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Could AI replace CEOs of CPA firms? · The Accounting Podcast

• Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding! Blake Oliver: [00:00:03] So this is why this is the number one reason why I believe that crypto, as it's currently implemented, cryptocurrency can't replace the US dollar as as a currency because without trusted intermediaries to reverse transactions like this, your average investor in crypto, your average user is going to get scammed out of a lot of money. David Leary: [00:00:31] Coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:39] Welcome to the show. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:41] And I'm David Leary. Blake Oliver: [00:00:42] Hey, David. I'm back from San Diego. I was in San Diego doing a keynote for a lineal global. They are one of the largest accounting associations, associations of CPA firms, accounting firms in the world. And they had a financial institutions workshop for CPAs who specialize in basically banks. You know, a lot of bank auditors were there. Small group, really fun. It was in the Gaslamp district and I got to go and do a little sightseeing. So I went over to Coronado Island and I went to the Hotel Del Coronado. Walked around there. It was beautiful. I never really, like gone inside. I've never stayed there and I never really got a chance to just like I always went to the beach there and saw it from the outside. But it's beautiful inside. I highly recommend anyone go. And if you do go, go up to the second floor and by the balcony that overlooks the lobby, there's this stained glass that's from the original construction of the hotel in 1888, and it's been restored. And it's a depiction of the crowning, which is, you know, Coronado Coronation. David Leary: [00:01:53] Correct. My memory of that hotel was the elevator. Like there's an elevator operator still after the elevator? Blake Oliver: [00:02:00] No, they've automated it, but it still looks like an old one. So it's got like the bars instead of, you know, but they've put they've put glass around. So you can't, like, stick your fingers through and, you know, chop off your hand because we don't have as much sense these days to. David Leary: [00:02:14] My brain says like 15, 18 years ago when I stayed there, there was somebody still operating the elevator for you? Oh, yeah. The hotel. Blake Oliver: [00:02:21] Yeah, it's possible. I mean, that thing, it looks ancient. So it was fun. I did my talk about artificial intelligence and how I believe it will transform and save the accounting profession in a very positive way, adding in a little twist on, you know, financial services where all that's going to go. David Leary: [00:02:38] You said these were bank auditors. Blake Oliver: [00:02:39] Yes. David Leary: [00:02:40] Did you get any inside scoop on SVB or any of that stuff? Blake Oliver: [00:02:43] No. We had a little bit of a debate about, you know, SVB and the responsibility of the auditors in, you know, identifying the bond risk. But no, nothing. Nothing. Nobody was working on SVB. That was KPMG. So these are smaller firms. But I did hear an interesting story from one of the partners there. I believe his firm is in Columbia, Missouri. And he was telling me how one of his managers, directors, senior manager went on maternity leave. And while she was on maternity leave, the partners voted her in to the partnership. So when she came back, she was going to be a partner. David Leary: [00:03:25] And she came opposite of stories I've ever heard before. It's usually. Blake Oliver: [00:03:30] Right. It's usually you get fired somehow during maternity leave. The profession has changed for the better, it seems. So they offered her the partnership and when she came back and she turned them down to go open a daycare center, a franchise daycare, the kind that has, you know, 200 kids. And the economics of it. Well, anyone who has young children knows that it's very difficult to find daycare right now. So if you do it the right way, apparently it can be very profitable. So that's what she's going to do. Instead of being a CPA firm partner, turn down being a CPA firm partner to go open a franchise daycare. David Leary: [00:04:11] The math could make sense because half her partner salary would have went to pay the daycare anyways if you had to pay for daycare. So this actually might be a smart idea. Yeah. To well, you pay for daycare, open a daycare center. Blake Oliver: [00:04:23] So it was great talking with this small group because all the stuff we've been talking about on the show, they validated it, right? The talent crunch. They can't find enough people, not enough people to do the audit work. And so, yeah, they were very eager to hear about how I could transform things in the near future. And I guess I want to kick off our discussion today with a fun video. David You know, we've been doing lots of amazing things with AI recently and sometimes you just got to enjoy it. So. I spotted this meme. Oh, wanna dance with. AI Clip: [00:04:55] Somebody is gonna destroy the world. I want to feel good with somebody. There was a dance with somebody with somebody who loves you. David Leary: [00:05:09] The listeners can't digest this, but it is. Arnold Schwarzenegger's face merged into Whitney Houston's body and face. Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:05:19] And obviously, his voice, which you could hear singing the words to that famous song. And this was posted by John Wyeth W-2 on Instagram. He said, I has bigger fish to fry than us. So I've been experimenting a little bit with AI and video creation myself. David and I wanted to make I wanted to play a video for you and our listeners in our live stream, viewers that I created entirely with a prompt in ChatGPT. I asked ChatGPT to create a short video for me on the topic of the importance of auditors, and I used the Wikipedia plugin and the Capcut plugin. These are plugins that you can get for free in ChatGPT premium or plus I guess is what they call it. You enable those plugins and ChatGPT can go out to Wikipedia and pull a page and then create an article for you or a script for you, which is what I asked it to do in terms of 12 year old could understand and then it can make a video with that script all with AI. David Leary: [00:06:25] So that Capcut you said, what is it called? Blake Oliver: [00:06:28] Capcut It's a video online video editing suite. David Leary: [00:06:30] Okay. Blake Oliver: [00:06:30] Yeah. For like social media videos. It's very popular with TikTok. I think it might be owned by the same company. They created it to help Tiktokers create videos about dance. David Leary: [00:06:40] Okay. Blake Oliver: [00:06:40] Yeah. So, so literally I. I put the prompt in with two instructions. Instruction. One was write a script on the importance of auditors. Put it in language a 12 year old can understand. Number two, use the script to create a video with Capcut. And here's the result. Speaker4: [00:07:00] Auditors are like financial detectives who make sure companies are honest with their money. They examine a company's financial records to ensure everything is accurate. This builds trust between the company and its investors or customers. Auditors must be independent, meaning they can't have personal or financial ties to the company they're auditing. This ensures their report is fair and unbiased. If auditors aren't independent, it could lead to mistrust in the company's financial statements, which is a big issue. Blake Oliver: [00:07:35] That's it. I only gave it a 100 words, but you know. It's not terrible. I mean, it is terrible, but it's. David Leary: [00:07:44] Also the ice cream truck. Music really like takes away a lot. Blake Oliver: [00:07:48] It didn't pick the best music. It did better on another one that I did on on Financial. What was it? I did? Financial services. Do you want to see that one or. David Leary: [00:07:57] Before you do that, just to comment on this Like I could see at the level that you've done, if I if you were a high