easy for tax evaders to cut corners.
The IRS has simply not had enough resources and staffing to address partnerships.
They are also going to put scrutiny on digital assets and F bar violations and labor
brokers. Apparently, there have been instances where construction contractors are making Form 1099
payments to an apparent subcontractor that's really a shell company with no legitimate business
relationship with the contractor. This money then flows back to the original contractor.
The IRS plans to conduct both civil audits and criminal investigations.
I think I got, we got so much mail. It's been great. Everyone send us your emails to the
accounting podcast at earmark.me. Send us your stories like rated. That was a really good story.
Thank you, Ray. Here's a longer one from Polita. Polita said, hello, Blake and David,
I worked as a non-CPA accountant 10 years ago prior to relocating to the United States in 2012.
I investigated pursuing further education in accounting to work towards the CPA designation,
but the requirements were daunting, given I was working full-time with a six-month-old and a spouse
who was already a full-time law school student. So I put it off. Ten years later, after three kids,
a spouse well-established in his career, working in other roles, and completing a master of
science degree and a non-accounting related interest, I found myself thinking about the CPA
designation again. While researching the accounting industry, I came across your podcast earlier
this year, back when it was the cloud accounting podcast, and it was extremely helpful in figuring
out the state of things. I went back to earlier episodes and listened many times to episodes covering
the accountant shortage, the 150-hour rule problem, NASBA's take on the 150-hour rule,
AICPA's eight-point plan to fix the accounting pipeline, the interview with Ken Bishop, and many more.
I now realize that I don't have to worry about working at a big four, that I can actually
accomplish this in many other types of accounting firms with a focus on something that interests me.
For instance, client accounting for nonprofits or small real estate companies.
For the first time, I felt this was achievable, so I submitted an application of intent to the
Texas State Board of Public Accountancy two weeks ago to find out what courses I need to satisfy
the education requirement. And to suite in the deal, as of September 1, 2023, the Texas Public
Accountancy Act was amended to require 120 semester hours to qualify to sit for the CPA exam,
instead of the prior 150 semester hours. And she provides a link to their update page.
As I await the response, I am researching local firms,
waiting to take on someone in the early stages of pursuing the CPA. As we near your end,
I see the potential for many of these opportunities becoming available.
Thank you for creating the accounting podcast and for researching and bringing relevant
information about the state of the industry to a returning career changer. Not sure if that
is a term such as myself. I don't think I would have acted as quickly without hearing your
and your guests' insight and commentary. In a sense, it has slowly been an effective call to action.
Amazing. We helped changing the world.
Bring the CPA, a future CPA back into the profession. Paulita, thank you so much for writing that
email. We are changing the pipeline. We should be part of the AI CPA strategy to increase the
pipeline. I know, right? I mean, this is a great example of somebody who has been really excluded
by the 150-hour rule, right? Non-CPA accountant relocated to the US,
had was working full-time with a six-month-old and a spouse in law school. You think this person
has the time and inclination to go and get 30 hours of semester hours of education that they
don't need because they've already been working as an accountant for 10 years. It's a total waste
of time for them to do that. That's who you're excluding. That's an example. You're excluding a
young mother, young working mom. Great job. Well done. You've improved the quality of the
profession by making everyone get 150 hours and excluding the young working parents.
I think the permeability to discover our conversations about it is really kind of an important
thing because if we want to tote the line and turn a blind eye to the discussion on 150 hours,
I know some people who listen to Boichi Sigeu say we talk about it too much or it's not that.
But by us having this discussion, she was able to find resources and differing opinions to help
her make it this life decision. If that wasn't there, she might not know that this was an issue
or that there could be options or that state of Texas was recently changed. I've got one more
before we go. I got to get to all of them. Yeah. Hello. My name is Harmony and I'm currently working
on my associates with plans to get my bachelors in finance and accounting. I think it's funny. Every
time I hear you guys talking about the 150-hour rule, I am 30 years old and though I wouldn't say
I'm indecisive, I've had a lot of interest career-wise that haven't all lined up. I've been to
Cosmetology School, Massage, Therapy School, and I have an Associates of Applied Science as a
Physical Therapist Assistant and a few scattered semesters of filler classes when something caught
my interest like taking ASL sign language because I thought it was cool or the Institute for
Integrative Nutrition, Health Coach Certificate because I wanted to learn from my own health care.
