Connect with us

Accounting

Biden moves to curb cooking oil imports with green fuel rule for tax credit

Published

on

The U.S. is moving to curb imports of used cooking oil, preventing foreign supplies used to make biofuels from qualifying for a lucrative tax credit.

In long-awaited guidance, the U.S. Treasury signaled that fuels made with foreign-sourced supplies won’t be allowed under the so-called GREET model, a Department of Energy tool used to determine the full sweep of greenhouse gases emitted from the transportation and energy industries. 

The move comes after a flood of supplies from China reached U.S. shores at cheaper prices than soybean oil produced locally. The decision is a win for American farmers, who have been counting on a boom in soy-heavy biofuels like renewable diesel to sell their crops.

Soybean oil futures for March jumped by the exchange limit in Chicago on Friday, surging 7%, the most since June 2023. 

Shares of Bunge Global SA, the world’s biggest oilseed processor, gained 5%. The joint owners of Diamond Green Diesel, North America’s biggest renewable-diesel maker, jumped, with Darling Ingredients Inc. surging as much as 10% and Valero Energy Corp. climbing as much as 4%. 

“This tax credit is essential to U.S. competitiveness and to reduce emissions in the transportation sector with more affordable, cleaner fuel,” U.S. Deputy Energy Secretary David Turk said in a statement. “The final guidance released today provides clarity and certainty to America’s world-leading biofuel industry.” 

The tax incentive that took effect on Jan. 1 is part of President Joe Biden’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act. While the guidance gives Donald Trump — a supporter of fossil fuels —something to work from, it’s unclear how far he will take his pledge to roll back the IRA.

U.S. biofuels and corn groups criticized the overall guidance as lacking details on what qualifies for tax credits. 

Geoff Cooper, chief executive officer of ethanol trade group Renewable Fuels Association, said it fell short of expectations and doesn’t give producers of corn-based U.S. ethanol the certainty they seek. Emily Skor, CEO of ethanol lobbying group Growth Energy, said the guidance “still lacks the critical details that are needed to help ensure that American biofuel producers and their farm partners can lead the world in clean fuel production.”

The National Corn Growers Association said more clarity is needed about the specific environmental practices that will be required for accessing the credit. “What a missed opportunity for growers,” said President Kenneth Hartman Jr., an Illinois farmer. 

Ethanol is among the ingredients that can be used in making green jet fuel. The $54 billion industry is counting on new markets like sustainable aviation fuel, or SAF, to boost demand at a time when the rise of electric vehicles poses an existential threat to liquid fuels, especially those used to power light-duty automobiles. 

The issue of foreign used cooking oil has been a growing concern of agriculture groups and lawmakers over the past year. Growers bristled as they saw soybean prices plunge as UCO from Asia flowed into the country for making fuels like renewable diesel and SAF. Fuel made with UCO is highly valued in low-carbon fuel markets like California because of its relatively small carbon footprint. 

Adding to the outcry was suspicion that China shippers were adding fresh palm oil to UCO, making it fraudulent under U.S. renewable fuel law. Palm, the world’s most widely used vegetable oil, is a bane to environmentalists and many countries because the industry is a key driver of deforestation in places like Indonesia and has been tied to labor abuses. 

The Treasury rules issued on Friday allow fuels made with UCO from the U.S. to qualify for the 45Z credit, which provides a per-gallon, or gallon-equivalent, tax credit for makers of so-called clean transportation fuels based on the carbon intensity of production.  

Under a rival model, the globally accepted Corsia standard established by the United Nations’ governing body for aviation, green jet fuel made with foreign feedstocks would have access to the credit.

Continue Reading

Accounting

The AICPA’s Mark Koziel: More upside than downside for accountants

Published

on

Mark Koziel speaking at 2025 Engage

Even as accountants worry about a host of pressing issues, there are strong reasons to be optimistic about the future of the profession, according to Mark Koziel the president and CEO of the American Institute of CPAs.

“We’ve had issues coming at us for decades, and in each and every instance we’ve tended to thrive,” he added.

As an example, he cited the long list of technological developments that were all supposed to take accountants’ jobs, from the desktop calculator and the personal computer, to Excel and blockchain — all of which ended up only helping to make accountants more productive.

“Every time, there’s a new development in technology, they want to put us out of business,” he joked.

And even in times of economic uncertainty, accountants have an edge: “Typically, we are the last to fall into a recession, and the first to come out of them, because as companies come out of a recession, they turn first to their CGMAs and their CPAs for help.”

With all that in mind, he noted that he wanted to change the title of his keynote from “Professional Issues Update” to “Professional Opportunities Update,” before diving into a wide-ranging discussion of the most important major trends and developments affecting accountants.

Among the areas he discussed were:

1. Changes at the IRS. The tax agency was able to make it through the spring filing season with service levels that were relatively consistent with previous years — but that may not be true in the fall, Koziel warned, as retirements and layoffs that were delayed to help the service make it through April 15 have gone into effect.

“In the heat of busy season this spring, there were all kinds of rumors and hearsay about what was happening at the agency, and we put out a press release just to members to say, ‘Please, stop reading the headlines. We talk to the IRS regularly, and as far as we can tell, service levels will be consistent with the past few years,’ and we were right. Members coming out of busy season said the same thing,” Koziel explained. “I don’t know that we can say that going into the fall busy season — the IRS has even fewer people than they had before.”

2. The fate of the PCAOB. As passed by the House of Representatives, the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill” includes a provision that would scrap the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board and roll up its functions into the Securities and Exchange Commission.

“We are having a lot of discussion about what the SEC/PCAOB thing will look like,” Koziel said. “It is still being discussed as the bill goes into the Senate side. I’d say it’s pretty likely. I don’t care if the PCAOB stays or if what it does rolls up into the SEC — but what an incredible opportunity for us to have a say in how inspections are done, and so on. The SEC, too, would like to look at things differently.”