school professor or teacher and you wanted to, instead of you building a slide deck and saying those things yourself, you could just hit play and let this play and it would mean less the music. It would accomplish that, I think So. Blake Oliver: [00:08:15] Here's another one I did. I asked it to do one. On the importance of management accounting for a presentation I was doing for the Institute of Management Accountants, and I think it did a better selection of the music on this one. And now remember, I didn't tell it what kind of music to pick. I didn't tell it anything. I had it draft the script and make the video. Oh, and our listeners can't see it. If you can see it on YouTube, you can't see it on the podcast. It's it's taken free stock photos and added them to every slide and added captions. And that voice, by the way, is completely generated by management. AI Clip: [00:08:49] Accounting is crucial for any business. It's like a toolkit that provides valuable information to managers. This information helps in making informed decisions such as launching a new product or finding ways to save money. It's not just about counting dollars. It's about planning for the future and improving the business. In short, management, accounting is the brain of a business guiding it to make smart moves. Blake Oliver: [00:09:15] I thought that was pretty good. David Leary: [00:09:17] It's that that it's. I still think the voices have a tone. Yeah right. Blake Oliver: [00:09:22] Everyone like to stop and remember this is year one of generative AI. That's true. This is year one. Imagine what it's going to do in future years. You might be able to design an entire presentation, just giving it an outline or talking with it. So anyway, I want to play that stuff for you. David. You know, I was gone for a couple of days. What is new in the world of accounting and tax? I saw we might have a government shutdown. David Leary: [00:09:49] Government shutdowns. Been in the news this week. So if you remember, it's great because like the articles they're they're loose in 2018, 2019. But there was a shutdown before and the IRS did shut down. And there's you know, there's some stock footage of like, you know, tape over the doors of the IRS offices and sort of dramatic things, B-roll footage like that from 2018, 2019. So I was just trying to figure out as I was going to shut down again. And a week ago, the IRS union said they were getting memos. They say there was not going to be a shutdown. So that was a week ago. The IRS was safe from the government shutdown. Blake Oliver: [00:10:24] Because they got all that funding, right? That $80 billion. David Leary: [00:10:28] Yeah, there's a tie to that, creating a safety net that goes into effect October 1st, which is basically the day after the shutdown. It's very like that. That part is still being debated and argued over. But as of yesterday, they're saying that there will be a partial close now. Oh, but this is so we still have, what, eight days before the 30th? Right. So I'm sure news will continue to change. And so as soon as we put this out, it might be completely different. But what I went on is I started to go down these paths right about like, what else gets shut down? Like, how does it impact things? A couple like, you know, the Pentagon has 80,000 civilian employees, but the one that caught my eye is the SEC. The SEC furloughs, 90% of its 4600 employees. How many? 90% of its 4600 employees. Blake Oliver: [00:11:18] On October 1st. Yeah. If they don't if the government shuts down, shuts down. David Leary: [00:11:23] And I just feel like that's a kind of an important one. Now, the Federal Reserve, they're not tied to the budget because they basically make money on their own industry fees and the fees they charge banks. They don't have any room or there's no possible shutdown. So federal Deposit insurance comp, Comptroller of Currency, they're all going to continue as normal, things like that. And then talking about people who still get paychecks. Right. So, you know, air traffic controllers will still get paychecks, they'll still be operating, but they will stop training new ones. Well, that's. Blake Oliver: [00:11:53] Not good because we were just talking about how there's a huge shortage, shortage. David Leary: [00:11:55] Of air traffic controllers. And then this was kind of interesting. Criminal prosecutions, including two federal cases against former President Trump, would continue. It's funny how they called that out so specifically, but most civil litigation would be postponed. Fbi, drug enforcement, Secret Service, they remain on the job. And then I was like, well, what about other government employees, including the representatives? Right. So our Congress people will still get paid. Like if there's a. Blake Oliver: [00:12:23] Shutdown, of. David Leary: [00:12:24] Course they will still get paid, but other government employees will not get paid. It's it's mind blowing, right? Blake Oliver: [00:12:30] Yeah. David Leary: [00:12:31] But it's not mind blowing. Blake Oliver: [00:12:33] It makes total sense. David Leary: [00:12:35] But there is a great Democratic rep, Angie Craig. She introduced a new bill to strip away paychecks from members of Congress if there is a shutdown. Blake Oliver: [00:12:45] Okay. We'll see if that has a shot. David Leary: [00:12:48] So basically, she it's going to be one day's worth of pay for every day the government shutdown is occurring. That's the proposal. But at the end, if they go back to work, they just get paid anyways. So they're going to they're going to give them the difference in the money. So it's it's temporary. Now, what's funny about this is the name of the bill. Okay. Are you ready? Now, listen carefully here. It's my constituents can't afford rebellious tantrums. Handle your shutdown act also known as the McCarthy Shutdown Act. Blake Oliver: [00:13:22] I like it. David Leary: [00:13:23] She named the bill the basically the McCarthy shutdown Act. But yeah, at least that's doing the right thing. But if they're still going to get they're still going to be made full. I mean, senators get 190,000 a year. You know, federal federal legislators get 174,000 a year. If they're still made full. There's no penalty to this. It's it's all optics and pandering. But hopefully, hopefully, the IRS will not get caught up in this. But don't know. My suspicion is it will because when they raise the debt ceiling. Right. That's when the IRS got they moved the levers and took some of the money away. We'll see if the IRS makes it through the next eight days here. Blake Oliver: [00:14:01] More IRS news. The AICPA said in their most recent town hall that their sources at the IRS believe that 95% of new IRC claims are ineligible. And that's new. I had not seen that in any other news source. So the AICPA is is making news here. I find that number to be shockingly high. And I want to thank Dan Snowden on Twitter for posting this and calling this out. He said exactly this news and he took a screenshot of the town hall. And I went and I was actually listening to it at the time, but I didn't catch that bit. And. I wonder how accurate that is. Like, how could the IRS possibly know this without actually reviewing the files? Are they sampling them or something? Is this just somebody's opinion at the IRS? If there are really that many, there are 600,000 new claims in the last few months that would mean, you know. Go ahead, David. David Leary: [00:15:01] My guess is 5% of the claims coming in are from like legit accountants and accounting firms. And the other 95% are just coming in from these mills. And so it's very easy for them to know where they're coming from. Mm hmm. Like, that's my guess. It's that obviously obvious and blatant. Now, I wish the IRS had this number. It's weird that the CPA dropped the number, but it is completely. It's unfathomable. It makes sense why they shut it down. Blake Oliver: [00:15:27] So I was listening to this town hall on my AirPods walking around San Diego after I did this keynote yesterday, and I walked up