Downsized IRS Walls Out Taxpayers, Tax Pros with Service Cuts
IRS shifts work to accountants with delays, dead phones, and employee departures.
By CPA Trendlines
TAX
New Guide Shows How Firms Build New Sales Tax Service Lines
New CPA Trendlines / Avalara playbook shows accountants don’t need to be SALT specialists before they can help.
Download the guide: From Generalist to SALT-Savvy: How Accounting Practitioners Can Build Sales Tax Expertise That Wins Clients.
Logan Graf: Build a Modern Accounting Business, Not a Job | The Disruptors
“People don’t want to work themselves to death for a third of the year.”
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The Disruptors
With Liz Farr
For CPA Trendlines
Logan Graf, owner of The Graf Tax Co and founder of the Counter community, is proof that there’s a better way to run a tax firm. Last tax season, after restructuring, hiring a manager, and implementing a tax scheduling system, neither he nor his manager worked more than 40 hours a week. He believes accounting firms should operate like modern businesses. “We don’t have to look at what’s been done in the past and copy them,” he says.
Graf, who launched his own firm in 2020, took mental notes of what he liked and what he didn’t like at the firms he worked at. At his last place of employment, Scott & Aderholt near Austin, TX, he was given an unusual level of autonomy. “I was basically running a firm within a firm,” he recalls.
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In addition to technical work, he also handled client onboarding, return preparation, review, billing, workflow design, and documentation, all of which made going out on his own easier. “It was like a seamless transition,” he says. The extra money as a firm owner was a welcome surprise. “I was basically making double the amount of money and working the same amount of hours, if not less,” compared to his prior jobs.
Blake Christian: Why You Should Pay Attention to OZ 2.0 | Holistic Guide
Proper entity structure, timing, and compliance are critical to maximizing the next phase of Opportunity Zone benefits.
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The Holistic Guide to Wealth Management
With Rory Henry, CFP®, BFA™
A decade ago, federal Opportunity Zones (OZ) were introduced as part of the 2017 Tax Cuts & Jobs Act to encourage long-term investment into economically distressed communities through tax incentives. The first phase of the OZ program expires at the end of 2026, but Blake Christian, CPA, says the program is entering a new phase (OZ 2.0) that could dramatically expand its impact across operating businesses, infrastructure, AI data centers, and rural America.
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While many investors initially focus on the tax deferral aspects of Opportunity Zones, Christian explains that the program delivers three separate benefits.
Jason Ackerman: Roth Mistakes That Cost Clients the Most | The Concierge CPA
Existing IRA balances and Form 8606 can make or break the strategy.
The Balanced Millionaire: Building a 7-Figure Firm in 4 Hours a Week. – See Today’s Special Offer
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The Concierge CPA
With Jackie Meyer
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Roth IRAs can provide tax-free growth and qualified withdrawals, but eligibility rules, reporting requirements, and conversion mechanics leave plenty of room for costly mistakes. Meyer and Ackerman examine direct contributions, backdoor Roth strategies, the often-misunderstood five-year rules, and the documentation advisers need to implement these strategies correctly.
A central warning: A backdoor Roth is not a product or a one-click transaction. It is a multistep process that requires advisers to examine the client’s existing IRA balances, properly report nondeductible contributions and conversions, and reconcile Form 8606 with Form 1099-R.
“Messing up the backdoor Roth is probably the one that can hurt the most,” Ackerman says.
Who Will Review Tax Returns When AI Trains No One? | ARC
Firms must build new pathways that develop reviewers, judgment and client-facing skills.
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Accounting ARC
With Donny Shimamoto, Liz Mason, and Byron Patrick
Center for Accounting Transformation
Artificial intelligence may not eliminate the entry-level tax professional. But it is dismantling the job that many firms still use to train one.
That’s the conversation driving a new episode of the Accounting ARC podcast featuring Donny Shimamoto, CPA.CITP, CGMA, founder and managing director of IntrapriseTechKnowlogies LLC and founder and inspiration architect for the Center for Accounting Transformation; and Liz Mason, CPA, CEO of High Rock Accounting.
The conversation begins with a small tax firm that hires six interns each year and teaches them to prepare returns much as earlier generations learned: working from paper documents, identifying relevant numbers, mapping those figures to tax forms, and entering the data into tax software.
MORE Accounting ARC: Accounting Internships Need an Upgrade | The CPA Career Nobody Talks About | Conference Season Exposes Accounting’s Knowledge Gap | The Feedback Mistake That Costs You Your Best People | Is Your Boss Really the Problem? | Most Accountants Are Missing This AI Shift | AI Can Fix Your Workflow—or Break It in Seconds | Efficiency Is the Wrong Goal for AI | Accounting’s Hidden Talent Risk: The Sandwich Generation | Built Fast. Sold Faster. Broken Later? The Truth About Accounting Tech | Recognize When You Need to Recharge Before You Burn Out | Valuing More Than the Balance Sheet
The firm owner sees the process as an apprenticeship that helps students bridge the gap between an individual tax course and real-world preparation. Shimamoto sees value in teaching interns how information moves from source documents to a completed return. Mason agrees with the objective but challenges the method.
“From a holistic learning exploration, sure, yes, that is a way to learn,” Mason says. “From a where-we-are-today perspective, I think that’s a giant disservice to these interns.”
The Top Tip for Reviewing Tax Returns
What would you say?
By Ed Mendlowitz
202 Questions and Answers: Managing an Accounting Practice
Question: I know you have a lot of advice on how to review tax returns. What’s your single best tip?
MORE: You Have to Start Somewhere | Two Options for Collecting Past Due Fees | When Board Service Gets Tricky | Eleven Ways New Staffers Can Help Bring in Business | Busy Season Is Over, So It’s Time for Some Resolutions | Want to Merge? Six Steps to Take | How to Start Providing Family Office Services | Every Accounting Firm Needs Quality Control | No One Listens to You? Change How You Talk | 47 Types of Business Valuation to Provide | Thirteen Things to Consider Before You Sell Your Practice | Uncooperative Partner Might Not be the Problem
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Response: I had never thought about this until this question was asked.
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Art Werner: Trump Accounts Offer Employee Fringe Benefits Opportunities | Quick Tax Tip
Trump Accounts’ potential for employer contributions has so far gone unnoticed.
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Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
CPE Today
One particular feature of the new Trump Accounts has received very little attention so far, notes tax expert Art Werner: the account’s potential use as an employer-provided fringe benefit.
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“What I’m about to talk about as a fringe benefit might be extremely new to a client,” Werner says. “They might say, I never heard of that. I didn’t know I could do that.”
The 3-Part Framework Firms Are Using to Fix K-1 Chaos
“Automation alone” can’t solve the K-1 calamity.
By CPA Trendlines Research Staff
Art Werner: ‘Free Money’ for New Trump Accounts | Quick Tax Tip
Trump Accounts are for the benefit of children.
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Quick Tax Tip
With Art Werner
CPE Today
Trump accounts offer a rare chance for a government-funded head start on a tax-advantaged education account.
“The federal government will actually infuse these accounts with $1,000,” says Art Werner. “It’s free money. Just face it, it’s free money.”
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Any child under age 18 with a Social Security number is eligible for a Trump account. Children born between 2025 and 2028 also qualify for a government contribution.