Art Werner: Avoid Tax Surprises for Clients | Quick Tax Tip

Unexpected tax bills erode trust fast. Most are preventable—if CPAs spot the warning signs early enough.

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Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
CPE Today

Surprise tax bills remain one of the most common—and avoidable—sources of client frustration. In most cases, the issue isn’t aggressive planning gone wrong, but passive assumptions left unchecked throughout the year.

Tax attorney Art Werner, JD, points to predictable triggers: income that rises while withholding stays flat, investment activity that isn’t incorporated into estimates, and planning decisions made without coordination across the return.

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Variable income is a frequent culprit. Bonuses, equity compensation, retirement withdrawals, and side-business earnings can easily push clients into higher brackets or trigger phaseouts.

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Visibility Is the New Accounting Authority | Accounting Voices

Reputation now grows through clarity and communication, not tenure.

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Accounting Voices
With Rob Brown

After two episodes dissecting the Big Four’s AI arms race, the final chapter of the mini-series turns the lens inward. This episode of Accounting Voices makes the case that staying competitive in an automated profession has less to do with budgets and bots — and everything to do with judgment, visibility, and trust.

AI has changed what clients and employers value. Hours and output no longer differentiate. Clarity, confidence, and credibility do.

In accounting, reputation once followed hierarchy. Today, it follows visibility.

When a client, prospect, or employer searches your name, they are not just checking credentials. They are looking for proof of thinking. Insight. Perspective. Signals that you understand what the numbers mean — and when they should be questioned.

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Lewis: Workforce Development Is the Next Imperative | Gear Up For Growth

Training and growth—not just recruitment—will determine the profession’s future.

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Gear Up for Growth
With Jean Caragher
For CPA Trendlines

When Jan Lewis, vice chair of the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), says, “The world is a complicated place, and who better than a CPA to help cut through the noise?” she’s not offering a slogan. She’s issuing a call to action.

More Jean Caragher here | Get her best-selling handbook, The 90-Day Marketing Plan for CPA Firms, here | More Gear Up for Growth

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In a wide-ranging and refreshingly candid conversation with host Jean Caragher on Gear Up for Growth, Lewis makes the case that this moment—right now—is one of the most consequential and opportunity-rich periods the CPA profession has ever faced.

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OCR, Research Bots & Meeting Assistants: What Actually Helps Now | ARC

Firms use AI, planning, and “hope” to make tax season more manageable.

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto

Center for Accounting Transformation

Build a 7-figure firm in just 4 hours a week!

As firms head into tax season, the hosts of Accounting ARC make a case for lowering the temperature — and the workload — with practical tech choices, proactive planning and a stronger focus on people.

MORE Accounting ARC: Return Season is the New Stress Test | Small Firms May Have the Biggest Advantage in 2026 | Downgraded: What the DOE Said About Accounting | Savage: Using Your License as a MegaphoneBaker: Interpreting Pricing PsychologyDon’t Get Fired by Your Own Automation | What Amazon Doesn’t Tell You | Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape UsGen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure

In a special Tax Season Readiness episode, Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA; joins co-hosts Liz Mason, CPA; and Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA; to preview new tax platform research, spotlight emerging AI tools and talk candidly about what helps teams sustain momentum from January through April.

Shimamoto, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation, sets the tone early. He says he intentionally avoids calling it “busy season,” noting that practitioners tell him the upcoming cycle may feel lighter than the past few years. The conversation that follows keeps returning to the same core question: What, specifically, helps firms reduce friction before deadlines hit?

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Epp and Schrock: Firms that Listen Keep Their People | MOVE Like This

Paychecks and perks are no longer enough to retain talent.

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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MOVE Like This
With Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk
For CPA Trendlines Research

In this episode of MOVE Like This, Bonnie Buol Ruszczyk sits down with Kristi Epp, a tax partner, and Amber Schrock, an advisory partner and Las Vegas market leader at Frazier & Deeter, explore how the accounting profession is evolving and how firm leaders can better support their people. Both guests share their career journeys and how they found long-term professional homes at the firm, emphasizing mentorship, growth opportunities, and a culture that values people as much as performance. 

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Epp and Schrock note that the past five years, particularly the post-COVID period, have fundamentally reshaped accounting. Remote work, automation, and regulatory complexity are now the norm, while consolidation and private equity activity are accelerating change across the profession. Frazier & Deeter’s recent growth initiatives, including acquisitions, reflect this shifting landscape and the need for firms to think differently about scale, talent, and integration.  READ MORE →

Oliver: Build a Biz that Runs Without You | The Disruptors

“They get a check every month, and they don’t have to do any work.”

This is a preview. The complete 1-hour video episode, with commentary and transcript, is first available exclusively to PRO Members | Go PRO here
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr

Blake Oliver noticed a consistent pattern with firm owners. The hardest part for them, it seems, just based on my conversations, is getting started and then building that initial team, creating that firm from scratch, going from zero to something is really, really, really difficult,” he explains.  

That “hardest part” echoes his own experience. 

MORE STREAMING:MORE STREAMING: Daiber: Use Succession as a Growth Strategy | Cannon: Busy Season is Self-InflictedCarroll: When One Person Can Break the FirmRampe: Build a Roadmap Even When the Road’s Not ThereChang: Killing SALY, One Agent at a Time | Vanover: 5-Star Firms Don’t Bill by the HourKless: Profit Is a Result. Flourishing Is the Purpose | Whitman: Build Culture on ‘Progress,’ Not Change | Shein: No PE? No M&A? No Problem | Hood and Weber: Time to RISEProctor: Turn Dumb Ideas into Brilliant SolutionsCarter-Gray: How 1 Poor Review Strengthened the Firm | Hartman: Upwork to “40 Under 40” in 3 Years |

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Before he became known to the accounting world as the co-host of the Accounting Podcast and founder of Earmark, Oliver had his own firm. “I spent five years building a firm from scratch…going from zero to a million dollars in revenue in five years,” he says. Because he was largely figuring it out on his own, the process was far harder than it needed to be 

His new book, “Building a Sustainable Firm: Strategies for the Modern Accounting Practice,” distils the lessons he learned from talking to firm owners and from his own experiences into a blueprint for creating an accounting business that supports your team, your clients, and your own life.

“If you’re going to take the leap to go start your own firm…you should have something that you’re happy with at the end, he explains  

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