Latest / The Accounting Podcast / Colbert's Losing P&L, Impending AI Fraud Crisis, House Holds FASB Hostage
Transcript
- 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: [00:00:04] If Trump actually wants to, like, stimulate American manufacturing, they can only do so much with the tariffs before they reduce demand, because prices go up so much that it just hurts the economy. And it doesn't help. David Leary: [00:00:18] Coming to you weekly in the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:25] Hello and welcome back to The Accounting Podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:31] And I'm David Leary. Ready to go, Blake. Another week. Blake Oliver: [00:00:35] I'm back. I'm in Scottsdale. Back from a month by the beach. I couldn't be more refreshed. Yes. And I'm really glad that I didn't get back from vacation and find out that our show was canceled, because that's what happened to Stephen Colbert, one of my favorite guys. Although I guess I should have seen it coming because I don't know. Do you ever watch that show anymore? David Leary: [00:00:56] No, I don't watch any late night TV shows. And some of his theory. I heard a theory about this. It all got killed because of TikTok and scrolling people in the evening. 10:00 at night just scroll. There's just doing, um, the watch and reels basically scrolling through reels on TikTok. And you're not watching these late night shows. Blake Oliver: [00:01:15] Well, and YouTube, I get my clips on YouTube now. I open the YouTube app on my TV, and there's Steven's monologue. If I want to watch it, I watch it. Maybe there's a bit nobody's watching these shows anymore. And it was an accounting reason. Cbs gave an accounting reason for canceling Colbert's show, and I want to dig into that a little bit, because there was all this coverage about the cancellation from like a political standpoint. Cbs parent company, Paramount is in a lawsuit or settled a lawsuit with Trump. And so people are saying, oh, maybe that was part of the reason that they did this. David Leary: [00:01:49] But it was my whole QuickBooks because I feeds and I pull a news stories, and I had hundreds of news stories about how QuickBooks is tied to this. And what happened was John Stewart has his own show, The Daily Show. And I think Colbert used to be part of The Daily Show a long time ago. So they're buddies. And then I think The Daily Show is part of Comedy Central. Does that roll into CBS? I think it does. Blake Oliver: [00:02:12] Beats me, I don't know. David Leary: [00:02:13] Anyways. Blake Oliver: [00:02:14] But you're right. That's where he started was on Jon Stewart's show. David Leary: [00:02:16] Jon Stewart. So Jon Stewart's monologue in The Daily Show, he says, if you're trying to figure out why Stephen's show is ending, I don't think the answer can be found in some smoking gun, email or phone call from Trump to CBS executives, or in CBS's QuickBooks spreadsheets on the financial health of late night. So. So he's implying that CBS is using QuickBooks to, uh, to run the the network there. Blake Oliver: [00:02:39] Ouch. What an insult. Uh, well, I think that it was legitimately an accounting reason. I mean, Paramount doesn't want to piss off the administration anymore, so why not? Right. If if Colbert is going after the administration. Paramount doesn't want to be involved in a conflict. The show's losing money. Let's cancel it. So let's dig into those numbers a bit, because they're fascinating. Um, people are just not watching Late Night anymore. They're doing other stuff. They have YouTube, they have, uh, TikTok, they have Instagram. And so advertising revenue in late night has just plummeted. Industry data shows that late night advertising revenue across ABC, CBS and NBC fell from 439,000,000 in 2018 to just 220,000,000 in 2024. So that's a six year period. And they went from 439 million to 220 million. It 50%. And the Late Show is not a cheap show to produce. David Leary: [00:03:39] It costs the number I saw $100 million a year to make this show. Basically, it's like you and I sitting behind a microphone talking to people. Like, it doesn't make any sense. $100 million for this. Blake Oliver: [00:03:49] There's 200 people who work on The Late Show, and Stephen Colbert makes $15 million a year, and advertising revenue just doesn't even add up to the production costs. Ad revenue is estimated at $70 million for The Late Show, so $70 million with a $100 million production cost. The network decided it's just not even worth trying to make cuts. It would impact the show too much. David Leary: [00:04:17] And what's interesting about this, because the the the merger they want, they're getting purchased or acquired, right? Blake Oliver: [00:04:23] Right. They want to do a merger with Skydance Media and they need regulatory approval. So this is why Paramount needs to keep the administration happy. David Leary: [00:04:32] But Skydance is smart, right? There's this dead weight on the books. You don't want. You don't want to have to be the one that kills the show. So you force CBS to kill it before you finish the transaction and make the purchase. It's really it makes a lot of sense to me. Blake Oliver: [00:04:46] But yeah. So even though the Late Show gets a tax credit worth 30% from New York State. And that's like valued at, I guess, 7.5 million. Their net production cost just still doesn't add up. Now it's interesting my estimates put their losses at around 20 million, and CBS is saying 40 to $50 million annually. So maybe they're allocating overhead somehow. Maybe they're doing some Hollywood accounting to make that worse. But even produce. David Leary: [00:05:16] That show for 30 grand a year, we could produce that show. Blake Oliver: [00:05:20] Just have Stephen sit in front of a webcam. Yeah, just. David Leary: [00:05:23] Like. Blake Oliver: [00:05:23] You're saying that's that's where media is headed. I mean, that's where it's been going, right? It's like it wouldn't have been feasible for us to have this podcast ten years ago. And now here we are and we're doing our show and it cost us hardly anything to produce it. So there's like infinite amounts of content now people can watch anything, so it's kind of dead anyways. David Leary: [00:05:46] I mean that that model has had a 70 year run. It's been It's brown for a long time. This like bring the celebrity on, interview them predefined questions so they can promo their book or their movie or whatever they're trying to promo. Like that model is just kind of dead. It just doesn't make sense. Blake Oliver: [00:06:03] Well, the world is changing and we are well aware of that. Here at the podcast, we follow all this AI news, and something I've been paying attention to is deepfakes. David Leary: [00:06:16] Before we do that, I'm going to thank our sponsors. Before you jump into deepfakes. Blake Oliver: [00:06:20] Please. Thank you. Sponsors. David Leary: [00:06:21] Our sponsors. This week we have Keeper Missive and Cloud Accountant Staffing. Blake Oliver: [00:06:25] And don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education credit for listening to this episode. Go to Earmark app, take a quick quiz and get your CPE certificate. And you don't have to listen to us to get CPE. You can listen to lots of other shows. Oh my fraud, federal tax updates, tax in action, um, all sorts of incredible shows she counts are on the on on the