POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Savage: Use Your License as a Megaphone | ARC – SLC

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Small acts of involvement add up to big wins for the profession and the public.

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Accounting ARC – Student-Led Conversations
With Arpan Grewal
Center for Accounting Transformation

Advocacy often appears on television as protest marches, campaign rallies, or contentious debates. But in a recent Accounting ARC – Student-Led Conversations episode, host Arpan Grewal and guest ZeNai Savage, CPA, recast advocacy as something more grounded and accessible: a series of everyday decisions about when to speak up, who to invite in, and how to use professional skills for public good.

MORE Accounting ARC: Baker: Interpreting Pricing Psychology | Don’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 Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting’s Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z – And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough

Savage is not a typical accountant. She is the founder of The Savage Advantage, a consulting firm that provides outsourced controller work, budget development, governance support, and board training to nonprofits and civic organizations. She also writes and speaks through Blurred Lines, a personal platform built on the belief that people do not have to separate their faith, professional life, and community service into neat compartments.

For Grewal, a Gen Z student leader, Savage’s path offers a concrete example of how young professionals can blend technical careers with civic engagement.

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Shutdown Shockwaves: How Accountants Keep the Government’s Books From Crashing | ARC

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Decode the financial fallout—where payables stall, nonprofits scramble, and the IRS slows to a crawl.

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Accounting ARC
With Liz Mason, Byron Patrick, and Donny Shimamoto
Center for Accounting Transformation

When the federal government shuts down, headlines focus on politics. But behind every furlough and frozen budget lies a deeper story—one told through accounting cycles, payroll ledgers, and cash flow reports. 

In the latest episode of Accounting ARC, hosts Liz Mason, CPA; Byron Patrick, CPA.CITP, CGMA; and Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, break down what really happens when appropriations stall and the business of government grinds to a halt. 

MORE Accounting ARC: Royalties, Residuals, and Reality Checks | ARC-SLC | Free Speech Is a Right; Respect Is a Responsibility | Cash Bags, Casinos & Audits: How First Jobs Shape Us | Gen Z Redefines Careers | Bootleggers, Baptitsts & CPAs: Rethinking Licensure | CPA Firm Ownership Under Fire | Walking Violation: When Showing Your CPA Gets You in Trouble | Audit Bags to TikTok Tags, Gen Z Talks Success | Students Challenge Accounting’s Traditional Career Path | True Grit: Recognizing Struggles That Shape Our Successes |More Admins, Fewer Students, No Plan | What Career Advice Gets Wrong for Gen Z – And How to Fix It | Your Identity is Not a Liability | Burnout, Be Gone: Accounting Needs a Boundary Breakthrough

“This is the kind of thing accountants think about,” Mason says at the start of the episode. “What’s the actual technical answer? What does a shutdown mean for accounts payable, for payroll, for the IRS? What’s really happening behind the scenes?” 

Their discussion reveals a complex web of accounting impacts—from unpaid invoices and delayed reimbursements to frozen nonprofit grants and confused taxpayers. 

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DOGE, Palantir and the IRS: What Could Go Wrong?

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Palantir and the IRS: Musk, left, Thiel, right

 

Who’s watching the IRS code?

By CPA Trendlines Research

The IRS’s Unified API Layer may be the cornerstone of a digital-first tax administration, even as key voices inside and outside the agency raise red flags about transparency, security, and oversight.

MORE Tax | Mounting Delays Undermine Public Trust in IRS Refund Process | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill  | IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Accountants Reporting a Pretty Good Year | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

The partnership with the tech industry is triggering a new kind of scrutiny, not over software performance, but civil liberties. At the center of that concern is Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company that confirms it will work with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency and the IRS on the API infrastructure. READ MORE →

Can DOGE and Palantir Fix the IRS with a ‘Mega API’?

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And what about data security and privacy?

By CPA Trendlines Research

The Internal Revenue Service is developing a Unified API Layer intended to consolidate access across its fractured legacy systems, a move that could transform the agency—if executed with transparency, speed, and user needs in mind.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

The project gained momentum–and sparked controversy–this year with the Department of Government Efficiency and Palantir Technologies aiming to build a comprehensive API system.

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Five Million IRS Refunds Delayed by Staff Cuts

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Still, better than 21 million in 2022 pandemic.

By CPA Trendlines Research

2025 Filing Season by the Numbers
Individual Returns Received 140.6 million
Refunds Issued 86.1 million
Total Refund Dollars $253 billion
Average Refund $2,942

Issuing $49 billion more in refunds than last year, the Internal Revenue Service processed over $253 billion in refunds during the 2025 filing season, with 86.1 million refunds issued and an average check of $2,942, according to the National Taxpayer Advocate’s 2026 Objectives Report to Congress.

MORE IRS | Brace Yourself: IRS 25% Staff Cuts Mean Big Trouble for Tax Pros and Clients | What to Watch in the One Big Beautiful Bill |IRS’s Big Annual Report: Already Out of Date as Agency Grapples with Chaos and Cuts | Busy Season Barometer Stats: Who’s Responding and How They’re Doing | Tax Season Faceplant: Accountants Overrun by Late Chaos

In 2022, the IRS faced a substantial backlog, with over 21 million delayed refunds, primarily due to pandemic-related challenges and a surge in paper filings. By 2023, improvements in processing systems and staffing helped reduce the backlog to approximately 1.9 million delayed refunds. However, in 2025, delayed refunds rose again to over 5 million, slowed by headline-making staff cuts and an uptick in identity theft cases requiring additional verification.

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