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LGBTQ financial planning for second Trump administration

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Financial planners who work with LGBTQ clients are helping them prepare for a potential rollback of civil rights under President-elect Donald Trump’s second administration.

Expressing empathy for the clients’ fears about future Supreme Court decisions, congressional bills or executive actions and state-level laws has emerged as a key aspect of guiding households through careful considerations and avoiding rash choices — along with providing technical guidance on the ramifications to estate planning and residential moves, financial advisors told Financial Planning. Just as with clients of any background or political ideology, planners are trying to assist clients in dealing with events out of their control that are affecting their families’ financial future.

“Being a great listener” and understanding that “people are going to have unease about investments specifically” when they believe that their rights are under attack can go a long way, said Lindsey Young, founder of Baltimore-based registered investment advisory firm Quiet Wealth. Shortly after Trump’s victory in this month’s elections, she warned in a LinkedIn post that many clients’ marriages may no longer be secure in some states and that it was important for LGBTQ couples to “have estate plans and healthcare directives in place that incorporate the possibility that their marriages are no longer recognized.” But that should come after giving the clients the space to share their valid concerns, she said in an interview.

“It’s just recognizing that it could be a hard time,” Young said. “It’s just saying, ‘I’m here to help you.’ Saying that is really important.”

READ MORE: LGBTQ estates — when planning is a civil right

Marriage rights are rightfully getting “a lot of attention when it comes to the political battle for human rights, and rightfully so,” according to Leighann Miko, founder of Los Angeles- and Portland, Oregon-based RIA firm Equalis Financial. However, transgender clients and their loved ones are also wondering about “the medical care they need” and a range of issues including “access to hormones, surgery, legal changes to a birth certificate or gender markers on a driver’s license,” she said in an email. 

“Often as planners, we default to our technical skills to plan the risk away,” Miko said. “While helpful and usually the reason our clients seek us out, it’s equally important to provide a safe space for our clients to express their fears and concerns, especially as it relates to their financial lives. As a marginalized community that has had to fight tooth and nail for basic human rights, LGBTQ clients are exhausted. Be patient, be willing to see things through a different lens, and listen with empathy.”

Even before the election, LGBTQ advocates had been tracking a surge in state bills and laws involving IDs, drag shows, health care and schools. 

For 2.7 million LGBTQ people over the age of 50, the rankings for the best states to retire in vary greatly from a list that doesn’t take their civil liberties into account, according to a report last month by the Movement Advancement Project, a nonprofit think tank. MAP’s top 10 of Oregon, Connecticut, Maine, Vermont, California, Hawaii, Delaware, Colorado, Rhode Island and New Jersey contrasted with a Bankrate list that rated Delaware, West Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina, Missouri, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Florida, Iowa and Wyoming at the top. Delaware was the only state that made both top 10 lists.

“Including even a minimal consideration of a state’s treatment of LGBTQ people would result in a different ranking of states altogether,” MAP wrote in the report. “MAP’s research team decided to compare Bankrate’s analysis to our publicly available data on state policy to illustrate how state rankings can change dramatically when you incorporate laws and policies that shape the lives and experiences of LGBTQ people. Our findings show strikingly different results and highlight a very different set of considerations for LGBTQ adults deciding where to spend their golden years.”

READ MORE: LGBTQ retirees face specific challenges. Here’s how advisors can help

As inviting as a new state may seem when considering policies, clients will need to weigh factors such as whether their residence may affect their pension and a possible higher cost of living if they depart from a southern state to a coastal state like California or New York, Young noted. Since fear can lead to common behavioral biases or mistakes, planners must “show them the facts in terms of the implications of a potential move” and “be realistic with them” as the clients think through their long-term goals, she said.

“The big thing is to say, ‘Let’s step back and run the numbers.’ I think there’s a temptation among many people to say, ‘I’m going to move, I’m going to get out and we’ll figure it out when we get there,'” Young said. “If they were to move, it actually makes them feel much more confident with that move, as opposed to just panicking.”