from the Gaslamp district up to what do they call it, Balboa Park. And I was walking around Balboa Park listening to the town hall, and they covered the pipeline issue in the town hall this time, which is great because they don't always talk about it. But again, they saved it until the last ten minutes of an hour long session. And I'm thinking to myself, come on, isn't this the number one issue that is facing the accounting profession right now? Is talent and getting young people into the profession. And it's constantly pushed to the very last part of the of the town halls. And the thing that really irritated me this time was that. Before talking about pipeline issues, the featured discussion was with Alan Colton, great, wonderful person, Alan Colton on M&A and PE, and they talked with him for 20 minutes about basically how to sell your firm, you know, whether that's going to be private equity or merging up or something else. And it was all about getting out selling your firm is was the topic right? That's what M&A is about. Blake Oliver: [00:16:48] That's what private equity is about. And 20 minutes on that. And then after that, five minutes on the pipeline issues. So four times as much time in this town hall dedicated to M&A selling your firm. Versus the pipeline. Now, we did get some news out of the pipeline segment, the five minutes they dedicated to it with Mike Decker. We found out that there's a committee, the national advisory, I forget exactly what it's called. Pipeline group consists of over 20 people from throughout the profession, and somebody we know is on it. David, It is Jennifer Wilson of Convergence Coaching. She is she is helping to run this with somebody from Aprio. And so I'm really excited because we've been wanting to get Jen on the show and we've we just haven't been able to schedule it. So I hope we can get her on the show and talk about the pipeline issue. But yeah, I think I think I wish I wish AICPA would would spend more time on this because I don't I think it's it's it's the number one issue. It should be at the forefront of every town hall. David Leary: [00:17:53] Well, don't they have it just like we do for and people are in it right now who are watching the live stream there in the chat room. Chat is up. Right. Doesn't the doesn't the town hall have a chat stream that people can do live chats in there and chat with each other? Blake Oliver: [00:18:07] I don't I don't know if you can see anyone else's chats. Like, I don't know how that works. David Leary: [00:18:11] Oh, I maybe I'll have to investigate. But I was in the impression that like people start really asking questions about 150 hour rule in the chat. So if you put it at the beginning of the thing, it's just going to fuel the chat room for an hour. And so if you keep at the end, you know, people, people have tipped off by then. Yeah, yeah. Fueling the fire. Blake Oliver: [00:18:32] Hey, thanks everyone who has joined us today in the live stream. We've got Hector Garcia here, celebrity in the chat. Elena is here, David Hall, geek Julio, thanks everyone who's commenting. Thank you all for joining us. If you have a story that you think we should be talking about that we missed, let us know. We want to hear from you and you can get notified when we go live by subscribing to us on YouTube. And we I think we recently passed 2000 subscribers on YouTube. So thanks, everyone who hit that subscribe button hit that like button. It is now a huge source of of views for us. It's the number one fastest growing podcasting platform. And I think we had something like 30, 40,000 views on YouTube last month alone. David Leary: [00:19:18] So I think a lot of the the reels right, the telephone style videos, the. Blake Oliver: [00:19:22] Shorts, they call them the. David Leary: [00:19:22] Shorts. The shorts. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:19:23] Yeah. Those are great. David Leary: [00:19:24] Have been doing really well. Yeah. One got 14,000 views. I have another IRS story that kind of even ties into the the pipeline problem a little bit. Blake Oliver: [00:19:33] Okay, well, we'll do that and then we'll get to my Could I replace story? David Leary: [00:19:38] So the IRS is posted 3700 new job postings because the IRS now wants to not audit small the the $400,000 people. They want to go after bigger, more complicated businesses. And so they want to hire new agents that are specializing in large corporate and complex partnership compliance. So 3700 new vacancies are divvied up against 250 IRS offices nationwide. Base salaries are between 98,000 and 158,000. Blake Oliver: [00:20:04] Say that again. David Leary: [00:20:05] So 3700 new jobs, 3700 base salaries from 98,000 to 158,000. Blake Oliver: [00:20:12] Wow, that's not bad. What are the qualifications for these roles? How much experience do you need? What are they? David Leary: [00:20:19] So that's really interesting. They want you to have one year of specialized experience and that you at least got a high school degree, right? Grade grade 12 level. Right. And that you can demonstrate some professional accounting or auditing work in the past. But essentially they don't really care what kind of degree you have, but they do want you to have at least 30 semester hours of accounting coursework. But it's it's definitely a lower requirement than obviously sitting for the exam. And look at the money you'd make. Yeah. Like if you're an accounting major this this is very viable. I mean government job 100 grand a year. It's pretty good. Blake Oliver: [00:21:03] Hey, I want to say, since we got Hector here, that everyone needs to go Listen to Hector Garcia's new podcast with Alicia Katz Pollock, the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast. Congratulations to Hector and Alicia for ranking on Charter Bull's Top 200 podcasts globally. It's a huge accomplishment. I don't think we've ever done that. David This show is rocketing up the charts and I am so happy and honored to be helping to produce this show as part of earmark media. And we we have worked with Hector and Alicia to bring their vision to light. It is the unofficial take on everything QuickBooks and Intuit. And who better than Hector and Alicia to do this? It's really great. So go subscribe. You can do that at We have a new URL for it. It is q Uccb dot show. So head over to Ucb's show and check it out and subscribe. They've got a new episode. Episode four is about Intuit betting big on AI. So you know, we cover that in a few minutes here on the show because we jump around to a lot of different things. Hector and Alicia dig in for an entire. David Leary: [00:22:16] Episode, an entire. Blake Oliver: [00:22:17] Episode, 40 minutes on this topic. So do not miss it. All right. David, should we talk about AI and stuff? My slightly cheeky headline for this episode or title of this episode is Could replace CEOs of firms. And it was inspired by this article here on Insider. The modern CEO job is completely broken, but I could make executives useful again. Um, and the basically the gist of this story is that the role of the modern CEO could be easily done by existing technology. Ceos are often highly paid figureheads who make decisions based on inputs from consultants rather than contributing meaningfully to the company's bottom line. And could we not hold CEOs accountable the same way as other employees or replace them with AI? They could provide quicker answers. Continuous self-improvement, operational efficiency. The CEO role is often very vague and generic, and companies could save a lot of money if somebody built a, you know, a CEO. Gpt, and just had it, you know, do all the CEO stuff. David Leary: [00:23:28] So former CEO of Intuit. He came from GE. Steve Bennett back in the day, he actually almost drove into it into the ground. But that's a that's a whole story for another podcast. But he used to brag about how many holes of golf he played a year. Oh, my God. And he and the CEO of Sun Microsystems, who was next door to Intuit, and there's a golf course right behind both