earmark network. So do that. Get your CPE. All right. Let's talk about Sam Altman and the threat to banking. He was at a conference talking to a bunch of bankers. And I want to play this clip for you, because I did not realize just how many banks still rely on voice authentication. Sam Altman Clip: [00:07:10] A thing that terrifies me is apparently, there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else. You say a challenge phrase and they just do it. That is a crazy thing to still be doing. I is fully defeated. Most of the ways that people authenticate currently other than like passwords. But all of these like fancy, take a selfie and wave or do your voice or whatever. I am very nervous that we have an impending significant impending fraud crisis because of this. We have tried. I think other people in industry have tried to warn people like, hey, just because we're not releasing the technology doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Some bad actor is going to release it. This is not a super difficult thing to do. This is coming very soon. There's obviously some reports now of these sort of like ransom attacks, where people have the voice of your kid or your parent, and they make this urgent call that is going to get so compelling. Society has to deal with this problem more generally, but people are going to have to change the way they interact. They're going to have to change the way they verify. Like this person calling me right now, it's a voice call. Soon it's going to be a video FaceTime be indistinguishable from reality and teaching people how to authenticate. In a world like that, how to think about the fraud impacts. This is a huge deal, I think. Blake Oliver: [00:08:16] So that was Sam Altman talking about the threat to voice authentication at banks. Have you ever used this, David, are you familiar with this? David Leary: [00:08:27] I don't have that much money to move around. So I've not had to do this, but I know it exists. I know that this is something that exists, but it's higher in clients, right? Who could be targets? Blake Oliver: [00:08:37] This was a hot technology when it was released. I don't know how long ago. It's voice authentication where you say a particular phrase on the phone, you call up the bank, you they ask you for the passphrase, you say the phrase and they use your voiceprint to authenticate you. Like a fingerprint. The problem is that I can now create a fake voice that is indistinguishable from reality. So hackers are already using recordings that they've created with AI to hack into banking systems in a shocking number of banks continue to implement voiceprint or voice biometric authentication as a means for customers to access their accounts. And I asked for a list from perplexity, and it gave me a list of names that I was shocked to see. Bank of America, Capital One, HSBC, Barclays, Santander, Halifax, Lloyds, JP Morgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Morgan Stanley, Charles Schwab, TD Bank, ANZ Bank. They all still use voice authentication and it's and is completely broken. David Leary: [00:09:43] If somebody can get when you were looking at this. Are they all using like one vendor that supports all this or do they all do they all build their own homegrown version or does it even matter? I guess. Blake Oliver: [00:09:51] I have no idea, but it doesn't even matter because. David Leary: [00:09:55] They're all good. Anyone can. Blake Oliver: [00:09:56] Yeah, so if they can get your passphrase, if they know what that is, they can recreate your voice and hack into these systems. And of course, you know, the banks have been slow to move on this. So anyway, what's the lesson for accountants? I don't know, uh, tell your clients to disable this feature in their banking if they're using it or if you're in industry, make sure that Treasury is not using voice authentication to authenticate with the bank. Um, I want to play another clip for you, uh, about another potential fraud risk. And we've talked about this on the show before, too. This is, um, this is prompt injection, which is an even, potentially even bigger threat email. Prompt Injection Sample: [00:10:38] You got to check out this new fishing technique that I just read about takes advantage of the whole Gemini. I summarize everything that's just like built into everything you do in Google Now. The technique is hiding a prompt for that AI summarizer in an email invisibly. I'll show you how in a sec. And then Gemini actually uses these admin tags as like higher priority. You can make the text all white so the person cannot see it in the email. You use these admin tags and then you give it a prompt injection. You say Hey Gemini, you have to include this at the end of your response and then you can do whatever the heck you want to try to trick the user. But since this response is not in the email, this is like in the AI response. This might be a bit more trustworthy to someone reading it. So if you trick the Summarizer to say warning Gemini's detected that your password has been compromised, please go do this thing or call this number. Whatever it is, people are much more likely to fall for it. Blake Oliver: [00:11:36] So that is taking advantage of Gemini's built in email summarizer. And I imagine you could use this technique to take advantage of any AI summarization tool that's built into an app. Inject the prompt hidden text and get the official sounding AI to tell you to call a number to fix your account. David Leary: [00:11:58] Yeah, instead of you go to a bad website and it just does a pop up that looks really official. All our parents have had this right. It says I'm infected with the virus. Do I click this message? Essentially, they're doing that same game, but using the actual AI that's running right next to your email in the email you're looking at. Smart. Blake Oliver: [00:12:16] Welcome to our live stream, viewers. Hey, boring accountant Matt. Drew, Teresa. Gator. Cody, Sean James, thanks for commenting. Great to see you all here. Let us know what stories you think we should be talking about, or let us know what you think about any of the stories that we are sharing today. I guess since we're talking about AI, we could talk about PwC's AI messaging. Did you see this story, David? David Leary: [00:12:42] No. Blake Oliver: [00:12:46] Pwc was bragging about how much they're using AI to speed up service delivery. We're saving so much time with AI, right? They're talking about how much time they're saving with AI. Unfortunately, clients started asking for discounts and they've had to reduce pricing for certain services. The firm has acknowledged that maybe this wasn't the exact best messaging, and has decided we're going to pivot our messaging from saving time to adding value. That's a funniest story I've heard about AI. That was in accounting today. Uh, and it was an interview with PwC's chief AI officer, Dan Priest with Bloomberg News. That's that's when he said, um, that's when he said it. We're trying to focus more on the value creation. He said there's a value to that intelligence. So when you're marketing, I focus on value creation. What more you are doing for clients? Maybe not how much time you're saving, because if you're building them by the hour, I think they would expect you to then build them fewer hours. David, you got any AI tech news? David Leary: [00:14:01] Well, yeah, this