“The inspection rules were written 20 years ago, and when we talk about audit transformation, we need to make sure those inspections match up with what we’re doing,” he added. “This is an incredible opportunity to do that.”

3, Private equity. While many are concerned about how the influx of PE money into the profession will reshape accounting — and Koziel was adamant about making sure that it doesn’t compromise quality, particularly in audit — he said firms need to be able to find the model that works for them, and that PE can teach some valuable lessons.

“What can we learn from private equity?” he asked. “Partner accountability. As much as we’ve talked about it, our governance never really allowed for partner accountability to occur in firms. It’s very true in PE that there’s partner accountability.”

4, Tariffs: Almost all business leaders (90% in the second quarter of 2025, according to a recent AICPA survey) believe that tariffs are creating business plan uncertainty — which creates an opportunity for accountants to offer meaningful guidance to clients, as they have in many previous eras of uncertainty.

“This is like the Paycheck Protection Program at the beginning of COVID — we take complex things and make them simple,” Koziel said. “Let’s stay on top of this and communicate with our clients on a regular basis.”

5. Staffing: AICPA chair Lexy Kessler, who joined Koziel in his keynote, reported that undergraduate enrollments in accounting are up for the third quarter in a row, a welcome development after years of serious concern about the profession’s pipeline shortage.

“We’re seeing results, but we’re not done yet,” she warned. “We need to keep our foot on the gas.”

Increased compensation for younger accountants and an uncertain economic environment have helped with the boost, but that isn’t all, Kessler said: “There’s some shifting in the marketplace — accounting has job stability, pay is looking better, students are seeing people from the profession out in classrooms, and they’re saying, ‘I had no ideas that’s what accountants do.'”

“I encourage everyone to change the story they’re telling,” she told the audience. Talk about the impact you have, not all the work it takes to make that impact.”

Koziel added some valuable advice for firm leaders from his time working at a Buffalo-based CPA firm in the 1990s: “When I was in charge of recruiting, I’d ask our partners, ‘Is this firm the right place for your kids?’ And if it’s not, fix it.”

Continue Reading

Accounting

Instead adds AI-driven tax reports

Published

on

Tax management platform Instead launched artificial intelligence-driven tax reports, harnessing AI to analyze full tax returns to glean tax strategies and missed opportunities.

The San Francisco-based company’s reports, which are designed for clarity and compliance, include:

  • Tax Return Analysis Report, which reveals tax-saving opportunities in tax returns for individuals (1040) and businesses (Schedule C, E, F, 1120, 1120S, 1065).
  • Tax Plan Report, which provides a real-time summary and action list of all tax strategies across all entities in a tax year and includes potential and actual savings, summaries for each tax strategy, and IRS and court case references.
  • Tax Strategy Reports for every tax strategy, with detailed calculations of deductions and credits, supporting documentation, and an actionable plan.

Instead users can collaborate with their tax professionals on the platform or search the Instead directory of firms that support the platform and offer tax planning and advisory services. 

Andrew Argue

Andrew Argue

“We are excited to bring our users the future of smart, effective decisions when it comes to filing taxes,” said Andrew Argue, co-founder of Instead, in a statement. “With Instead, users can easily uncover and implement tax strategies and opportunities that will save them money and have the transparent calculations to support a tax return. And this is just the beginning…we have some exciting things on our roadmap and look forward to sharing them very soon!”

Continue Reading

Accounting

Half of accountants expect firms to shrink headcount by 20%

Published

on

Fifty-two percent of accountants expect their firms to shrink in headcount by 20% in the next five years, according to a new report.

The Indiana CPA Society, in collaboration with CPA Crossings, released today a 2025 Workforce Transformation report. Paradoxically, while it found that most respondents anticipate their firms to reduce headcount, 75% said that their firms will need the same amount or more staff to meet future client demand. 

Sixty percent of respondents said that entry-level professionals are the role they anticipate needing fewer employees in the future due to automation. Nearly half as many responded saying experienced professionals (approximately 33%) and manager-level roles (approximately 25%). 

The report highlights the weaknesses of the pyramid-shaped practice structure that is the basis for most firm’s current talent management and workforce development systems. One challenge is the pyramid’s low retention design. 

“The pyramid practice structure was not designed to retain staff. It actually does the opposite. Upward mobility is statistically difficult to attain,” the report reads. “Firms have a lot of requirements for entry-level staff, but there is a lot less need for experienced staff. Firms eventually have a lot of entry-level professionals qualified to become experienced staff but only a few openings. It only gets more difficult as staff try to move from experienced staff to managers. For those who want to move from managers to owners, the wait could be 15 years or more — or maybe never.”

The report discussed the dwindling pipeline of incoming talent, saying, “Currently, there are not enough qualified staff to maintain a bottom layer that is wide enough,” and generational preferences, saying, “Gen Zers are looking for meaning and emotional connection. If they cannot find these connections in their work, it won’t take much for them to decide to move on.”

The final weakness of the pyramid model the report highlighted was advances in technology, particularly automation and artificial intelligence. 

“Advances in technology, especially with automation and artificial intelligence, could obliterate the work being done by the bottom of the pyramid,” the report reads. “This impact is beginning to be seen in accounting firms across the country as manual and time-consuming data entry and reconciliation tasks, once assigned to entry-level staff, are being automated. Firms are already seeing great benefits from this transfer, such as faster and more accurate data processing.”

The report suggests that firms take on a new practice structure that focuses on precision hiring, proactive retention, practical technology implementation, pricing expertise, practice area expansion or focus, and people acceleration. 

Continue Reading

Trending