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Musk’s DOGE to lead Trump’s purge of federal regulations

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order undertaking a massive regulatory review in a bid to fulfill his campaign pledge of eliminating rules he says stifle businesses and innovation.

The order requires all agencies to review all regulations to ensure they align with the administration’s policies and billionaire Elon Musk’s DOGE effort, which seeks to slash federal spending and personnel, according to a White House fact sheet.

DOGE and the White House’s Office of Management and Budget will develop a regulatory agenda to rescind or scale back rules that don’t align with Trump’s vision, the fact sheet said. The order calls on agencies to not prioritize enforcement actions that “stretch statutory authority or exceed the constitutional powers of the Federal Government,” the document said.

The directive gives more power to the cost-cutting efforts overseen by Musk even as the initiative faces legal questions about its authority and scope.

Trump also signed a directive eliminating or minimizing a dozen federal entities as he looks to slash government spending and programs. 

The Community Bank Advisory Council and Credit Union Advisory Council would shutter within two weeks, as would other federal advisory councils on long COVID, health equity, and voluntary foreign aid.  

The U.S. Institute of Peace, U.S. African Development Foundation, Inter-American Foundation, and the Presidio Trust in San Francisco, would be cut “to the minimum presence and function required by law.”

The order is intended to “further decrease the size of the Federal Government to enhance accountability, reduce waste, and promote innovation,” according to a White House fact sheet. The goal is to reduce the federal bureaucracy to the “minimum level of activity,” the document said.

A fact sheet outlining the rationale for cuts also specified the political affiliations of some involved with the agencies. It faulted the Presidio Trust as a “pet project” of former Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and board members who manage the area in her California district for donating to her political campaigns. It also said political contributions from staff employed by the U.S. Institute for Peace skewed toward Democrats over Republicans.

Other agencies and councils slated to be shuttered included the Presidential Management Fellows Program and the Academic Research Council, which provides information to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau — an agency that has been targeted for recent cuts. Trump in a speech on Wednesday said he has “virtually shut down” the CFPB.

The order calls for an additional list of “unnecessary government entities and federal advisory committees” to be submitted within 30 days to Trump for termination.

Musk’s DOGE effort has sought to shrink the U.S. government, including by dismissing some employees and seeking to encourage others to take buyout packages. About 75,000 workers signed up for a voluntary resignation program, but that tally — which comprises about 3% of the 2.4 million civilian federal workforce — fell short of a goal White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt previously set at 5% to 10%, raising the prospect of mass firings.

Trump is already moving to make deeper reductions to the workforce, signing an executive order directing agency chiefs to prepare for “large-scale reductions in force.”

The president’s assault on the federal government has drawn court challenges over DOGE’s powers, and its access to sensitive data on the American public. It has also sparked worries about conflicts of interest involving Musk, the world’s richest person. 

A federal judge on Tuesday denied a request to temporarily block DOGE teams from accessing internal government systems and prevent them from removing employees from U.S. agencies, handing Trump and Musk a win as they continue their efforts.

It is unclear how much DOGE’s cost-cutting work will actually save and how those potential savings will be redirected. DOGE’s own accounting has raised questions about its reliability. Trump on Wednesday suggested some savings could be returned to taxpayers or used to reduce the U.S. deficit.

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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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Accounting

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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