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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

The New Pipeline: Outsourcing and Offshoring

businessman's hand pointing to icons, one of which is labeled "outsourcing"

Firms still are working out their options and business models.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The 2024 Rosenberg National Survey of CPA Firm Statistics has found something that everybody knew. It has also found that there’s more of it than anybody knew.

And that there’s more coming.

MORE: Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?
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This swelling tsunami sweeping over the accounting industry is the use of outsourced staff, outsourced tax returns, and the ultimate in remote work, offshoring assignments and functions to foreign lands.
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POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Is the IRS Adequately Tracking Corporate Tax Evasion?

The Inspector General smells something fishy.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Believe it not, there are large American corporations that establish a pseudo-presence in other countries for the sole purpose of evading taxes.

And that’s not the only trick in the corporate books.

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Granted, sometimes those tricks are legitimate tax tactics. The tax code has loopholes, and that’s what they’re for.

Needless to say, corporate tax strategy can get pretty complicated. There is an entire industry of lawyers, accountants and wealth management professionals dedicated to walking the fine line between evasion and due diligence in the interest of shareholders.
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OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

The Slow, Painful Death of the 150-Hour Rule

Ending a 50-year mandate, now “competency” counts (again).

By Rick Telberg
CPA Trendlines Research

After a quarter century of campaigning to get the 150-hour rule passed by all 50 states, overcoming opposition that seemed at one time as if it would rend the profession’s institutions, and after another quarter century of finding that the rule was failing by all critical measures, the AICPA and NASBA are rolling out a workaround that could kill the rule.

MORE 150-hour rule  | DOWNLOAD the exposure draft

The organizations are offering a “competency-based” hurdle for CPA licensure that signals abject surrender.

This is the story, 50 years in the making, of (mostly) good intentions gone bad, unintended (but not unforeseen) consequences, and how rank-and-file CPAs (eventually) overcame the power plays of multinational firms. READ MORE →

OUTLOOK & ANALYSIS

Is This the Last Year of Accounting’s Golden Age?

hourglass breaking, sand blowing away

The authors of the Rosenberg MAP survey have some thoughts.

By CPA Trendlines Research
Rosenberg Survey of CPA Firm Statistics

One thing CPA firms can’t gripe about is revenue. Yeah, the hours seem to be getting longer, the struggle harder, the rules more complex, and the technology continuously antiquated. But the money: it’s good.

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The 2024 Rosenberg Survey of CPA Firm Statistics—the 26th annual edition of the premier report on the state of the industry—confirms that in 2023, virtually all indicators of CPA firms’ health were good. And, generally speaking, the bigger the firm, the better they’re doing.
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