California just sent a bill to the governor that would put some pretty clear guardrails around lawyers using generative AI. Among other things, attorneys would have to disclose AI use in documents submitted to a court, verify the accuracy of AI-generated material, and they couldn’t delegate the practice of law to AI.

I think tax is going to need a similar line.

Not for every use of AI. Using AI to summarize notes, clean up a spreadsheet or draft an email is very different from using it to determine whether a taxpayer qualifies for a credit, research a tax position, generate technical substantiation, allocate expenses or produce calculations that ultimately land on a return.

The IRS already requires a paid preparer to sign the return and use a PTIN. The preparer is taking responsibility for the substantive accuracy of that return. But right now, neither the IRS nor the taxpayer necessarily knows whether a significant tax position was developed through actual professional analysis or largely generated by an AI system and then signed off on by a human.

We think there should be disclosure when AI crosses that line.

Something as simple as: Was generative AI materially used to determine, calculate or substantiate a position reported on this return?

A “yes” wouldn’t mean the position is bad. AI can absolutely be useful. But it would establish that AI was materially involved and make clear that the signing professional is still responsible for independently reviewing the work.

The third-party study issue makes this even more interesting. If a CPA receives an AI-generated R&D study from an outside provider and relies on it for the return, should the provider be required to disclose how the study was produced? We think yes. And we don’t think that disclosure changes the signing preparer’s responsibility to actually evaluate it.

Law seems to be moving toward AI is fine; undisclosed delegation of professional judgment isn’t.
Tax probably should too.

Would you support an AI disclosure limited to substantive tax work, or do you think the preparer’s signature and PTIN already cover this?

Hi everyone, looking for a bit of a sanity check on salary negotiations.

I’m an ACCA-qualified accountant with FP&A and management accounting experience, based in London. After a couple of months of being unemployed and finding the job market pretty gruelling, I’ve finally landed a solid offer!

The offer is for £55k. However, I was really aiming for the £60k mark, which aligns with other final-stage interviews I’ve had recently and my general market expectations.

My question is: Is it too risky to negotiate in my current position?

Normally I would push back for the £60k, but given my employment gap and how mentally exhausting the search has been, I'm terrified of overplaying my hand and having the offer pulled. I just want to get back to work, but I also don't want to leave money on the table if negotiating is simply expected.

For hiring managers or recruiters out there:

• Is asking for £60k when offered £55k likely to get an offer rescinded in this market?
• How would you phrase the counter-offer so it sounds appreciative but firm on my market value?
• Am I being greedy/unrealistic to push for more when I don't currently have a role to fall back on?

Would appreciate any blunt advice on how to play this.

Thanks!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Accounting/comments/1uuqlmo/im_a_cpa_making_20_an_hour_at_the_irs/

I had a meltdown at work and got fired. Now any job interview I have is going to be over as soon as they ask why I left my last job. I might as well kill myself.

Hi everyone,

I immigrated to Canada as a permanent resident about a year ago as a skilled worker. I have 8 years of accounting experience and a bachelor’s degree in Accounting, Control and Audit.

I’m currently going through the CPA Ontario process. After my credential assessment, I was told I need to complete 11 prerequisite courses before I can enter CPA PEP.

About 5 months ago, I found a job as an Accounts Receivable Clerk / Administrative Assistant. I’m currently making $21/hour, and I’m wondering if I’m being underpaid because I don’t have Canadian experience, or if I’m simply being taken advantage of.

My job involves AR, but I also handle quite a few administrative and miscellaneous tasks. We’re a real estate company with 500+ tenants, so I’m constantly dealing with phone calls, emails, tenant issues, etc. I’m also responsible for things like monitoring the cameras when someone takes a parking spot, which obviously isn’t really related to accounting.

The frustrating part is that it’s a private family-owned company. The owner’s sons also work here, and I sometimes have to chase them repeatedly just to get invoices or responses to emails. Yet if something goes wrong with an AR-related matter, I can still end up being blamed for it.

I’ve made a few mistakes here and there, but I honestly think part of the issue is that I’m constantly being interrupted by phone calls and pulled into tasks that aren’t really part of my role.

