It’s no secret that more and more CPAs are offering financial services to their clients. 

In fact, financial planning questions now have a greater emphasis on the CPA exam than ever before. I find that encouraging. But if you think true financial planning is all about investments and annual returns, think again. 

Financial advisors are no longer hanging their hats on portfolio performance. They’re moving toward the holistic approach to wealth management, an approach that goes beyond financial services to account for any factor that touches a client’s financial life. The holistic approach recognizes that financial health is closely intertwined with physical, emotional, mental and social wellbeing. I’m guessing this wasn’t covered in your accounting school curriculum.

To move into this area successfully, you’ll have to do more than crunch the numbers and plug in investments. Clients and strategic partners will evaluate you based on how well you can really listen to clients and empathize with them. Those attributes are now more important than your advanced math skills, technical skills, and knowledge of the Tax Code.As Clayton Oates, founder of QA Business, wrote in the foreword of my new book Holistic Guide to Wealth Management (CPA Trendlines), “Empathy is an area we have only just begun to explore in our profession. It’s about the art of asking questions and listening. It’s about discovering new circumstances in your client’s business and personal life that were previously not discussed. Shared discovery helps create a genuine and lasting connection with your clients.”

In the introduction, Seth Fineberg, founder of Accountants Forward, explained that as a CPA, you are your clients’ most trusted guide. “You are the one who has been helping them in their financial lives the longest,” he wrote. “And even if your client tells you they already have a financial planner, it’s worth reaching out to that planner and potentially collaborating with them as part of your service to ensure that your client is getting the best possible advice. That’s because every single year, you know what they owe in taxes and why.” 

According to Fineberg, accountants know intimately where their clients’ spending goes and may already offer basic ways for them to save on taxes. In short, “the trust is there. The data is there. Why aren’t you helping them more?” he askedI began to ask myself the same thing as I started making deeper inroads into the accounting profession. Thanks to advances in technology and increasing affordability of a virtual family office model, you can provide your clients with access to a wide range of services. Experts can be brought in as needed to provide specialized knowledge about accounting, tax, estate planning, insurance, legal, philanthropic planning, investment and administrative matters. Best of all, the experts don’t have to be in-house on your full-time payroll. Again, as the client’s CPA and most trusted advisor, you direct the relationship and remain the central point of contact. 

Estate planning to cement client relationships

When it comes to providing the family office level of care, estate planning comes top of mind. On a recent podcast I hosted, Andreas Mazabel, head of advisor sales at Trust & Will said firms that are proactively adopting estate planning are finding it a powerful way to deepen relationships and better connect with their clients’ values and the extended family’s values. He believes advisors who are not incorporating estate planning into their practice are losing clients to firms that do.

“One thing we continue to see is that clients looking for advisors want complete holistic planning,” said Mazabel. “They tell us: ‘I don’t want to go to three or four different offices to get all of my stuff done. I want to go to one trusted source who really understands my goals and my gaps and can help me build a complete plan around that.” 

Mazabel said that for many years as an advisor, his focus was on building up a client’s assets. There wasn’t much emphasis on protecting those assets or transferring them tax-efficiently to NextGen or the causes they believed in, he noted. Like Mazabel, I’ve long believed you can connect generations with estate planning. It’s a great retention tool as well as a great prospecting tool. And thanks to online estate planning tools like Trust & Will, technology streamlines the process for clients. In the past, advisors would refer clients to an estate attorney and hope they’d show up. Once there, clients would have to endure uncomfortable conversations about health care directives, powers of attorney, and death. Now they can do it from the comfort of home and have an advisor walking them through the process. By making it easier for the advisor to be involved directly in the estate planning process, Mazabel says it’s much easier to hold clients accountable for following through. 

Trust & Will’s research has found that when a person comes to set up an estate plan on the platform without a financial advisor, there’s about a 25% chance they’ll go through the process and complete it. But when they come through a financial advisor, the completion rate goes up to 75%. That’s one of the many advantages of having a trusted advisor. 

When you consider that 55% of Americans don’t have any estate documents and only 31% have a basic will, according to Trust & Will’s 2025 Estate Planning Report, I can’t think of a better argument for the power of accountability.

Speaking of statistics, my good friend Michael DiJoseph, a senior strategist at Vanguard Investment Advisor Research Center, has long studied and quantified the value that a skilled advisor brings to clients vs. clients who don’t use financial advisors. Vanguard celebrated the 25th anniversary of its Advisor Alpha Study, which has consistently shown that skilled advisors add a full 3% (300 basis points) annually to a client’s portfolio. How? By holding them accountable to their plan and helping them avoid rash, wealth-eroding decisions during times of market volatility or personal stress. Over those 300 basis points, Vanguard believes 200 of that “alpha” comes from behavioral coaching, which could include trust-building activities such as estate planning. 

