Today's Features
AUDIT & ASSURANCE

Are You Using the Right Business Model?

Own your expertise and price it accordingly – yes, even in audits. 

By Alan Anderson, CPA
Transforming Audit for the Future

Those firms that value the chargeable hour above all risk losing their best team members. The ones who want to think, innovate and come up with creative ideas that add value to the client and the firm will leave.

MORE: Give Advice While Remaining Independent |  Stop Mixing Up Your V’s and Losing Your Best People | How to Upgrade C and D Clients | Can a Service Center Model Solve Audit Staffing Shortages? | Move to Advisory and Assurance with Relevance | Use Eight Audit Exit Items to Deepen Client Relationships | Know Your Three Audit W’s | Planning Lays the Foundation of Audit Relevance | Are You Correctly Identifying the Relevance Intersection?
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When audits are billed out on a flat-fee basis, is an hourly rate still relevant? Tracking time isn’t a revenue system if it does not impact what the client pays you. The billable hour is nothing more than a cost accounting system. Production is what the client pays for, so measuring that, plus instituting measures for accountability, more closely mirrors what brings money in the door.

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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.

MORE: IRS Still Unsure How to Measure Audit Rate | Art Werner: Estate Planning Strategies | Quick Tax Tip | Art Werner: Post-Mortem Estate Planning | Quick Tax Tip | Pause to Praise the Tax Pro Volunteers | IRS vs. Fraudsters | Imagine! The National Tax Advocate Does | Art Werner: Maximizing Fringe Benefits | Is the IRS Mismeasuring Phone Service? | Eight Steps to Getting Started with AI: A Guide for Tax Professionals
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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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ACCOUNTING INFLUENCERS

Richard Kopelman: Inside Aprio’s Bold Makeover | Accounting Influencers | Part 1 of 2

Lessons from dozens of strategic mergers & acquisitions.

Subscribe to CPA Trendlines podcasts anywhere: Apple, Google/Youtube, Spotify, iHeart, Deezer, Amazon Music, Audible, Player FM, Audacy, RSS.


Accounting Influencers
with Rob Brown

Richard Kopelman, CEO and managing partner of PE-owned Aprio, reveals the firm’s dramatic transformation and rebranding into a global business advisory and accounting firm.

See Part 2: Richard Kopelman: Aprio’s Plans for Global Conquest  | More Accounting Influencers with Rob Brown here | Aprio Sells Majority Stake to Charlesbank Capital Partners here | Cited: Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

In this first part of a two-part Accounting Influencers with Rob Brown, Kopelman analyzes the high demand for accounting services due to changes in business, regulatory requirements, and technology. According to Kopelman, a key challenge for accounting firms often lies in mindset, requiring a shift from a risk-averse outlook to a more “positive,” entrepreneurial one.

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