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In this episode of the podcast, hosts John Tripolsky and Chris Picciurro, CPA, dive into the dynamic and very insightful "conference season" for tax professionals. They take a broad look at the tax industry, focusing on various topics such as practice management, technology adoption, and what taxpayers need to know about the tax profession's shifting landscape. This episode offers insights straight from the heart of the action as Chris shares experiences from recent conferences where he was a speaker and active participant.
In an age where continuing education is vital for CPAs and tax professionals, Chris sheds light on the evolving nature of tax conferences post-pandemic. He explains how these gatherings not only serve educational purposes but also facilitate invaluable networking opportunities. Listeners get an insider's view of the challenges faced by mature-aged CPA firms concerning succession planning, how young professionals are reshaping practices by choosing to build rather than buy, and the defining role Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing in the tax industry's evolution. Keeping pace with progress is crucial, as Chris aptly summarizes, "If you're not evolving, you're eroding."
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In an age where continuing education is vital for CPAs and tax professionals, Chris sheds light on the evolving nature of tax conferences post-pandemic. He explains how these gatherings not only serve educational purposes but also facilitate invaluable networking opportunities. Listeners get an insider's view of the challenges faced by mature-aged CPA firms concerning succession planning, how young professionals are reshaping practices by choosing to build rather than buy, and the defining role Artificial Intelligence (AI) is playing in the tax industry's evolution. Keeping pace with progress is crucial, as Chris aptly summarizes, "If you're not evolving, you're eroding."
⸻
STUDIO SPONSOR
Strategic Associates
👉 www.teachingtaxflow.com/studio
EPISODE SPONSOR
Wealth Builders Mortgage Group
Your trusted mortgage partner for investors and entrepreneurs.
👉 https://www.wealthbuildersmortgagegroup.com
⸻
👉 Spotify https://bit.ly/3KdmtJL
👉 Apple Podcasts https://apple.co/3ZkyEtX
👉 Amazon https://amzn.to/4qmdqa5
👉 iHeart https://bit.ly/iheart-TTF
- (00:01) - Insights From Tax Professionals' Conferences and Networking Experiences
- (05:35) - Challenges and Solutions in Tax Professional Efficiency
- (09:01) - The Importance of Clear Communication in Financial Transactions
- (11:01) - Evolving Tax Practices: Succession, Technology, and AI Integration
- (16:59) - The Importance of Conferences and Networking in Tax Industry
Creators and Guests
What is Teaching Tax Flow: The Podcast?
Welcome to “Teaching Tax Flow: The Podcast”, the show that’s all about demystifying taxes and helping you keep more of your hard-earned income in your pocket.
Hosted by tax experts from the Teaching Tax Flow team, this unfiltered (but clean) podcast is designed to empower you with the knowledge and tools you need to confidently navigate the world of taxes. We’ll cover everything from understanding tax laws and regulations to maximizing deductions and credits.
In each episode, we’ll break down a specific tax-related topic in a clear and accessible way, providing practical tips and strategies you can use to optimize your tax situation. We’ll also answer listener questions, share the mic with amazing guests, and share real-world examples to help illustrate key concepts.
Whether you’re a freelancer, small business owner, real estate investor, or just looking to understand your taxes better, this podcast is for you. So tune in, take notes, and start building your confidence in taxes today.
Produced and hosted by Teaching Tax Flow.
www.TeachingTaxFlow.com
Hey, everybody, and welcome back to the Teaching Taskflow Podcast, episode 201 today. Welcome, I should say. I feel like I do a little song and dance to the Strategic Associates studio. That's right. If you don't know who those guys are, check it out in the show notes.
John Tripolsky:We can connect you. And we'll leave it at that. But the topic for today, we're switching gears a little bit. You know, we crossed that 200 mark. We're not gonna talk about one specific thing.