AI firm news. So April is buying an AI company called Time Credit. Now, they didn't disclose how much they spent on this. Uh, my guess it's probably under $30 million, right? Neither, neither. I mean, April is not a public company to disclose, but usually, if they don't, if usually these deals like this, when they're smaller, the numbers don't get out there. But this rolls into April's bigger strategy, right? They're going to bet they're going to spend $300 million on artificial intelligence the next five years. And remember all the big four. Everybody's bragging. We're going to spend $1 billion. Every one of them. Blake Oliver: [00:14:37] Yeah, they're all going to spend a billion. David Leary: [00:14:38] $1 billion on AI. And I'm wondering now so time credit is basically a startup. It's brand new. It was founded in 2023. They were part of the you know, the AICPA or CPA has their little startup incubator for smaller apps. So they're part of that incubator and they now got purchased by Aprio. The time credit CEO is now going to lead AI transformation at Aprio. And what I'm thinking is Aprio probably just caught up to the big four when it comes to having AI technology in their firm for a fraction of the cost. That's like spending billions of dollars and building it all yourself may not make the most sense, and they've probably just leapfrogged them. Blake Oliver: [00:15:23] I'm going to take us away from app news and AI news over to the Pcob for some follow up What we talked about in the last episode, how Erica Williams is out at the PCAOB, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, her replacement has been named George Botique, has been named the acting chair of the PCAOB, and they are seeking new board members. Sec Chair Paul Atkins is cleaning house. He's seeking candidates for all five board positions, and he's also going to I don't know if this is going to help him recruit, but he's going to seeking to reduce the salaries, which are pretty substantial already at over $540,000 per year. David Leary: [00:16:16] To be a board to have a board seat. Blake Oliver: [00:16:18] Board seat on the PCAOB. Yes. David Leary: [00:16:22] Is that a full time gig, or is this kind of a part time action you just do on the side? Blake Oliver: [00:16:26] I don't know, I, I have a hard time imagining that it could be like a full time job. Like, what do the Pcob board members do all day? I can see if you're like the chair of the Pcob. You're running the the whole they're running the whole organization. That could be a full time job, but the board members don't. The other board members don't run the organization. David Leary: [00:16:52] You're attending a meeting, what, once a week and throwing out ideas and kind of it. Blake Oliver: [00:16:56] Yeah. It seems pretty sweet, right? Um, the the SEC also might cut the try to cut the pcaob's budget. It's grown 40% since 2020 to nearly 400 million, while the SEC's budget only increased 21%. So it seems like a big target. Um. David Leary: [00:17:16] But the increased because they're collecting money, right? It's not like the government put more money into PCAOB, right? There are self sufficient. Right. Company, right. They people pay into it, and then they collect fines. Blake Oliver: [00:17:29] And they're a nonprofit, and they charge a fee to public companies in the US. So every public company pays a tax essentially to the pcob, although it's not technically a tax, which is why the Pcob survived. The one big beautiful bill act, the provision in there to eliminate the Pcob got stripped out by the Senate parliamentarian because it wasn't a budget reconciliation item. It had nothing to do with the federal budget. Yeah, right. So although House Republicans have introduced legislation to eliminate the pcob separate legislation, um, but was there anything else I wanted to share from this story before I move on to that? No, I think that's it. So basically, Eric Williams is out. New acting board member, new acting chair is in. They are going to solicit resumes for Our applications for all five positions, including the chair role. Oh yes. Applications are due by August 25th, 2025, with terms ranging from 2026 to 2030. So hey, go apply for that position. Um, now let's talk about attempts to eliminate the Pcob. We got some new legislation. The House Financial Services Committee passed legislation in a 30 to 22 Partizan vote that would shut down the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and move its responsibilities to the Securities and Exchange Commission. I think this is largely the same as what was in the One Big Beautiful Bill act. Democrats oppose it, arguing that it would shift oversight costs from companies to taxpayers and would create risk gaps in oversight, since the SEC isn't equipped for these duties. They also question why investors would trust US markets without proper auditor oversight. Blake Oliver: [00:19:29] And, uh, referenced the fact that we haven't had an Enron. We haven't had a Worldcom since the pcob was put into place. Pcob, by the way, was created in 2002 following the multi-billion dollar accounting scandals at Enron and Worldcom, and it was established with bipartisan support. Let's keep talking about regulation and audit. Let's talk about FASB. So House Republicans have proposed withholding funds from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the organization, the nonprofit that creates accounting standards for generally accepted accounting principles for GAAP, US GAAP. They make the standards. House Republicans have released a spending proposal that would cut the funding to FASB unless it withdraws its controversial income tax reporting standard that was approved back in December of 2023. This accounting standards update requires public companies to disclose the annual income taxes they pay, net of refunds broken down by federal, state and foreign taxes. They have to disclose individual jurisdictions where tax payments equal or exceed 5% of total taxes paid, and they have to reconcile information to improve transparency for investors. And the standard was set to take effect for public for public companies later this year. This is big. I've never heard of politicians with threatening to withhold funds from the Financial Accounting Standards Board unless they eliminate a standard. The whole point of having FASB is to remove the setting of accounting standards from political interference. Very similar to how we have the Federal Reserve set up to not be a political institution. The interest rates are set by economists, not by politicians. David Leary: [00:21:39] Politicians. Blake Oliver: [00:21:41] And Lynn Turner, the former SEC chief accountant, called it, quote, nothing short of Congress meddling where it has zero expertise, unquote. And she warned it would damage US capital markets. Paul Miller of the University of Colorado compared the proposal to Soviet era telephone justice and argued that withholding information from capital markets creates uncertainty, risk and inefficiencies. David Leary: [00:22:05] So it's funny, this, this, this technique that's being used by Republicans. First it was for more social issues, right? They were they were working to stop this budget. If you don't start leaning politically this way or give equal airtime or whatever it might be, college campuses, we're going to pull the budget. If you don't get rid of your