I gave all that background to say that I looked at the hours on my transcript and was not quite
surprised to see that I had over 145 acquired hours on my transcript. I don't believe I will have
trouble meeting that 150 hours if I chose to get my CPA after completing my bachelors. I enjoy
listening to your show even though I am extremely new to the profession. Thanks.
It's great. Thank you Harmony. And that's another career changer.
That's right. A career changer who like me waffled around a lot, so had most of the credits already.
Although Harmony, you might be disappointed depending on your state to find out that they require
a lot of specific classes, a significant number of specific accounting of business classes.
And if you don't have those, you have to go back and get those classes just because they require
you to have sat in a classroom to take those specific classes, even if you can demonstrate your
knowledge on the exam. Because it's apparently not enough to prove your knowledge on the exam,
you have to have a transcript that says you sat in a classroom for X hours to also prove your
knowledge. I guess one thing isn't enough. I don't know. It doesn't really add up for me.
I think the bachelors and given you've got all that wide-ranging experience should be enough,
but you know, that's just my opinion. Someone in the chat room, apparently, when they're
linked in person, their name doesn't come through. Not always. They've just chats through linked in.
But somebody asked, does anyone know if Georgia is targeting to reduce the 150 hour rule anytime soon?
Anybody in Georgia that has any information, please leave a voicemail or send us an email.
Because yeah, are the dominoes falling? Yeah. I mean, so far, we've got Minnesota and South Carolina
actively working to reduce the 150 or provide an alternative pathway. Texas has reduced the
sitting for the exam to 120, but you still got to get the extra 30 after if you want to be a CPA to
get licensed. What other states are moving in this direction? New York doesn't have to. In New
York, yeah, you already has. In New York, there's a pathway where you don't even need a bachelor's
degree to get your CPA. Most people don't even know about that because it takes, is it 15 years of
experience? 15 years. Yeah. Pretty funny like that that even exists still. And yet, you know,
these states are getting such hassle for trying to change things a little bit.
Allison said, Harmony is going to be a well-rounded CPA given her very interest. Yes, I agree.
Assuming she's not put off by the specific education requirements. That's the biggest challenge
for us career changers. It was for me. It took me five years to get my CPA because of all the
classes I had to take while working full-time. All right, that's enough for this week, David.
If our listeners want to get in touch with you, where should they go?
I'm on all the socials just at David Theory. I am at Blake T. Oliver. Send us emails. We are
the accounting podcast at earmark.me. That's the accounting podcast at earmark.me. Subscribe to us
on YouTube and earn free CPE for listening today with the earmark app. You can search earmark CPE
on the App Store or Google Play Store. And check out our, I think we're up to almost 500 reviews
on Apple with 4.9 stars. Thanks everyone who's written a review of the app. We're really
proud of that and and thanks so much. David, see you next week. That's it. Next week.
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Most firm owners are busier than they want to be because they feel like they have to work long
hours to keep their firms running. But according to CPA Ryan Lazanis, that is not necessary.
Ryan built a multi-seven-figure firm that didn't require him to work nights or weekends and
just five years after starting his firm, Ryan sold it to a major international organization for
a hefty profit. His secret is a special six-part system, and right now he's teaching 700 plus
busy firm owners to implement this system in their own firm, so they can scale revenue and spend
more time with family and friends. Learn more about Ryan's special six-part system that lets
firm owners grow their revenue and their free time. Go to www.futurefirmacelerate.com slash C-A-P.
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job posting, or that fancy Excel macro you just created? Why not let the listeners of the
Cloud Accounting podcast know by running and classify that? Hit the show notes for the link to
get more info.