John Tripolsky:We're gonna talk about a whole lot of things. Chris Picciurro, for one, welcome back to your own show, sir. And more importantly, you know I love seeing you, but you and I've been on the road with you for a few of these things. It's like our Super Bowl conference season, playoff season, we should say, for a lot of these conferences. And humble brag for you a little bit, I'll I'll do it for you.
John Tripolsky:I don't think we've actually been to one that you haven't spoke at. So why don't we dive into these things and tell people that aren't in that industry, that are going to these conferences, what in the world we even talk about.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Sound good? Feels great to be home in my own bed, number one, with all my teaching tax flow gear, in my closet, and it is, great to be back on the show. John, you nailed it. We are wrapping up what I call conference season for our profession. So, CPAs, enrolled agents, and any other licensed tax professional, just like any just like other professions are required to earn continuing education credits.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And there those those requirements are pretty substantial. You know, one to two weeks a year, we need to, even though we may I mean, I've had a CPA license for almost twenty five years. I still have to go through continuing education. And because of these these continuing education requirements, most I shouldn't say, well, many, many tax professionals go to a conference. Conference is something where you have a lot of different options for sessions and learning, but also especially I feel like since the pandemic, we appreciate that face to face interaction.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And this is really important for tax professionals, but it's also important for taxpayers to understand what's going on kind of behind the lines. Right? And I as I was coming back from Michigan to, my where I'm at in Franklin, Tennessee, I was thinking and this is just recently. Right? John, I saw you last week.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So recap last week at the Michigan Association of CPAs Conference, a small firm practitioners conference. Shout out to Bob Doyle and the absolutely amazing team at the Michigan Association of CPAs. This conference has been going on for, I think, was a forty eighth year. This is my twentieth year going to the conference. I missed one or two, and they they skipped one for the pandemic.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And then shout out to Taxposium, the National Association of Tax Professionals. That conference moves around as well. So we're gonna talk a little bit, John, about what the heck's going on out there in the tax world from the national perspective. We had about, I wanna say, over a thousand attendees. It was in Cleveland this year.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So, John, you got to go to both of them. Right? It was pretty regional for you. Yeah. I go to Cleveland.
John Tripolsky:On a plane.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It was yeah. It's always nice to me out to go on a plane. We got to go to Cleveland and over a thousand tax professionals. I had the honor of speaking at that conference. And then, again, in Michigan, I'm very involved with the association there and got to speak at that conference, which but it really it's it's seeing, you know, seeing other tax professionals collaborating.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:The continuing education is important, but for tax professionals watching or listening, and more importantly, taxpayers, the most valuable part of those conferences occur outside of the sessions, John, right? In you you've been with we've been together a lot working on finding new implementation partners, which we're gonna have some content coming from some new ones we met. So that's at the trade show. The little conversations, grabbing coffee, grabbing lunch, quite frankly, they could be at a slot machine. They could be at a karaoke lounge.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:We've had those conversations, right? And talking about the industry, talking about clients, and making sure as a CPA myself and part of our private CPA firm that we are leaving every person we talk to or interact with better than we found them. That doesn't necessarily mean they're going to be a client of ours or they want to be a client of ours or we're a good fit, but also understanding for them, and I communicate this as much as I can, what's going on in our industry. So so, yeah, I'm I'm excited to share some some takeaways from both both of those conferences. And, I know that the tax podium, which is the NATP, it's gonna be in Boston next year, and then the Michigan Association is moving to the West Side Of The States at Muskegon.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:It's gonna be near the water, and I know there's a theme park there. So, so, yeah, let's let's
John Tripolsky:Start networking on the water slides. Professionals, not the taxpayer. And right? I'm kind of wedged in the middle. Right?
John Tripolsky:Like, I'm not the tax pro. Obviously, we're filing tax. I have been my whole life. Taxpayer life. And one thing too, I don't know if you've ever actually thought about this, Chris, is, know, a lot of these, I know you did one presentation on a lot of it, it's practice management.