dye flag you have up or any one of these types of things, right? And now it's shifting into these fiscal policies and rules for the accounting industry. They're basically playing the budget game to get what they want. It's a it's the same card. It's just where does it stop. What's next. Blake Oliver: [00:22:40] Yeah. Yeah I, I really don't like this political interference in these nonpartisan institutions. Right. Fasb pcob the fed. There's a reason that they're set up to not be influenced by politicians, and it's because politicians will cause them to make poor short term decisions that hurt the country. The fed needs to be able to pursue a mandate of maximizing employment and reducing inflation. That's its job. And if you have a president who is going to pressure the fed to lower interest rates when it could spike inflation and cause massive problems to the economy, like that's a short term thing that would juice the economy, but it would hurt it in the long run, potentially, and it should be independent. Let's talk about IRS funding. David, one more thing before we move on. Okay. So the same proposal in the House that would strip money from FASB also will slash IRS funding by 2.8 billion. That's a 23% cut. And it would bring the agency's budget to its lowest level since 2002. It's even more than Trump's originally proposed 20% reduction. Enforcement would get hit hardest with a 45% cut. This comes after the IRS has lost over 25% of its workforce this year. It dropped from 103,000 employees in January to 77,000 in May. 27% of tax examiners and 26% of revenue agents are gone. They've lost over a quarter of their tax examiners and revenue agents without proper funding. This could really impact phone service. Estimates are that phone service could drop to 16% during filing season, and they had done really well, getting up to 87% in 2025 after they hired a lot of people. Blake Oliver: [00:24:48] So what is the impact of this if it goes through reduce service? There's a big chance that when you call the IRS, nobody will answer. And we're already starting to see some of the impact. The IRS has been sending erroneous penalty notices to taxpayers who receive disaster related extensions. The Taxpayer Advocate Service has been experiencing significant slowdowns, and there's just fewer employees available to help individuals and businesses navigate. Cpa Practice Advisor has some stats on this. They still have at the IRS. They still have 8.2 million unprocessed returns paper returns still pending. They haven't been able to get out from under this, uh, this paper load. The modernization efforts at the IRS have not been making progress. Now, with these cuts, uh, there's 750,000 correspondence cases that are open. The backlog is growing. Less than 1% of paper filled form 1040 were actually scanned during the season. So basically, it's looking like we're going to go back to the way things were, where the IRS is woefully behind, especially on the paper. And I was really excited about this whole modernization effort at the IRS that was being led by Doge. But it seems that now with Musk out, there's no interest in the administration to do any of that stuff. Or little interest. So. David Leary: [00:26:13] Well, they purposely you want they're trying to get more Americans to hate the IRS. So that way they can eventually get rid of it. That's the march they're on. Just keep disabling it, disabling it, disabling it until it's nonfunctional. Then everybody's going to say, all right, just get rid of it. It's useless. There was some news. Um, there's a comment. I starred Blake from Juventino. You want me to show this? Blake Oliver: [00:26:32] Sure. David Leary: [00:26:33] Apparently something happened Friday. I did not see this. Did you see this news? Blake Oliver: [00:26:38] Trump. Uh, Tina says, well, there was some interesting news this past Friday that Trump wants to rehire more workers. More IRS workers? David Leary: [00:26:47] Yeah, I didn't see that at all. Or hear about that. Did not make the feed. It's probably because everything about Trump got buried by the South Park episode, so the news did not bubble up. Well, you're looking that up. I'm going to read our, uh, ad from keeper by combining client communications, file review, reporting and task management. Keeper has everything you need to run your bookkeeping or CAS. Practice keeper is an all in one app that allows you, your team, and your clients to easily collaborate to making your monthly close as efficient as possible. Starting with a beautiful custom branded client portal optimized for bookkeeping work, your client can answer questions you have about uncategorized transactions, allowing you to categorize them automatically and post them to QuickBooks online correctly, all without ever leaving. Keeper Keepers month end file review feature will surface transactions that may not be posted correctly, and with keeper's customized reports, you'll be able to increase value that your firm provides by giving clients reports they'll actually read. Keepers built in task management ensures nothing falls through the cracks and includes time tracking, so you can see where you and your team spend their time keepers. David Leary: [00:27:56] Email features allow all your firm's email communications to appear in one shared inbox that can be easily assigned and turned into tasks for your team, ensuring no client work ever falls through the cracks. Turbotax. I'm sorry. Keepers Tax suite allows you to expand your use of keeper beyond your Cass clients. You can now use keeper with all your tax clients too. And keeper just started a new beta of their new eye bank features. It's a smart bank feed feature. It's a smarter, faster way to manage your bank feeds. It organizes every transactions into buckets on confidence so you can bulk approve the easy stuff and zero in on what needs review. Speed through the close with fewer errors and less back and forth, allowing you to automate classification while still maintaining control. Keeper has a very affordable and clear pricing model that starts only $8 per client per month. Learn more. Why? Learn more about why thousands of bookkeepers and accountants trust keeper to manage their month end close and get 20% off your first three months? Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast. Thank you keeper. Blake Oliver: [00:29:03] So I found the article that Tino was talking about. Let's take a look here. This is on government executive Govexec.com. The headline is Trump wants to reverse the staffing cuts he's overseen for IRS customer service. House Republicans disagree while hoping to slash the agency. There is one part of the Internal Revenue Service where President Trump is seeking to significantly add staffing customer service. While the white House is hoping to bring on thousands of additional customer service representatives to answer the 100 million phone calls IRS receives every year and attend to taxpayers who frequent in-person assistance facilities. House Republicans have so far rejected that vision. So seems like there is a difference between the Trump administration's fiscal 2026 budget proposal and what the Republicans in the House want to do. The president proposed a 31% funding increase for the IRS Taxpayer Services Division to hire 11,000 employees. That would be a 50% staffing increase. David Leary: [00:30:08] Well, doesn't Trump