campuses there. And they would golf literally four days a week, probably, maybe more. And his point on this was, well, as a CEO, the way, you know, I'm doing my job is I've gotten my C-suite all executing, right. I don't have to do the work. So, yes, could I replace what he's doing? Yes, I've seen robotic golf. Blake Oliver: [00:24:13] So is the CEO of Earmark. I'm sort of biased because I don't think an AI could do my job quite yet, but I think there's parts of it it could really do like a significant part, which is simply following up on the status of projects. I feel like my job, so much of my job is just going through our notion database of every project that everyone's working on and asking for status updates and I need to figure out how to automate that. I was talking with Liz Mason, my friend here in Scottsdale, who runs High rock Accounting, and she was telling me she's done this to some extent with her own project management software, where if there's not an update in there for X amount of hours or days, it will then post on her behalf into the project asking for the status update. So I might do that. David. Don't tell anyone else at earmark that I'm doing this. David Leary: [00:25:07] But but I can say as a leader, like what? It's how there's so many things. There's so much input, so much noise. What as a CEO of a company, like what should you look at next? And so if I can help you bubble that up, that can make sense. Blake Oliver: [00:25:21] So I think like if the CEO is just doing that kind of like management of like an ongoing business and not trying to innovate inside the business, then yeah, I think actually I could probably do a better job than a lot of CEOs who are just like figureheads, you know, and keeping the business going steady. But as soon as anything changes, you know, then that's where the creativity comes in, That's where the vision comes in. So I think the article is a bit tongue in cheek to. Um. Should we go to remote work? I wanted to talk about that last week, and we just, like, never got to it, like, over many weeks. David Leary: [00:25:55] Yeah. If you have a remote work story, I have one as well. I don't know if you have more than one. Blake Oliver: [00:25:58] I well, so I have a tie in banking and remote work. They're starting to. Come together and I'm making this connection now. I'm not the only one. People started writing about it. This started with Jamie Dimon, who has been critical about remote work. Speaking of. That's right. Yet again, there was a September 7th article on the Street.com covering how Jamie Dimon, CEO of Chase, has issued a stern warning to employees about returning to the office full time. He said that those who don't want to commute should not expect to have a job at JP Morgan. He said that 60% of their employees are back full time, 30% at least three days a week, and 10% remain fully remote. Managing directors were required back full time in April, and Jamie Dimon is one of those people who believes that you cannot collaborate effectively, remotely, and you can't be. I think he said, to paraphrase, you can't be an effective leader if you're not in the office. Now, why is he so set on, you know, getting his people back in the office? There's another guy who has been criticizing remote work, and that's Mike Bloomberg. Mike Bloomberg was quoted in Fortune as complaining that remote workers are playing golf all day. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg believes that remote workers are essentially on vacation and that golfing has increased during work hours. And it's true. A Stanford University research paper found that post-pandemic golf course visits have indeed skyrocketed during weekday mid afternoons. However, the researchers have noticed that they have noted that this increase in golfing has not directly led to a drop in productivity. As long as employees make up their time later in the day. But Bloomberg doesn't pay attention to the research. He thinks that because people are going out and catching a game of golf, maybe eight holes here and there in the afternoon, that they are not working. And it's shocking to me that these smart guys are just not looking at the data because productivity has not dropped with remote work. If anything, it's gone up slightly. So why? David Leary: [00:28:13] Why worried about their their c-suites if those two aren't golfing themselves? I worry about the C-suite of his C-suite if he can't go golfing himself. Blake Oliver: [00:28:23] So what's why? Why did these guys have such a problem with remote work other than being like old and crotchety and not being able to, you know, do a zoom call. David Leary: [00:28:33] Because they want to walk, you want to look. You see if people are at their desk, are you at your desk or you must be working? Well, they want that kind of a management style. Blake Oliver: [00:28:40] It might have something to do with commercial leases and occupancy and buildings. Chase has invested heavily in commercial real estate, including a new thousand hundred foot tower in New York. For 15,000 workers, vacancy rates could cause issues with loans and property valuations. So maybe it's these rich guys with a lot of real estate, commercial real estate saying, uh oh, we need to do something to get occupancy rates back up, because if we don't, we will not be able to refi our commercial real estate loans when their balloon payments come due in 6 to 7 years. And this is something that I did not realize was such a big deal. This could be the ticking time bomb in our economy right now. I think it is It's it's that a lot of banks, especially mid-sized banks but you know bigger ones too have a lot of loans on commercial office space commercial loans and. If those buildings don't generate enough rents now the interest rates are up, they will not be able to refi and most commercial loans are not made like a traditional 30 year home mortgage where it's the same payment for 30 years and then you're done for the whole loan. It is it is like 6 to 7 years. And then at the end of that 6 or 7 years, a balloon payment of lots of money is due. You got to pay off that whole loan. So the loan is only for like, you know, a portion of the amount. And with interest rates going up really fast, dramatically, the the new payment is just like in the financial crisis when people couldn't pay their home mortgages because interest rates walked away. The payment will get so high. Now the rents are coming down because occupancy is down. So the rent collections may not be enough to pay the loan. And that's when the owner of the building walks away and the banks are left with the keys. David Leary: [00:30:36] So your assertion is that Jamie Dimon and Bloomberg, because they are overly exposed, they have a risk in owning too much commercial property. If they can convince all their CEO friends to make employees go into the office and pay rent for an office space, that's going to help reduce some of the risk. That's your. Blake Oliver: [00:30:53] Assertion? I think that's a I think they have a motivation to encourage people to go back to work for that reason and to, you know, try and use their position as leaders in business to get other business leaders to do this. But it's definitely not working with accounting firms. I keep seeing articles about how accounting firms are downsizing their office space, whereas here KPMG in Philadelphia is moving out of 1601 Market Street, and they're cutting their office space by 38%, and BDO is looking for a smaller office than their current digs at Heinz 57 Center downtown in Pittsburgh. And you'll see these the large I see. David Leary: [00:31:33] These articles goodbye in the feed so-and-so have moved office closed down smaller office downsize. Yeah. There's not many moving up to bigger offices. Blake Oliver: [00:31:41] No, they're not. And you know, it's funny, the Big Four do studies on remote work as well. So like actually accounting as a profession, we are leading the way with remote work. And I think it's got to be because auditors have always been