John Tripolsky:So those tax and, you know, accounting practices, you're giving tips and I wouldn't say how to's or any of the stuff that sounds kind of boring. You're talking to people really how to better their their operations. Right? So efficiency is always a big thing. And you hit on technology a lot.
John Tripolsky:A lot of the stuff that you guys have been doing for a while and continuing to to fine tune. But really, why that's super important to the taxpayer or the client customer in this case, right, is the more efficient that these tax professionals are, the better service that their clients, the taxpayer's getting. So again, I'm kind of in it again in the middle. I love seeing it when people aren't just looking at it like, how do I make more money for my business? You know, the the tax, the the practice or the firm owner.
John Tripolsky:They they really do want to help people. And I think one of the biggest things and tell me if I'm wrong is a lot of it is bandwidth issues where they can only do so much by, you know, you're helping them with the efficiencies and growing and scaling, I should say, so they can help more and more people. Right? And that's really cool to see for at least from my eyeballs. And I see your presentations.
John Tripolsky:They're pretty good.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Absolutely. The slides look good. Someone someone smart at them. And your
John Tripolsky:tax Well, if you if you did a crappy job, I'd tell you.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I consider you tax professional adjacent.
John Tripolsky:Yep. I forgot about that one. That very true.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, here's so here are my top I have three takeaways from these conferences. And, again, they really aren't the takeaways aren't for tax professionals. So they're for the tax community, including tax payers. Before I get into my three main takeaways, I want to just throw this out there. The IRS continues to be understaffed, underfunded, has a lot of leadership issues, and extremely challenging to work with.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So if you're a taxpayer or tax professional that is trying to resolve a notice, an amended return, it is not uncommon for you to feel like you're falling through the cracks, to feel like you're running in circles or banging your head against the wall. There is a secret bat line called the paid professional line where tax professionals, enrolled agents, as long as you are registered with IRS and you have what's called a PTEN, meaning a number that identifies you as a tax professional, you're supposed to be able to streamline your communications with IRS, assuming that you have a power of attorney on file for your client, and even those efforts are being failed right now. So no, that doesn't sound like the best news. However, it's important to understand because a lot of times you feel like you're in a bubble or in a box. You're trying to communicate with IRS.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:They are having big problems. So one of the things we have to think about when we work on tax returns is we've had other episodes on this, making sure we have all the right information, that it's accurate. To avoid a notice IRS tax audit or an IRS notice before it happens. So
John Tripolsky:And a tax broker can only use the information they're given. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Absolutely.
John Tripolsky:You guys cannot connect the dots that don't exist.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:How many times, you know, especially earlier in my career, if I was preparing a tax turnout, ask someone, well, what were your, you know, donations like last year? And they'd say, I don't know. You tell me. It's like, I don't know. Or they donated all this stuff to Salvation Army.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:What was this worth? You tell me. No. No. I I don't know.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:I mean, can you imagine you go into a bank for a mortgage and and you say, the, you know, the the loan officers, you say to the loan, hey. Tell me what my income is so I can get this loan. That's not how it works. Right? So we do need that information.
John Tripolsky:So I mean, honestly, Chris, as funny as it is, and, like, all joking aside, you saying some of that reminds me or I can visually see this, you know, somebody walking in or emailing with their tax pro thinking like, of course they know I got married and had, you know, triplets. I I put it on Facebook. Why don't they know it? It's not like you're looking at everybody's damn Facebook page for all their life events and recording them. Right?
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right. Right. It it's it's it's interesting.