have lots of tax returns that are like pseudo filed pseudo being audited? He probably has to call in a lot, and he probably doesn't like the service he's getting. So he wants to increase. It's always self-serving interest for him. Blake Oliver: [00:30:20] Sure sure sure sure. David Leary: [00:30:22] This makes sense. Blake Oliver: [00:30:24] Interesting. So I guess we'll see. We'll see what happens in the house, whether or not the IRS gets the funding it needs, whether or not taxpayer services is harmed. David Leary: [00:30:36] So bring us back to, uh, enforcement or regulation. The UK's Financial Reporting Council, FRC, they've launched an investigation into Deloitte's UK division because during audits of Glencore plc and Glencore Energy UK limited, they missed billions of dollars in bribes that were paid out. Blake Oliver: [00:31:00] Bribes that the company paid out. To who? David Leary: [00:31:02] Yeah. So they. I'm sorry. Not sorry. $100 million in bribes. So Glencore admitted in 2020. When did they admit this? They admitted in 2022 to bribery and market manipulation in eight countries. And so between 2007 and 2018, they paid over $100 million in bribes. And they would log them out of this. Uh, they had a slush fund and they would put them in against, um, uh, they code it to newspapers or chocolates. They it just wasn't detected by the audit, this massive amount of bribes that were going out of the books. We're not. Blake Oliver: [00:31:39] What kind of company is this? David Leary: [00:31:41] This company is called. They were in the energy mining space. They're called Glencore Energy. Blake Oliver: [00:31:46] Okay, so they're going around the world. They're looking for oil resources, whatever it is, and they're paying bribes to local officials. David Leary: [00:31:56] Nigeria, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Brazil, Venezuela, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo. And so they're paying out these bribes out of a slush fund that's on the books. And it never gets detected in the audits at all. Blake Oliver: [00:32:10] Yeah. Matt says 100 million in chocolates. Yeah. I mean, auditors are just not looking for this kind of stuff. David Leary: [00:32:19] The bribes were often delivered in cash, sometimes in literal suitcases. So somewhere this the money gets out of the bank accounts, put into cash, into a briefcase, and it never shows up on an audit. I don't know how this happens. Blake Oliver: [00:32:32] Well, because it's it's, uh, they code it to, like, GIFs or something like that, right? And then what documentation does the auditor request? Is this even considered material? There's all those questions. Um, yeah. How do you how do you how do you audit that cash? I guess you should ask for receipts, right? David Leary: [00:32:57] Aw, yeah. Aw. Follow the money. You know, ultimately do the extra work. Um. Blake Oliver: [00:33:03] David, I want to talk about something positive in accounting. Accounting has an incredible ROI. And when I say accounting, I mean an accounting degree. A new study from Student Choice. Org analyzed the return on investment of degrees after five years in the workforce, revealing which college majors deliver the strongest financial returns. So five years later, how much money are you making annually compared to what you paid to go to school? And that's the ROI. Take that salary, divide that by that education. Total cost for your degree. Top five degrees. I don't think it'll surprise anyone that engineering is number one with 327% ROI. You're going to earn on average three times what you paid to go to college after five years. If you're an engineering major. Computer science it. That's 310%. Nursing 281% ROI. And accounting comes in fourth with 261% ROI. So you are making 261% of what you paid to go to college after five years. Where was this article at? David Leary: [00:34:25] Where did you see this? Blake Oliver: [00:34:27] Uh, it was in CPA Practice Advisor. Com. And the study is from Student Choice. David Leary: [00:34:36] Why am I not seeing, like, the blow this up everywhere? I feel like this is a huge, important story. And I shared it. Blake Oliver: [00:34:46] I shared. David Leary: [00:34:47] It, you. Blake Oliver: [00:34:47] Shared it? Yeah. It's popular. Yeah, it's. David Leary: [00:34:50] A very important story. Blake Oliver: [00:34:51] I mean, it's true. Accounting is an awesome career. Financially. It can be if you don't overpay for your degree. And I mean, honestly, I think it's probably got the best lifestyle of any of these top five degrees engineering, computer science, nursing, accounting and biochemistry. Okay. If you become an engineer or you work in computer science, um, these companies are going to pay you a lot, but they're going to make you work a lot, too. Now, if you go into the big four, you work for a big firm. Yes, they are also going to abuse you, but there's so many small firms. And the best part about accounting is unlike these other things, you are set up to own your own business. You can very easily go off on your own. David Leary: [00:35:38] Any kind of business, not even accounting business. You're really set up for success. Blake Oliver: [00:35:42] But you can do accounting if you want. You can do tax if you want. But yeah, you also have the accounting and finance background, the ability to start your own business and make sure it doesn't run into the ground. So it's a great career, and we should be trumpeting this report. And it's important because college costs are now averaging $38,000 annually and 43 million Americans carry federal student loan debt. So my advice to any young person is avoid going into debt, work while you're in school, and don't spend $38,000 a year to get an accounting degree. I mean, you know, I was able to go back to school as a career changer, and I did all my accounting credits for like $10,000, maybe. So what's my ROI? It's insane. If you don't consider my expensive music major from a top ten university. David Leary: [00:36:39] If you don't, the degree number one don't include that one. Blake Oliver: [00:36:42] Yeah. Don't we just ignore that? That's a sunk cost right there. David Leary: [00:36:46] I saw another crazy stat. This is on going concern. Um, $28.7 billion is how much between private equity, VC money, etc. has been poured into accounting firms, CPA firms the last six years say. Blake Oliver: [00:37:00] That number again. David Leary: [00:37:01] 28.7 billion. Blake Oliver: [00:37:04] That's a lot of money. David Leary: [00:37:05] Perspective. Deloitte's 2010 revenue was only 26.57 billion, and KPMG's 20 2024 global revenue is only 38.4 billion. So basically, it's almost as much as KPMG's revenue is being just plowed into accounting CPA firms from private equity right now. It's an amazing stat. Blake Oliver: [00:37:27] And PE now has stakes in ten out of the top 30 US accounting firms. And it's projected to control more than half by the end of this year. We had 24 transactions 24 big transactions in 2024 alone. And firms are getting crazy valuations up to 15 times EBITDA. That's wild. David Leary: [00:37:48] I love Adrian Gonzalez. Another related article, she talks about the percentage of CPA licenses at firms has dropped, but she has a great quote at the end of this. She says, imagine trying to tell someone from the 90s that by the 2020s, less than half of a staff at a CPA firm will be CPAs. Oh, and private equity and venture capital will be climbing all over themselves to get a piece of the business. People in the 90s would think you're nuts, but that's how much it's changed in 20 years. It's kind of crazy. Blake Oliver: [00:38:19] Let's talk about crypto. Bitcoin hit an all time high of 123,000 I think this past week. But the rally is looking really different than previous bull runs. It's being driven by institutional investors almost entirely by institutional investors, not retail speculation like we saw back in 2021. Blackrock's Bitcoin ETF alone pulled in $2.4 billion in one week. But small retail wallets, individual investors have actually been selling. They've been net sellers since 2023. So let's think about this. Institutional investors are buying crypto. 