It’s not an abusive or terrible workplace, but I genuinely don’t enjoy working here. I feel like I’m doing a lot for $21/hour, especially considering my previous experience.

So I’d really appreciate some perspective from people working in accounting in Ontario:

Am I being underpaid? Is $21/hour reasonable for someone in my situation, or should I already be looking for something better?

And if you were in my position, would you stay for the “Canadian experience” and CPA prerequisites, or start applying elsewhere now?

Thanks!

and ill die unemployed or atmost poor

I’ve been thinking about how frustrating the intersection between work, life, and studying for the CPA can be.

I have a young kid, and when I was working full-time, trying to work, be a parent, handle regular life responsibilities, and seriously study for the CPA felt damn near impossible. People always say “just study before work” or “study after work,” but there are only so many hours in a day. At some point you’re sacrificing sleep, family time, job performance, or all three.

Eventually I made the decision to leave my job and study full-time. I had already been working in public accounting and felt like getting the CPA was the better long-term investment, especially after dealing with stagnant pay and not getting the promotion I felt I had already been operating at the level of.

And it worked. I passed all four sections and got my CPA.
But now there’s this weird post-CPA consequence where the employment gap I created specifically to get the credential employers supposedly value is something I have to explain.

That’s the part that gets me.

If I had stayed employed and taken another 2-3 years to pass, my resume would have had perfect continuity. Instead, I stepped away, accomplished the goal, became a CPA, and now it sometimes feels like employers look at the year-plus gap before they look at what I actually accomplished during it.

Then there’s the job market itself. From what I’m seeing, there just aren’t that many true entry-level accounting opportunities available right now. But even if there were, I’m not really an entry-level candidate anymore. I already have several years of public accounting experience, including responsibilities that were already trending toward the senior level.

So naturally, I’m targeting Senior Associate-type roles. And even if I were willing to step back into an entry-level position, the compensation I’m seeing from many smaller firms simply doesn’t make sense for someone with my experience and a CPA. Meanwhile, a lot of the larger firms don’t seem to be hiring much at the entry level in the first place.

But then some firms seem hesitant because I haven’t been working for the last year.

So what exactly are people supposed to do?

Work 50+ hours, raise a kid, study hundreds of hours for the CPA, maintain your relationship and household, and get enough sleep—all with limited time, energy, childcare, and financial resources—and somehow none of it is supposed to take a hit? I genuinely envy people with strong support systems, because raising a child without one is no joke. It’s not surprising that so many people are delaying or avoiding having children when work increasingly comes first.

Obviously people do study with these limitations, and I have a lot of respect for anyone who does. But I think we sometimes talk about CPA studying like everyone has the same amount of disposable time outside of work.

Studying while single with no kids is not the same equation as studying while raising a family.

Long term, I still think leaving and getting the CPA was the right decision. Five or ten years from now, that year probably won’t mean much, while I’ll still have the license.

But short term, the transition back into the workforce has been way more frustrating than I expected.

It almost feels like the system says:
“Get your CPA. It will help your career.”

Then when you actually prioritize getting it:
“Wait, why weren’t you working?”

Anyone else go through something similar after taking time off specifically to finish the CPA?

Maybe I’m reading this wrong

As a slow learner i can’t understand what our prof discussing, anyone here can help me?

I have a second interview for an IA SOX Consulting position. Just wondering how the culture and management are at Crowe. Any insight is much appreciated!!!

We review a few thousand expense claims a month and spot checks stopped being enough a while back. The stuff that actually catches problems now is boring: duplicate receipt detection, matching receipt totals against card feeds, and flagging anything submitted right at month end when people are rushing. None of it is exciting, but it catches far more than random sampling ever did. Curious what's worked for others, especially teams without a huge finance headcount.

I’m a junior accounting major and I’m gonna be completely honest: I feel like I barely know shit about accounting.

I’m taking five classes right now, and in probably four of them I really don’t know what’s going on. For a lot of assignments, I’ve depended heavily on AI. Sometimes I basically just use it to get the work done and don’t even bother checking enough to actually understand what I submitted.

Last year we did Excel worksheets and projects. I used AI for a lot of that too instead of actually learning the formulas. If somebody put me in front of Excel today and told me to make a spreadsheet or use basic formulas without help, I probably wouldn’t know what the hell I was doing.