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Chris Picciurro, CPA:Well, let's talk through the the my three main takeaways from, again, probably talk talking to hundreds of tax professionals. The first one is the traditional CPA firm succession model continues to disappear. We can even move that over to enrolled agency firms as well. So most CPA firms, and I'm talking from the CPA side, are still owned by mature aged operators that are going to continue to struggle to recruit, attract, and retain talent. And a lot of times, the operating CPA back in the day, twenty five years ago, there was this like, hey, I'm going sell my practice, and I had eight to 10 buyers willing to pay me a good multiple for it.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And that's not the case. Fewer young professionals are willing to buy a book of business, right, instead of just grow it on their own because what's happening is when you acquire a book of business, you're also acquiring their legacy processes, pricing, technology, and staff. Now the staff could be a positive, but it could be it could be a challenge. So that's something
John Tripolsky:that you say you're also inheriting their problems. Right.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You are.
John Tripolsky:Just saying.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:You are. And and, you know, we were part of a panel discussion on top of this presentation at Taxposium that was extremely popular. See, I was luckily able to to ask two nationally recognized professionals to join me on a panel discussion, and it was amazing. And I mean, it could have went on for hours, that whole should I build or should I buy a practice. And what I'm telling you is if you're working with a tax professional or if you are a tax rational that is mature age, that you have no succession plan, that is not a good option.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Start thinking about that. And if you're a taxpayer, at least start thinking about what's going to happen if Joe or Joanne or Billy or Bobby retire or, no offense, but die at their desk. I know that sounds morbid, but it happens quite a bit in our industry. It's just one of those things. So succession planning is definitely an issue because we have a lot of people retiring and not enough people coming in.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Kind of in that vein, number two, that young professionals are more apt to build their practice than buy, and that is a big decision, like I mentioned before. The main reason is that the younger professionals realize that, and we talk about this all the time, that they can engineer a practice exactly how they want it to run. So as the tax, as a taxpayer, you might be attracted to a younger professional, one, because you feel like you can have a longer term relationship with them. Two, that you might feel that they're more apt to utilize technology, which includes data security. And you might just be someone that doesn't necessarily want to go into a physical office, put on real clothes, shake hands, sit in a waiting room, maybe drink a coffee and have a little piece of candy, but maybe you do.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But there's plenty of people that don't want that experience, and those tax professionals are successful at partnering with those clients. We have a term in our industry that I like to use called evolver erode. So a lot of times a younger professional, someone that's it's easier for them to evolve, and a lot of the more mature age professionals, quite frankly, are not evolving. They're sticking with their processes, and if you're not evolving, you're eroding. I mean, can you imagine if John, you know, you're a car guy.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Right? So can you imagine what whatever the best pickup truck was in 2010, if they said we're best in class, maybe it was probably a Ram. I don't know. Maybe you'll get all upset about that.
John Tripolsky:Yeah. You know, I I was kind of unloyal in my early twenties with brands, but I don't know.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Let's say if Dodge Ram was was the class of every pickup in 2010, If they just said we're happy, we don't have to make changes, just keep doing what we're doing. Five years later, they'd be left behind. And, unfortunately, in our industry, that's happening. So my second one is younger professionals increasingly are choosing to build their practice instead of acquire practice. And then the third topic, which we've been heavily involved in these discussions, is that AI remains one of the biggest issues facing our profession, just like every other profession.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:And this is my opinion, right? But I believe AI continues to dominate conversations with CPAs, enrolled agents, and tax professionals. And I've been saying for years that firms that adapt and bring AI responsibly into their practice are going to replace practitioners and firms that don't embrace AI. I don't think AI itself is going to replace tax professionals. It's just firms that embrace, like I said, in a responsible and intentional way, AI, will wipe out the ones that don't.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:So think about war. I know this sounds morbid again, but in, you know, in the civil war, which is a terrible war, they didn't have the technology, the drones, the airplanes, the stealth bombers that we have now. So you've got to so if an army or isn't embracing the new technology responsibly, it's going to get left behind.
John Tripolsky:Absolutely. Absolutely. And it makes sense, right? It's it's and I I imagine whether people really stop and think about that, they see this, You know, even if it's somebody that, you know, you're no longer mailing in everything. If I remember, right, I mean, here's one example, right, of the IRS doing it with tech, you know, tech as a whole.