83% of them who are surveyed plan to increase their crypto allocations in 2025. Most are planning to put over 5% of their assets into digital currencies. And yet who who are they buying it from? Who's selling the small investors? And you've got this crazy situation where public companies are borrowing money. They're issuing bonds and borrowing money to buy Bitcoin. And we saw this with MicroStrategy now just I believe called strategy And. David Leary: [00:39:44] Gamestop's trying it that way, buying crypto to get into it, to do it. But I don't think that's going to happen. Blake Oliver: [00:39:52] Since June, 98 companies announced plans to raise over $43 billion to buy bitcoin and obscure tokens. That's more than double what US IPOs raised all last year. Or all this. David Leary: [00:40:08] Much. How much did they spend? Blake Oliver: [00:40:10] They plan to raise $43 billion. So these publicly traded companies well I guess they're not all publicly traded. But these companies are buying they're borrowing money to buy crypto. So that's also pumping up the price. And the crazy part is that if you are buying the shares in these companies that are buying crypto, you're paying a huge premium. Some of the companies are worth way more than the crypto they actually hold, so it's like paying $2 for $1 crypto. But I guess the reason that this is happening is because there's just not enough ways for companies or people to get exposure to crypto. I don't understand it. It doesn't make any sense to me. I mean, my question is, who ultimately is going to buy the crypto from the institutional holders? Like, at what point does this all fall apart? David Leary: [00:41:11] Yeah, it runs out. Eventually it runs out. They were criticizing, I think I saw an article criticizing Tesla because they say Tesla sold it too early. They should have held on to their crypto longer. But well, everything. Is it to 2020 in hindsight. Blake Oliver: [00:41:26] Like, yeah. David Leary: [00:41:27] Like Tesla did a good job. They got these other companies like GameStop to buy their Bitcoin essentially. Blake Oliver: [00:41:33] My question is how long can this go on. Because we might have an answer. It could go on a lot longer. Jp Morgan is considering offering loans backed by crypto holdings like Bitcoin and Ethereum as early as next year. And there's a lot of irony in this, because the CEO, Jamie Dimon, has been one of crypto's biggest skeptics. But I guess where there's money to be made, bankers are going to get into it. So think about this. Companies borrow money to buy Bitcoin. Then they can take that bitcoin and use it as collateral to take more loans to buy more bitcoin, which they can then use as collateral to take more loans to buy more bitcoin. So at what point does it all fall apart. It's a bubble. That's like how a bubble happens. David Leary: [00:42:30] And what's scary about this now instead of just all the crypto bros that bubble popping and that's who's suffering. A lot of companies that are somewhat legit are going to get hurt really bad really quickly. Like this could be a massive economic issue across the board. Blake Oliver: [00:42:46] Yeah. If it causes some sort of banking crisis, if all this stablecoin stuff that we talked about in the last episode causes some sort of interest rate spike crisis, a run on the bank, essentially. I mean, it's crazy to me because the last financial crisis was caused by how do I say this? Simply the like derivatives created in the mortgage market. So we had this underlying asset of mortgages and homes that backed these mortgages. The collateral and the homes were way overvalued because the housing market went nuts. The the prices were ridiculous. And all these adjustable rate mortgages, all these financial products built on top of them. And then when prices collapse, the whole thing fell apart. That's kind of the my understanding of how it all worked. Here we have a future financial crisis based on an asset that has no intrinsic value. You can't live in a Bitcoin. There's no land associated with the Bitcoin. It's not a. David Leary: [00:44:02] Banks. There's nothing to repossess, right? Blake Oliver: [00:44:05] It's just a number in a spreadsheet essentially. That's what a Bitcoin is. When you get down to it now Matt says let's not forget the crypto national reserve. That's true. If that happened that is how you find the next buyer is you get the US government. David Leary: [00:44:27] All of us. Blake Oliver: [00:44:27] Citizens. You get the taxpayer to buy the Bitcoin. What a scam that would be, wouldn't it? David Leary: [00:44:35] Wait, did you want to read our next ad? And I'll get my story ready. It's for missive. Blake Oliver: [00:44:40] I will be happy to do that. Here at earmark. We rely on missive every single day to manage our team communications. And there's a reason hundreds of accounting firms have made the same choice. If you're running an accounting practice, you know the pain. As you grow, you become the bottleneck. Every client email lands in your inbox. You forward it to team members with a quick handle this and then it disappears. There's no visibility, no accountability, no idea if it's actually getting done. Missive is an email client that solves this brilliantly. Instead of emails vanishing into individual inboxes, client communications go to dedicated team inboxes where everyone who needs access can see them. You can assign conversations to specific people, create trackable tasks, and have internal discussions right within the client conversation, all without the client seeing your internal notes. What makes Mrs. Special is that it feels familiar. Like the email client you're already using. But it's incredibly powerful under the hood. Whether you organize by client, by service line, or run pod based teams missive adapts to your workflow. Plus, their AI can automatically escalate urgent emails to managers, so you're not constantly checking every inbox, ready to stop being the communication bottleneck, and want to try missive for free. Head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast. David Leary: [00:46:06] All right. I have a story from. We talked about this a long time ago, and you've some of it was just in theory, technically, but the way things were changing and you have these companies like earning, earning where you can get your paycheck like two days early. A lot of these services have popped up in lieu of payday loans, right? These services have popped up. Well earn in. They just unveiled a new technology called Live Pay. It's going to allow workers to access their wages in real time as