In terms of the possible challenges to same-sex marriage, advisors and their clients could seek second-parent adoptions, update the beneficiaries listed in a will or a trust or purchase life insurance to cover estate taxes if one of the spouses dies, Miko noted. Those possible steps come on top of other necessary ones, if there is a Supreme Court decision overturning same-sex marriage rights or if individual states pass their own restrictions, she said.

“Many of the pre-2015 safeguards will have to be implemented once again, which still don’t quite level the playing field compared to legally recognized marriage rights,” Miko said. “For example, a non-married partner does not automatically inherit assets upon the death of a partner, and, in community property states, the surviving partner would not receive the tax benefit of a full step-up in cost basis on the inherited asset, such as a home.”

READ MORE: Are Christian donor advised-funds pushing anti-LGBTQ politics?

She and Young pointed out how marriage affects the policy of unlimited gifts between spouses without estate taxes and the requirement for clients to get current and valid power of attorney and advanced health care directive documents on file. 

“The good thing is that there are many LGBTQ estate attorneys who have been doing this for decades,” Young said. “That provides the best protection against potential changes in the law.”

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IAASB tweaks standards on working with outside experts

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The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board is proposing to tailor some of its standards to align with recent additions to the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants’ International Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants when it comes to using the work of an external expert.

The proposed narrow-scope amendments involve minor changes to several IAASB standards:

  • ISA 620, Using the Work of an Auditor’s Expert;
  • ISRE 2400 (Revised), Engagements to Review Historical Financial Statements;
  • ISAE 3000 (Revised), Assurance Engagements Other than Audits or Reviews of Historical Financial Information;
  • ISRS 4400 (Revised), Agreed-upon Procedures Engagements.

The IAASB is asking for comments via a digital response template that can be found on the IAASB website by July 24, 2025.

In December 2023, the IESBA approved an exposure draft for proposed revisions to the IESBA’s Code of Ethics related to using the work of an external expert. The proposals included three new sections to the Code of Ethics, including provisions for professional accountants in public practice; professional accountants in business and sustainability assurance practitioners. The IESBA approved the provisions on using the work of an external expert at its December 2024 meeting, establishing an ethical framework to guide accountants and sustainability assurance practitioners in evaluating whether an external expert has the necessary competence, capabilities and objectivity to use their work, as well as provisions on applying the Ethics Code’s conceptual framework when using the work of an outside expert.  

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Tariffs will hit low-income Americans harder than richest, report says

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President Donald Trump’s tariffs would effectively cause a tax increase for low-income families that is more than three times higher than what wealthier Americans would pay, according to an analysis from the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy.

The report from the progressive think tank outlined the outcomes for Americans of all backgrounds if the tariffs currently in effect remain in place next year. Those making $28,600 or less would have to spend 6.2% more of their income due to higher prices, while the richest Americans with income of at least $914,900 are expected to spend 1.7% more. Middle-income families making between $55,100 and $94,100 would pay 5% more of their earnings. 

Trump has imposed the steepest U.S. duties in more than a century, including a 145% tariff on many products from China, a 25% rate on most imports from Canada and Mexico, duties on some sectors such as steel and aluminum and a baseline 10% tariff on the rest of the country’s trading partners. He suspended higher, customized tariffs on most countries for 90 days.

Economists have warned that costs from tariff increases would ultimately be passed on to U.S. consumers. And while prices will rise for everyone, lower-income families are expected to lose a larger portion of their budgets because they tend to spend more of their earnings on goods, including food and other necessities, compared to wealthier individuals.

Food prices could rise by 2.6% in the short run due to tariffs, according to an estimate from the Yale Budget Lab. Among all goods impacted, consumers are expected to face the steepest price hikes for clothing at 64%, the report showed. 

