Kevin Dietsch/Photographer: Kevin Dietsch/Gett

The House-passed version of the Trump administration’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” now in the Senate, is almost certain to pass in one form or another, despite threats by budget hawks to oppose it if certain cuts are not made, and by blue state Republicans who want different ceilings on the state and local tax deduction. 

The alternative — a significant tax hike at the end of the year — is, for many, too radical to contemplate. Nevertheless, the time between now and the vote to finalize it will see extreme bargaining and chipping away at various provisions to make it palatable to various factions in both the Senate and the House. It may, however, be difficult to meet President Trump’s desire to have it on his desk awaiting his signature by July 4. 

“It’s tough to spend a lot of time on a proposal until it has been approved,” said Stephen Mankowski, past president of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners. “Over the past several weeks, AICPA committees have been going over the provisions, and finding some good, and others not so good. Whatever it is, we know something will pass, because otherwise all of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act provisions will expire at the end of the year. In a lot of cases, what this does is make some things permanent. It will be interesting to see how things will flow out of the Senate. Other than non-useful information that we see with people picking certain little clauses, there hasn’t been a lot of press about the bill.”

The exemption from tax of tips and overtime pay is in the bill, but the exemption of Social Security benefits is not.

(Listen: “The state of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ and more.“)

Mankowski named the decoupling of theft losses from the federally declared disaster requirement as a needed legislative priority, given the proliferation of cyber-crime. He cited the NCCPAP agenda for its 2025 meeting: “Unreimbursed personal theft losses due to cyber-crime are not deductible unless they are due to a federally declared disaster. The impact is magnified when retirement funds are lost, requiring the amount to be included in income as a distribution from a retirement plan along with possible exposure to a 10% excise tax if the distribution occurred prior to the taxpayer reaching age 59½.”

Mankowski remarked that although the proposed legislation does not eliminate the tax on Social Security benefits, an increase in the senior citizen standard deduction by $4,000 would help offset some but not all of the tax on Social Security. But it would be beneficial to file separately if one spouse is working and the other is retired. 

He is happy that the legislation addresses the Form 1099-K threshold by raising it from $600 to $20,000, with a transaction threshold of 200 transactions. “That’s a positive because otherwise you could sell me your desk for $600 and be required to report it on a Form 1099, whereas under the new provision you can sell an entire office of furniture and it would not be over 200 transactions,” he said.  

Other provisions in the House bill, according to Bill Nemeth, executive director of the Georgia Association of Enrolled Agents, include:

• Student loan debt being eliminated if the student dies; 
• An increase in the Child Tax Credit to $2,500 for four years, followed by reversion to $2,000; 
• The federal estate tax exemption going to $15 million; 
• 529 Plan funds being allowed to be used for elementary, secondary and home-school education; 
• A partial charitable deduction for non-itemizers at $300; 
• The qualified business income deduction being increased to 23% (up from 20%);
• R&D expenses being immediately deductible from 2025 through 2029; 
• Tip income being not taxable; 
• 100% bonus depreciation being extended through 2029; 
• 1099-K third-party thresholds being increased to $20,000 and more than 200 transactions; 
• Trump accounts for newborns of $1,000 for children born between Dec. 31, 2024, and Jan. 1, 2029; 
• No tax on overtime; and,
• No tax on car loan interest for domestically manufactured automobiles. 

Pay-fors, meanwhile, include the phaseout and termination of $7,500 new and $4,000 used electric vehicle credits; 

• Repeal of clean energy credits for homes at end of 2025, including for contractors that build energy-efficient homes; 
• Phaseout starting in 2029 for wind, solar, and other renewables; 
• Annual fees for vehicle owners highway trust fund of $ 250 for electric vehicle; 
• A long list of new fees for individuals going through the immigration system; and,
• An increase in the amount of money that federal workers are required to contribute to retirement accounts from 0.85% to 4.4%.

The bill would also allow contingent fees on original returns. Both the AICPA and the NAEA oppose this item.

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Chris Kleponis/Bloomberg

President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill” is fast approaching the finish line, and has accumulated updates that not only set out to renew expiring portions of his landmark Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, but add new provisions to the Tax Code.

The legislation is currently under review in the Senate, and could be in for a host of new modifications before it comes to a final vote. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent estimated that a final version of the package could be signed by July 4.

One of the most contentious elements of the package has been the treatment of the state and local tax deduction. Currently, there is a tentative agreement in place among Republicans to increase the SALT deduction cap to $40,000 for roughly a decade.

Jason Smith, chair of the House Ways and Means Committee, told attendees at an Economic Club of Washington, D.C., event that a previously proposed $30,000 limit was a “fair” figure and that those on the fence should accept it.

“It’s not everything that some of the SALT members want, but I have members of our conference that don’t even think that you should be able to deduct $1, let alone $30,000. … It’s a fair and balanced approach,” Smith said.

Other notable provisions that have been hotly debated center around Medicaid cuts, tax credits created under the Inflation Reduction Act and more.

Read more: SALT write-off, Harvard tax, Medicaid cuts: What’s in Trump’s bill

Not all are upbeat about Trump’s tax reconciliation bill however, as members of the American Institute of CPAs and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board call for drastic changes to provisions that greatly impact the accounting profession, such as eliminating the PCAOB and transferring its duties to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Furthermore, estimates from the Congressional Budget Office say that if passed, Trump’s tax and spending bill could see U.S. budget deficits grow by roughly $2.42 trillion over the next decade.

The prospect of this has seen once-ardent Trump supporter Elon Musk, former head of the Department of Government Efficiency, rally against the bill that “more than defeats all the cost savings achieved by the DOGE team at great personal cost and risk,” he said in a post on X.

Read more: The state of the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ and more

Below is a timeline of noteworthy benchmarks in the legislative process to pass the “One Big Beautiful Bill” and insight into how its provisions would impact accountants.

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.”