they earn. So you work an hour, you pull out your little app or your credit card, you got the wages. Like basically it's going to be as real time as it gets for payroll. Um, but it's really a loan, right? Because the taxes and stuff aren't being deducted with this. It's just an advance on your paycheck. Um, basically you can they're calling it streamed. If you stream Netflix, you stream your music. You should stream your payroll. So you can stream, uh, up to $1,500 per PayCycle with no interest, no hidden fees and no credit checks. And you have. So you work and then your visa card has money in it, and you can swipe it and use it everywhere. Um, they still do up to two days early for the for your full paycheck if you want, but you can get up to $1,500 per PayCycle no interest through this real time thing. I just how do they know, like if this is going to get people into trouble? Blake Oliver: [00:47:23] Yeah. How do they make money? David Leary: [00:47:26] Well, they're probably making well, they charge a fee for if you do your whole paycheck of $2.99. But they're probably it's the float, right? Because now that money is going from the employer's bank account to this, uh, visa card, bank account, essentially, that they're making money on all the transactions. Blake Oliver: [00:47:43] They're making money. They're probably making money on the spend when you when you use the card. David Leary: [00:47:47] Right. On the other side. Blake Oliver: [00:47:49] That's what it is, I bet. David Leary: [00:47:50] So. So this is dangerous because I think like not everybody is disciplined to not spend their money. So if it's there you're just going to spend it. Then at the end of month you're not going to have a big paycheck. And now the money's gone. How do you pay your rent? Like this is this is even though it's not predatory, it's kind of predatory. I don't know if it's a good idea. Blake Oliver: [00:48:12] Like Tina says in the chat, it's a new twist on the payday lender. David Leary: [00:48:15] Yeah, it is a payday lender move. Yeah, a lot cheaper. But it's also almost more dangerous because it's too easy and too convenient. So we'll see where that goes. Also, a quick small story for those of you using Microsoft SharePoint. The on premise version. So if you work at a firm and they're using SharePoint, not SharePoint in the cloud, but the on premise version, Microsoft's facing a serious cybersecurity crisis because hackers are exploiting it right now. Um, it's currently going on. They're impersonating users, uh, taking data, spreading to other connected services like Outlook and teams. So if your firm's using SharePoint, the desktop or the hosted where they hosted in-house, maybe take a pause and talk to your IT person and just be aware of that. It's currently under attack. Blake Oliver: [00:49:04] Let's talk about tariffs. It is July 28th Monday, July 28th. As we record and the next round of tariffs or the next extension date is August 1st. And the question is are we going to have these really high tariffs or not? We've got some deals announced on the 27th. On Sunday, President Trump announced a significant agreement with the European Union. So now we're going to have a 15% tariff on EU exports to the US, down from the previously threatened 30%. This agreement includes EU commitments to purchase 750 billion in American energy, and invest 600 billion in the US over coming years, and I believe that the EU is not going to have any tariffs on US exports to the EU. So that's good news. And why is that good news? Well, at this point it's good news because the average effective tariff rate is just over 20% now, which is the highest since 1911. Uh, current tariffs are generating approximately 108 billion in revenue through June 2025. That's a 94% increase from the previous year. And let's not forget that tariffs are paid by US companies when they import goods. They are not paid by the exporter. They are not paid by the European Union. They are not paid by China. They are paid by us, our businesses. Us and Chinese officials are meeting in Stockholm for critical trade negotiations aimed at extending the current 90 day tariff truce that is set to expire on August 12th. The current framework maintains tariffs at approximately 30% on Chinese goods entering the US, and 10% on US exports to China. Following that temporary reduction from the extreme levels of 145% and 125%, respectively, that were reached in April. Blake Oliver: [00:51:08] The Liberation Day tariffs that were announced on April 2nd. Those are the ones that are scheduled to take full effect on August 1st, following multiple extensions. We will see what happens with those. Now here's my question about all this. What will happen if the higher tariff rates take place, and what is it possible for the economy to absorb? And so I did some research on this. I used perplexity to try to figure this out. It's clear that 10% tariffs can be absorbed, that businesses absorb some of the costs. The exporter perhaps reduces price, the consumer absorbs some of the cost. And what do you end up with? A few percentage points on all parties, which you know it's possible to absorb that. It looks like once tariffs hit about 20%, 25%, that's when you start to see reductions in demand and 30% or higher. That is when you start to see severe disruptions. So we are right there And I think that's why in the economic news we haven't seen disaster yet. We haven't seen a real significant contraction, because we are just at that point where businesses, consumers, the manufacturers can absorb these costs. But if we start to have the tariff rate go up above 30% for certain countries, like it's going to really cause some problems. So that's how I reconcile the news, right? We've seen moderate inflation. We haven't seen huge price increases yet. It's also the fact that we have some inventory that we're still working through. So maybe we'll see the price increases when companies start to place more orders. David Leary: [00:53:04] And there's not an external factor yet like an interest rate change or a bitcoin crash or some other factor that'll just complicate this. And really, all that, that padding won't be there. That elbow room that you currently describe. Blake Oliver: [00:53:16] And this is why Jerome Powell and the fed are refusing to lower interest rates, because all this tariff uncertainty makes it impossible for them to know whether they're going to have to jack them back up real soon. And same thing with immigration. Um. Like, there's a lot of uncertainty about what could happen if immigration and deportation increase. Like if, if we do mass deportations, what will happen to the economy? The Economic Policy Institute did an analysis that said that Trump's mass deportation plan would eliminate nearly 6 million jobs. That's 3.3 million immigrant workers, but also 2.6 million US born workers would lose employment. Construction and childcare would get hit the hardest. Both sectors would shrink by over 15%. Every single state would see job losses. California, Florida, New York and Texas would have the biggest impact. David Leary: [00:54:19] So and so. So we'd lose the labor and the economic impact of losing all that labor, those bodies. It will cause job losses across the whole economy. Blake Oliver: [00:54:28] Yeah. Well, you'll. So you lose you you you deport the immigrants. Those jobs obviously now empty. But