really basically remote, right? If you're an auditor, you're almost never back at your home office. You're always on site. And so we're we're adapted to this. And a new Deloitte study published in September found that of 2000, more than 2000 US consumers, 56% of employed adults worked remotely or in a hybrid manner over the last year. And of those, 45% said working from home improved family relationships and 40% reported improved emotional well-being. Additionally, eight and ten hybrid workers said their relationships with family members, colleagues and managers improved or remained the same compared to when they worked entirely in the office. The preference for fully remote or hybrid options over in-person work has increased, with 37% preferring in-person work and 28% preferring an even blend of remote and in-person. Remote education is also gaining in popularity, with 52% of respondents who learned remotely wanting to continue learning mostly or completely remotely in the future. Hey, and that's good news for earmark. David Leary: [00:33:03] Yes. Blake Oliver: [00:33:04] Where you can earn CPE for listening to podcasts without having to go to an in-person conference or seminar. By the way, if you're listening right now and you didn't know you can earn free continuing professional education credits, both Nasba and IRS approved with the earmark app, you can get your naspa CPE for listening to the accounting podcast and you can get IRS for listening to shows like Federal Tax Updates. And I mentioned Hector's show, the Unofficial QuickBooks Accountants podcast. You can get CPE now for that, too. The IRS, we can only give out for federal tax topics and ethics topics. So it's less it's more limited. But the Naspa CPE, we have over a thousand courses now in the earmark library and it's free to use for one a week. And then if you want to support our work and unlock and unlimit yourself and get rid of the ads in the app, you can subscribe for $130 a year at this time. That may be going up later this year. So grab it while you can, because once you lock in that subscription, it will continue to renew at that price. David Leary: [00:34:11] So you're grandfathered into the pricing. Blake Oliver: [00:34:13] At this time, we have decided that everybody who supports us early on gets to keep the price. So we've got folks who are still in at, you know, the $100 a year. And I don't have any plans, you know, for I don't have any plans to change that. So it's a thank you to everybody who supported us early on. And we've got over I mean, we've got. Something like 700 individual subscribers now to earmark. Thank you, everyone who supports us. And we've got thousands of subscribers through our partnerships with associations like the Maryland Society of Accounting and Tax Professionals, all their 1500 members get free CPE through US unlimited subscriptions through a partnership with them, and we're working on other groups. So if you want to, you know, for your association, if you're listening and you want to offer earmark as a benefit to your members, reach out to us at Earmark Cpcomm. You can just email me Blake at Earmark cpcomm and we'll be happy to talk to you about that. David Leary: [00:35:14] I have another headline on working from home. So this was a study from Microsoft and Cornell University, and they they used multiple datasets. And one of them was Microsoft's own employee data on commuting and teleworking behaviors. But so the headline essentially people who work from home all the time cut emissions by 54% against those in office when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions. Blake Oliver: [00:35:38] That's incredible. David Leary: [00:35:39] So more than half by working from home? Yeah, the vast majority of that obviously, is the car, the commute. Yeah, that's pretty major. Blake Oliver: [00:35:46] So there's an ESG reason for remote work? David Leary: [00:35:50] Yeah, it's better for the environment, which is almost obvious. Right. And if I if I'm thinking back to when the pandemic we had that lockdown when everybody was 100% locked down and nobody was driving anywhere. If I remember correctly, like there was measurable differences in cities and air pollution and air quality and vegetation and birds were flying around, if I remember correctly. So, yes, if people aren't driving cars, it's always going to be better and then they can kind of get into just maybe you're hybrid, right? So just one day of remote work a week reduces emissions by 2% over the year. Wow. Just just one day a week. And then two or 2 to 4 days, 2 or 4 days a week, reduce your individual emissions by up to 29% versus onsite workers. So just two days a week is a it's a third of your emissions could be eliminated. So I think that's and then the focus as far as in the office, people are worried about like you know IT devices right So your computers and your phones and all of that. Yes it's all the multiple screens. It's all using electricity that's live streaming our Internet. But it's it's almost nominal. Like instead the focus should be on the commute air conditioning and heating. Like those are your big the big energy sucks that can be managed by working from home. Right? Because you work home now, you have a less smaller office to cool as well. The more people work from home. That's right. There could be ripple benefits to this. Blake Oliver: [00:37:12] We haven't talked about blockchain in a while and I have to highlight this fraud, this scam for our listeners. Mark Cuban lost $870,000 in a crypto scam. Yeah, that Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks Shark Tank shark 870,000. He got scammed out of his wallet, was drained of stablecoins. The scam was flagged by blockchain watchers who noticed the suspicious activity in Cuban's wallet, prompting him to move his other holdings to safety so he could have lost millions. But thanks to fans of his, he didn't. And he only lost 870,000. David Leary: [00:37:57] So he has a crypto wallet. He's got his his coin in there, Bitcoin and he's got his crypto wallet. You have to have that huge password hash to get into that. And so somebody was able to get in there and start moving the money out. Blake Oliver: [00:38:11] Not by cracking his password. They did it. David Leary: [00:38:14] By going to say how they how. Blake Oliver: [00:38:15] They got him to download a fake copy of the Metamask crypto wallet. So he downloaded fraudulent software to manage his crypto. David Leary: [00:38:26] And hey, we have a better wallet users. Blake Oliver: [00:38:29] Yeah. David Leary: [00:38:29] Or you put the money in there. Blake Oliver: [00:38:31] They impersonated the company he was using and he downloaded their update which had a backdoor into it. So. This is why this is the number one reason why I believe that crypto, as it's currently implemented, cryptocurrency can't replace the US dollar as as a currency because without trusted intermediaries to reverse transactions like this, your average investor in crypto, your average user is going to get scammed out of a lot of money. If a guy as smart as Mark Cuban can get scammed out of $870,000, what chance do the rest of us have? And so it can never be used as a cryptocurrency until somebody fixes that, figures that out, like the cryptocurrencies that rely on completely distributed third party verification. And there is no person in the middle, no trusted bank or whatever that can reverse the transactions. Like that's there's no way to undo this sort of thing. And there was a quote from Cuban here in the article that I want to call out because he said something actually, you know, meaningful here. He said, the whole point of the blockchain is that it's 100% public. Cuban, who conceded the lack of anonymity, can claim that he has got a lot of wallets and that 99% of what he is doing is learning. He concluded that the technology does need to be easier so that celeb or not anybody can do it. So until the technology improves, it's not going to take over the world. David Leary: [00:40:05] And everybody's learning budgets are different. We talked about this before as far as like the percentage of the guys that went down in that sub and the percentage of their income and how it was you or I spending $200 on something exciting, it didn't matter. And the same thing I you know, I got $100 in crypto spread across a couple of wallets. He just he's learning with 100 grand like. Yeah. Or sorry, 800 grand million bucks in crypto. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:40:27] For him. You know maybe that's no big deal continuing on in crypto news tether. Remember tether David Yes the the Stablecoin the number one stablecoin in the world that has never gone through an audit. Still, I haven't heard any news about it. If anyone knows if they've finally been audited, let me know. But it's, you know, tens of billions of dollars in value that has never been audited. They are back to their old tricks. They are lending out Stablecoins again. And they promised that they would not do this last year. They said they would wind down their lending of stablecoins they haven't done it. And guess what? When you lend out stablecoins, you are by definition no longer a stablecoin because it means that your stablecoin is not 1 to 1 backed by US dollars. I can't believe they can get away with this. So they have $5.5 billion of loans out there as of June 30th according to their quarterly financial update, which of course was not audited. So we don't know if that number is for real or not. Yeah, and they said they were going to wind it down. So the question is, why are they doing this to also they don't need to do this in order to make money because they can rake in money hand over fist right now because people buy tether with US dollars supposedly, and then tether goes and invests those US dollars in bonds, US government bonds, which are paying pretty great interest rates right now, like 4 or 5%. Blake Oliver: [00:41:56] Right. And so they can make 4 or 5% and they don't need to lend out this money. So the question is, why are they lending out the money? And there's speculation online that it's because there are people that are critical to the tether ecosystem, the whole crypto ecosystem that are underwater right now. And so tether lends out the tether to prop up the values of other cryptocurrencies and the entire ecosystem, because those people can then use the tether to continue to buy crypto when prices are dropping and prop up the prices. And that's the that's the conspiracy theory that I that that's my conspiracy theory that I tend to buy into, which is that a lot of the value of cryptocurrency in the market is created by wash sales and this kind of market manipulation where it's not happening with actual dollars, it's with tether that is being loaned out because tether can just. David Leary: [00:42:50] Essentially it's one player controlling the market prices. And I think I saw a headline Fly by this week about Ftxs. The 87% drop in crypto was basically FTX caused that to happen before. The last. They basically were responsible for it. So it's like these one one player is really just messing around with the market and just playing God, if that makes any sense. Yeah, there is no free market, which is crazy because that's the big argument about all the crypto and the bitcoin. And it's. Blake Oliver: [00:43:20] Yeah, no, it's actually controlled by very few whales opposite. David Leary: [00:43:23] Of decentralized, right? It's opposite of decentralized and. Blake Oliver: [00:43:26] It's worse than the centralization we have in the current banking system because we don't know who the players are. They can be completely anonymous and they're unaudited and unaccountable to anybody. It's just, yeah. David Leary: [00:43:37] Well, it goes back to what I think. You brought this back before there was banking regulation and all these banks could just issue their own currencies back in the day. Right? It's kind of the wild cat they're doing. Blake Oliver: [00:43:45] And you know, that's funny because I went to that Hotel, Del Coronado, which was built during that time period in 1888 when we had all the wildcat banks out there, you know, propping up well, not propping up, but as a result of like all the oil and railroad industry in the Midwest and the West, where they couldn't get financing. Right. So they had to create these banks and all these banks just started issuing their own currencies. And you had these crazy banking situations for decades until finally civil war comes along. And then the federal government puts an end to that at the end of the Civil War. Hey, we got listener mail. Shall we check in on how our listeners are doing? David Leary: [00:44:23] Absolutely. And then comments to. Blake Oliver: [00:44:25] Comments as well. Yes. So leave us your comments in the live stream, David. We'll be taking a look at those. I will look at the listener mail. Let's see. I got a comment from Matthew who said subject 150 hour requirement. Blake, nice article. Oh, this is referring to the article I wrote in accounting today on the wild classes accountants take to get their 150 hours. 50 hours. Did did did we talk about that on the show yet? I don't think that we did, no. David Leary: [00:44:52] But it was funny because I saw the article and I was like, oh, man, somebody at accounting today took Blake's thesis and then I noticed it was your article. Blake Oliver: [00:45:00] Yeah, actually. So this is an article that I published on Accounting today last week, and it was inspired by a LinkedIn post I did where I asked everybody to share the craziest classes they've taken to get their 150 hours to sit for the CPA exam. And I compiled the list from the LinkedIn comments and posted this or submitted this article to Accounting today, the one that inspired it, the LinkedIn post originally was beginning walk slash jog, but we had many more come in vegetable gardening, pickleball, weight training for women, whitewater kayaking, Alabama dinosaurs, environmental geology, history of rock and roll, natural disasters, understanding jazz, golf, canoeing, scuba diving. A lot of physical activity is interesting. I didn't realize so many colleges granted college credit for what? Like recreation? Like when you're. David Leary: [00:46:00] Told you need to complete 30 more hours and the 30 hours can be anything, you're going to pick those kind of classes, right? Naturally. Blake Oliver: [00:46:07] Right. I mean, you're going to do that if you don't have the money to pay for a master's, which is why the 150 hours is discriminatory and exclusionary. And actually, there's an article I want to I want to share after we get to the listener mail about that in going concern that talks about how like the people who are most affected by the 150 hour rule tend to be minorities who don't want to do the extra year of education. So they have to do these workarounds. And it's actually one of the biggest reasons why they decide not to go into accounting like 6,070%. But anyway, I don't want to skip around too much. Let's do this listener mail. So Mike Matthew wrote in and said, Blake, nice article. Yes, it's all theater. And yet the AICPA seems willing to oppose any challenge, e.g. Minnesota to the absurd rule even in the face of falling AICPA membership. Yeah, that's the thing I don't understand is you would think that these associations would want more CPAs and the numbers are going the wrong direction. They won't you know, their dues are going to drop. It's precipitous. Right. Going off a cliff here. Like why why. David Leary: [00:47:14] Won't they have your member dues easily? Just like you don't have to be a CPA and you can still join us. Blake Oliver: [00:47:19] Well, then it's like, why even have the CPA? David, you know, Todd wrote, you may have already pointed this out, but I thought it was interesting that two of the presidential candidates for the Republican nomination have an accounting slash accounting tech background. Nikki Haley began doing bookkeeping work at the age of 12 for her mom's clothing shop. She graduated from Clemson