According to DiJoseph, the higher the level of trust a client has in their advisor, the more likely they are to make a referral. DiJoseph’s team has taken it a step further and looked into the three main components of trust. Emotional trust was by far the most important component:

• 17% of respondents rated “functional trust” (building portfolios, doing financial planning, etc. as the single most important type of trust. 
• 30% of respondents rated “ethical trust” (advisors’ interests are aligned with theirs vs. trying to sell them something) as the single most important type of trust.
• 53% of respondents rated “emotional trust” (softer skills: actively listening; asking good questions; treating clients like people, not portfolios) as the single most important type of trust.

From my standpoint, these stats are very welcoming for a profession that hangs its hat on trust. As I discuss throughout my book, working toward that ROR (Return on Relationship) is about developing emotional trust with clients and having a greater connection with them. That’s how you can introduce estate planning into your holistic type of offering to clients. Even better, it can increase revenue and provide clients with much appreciated peace of mind.

For forward-thinking CPAs, estate planning isn’t just an add-on service; it’s a cornerstone of relationship-centered wealth management that clients increasingly expect from their most trusted advisor. Build your ROR today!

The Internal Revenue Service reportedly intends to reinstate thousands of probationary employees who were fired after two courts ordered it to do so.

IRS acting commissioner Melanie Krause announced in a conference call Wednesday that approximately 7,0000 fired employees would be able to return to work by April 14, a day before the end of tax season, according to the Federal News Network. The IRS also sent out an email to the employees, who the Trump administration began firing in February.

“You are receiving this email as one of approximately 7,000 probationary employees who were separated from service and have been reinstated in compliance with recent court orders,” said the email. “At this time, while you remain on administrative leave, you will soon receive instructions for how to return on full-time duty by April 14.”

The employees will be able to get back their identity badges, computer equipment and workspace assignments and will be allowed to temporarily take advantage of telework if office space isn’t available for them. However, employees are also being given the option to not return to work at all.

“If you wish to not return and voluntarily resign from federal service, you should send an email to [email protected] as soon as possible,” said the email. Please know that outside employment does not necessarily prevent you from returning to work. If you have secured outside employment and wish to continue with the outside employment while re-employed with the IRS, you must submit an outside employment request to your manager.”

The IRS had placed many of the fired employees on paid administrative leave in order to comply with a federal judge’s order in California requiring employees at the Treasury Department and five other government agencies to be reinstated. However, the judge later ruled that putting the fired employees on paid administrative leave wasn’t enough to comply with his preliminary injunction. Another judge in Maryland on Tuesday ordered 18 federal agencies to reinstate workers in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The National Treasury Employees Union and other unions have filed lawsuits against the Trump administration over the firings and an executive order eliminating collective bargaining rights.

Some IRS employees have reportedly been using the time on paid administrative leave to search for other jobs, which could help fill the ranks of accounting firms and other businesses searching for talent.

Joseph Perry, national tax leader and managing director at the accounting and professional services firm CBIZ, has been seeing more resumes coming in from IRS employees.

“We actually have an uptick in resumes,” he recently told Accounting Today. “In fact, I was connected by a business leader to somebody that is still working for the IRS, but is not going to be there too much longer, and he’s exploring other options. So there is going to be, I think, an uptick in many companies. The IRS has really good, talented people that are going to come back into industry, that are going to be very useful to firms like our firm, CBIZ, to bolster our ability to service our clients in an effective way and be able to do that. It’s pretty interesting, right? We’re one of the top 10 firms. As it relates to firms that may be in the top 25, I would tend to think it’s a unique opportunity for them to pick up somebody that they otherwise wouldn’t have been able to pick up, somebody with talent and experience, and that probably would lead to them providing services that they otherwise wouldn’t have.”

Staffing companies have seen some interest, but the uncertain state of the various federal court cases may have been keeping people on the sidelines. “It’s still a bit early to tell if there’s been a significant increase in interest from former federal employees in the private sector accounting and tax space,” said Brandi Britton, executive director of finance and accounting practice at the staffing company Robert Half. “While we do see candidates with federal experience, it’s difficult to immediately distinguish between those transitioning directly from federal roles and those who have federal experience as part of their broader career background. What we do know is that finance and accounting leaders are facing ongoing skills gaps and are actively seeking candidates to fill in-demand roles. A few notable skills gaps include finance and FP&A, financial reporting and tax expertise.” 

The requirements for the Clean Vehicle Credit seemed a little complicated when they were introduced in the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022, and they are proving to be a little difficult in practice. 