That’s the part that bothers me. At this point I sometimes feel like there isn’t much difference between me and some random person who has never taken accounting, except that I have credits toward an accounting degree.

I’m not gonna sugarcoat it and call it “using resources.” I’ve cheated and depended way too heavily on AI.

At the same time, I think I’m actually a pretty fast learner when somebody points me directly toward what I need to learn. I’m probably also just lazy when it comes to sitting down and putting the work in.
One thing that throws me off badly is the language of accounting. School makes accounting feel insanely complicated to me. There are all these worksheets, terminology, problems, calculations, and steps, and after a while my brain basically checks out.

But here’s the weird part.

Sometimes I’ll randomly watch YouTube videos of people explaining what accountants actually do at work. I’ve watched people demonstrate bookkeeping, entering transactions, doing reconciliations, working through Excel, things like that.

And when somebody actually shows me the job step-by-step, I’m sitting there thinking, “Okay… I could probably do this.”It doesn’t look nearly as scary as accounting school makes it look.
I know watching some bookkeeping videos obviously doesn’t mean I understand professional accounting. I’m just saying that seeing the actual work makes more sense to me than doing endless textbook worksheets.

And honestly, if I had actually put the amount of effort into learning that school expects from me over the last couple of years instead of looking for shortcuts, I’d probably know a shit ton more accounting by now.

Another thing going through my head is AI.
The world is changing ridiculously fast. By the time I graduate around December 2027, AI will probably be way better than it is today. Part of me looks at all these worksheets and thinks, “How much of this shit am I actually going to manually do at a real job?”My assumption has basically been that if I get an accounting job, I’ll continue depending heavily on AI to help me do the work.

Obviously there’s a huge IF there, because I might walk into an interview, get asked basic accounting or Excel questions, and get exposed immediately.
Or maybe I somehow get hired, they give me something basic to do, and I realize I have no clue what I’m doing.

That’s one of my actual fears graduating with this degree, realizing I don’t understand the profession, quitting, and ending up working some random retail job while wondering why the hell I spent years getting an accounting degree.

I’m not really asking for sympathy and I’m not asking for a motivational speech about believing in myself.
What I genuinely want to know from people who actually work in accounting is:

How different is accounting school from the actual day-to-day job?

If someone basically does what I’ve been doing passes classes, relies heavily on AI, understands very little, and hopes they can learn once they get hired how fucked are they?

How much accounting knowledge and Excel are you realistically expected to have walking into an entry-level position?

Do companies actually teach you how to do the job, or are they expecting you to already know most of this?

And with AI becoming more capable, is my idea of heavily relying on AI at work realistic, or am I seriously misunderstanding how accounting jobs work?

Be completely honest. I’d rather hear “you’re cooked unless you change something” than have people make me feel better

While working on a business return, I realized my client will have $500k on their K1 and part of it is my fault because I didn’t expect them to make a lot last year and procrastination on my part.

I’m worried my manager would get mad at me, is there any way to fix the damage before the September 15th deadline?

I've worked for Venture Backed accounting practices and ran my own "bootstrapped" real accounting practice no backing.

I remember going to the CEO of the first VC backed practice I worked at and told him that we had to stop onboarding new customers. A look of terror came across his face. The board expected growth numbers and there was no way we were going to stop taking on new clients. So, hire more, stretch more, try to automate more.

When I started my own practice, there was a lot of luxury in only taking on work that we wanted, but in the early days, that meant more credit card debt, and the only real saving grace was my business partners savviness with saving money to help us get through.

There are lots of real trade offs, and I generally don't have as much respect for the "outsider" CEO building an accounting practice, but I also see lots of technical accountants being the biggest bottleneck to their growth as they are scaling without deep pockets.

With the investment in Eide Bailly and the acquisition of CBIZ, this is becoming harder to ignore.

Do you think PE is inherently bad? Or is there good that can come from this?

Now that I work for a fully remote firm I feel like I actually enjoy my job. My experience has been that in every office job I've had there was just zero reason for me to even be in office. For every single accounting position I've held, 100% of my responsibilities could be done from home and the idea of having to commute to a sterile office to do them just annoyed me.