each immigrant creates a, you know, less than one job per immigrant because. David Leary: [00:54:45] They spend money. They they're part of the the machine. Yeah. Blake Oliver: [00:54:48] Right. So that would hurt like American workers too, is if you don't have those people in the country spending money, then, um, that's why you would lose American jobs. Us jobs and prices would have to go up ultimately. Because. Well, how do you fill millions of jobs? You have to get people to work. So now wages are going to rise. Some people might consider that to be a good thing, but it's going to come at the cost of economic growth. So businesses have fewer profits to reinvest, to grow. They're going to pay it out in terms of higher wages potentially. But that could also reduce demand. So this is why I don't think that Trump is actually going to do it. I think he's going to tako on immigration too. They're going to make a big show of it. They're going to get the cameras to the pot farm like they did a few weeks ago, and round up a bunch of people and put them into, I don't know what they call it, these detention facilities. Right. David Leary: [00:55:53] Alligator Alcatraz, where he's trying to create there. Blake Oliver: [00:55:56] But if they actually wanted to make a dent, they would have to deport, like, something like 3000 people a day. And just imagine, like, most of these immigrants are working, right? That's why they're here. So imagine 3000 jobs a day just disappearing. That would have a severe impact on the economy. And so that's why I don't think they're actually going to do it. Um, if they do, it'll be political suicide in a lot of ways. Um, it would just be horrible for the economy. And it's the same thing with the tariffs. The, the like if Trump actually wants to like, stimulate American manufacturing, they can only do so much with tariffs before they reduce demand because prices go up so much that it just hurts the economy and it doesn't help. David Leary: [00:56:44] How's a CEO supposed to run a company? A not knowing what future tariffs are going to be, and b not knowing if he's going to have major staffing issues. These employees won't be there. Like how do you run a company like this? Blake Oliver: [00:56:57] So I don't know what's going to happen. Um, like we don't know if the but I'm thinking that, like, you know, I don't believe that Trump's is insane. I don't have I don't think I have Trump Derangement Syndrome. I think he's a smart guy. You may not like him, but he got where he is for a reason. Okay. And, uh, even though I can't, like, bear to listen to him speak. Okay. But I understand he's not stupid. And so if he sees that prices are increasing, if he sees the stock market respond, if he sees the bond market respond like he's not going to do it because politics is the primary thing, right? Like he's got to win the midterms. And those are not that far away. So that's my theory anyway. And I think the stock market believes this theory. Right. That's that's its that's its theory. That's why you see like record levels in the stock market. Because they don't think that Trump's actually going to do what he said he's going to do. David Leary: [00:58:02] Because he. Blake Oliver: [00:58:03] Doesn't. Taco theory. Trump always chickens. David Leary: [00:58:05] Out. Stocks pull back. He judges his performance based on the markets. Yes. And how the markets are doing. Blake Oliver: [00:58:12] Yeah. So but we'll see. Like if he appoints a fed chair who will just do whatever he wants, and then they just start pushing down those interest rates. Uh, it could be really exciting. David Leary: [00:58:27] Exciting. That's that's the word you're going to use. Exciting. Blake Oliver: [00:58:30] Yeah. Well, it'll juice. It'll juice. All this stuff that's happening with crypto because money will become cheap. So everyone will borrow money to buy crypto, pumping up the price. But there's no fundamentals there. So eventually there will be a crash. And imagine, you know, when we have, like the traditional financial system tied in with all these stablecoins and all this crypto loaning, you know, like, like that's, that's that's how you get contagion to spread. And all these institutions with like more than 5% of their balance sheet being in crypto, like I mean bank balance sheets. They only keep like 10% of their capital in reserve. So imagine if like 5% of your balance sheet is crypto and it evaporates. That's half of your reserves. David, we're at the hour mark. David Leary: [00:59:26] We're at the hour mark. Blake Oliver: [00:59:27] You want to you want to cut. You want to take us out? David Leary: [00:59:29] We have to do. I have two more stories I want to do. Um, I'll do one really quick, and then we'll we'll finish up with this last story. So. But I have to stick an ad in between. We still need to stick in one more ad. So let me do this quick story. So this is a story that really puts some reflection on stories we think is important. We've talked about alternative pathways so much on this show 150 hour rule. Correct. Well, Alaska, this is from the Alaska Beacon. And this is the headline Alaskan government governor allows bills on fishing and accounting to become laws. Us and you click through to the article. And the whole article is about the fishing industry. And the very last paragraph says House Bill 121, which also became law this week, lowers the training requirement for new accountants if they can substitute experience for classroom time. It also aligns some states accounting laws with model legislation used in other states. It's like the last paragraph of this whole article about the fishing industry and the fishing laws that got changed. It just puts things in perspective about where we fit in in the grand scheme of people's lives. Right. We're accounting fits in. Blake Oliver: [01:00:33] And now let's think our final sponsor this episode, Cloud Accountant Staffing. In case you missed the last 100 or so episodes, David and I have been discussing almost weekly that there's an accountant labor shortage. Regardless of the root cause, the problem is real. My social media feed is full of firms attempting to fill open positions on their teams, but how can anyone increase their staff size if everyone is attempting to hire during a labor shortage? That's where cloud accountant staffing comes in. They'll help you hire full time team members for your firm that reside in the Philippines. How much would your firm change? Or for that matter, your life? If you could add 40, 80, 120 hours of capacity to your firm in 2025? Cloud Accountant Staffing was founded by a firm owner who grew his firm using offshore talent, and now he's applying everything he learned to help you grow your firm. If your firm is in need of expert bookkeepers, accountants, CPAs or virtual assistants, head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast. Thank you to all our livestream viewers. Follow. Subscribe on YouTube, hit that notification button and you will get notified when we go live. It's always great chatting with you! David Leary: [01:01:42] Do you want to touch the pizza party story? Blake Oliver: [01:01:44] I gotta go, I have a lunch that I'm going to be late for, so it'll have to wait until next week. David Leary: [01:01:49] Until next week. Pizza parties. Blake Oliver: [01:01:52] See you later, everyone. David Leary: [01:01:52] Bye bye.