The Yale Budget Lab projected that the tariffs would result in a loss of $4,700 a year on average for American households.

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At Schellman, AI reshapes a firm’s staffing needs

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Artificial intelligence is just getting started in the accounting world, but it is already helping firms like technology specialist Schellman do more things with fewer people, allowing the firm to scale back hiring and reduce headcount in certain areas through natural attrition. 

Schellman CEO Avani Desai said there have definitely been some shifts in headcount at the Top 100 Firm, though she stressed it was nothing dramatic, as it mostly reflects natural attrition combined with being more selective with hiring. She said the firm has already made an internal decision to not reduce headcount in force, as that just indicates they didn’t hire properly the first time. 

“It hasn’t been about reducing roles but evolving how we do work, so there wasn’t one specific date where we ‘started’ the reduction. It’s been more case by case. We’ve held back on refilling certain roles when we saw opportunities to streamline, especially with the use of new technologies like AI,” she said. 

One area where the firm has found such opportunities has been in the testing of certain cybersecurity controls, particularly within the SOC framework. The firm examined all the controls it tests on the service side and asked which ones require human judgment or deep expertise. The answer was a lot of them. But for the ones that don’t, AI algorithms have been able to significantly lighten the load. 

“[If] we don’t refill a role, it’s because the need actually has changed, or the process has improved so significantly [that] the workload is lighter or shared across the smarter system. So that’s what’s happening,” said Desai. 

Outside of client services like SOC control testing and reporting, the firm has found efficiencies in administrative functions as well as certain internal operational processes. On the latter point, Desai noted that Schellman’s engineers, including the chief information officer, have been using AI to help develop code, which means they’re not relying as much on outside expertise on the internal service delivery side of things. There are still people in the development process, but their roles are changing: They’re writing less code, and doing more reviewing of code before it gets pushed into production, saving time and creating efficiencies. 

“The best way for me to say this is, to us, this has been intentional. We paused hiring in a few areas where we saw overlaps, where technology was really working,” said Desai.

However, even in an age awash with AI, Schellman acknowledges there are certain jobs that need a human, at least for now. For example, the firm does assessments for the FedRAMP program, which is needed for cloud service providers to contract with certain government agencies. These assessments, even in the most stable of times, can be long and complex engagements, to say nothing of the less predictable nature of the current government. As such, it does not make as much sense to reduce human staff in this area. 

“The way it is right now for us to do FedRAMP engagements, it’s a very manual process. There’s a lot of back and forth between us and a third party, the government, and we don’t see a lot of overall application or technology help… We’re in the federal space and you can imagine, [with] what’s going on right now, there’s a big changing market condition for clients and their pricing pressure,” said Desai. 

As Schellman reduces staff levels in some places, it is increasing them in others. Desai said the firm is actively hiring in certain areas. In particular, it’s adding staff in technical cybersecurity (e.g., penetration testers), the aforementioned FedRAMP engagements, AI assessment (in line with recently becoming an ISO 42001 certification body) and in some client-facing roles like marketing and sales. 

“So, to me, this isn’t about doing more with less … It’s about doing more of the right things with the right people,” said Desai. 

While these moves have resulted in savings, she said that was never really the point, so whatever the firm has saved from staffing efficiencies it has reinvested in its tech stack to build its service line further. When asked for an example, she said the firm would like to focus more on penetration testing by building a SaaS tool for it. While Schellman has a proof of concept developed, she noted it would take a lot of money and time to deploy a full solution — both of which the firm now has more of because of its efficiency moves. 

“What is the ‘why’ behind these decisions? The ‘why’ for us isn’t what I think you traditionally see, which is ‘We need to get profitability high. We need to have less people do more things.’ That’s not what it is like,” said Desai. “I want to be able to focus on quality. And the only way I think I can focus on quality is if my people are not focusing on things that don’t matter … I feel like I’m in a much better place because the smart people that I’ve hired are working on the riskiest and most complicated things.”

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