John Tripolsky:You can no longer mail in checks. Right? It didn't happen last September or somewhere along those lines.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Yeah. So everything's advancing. Trying to go paperless and and yeah. To mean, to put a bow on this as we talk about conference season, there's so many conferences, and you could go all summer and go to conferences. I'm I'm just especially with three teenagers in the house, and I've tried to be extremely intentional about the the the conferences I attend.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:But I think that if you're a taxpayer listening to this, it'd be a good question to ask your tax professional what they're doing with their continuing ed opportunities. Right? Because, yes, it's good to get that technical knowledge, but as you've been on a ton of the speeches and presentations, I'm always gonna say, we're gonna learn if we're in a group. We're gonna learn from more from each other than we are from the from the the books or one instructor.
John Tripolsky:100%. And it's been good to see these these events too. It's, you know, seeing a lot of the same people, I think, over year. You know, some of them two, three years now, and they're making changes, you know, within their tax practice too. And it's, I mean, sure, like any other conference, sometimes people get together and all they do is kinda, you know, complain about certain things or or certain clients.
John Tripolsky:Everybody is the same, right, regardless of the industry. But it is cool to see how a lot of things are being adapted, and then people are really changing and back to what I was saying at the beginning, right, it's the more the more clients and people that a lot of these firm owners and practitioners can serve, and it's very optimized and efficient, the better it is for everybody. Right? Because as you mentioned, it's not like this industry is being flooded with, you know, a 100,000 new, quote unquote, applicants, or people getting into the industry, you know, it's, it's slowly declining in some regard. And it's good to see that people are coming into it, and they're injecting, you know, frankly, life.
Chris Picciurro, CPA:Absolutely. We've been I I've really enjoyed some of the newer entrants to the industry and try to seek them out and talk to them as much as I can and continue the conversation throughout the year.
John Tripolsky:Excellent. Well, I appreciate this conversation, man. It was this was a good fun one. So alrighty. Well, anybody that's listening to this or watching this, couple things for you now.
John Tripolsky:And I'll and I'll give you these in this specific order too. For one, look in the show notes. You got some links in there for some resources. Check out that stuff. Defeatingtaxes.com will send you a couple different routes, including direct you to our private Facebook group.
John Tripolsky:But even more importantly than that, on YouTube, whether you're here already or not, be sure to subscribe and then see the little bell there. Follow everything that we're doing here and get the notifications because really now moving forward, as we've always promised, right, we're getting a little bit more honed in on some topics, but we're also going a little bit more broad with some. So even if this one, you don't feel like applied to you a 110, I guarantee that it did. Kinda like your your mama always told you better better listen to me now kinda thing. It's happening whether you like it or not, and I promise it's for the better.
John Tripolsky:So Chris, you had some really good points there. What was kind of seen here, you know, hot in the streets of something that just now your average taxpayer can walk in the door and go to one of these sessions. You got a little insight, but also if anybody has any questions on this stuff, drop it in the comments there on YouTube, answer every single one of those so it will not go unanswered and we're happy to reply to it. So check it out everybody. Until next time, you have a great week.
John Tripolsky:We'll see you back here again next week on the Teaching Tax Flow Podcast.
Disclosure:The information in this podcast is educational and general in nature. It reflects the opinions of teaching tax flow and does not take into consideration the viewer's personal circumstances. It is not intended to be a substitute for individualized financial, legal, or tax advice. Consult the appropriate qualified professional prior to making any decisions. Securities are offered and supervised through Cabin Securities Inc member, FINRA SIPC.
Disclosure:Investment advisory services are offered and supervised through Cabin Advisors LLC, an SEC registered investment advisor. Chris Picciurro is a registered representative of Cabin Securities and an investment advisor representative with Cabin Advisors LLC, teaching Tax Flow as an independent entity and is not affiliated with Cabin Securities or Cabin Advisors.