Even when I was in office practically all of the meetings we held were over Zoom sitting at our own computers so there was literally 0 point.

Training? I've heard people say training is easier in office. My experience is that all my trainings were over Zoom anyway.

When I worked in audit all of my engagements were with teams from other offices, so I would go in every day just to be in Zoom calls all day with people I never met.

Why does it seem like the talent coming out of Big 4 tax over the last decade has been declining in quality? Would love to hear from the younger accountants. Isn’t because of offshoring? Is it because there is enough tech that people aren’t in the weeds as much? Or have I just been unlucky in hiring processes?

I’m a CPA and remember enough to feel confident but since I only do one return/year I’m afraid of forgetting something, so I always enter my info into turbo tax which tells you the estimated federal and state refund, which I use as a check figure against my return with the expectation that even if I miss some detail the amount should be correct.

It’s arguable if my time is worth the fee I’m saving but I’ve done this for over a decade, curious if anyone else does as well.

I’m 33, immigrated to Canada about 9 years ago, and currently work as a Senior Accountant in real estate in downtown Toronto making around $97K. I’ve finished the CFE and have some EVR experience.

I’m at a weird point in my career where I feel like my current path may have a ceiling because I don’t have public accounting or Big 4 experience.

I’m wondering whether I should go back into public accounting, possibly tax, or pivot out of traditional accounting into ERP implementations or analytics. I’ve had some exposure to both through small projects and found them interesting.

I may also be thinking about the problem completely wrong. If you were in my position, would you stay in accounting and specialize, go back to public accounting, or use the accounting background to pivot into something more systems/data-oriented?

Would especially appreciate advice from people who have made similar transitions in Toronto/Canada.

I’m in dire need of a CPA that knows the ins and outs of first year trucking company taxes.

I run some out of state LLCs but they are all disregarded entities. So it’s just an individual return. I’m in the US.

I used an accountant for years but he retired.

I tried hiring a different accountant but they all ignored me. Maybe it’s because I’m close to the October 15 deadline.

So with October 15 approaching is it fine to just use turbo tax? Or is it complicated even if they are disregarded entities:

While I see a lot of complaints about being an accountant on here and I understand most of them. I’m going to do an accounting program at my school to be able to sit for the CPA, my question is aside from all the complaints I see, is the pay at least worth it for most of you? Or eventually you’ll get to a point or a position where the pay is good?

I (22M) am a brand new CPA and was recently hired at a startup after being let go from my tax associate job at a top 10 firm. The owner wants to build a combined services firm (tax, bookkeeping, asset management) using the money he is getting from the sale of his partnership interest at an asset management/wealth advisory firm that he was an original partner at.

Right now he is focused on getting scaling a tax book of business and has already purchased two firms and is in current talks for 3 more for in 2027. Right now there are 3 other CPAs working here: the former owners of the purchased firms and 1 investing partner. The former owners are on contract full time through the end of 2027, after which their books are going to become mine.

With the help of the other CPAs, I've been tasked with making recommendations for a brand new tax tech stack and processes. They are helping, but ultimately I am responsible for advising the owner on what we should be doing. He has the capital and plans to purchase the books of additional retiring CPAs in the next 3 years. He wants it to be infinitely scalable, and has a cost no object attitude as long as it can be justified.

Are there any major software I should consider outside of these core needs:

Tax Software (CCH Axcess is in the lead currently)

Document intake, signatures, and delivery

Storage

Tax research

Firm/Workflow management

OCR/data entry

Also, any advice for managing my own book? I know we will start hiring for tax year 2027 for any additional books of business, but the current clients are planned to become my responsibility. In total, I will have 500 clients and 800 returns. The split is approximately 75% 1040, 15% 1065/1120S, and 10% trusts/estates. Nothing too difficult, especially compared to the consolidated corporation returns I was doing previously.

Lastly, when should I ask for equity? My initial thought was I could start the conversation after the software/process implementation that we are doing from October-January, if that goes well. Otherwise, should I wait until we start integrating other firms or I officially get my book? If it's relevant, I'm in the Atlanta metro and current comp is about 95k.