There were restrictions based on where the vehicle was assembled and where the critical minerals and battery components originated. Then there were limits on the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for the vehicle and the income of the purchaser. The manufacturer was required to have vehicles pre-approved for a given level of credit and the dealer was required to be registered.

Some provisions were phased in over time, including the option to transfer the credit to the dealer, which became effective for 2024. The Internal Revenue Service then added certain compliance requirements, including filing a time of sale report (the Clean Vehicle Seller Report (Form 15400)) within 72 hours of the vehicle being placed in service and submitting information through an Energy Credits Online portal.

Some of these provisions were designed to simplify the process. When a potential purchaser entered the showroom, the purchaser would be able to find out in real time what amount of credit was associated with a particular vehicle. A time-of-sale report could be filed with the IRS electronically via the portal to determine even before the sale was finalized if the vehicle qualified for the credit. 

Unfortunately, things have not worked out quite so well in practice. 

The more simplified requirements in place for purchases in 2023 appear to have lulled dealers into the belief that the same practices would be fine for 2024. Some dealers, far from using the time-of-sale reports to make sure the credit was cleared for approval at the time of sale, failed even to prepare the reports. Purchasers, unaware of the new requirement, failed to demand a copy at the time of sale. In those instances where the purchaser retained entitlement to the credit, rather than transferring it to the dealer, the purchaser found that, when they filed their 2024 tax return in 2025, the IRS rejected the claim for the credit. When the purchaser contacted the dealer about the problem, the dealer found they were unable to correct the issue because the time-of-sale report had not been filed within the required 72-hour period and any late submission was rejected as untimely. 

Only 7% of purchasers in 2024 retained their entitlement to the credit. The rest of the purchasers transferred entitlement to the credit to the dealer, resulting in a price rebate on the vehicle purchase. However, again, when the dealer sought to claim the credit transferred from the purchaser, the dealer encountered the same problem of an untimely time-of-sale report, which could not be corrected because the 72-hour time period had expired.

This glitch in the system impacted dealers even more than purchasers and got the attention of the National Automobile Dealers Association, which immediately started pressuring the IRS and Congress to find a solution to the problem. In response, the IRS has informed NADA that it is waiving the 72-hour requirement and is accepting late time-of-sale reports into the Energy Credits Online portal. The IRS has set no time limits so far on the submission of late reports.

Corrective action

Dealers will want to refile all rejected time-of-sale reports that had been rejected as untimely. Dealers will also want to make sure they are registered with the IRS and notify any purchasers that the credit has now been approved. 

Purchasers will want to contact the dealer for a copy of the time-of-sale report and make sure the dealer is resubmitting the report or submitting it for the first time. Purchasers will need to file a Form 8936, “Clean Vehicle Credits,” to be used for the Clean Vehicle Credit, the Previously Owned Clean Vehicle Credit and the Qualified Commercial Clean Vehicle Credit. Form 8936 is required to be filed either when the purchaser is claiming the credit on the purchaser’s tax return or when the purchaser has transferred the credit to the dealer. 

In some cases, where the purchaser had already filed a tax return where the credit was rejected by the IRS, the purchaser will be required to file an amended tax return to claim the credit once the time-of-sale report has been accepted.

Termination of the Clean Vehicle Credit

While under current law, the Clean Vehicle Credit is scheduled to continue until 2032, Congress is working on tax legislation expected to be enacted this year that might repeal the credit. President Trump has expressed his opposition to many of the clean energy credits included in the Inflation Reduction Act enacted in 2022, and in particular opposition to the Clean Vehicle Credit. 

Congress is still in the early stages of working on this legislation, and it is not clear to what extent this provision might be included in the final legislation. If enacted at all, it is likely that the legislation would not be enacted until later in 2025. This makes it unlikely that any repeal of the Clean Vehicle Credit would be made retroactive to the beginning of 2025. However, it is possible repeal could be effective as of the enactment date of the legislation. 

Taxpayers considering the purchase of an electric vehicle in 2025 may want to monitor the progress of this tax legislation through Congress and whether a repeal of the clean vehicle credit appears to be included. Purchase of the vehicle before enactment of the legislation may preserve the credit for the taxpayer. 

Tariffs

The limit on the manufacturer’s suggested retail price for electric vehicles could become more difficult for manufacturers and dealers to stay under if the tariffs on imported automobiles and auto parts force manufacturers to raise prices. The MSRP limit for vans, SUVs and pick-ups is $80,000 and for other vehicles $55,000. If the electric vehicle currently under consideration for purchase is close to these price limits, a taxpayer might want to consider purchasing the vehicle sooner, before these tariffs achieve their full impact.