with an accounting degree, worked in corporate accounting for and later her family's clothing business as an accountant. Slash CFO. Doug Burgum was president and chairman of Great Plains Software. I had no idea he was running for president. I'm out of the loop. Great Plains Software developed accounting software for small, medium sized businesses. It was acquired by. Esoft in 2001, it appears that the ERP system, Microsoft Dynamics GP, evolved, at least in part from the software acquired from Great Plains. Note that my sources are Wikipedia and other online sources, so take details with a grain of salt. Well, you know, I use Wikipedia, so I'll buy it. Thanks, Todd. David Leary: [00:48:25] We need more accountants in government. I think that could help. Blake Oliver: [00:48:28] I got an email from Erica who said in regards to the article. Good article, nice high level summary of all the factors to consider. I happen to have dinner with a state lobbyist last weekend and asked him who's talking about the CPA shortage in the Idaho legislature. Crickets. Every time I mention the shortage to someone outside the industry, they're always shocked. Apparently we're the only ones that know smiley face. Keep fighting the good fight. Erica. Thank you, Erica. David Leary: [00:48:55] But it's getting mainstream coverage now outside of accounting press. And again, this is how it works with like, I think, legislatures and legislative bodies until somebody and they have a lot of like that's just the way politics is. Right. A lot of people in political positions have businesses. They have side income. They're former business people. Until the one day they realize like, oh, I can't get my business audited or I can't do this or I can't do this because there's no accountants, that's when it's going to start hitting home. Right. And that's happening, though. Remember, we talked to a in Minnesota and Linda. Blake Oliver: [00:49:32] Weddle. David Leary: [00:49:33] Widow. Right. She said smaller municipalities can't get stuff done. Yeah. Because they can't get accounting firms. Blake Oliver: [00:49:40] That is going to drive it, I think. And also if the associations start lobbying for it. Right. That would do it. They have influence. I mean, that's their main function. The state associations lobby for the CPAs in the state and that's what they put the money to use doing. Here's an email from Ray. Ray said Two of your favorite topics IRS and I unusually mentioned together in the same sentence. I wonder if they'll get competent people to use AI in truly cutting edge and innovative ways, or if the IRS will Underutilize I make a mess and waste lots of time and money. I'd give it even odds. And he sent me this article here from Tax Advisor. Irs Vows New Enforcement Efforts aided by AI. And he continues, I do hope that the IRS pulls this off and succeeds. For tax administration is good for everyone in our voluntary compliance regime. The risk of audit, whether actual or perceived, is the strongest motivator. Those who follow the rules should will have less to fear, and those who do not follow the rules should will have more to fear. Now, this article that Ray sent along is talking about how the IRS has a plan to focus more tax enforcement efforts on the wealthy and that they are going to utilize artificial intelligence specifically to audit large partnerships, which is something that they have struggled to do with human beings because it is very difficult to audit large partnerships with all of these k-1s and all of these entities that own these things. It's just like a web of entities, right? It's not as easy as just auditing one earned income tax credit, which is what they are also actually going to cut back on. They have said. So we don't really have details as to how they're going to do it. David Leary: [00:51:33] And I've seen this brought up in a couple of different articles as a footnote kind of in the article, but it's really them in the same way we talk about using it at our own company or firms using it. You're trying to supplement labor, right? Just helping somebody be 20% faster if it can. If it can help like that, that's going to make a difference for the IRS. Blake Oliver: [00:51:51] So let me read the couple of paragraphs specifically about how they're approaching it. The two main efforts were full announced are the pursuit of 1600 high wealth taxpayers who owe at least $250,000 each, and using AI to focus on large partnerships that the IRS previously did not have the resources to take on. Also, Werfel said, the IRS will improve the tax system for middle and low income people by ramping up efforts to take down schemes such as those that promise exorbitant earned income tax credit refunds. So they're going to go after the promoters of the earned Income tax credit fraud, not the individuals, which I think makes sense. It's like going after the I.R.S. Mills would make a lot of sense as opposed to going after the individual filers. If you shut down the mills, if they had if they had done that before they got this flood of filings, then they wouldn't have the flood of filings, would they? Earlier this year, the IRS said it was pursuing 175 millionaires who owed hundreds of millions of dollars in back taxes. So far, the service has collected tens of millions of dollars from 40 or so of those millionaires, Werfel said. So they've gotten to 40 out of 175 that they identified. And yeah. David Leary: [00:53:06] I have a prediction. So obviously Congress is all, Oh, I needs regulation. And there's like the anti AI crowd out there, but there's also the anti IRS crowd out there. I think you're going to see a bill introduced that says they are not allowed to use AI to do audits, like somebody's going to introduce that just to keep the IRS held down, essentially. And they're going to argue and they're going to get the votes from the other side of the aisle because that side of the aisle is like we got to fear AI. So like this is probably won't happen because of politics. Blake Oliver: [00:53:40] Maybe Here's more details on how they're going to use the AI for these partnerships. First, the IRS will audit 75 specific partnerships with over $10 Billion in assets on average. And starting in October, the service will mail a compliance alert to hundreds of partnerships, with over 10 million in assets where the IRS discovered discrepancies between end of year balances compared to beginning balances in the following year. Large partnerships are, quote, some of the complex cases the IRS faces, end quote. He said, quote, And it involves a wide range of industries and activities where it's been far too easy for tax evaders to cut corners. The IRS has simply not had enough resources and staffing to address partnerships. They are also going to put scrutiny on digital assets and FBAR violations and labor brokers. Apparently there have been instances where construction contractors are making form 1099 payments to an apparent subcontractor. That's really a shell company with no legitimate business relationship with the contractor. This money then flows back to the original contractor. The IRS plans to conduct both civil audits and criminal investigations. I think I got. We got so much mail. It's been great. Everyone, send us your emails to the accounting podcast at earmarked me. Send us your stories like rated. That was a really good story. Thank you, Ray. Um, here's a longer one from Pilita. Blake Oliver: [00:55:05] Pilita said. Hello, Blake and David. I worked as a non CPA accountant ten years ago prior to relocating to the United States in 2012. I investigated pursuing further education in accounting to work towards the CPA designation, but the requirements were daunting, given I was working full time with a six month old and a spouse who was already a full time law school student. So I put it off. Ten years later, after three kids, a spouse well established in his career, working in other roles and completing a master of science degree and a non accounting related interest, I found myself thinking about the CPA designation again. While researching the accounting industry, I came across your podcast earlier this year back when it was the Cloud Accounting Podcast, and it was extremely helpful in figuring out the state of things. I went back to earlier episodes and listened many times to episodes covering the accountant shortage, the 150 hour rule problem Naspa's take on the 150 hour rule CPAs eight point plan to fix the accounting pipeline. The Interview with Ken Bishop and many more. I now realize that I don't have to worry about working at a Big Four that I can actually accomplish this in many other types of accounting firms with a focus on something that interests me. Blake Oliver: [00:56:16] For instance, client accounting for nonprofits or small real estate companies. For the first time, I felt this was achievable. So I submitted an application of intent to the Texas State Board of Public Accountancy two weeks ago to find out what courses I need to satisfy the education requirement and to sweeten the deal. As of September 1st, 2023, the Texas Public Accountancy Act was amended to require 120 semester hours to qualify to sit for the CPA exam instead of the prior 150 semester hours. And she provides a link to their update page. As I await the response, I am researching local firms willing to take on someone in the early stages of pursuing the CPA. As we near year end, I see the potential for many of these opportunities becoming available. Thank you for creating the accounting podcast and for researching and bringing relevant information about the state of the industry to a returning career changer. Not sure if that is a term such as myself. I don't think I would have acted as quickly without hearing your and your guests insight and commentary. In a sense, it has slowly been an effective call to action. Amazing. We help changing the world, bring a CPA, a future CPA back into the profession. Paulita Thank you so much for writing that email. David Leary: [00:57:31] We we are changing the pipeline. We should be part of the AICPA strategy to increase the pipeline. I know. Blake Oliver: [00:57:38] Right? And this is a great example of somebody who has been really excluded by the 150 hour rule. Right. Non CPA accountant relocated to the US had was working full time with a six month old and a spouse in law school. You think this person has the time and inclination to go and get 30 hours of 30 semester hours of education that they don't need because they've already been working as an accountant for ten years. It's a total waste of time for them to do that. And that's who you're excluding. That's an example. You're excluding a young mother, a young working mom. Great job, well done. You've improved the quality of the profession by making everyone get 150 hours and excluding young working parents. David Leary: [00:58:25] And I think her ability to discover our conversations about it is really kind of an important thing, because if if we want to toe the line and turn a blind eye to the discussion around 150 hours, I know some people listener couple weeks ago said we talk about it too much or something like that, but by us having this discussion, she was able to find resources and differing opinions to help her make a life decision. And if that wasn't there, she might not know that this was an issue or that there could be options or that State of Texas was recently changed. Blake Oliver: [00:58:57] I've got one more before we go. I got to get to all of them. Yeah. Hello. My name is Harmony and I'm currently working on my associate's with plans to get my bachelor's in finance and accounting. I think it's funny every time I hear you guys talking about the 150 hour rule. I am 30 years old and though I wouldn't say I'm indecisive, I have had a lot of interest career wise that haven't all lined up. I've been to cosmetology school, massage therapy school, and I have an associates of applied science as a physical therapist assistant and a few scattered semesters of filler classes when something caught my interest, like taking ASL sign language because I thought it was cool. Or the Institute for Integrative Nutrition Health Coach Certificate because I wanted to learn from my own health care. I gave all that background to say that I looked at the hours on my transcript and was not quite surprised to see that I had over 145 acquired hours on my transcript. I don't believe I will have trouble meeting that 150 hours if I chose if I choose to get my CPA after completing my bachelor's. I enjoy listening to your show even though I am extremely new to the profession. Thanks. David Leary: [01:00:03] That's great. Blake Oliver: [01:00:04] Thank you. Harmony. David Leary: [01:00:06] That's another career changer. Blake Oliver: [01:00:07] That's right. David Leary: [01:00:08] Coming into the. Blake Oliver: [01:00:09] Industry, a career changer who, like me, waffled around a lot. So had most of the credits already. Although Harmony, you might be disappointed depending on your state to find out that they require a lot of specific classes, a significant number of specific accounting and business classes. And if you don't have those, you have to go back and get those classes just because they require you to have sat in a classroom to take those specific classes, even if you can demonstrate your knowledge on the exam because it's apparently not enough to prove your knowledge on the exam, you have to have a transcript that says that you sat in a classroom for X hours to also prove your knowledge. I guess one thing isn't enough. I don't know. Doesn't really add up for me. I think the bachelor's, and given you've got all that wide ranging experience should be enough. But you know that's just my opinion. David Leary: [01:01:01] Someone in the chat room, apparently when they're LinkedIn person, their name doesn't come through, not always chats through LinkedIn. But somebody asked, Does anyone know if Georgia is targeting to reduce the 150 hour rule anytime soon? So anybody in Georgia that has any information, please leave a voicemail or send us an email because that's. Yeah. Is the are the dominoes falling? Blake Oliver: [01:01:22] Yeah. I mean, so far we've got Minnesota and South Carolina actively working to reduce the 150 or provide an alternative pathway. Texas has reduced the sitting for the exam to 120, but you've still got to get the extra 30 after if you want to be a CPA to get licensed. What other states are moving in this direction? David Leary: [01:01:43] I New York doesn't have to. Blake Oliver: [01:01:44] In New York. David Leary: [01:01:45] Yeah, you already has. Blake Oliver: [01:01:46] In New York, there's a pathway where you don't even need a bachelor's degree to get your CPA. Most people don't even know about that because it takes 15 years of experience. 15 years? Yeah, pretty funny like that. That even exists still. And yet, you know, these states are getting such hassle for trying to change things a little bit. Allison said Harmony is going to be, well, going to be a well-rounded CPA, given her varied interests. Yes, I agree. Assuming she's not put off by the specific education requirements. That's the that's the biggest challenge for us career changers. It was for me, it took me five years to get my CPA because of all the classes I had to take while working full time. All right, that's enough for this week. David, If our listeners want to get in touch with you, where should they go? David Leary: [01:02:34] I'm on all the socials, just @DavidLeary. Blake Oliver: [01:02:36] I am @BlakeTOliver send us emails. We are the accounting podcast at earmarked me that's the accounting podcast at earmarked me subscribe to us on YouTube and earn free CPA for listening today with the earmark app, you can search Earmark CPA on the App Store or Google Play store and check out our I think we're up to almost 500 reviews on Apple with 4.9 stars. Thanks, everyone who's written a review of the app. We're really proud of that. And thanks so much, David. See you next week. David Leary: [01:03:14] That's it. Next week.