Account Sense founder & CEO Jennifer Mitchell (center) and her team
richard Breshears
Jennifer Mitchell tries not to say the words “tax season.” She is retraining herself and her staff of 11 at Washington State-based firm Account Sense to think of busy season differently, but she’s also designed it to be different.
Starting last year, Mitchell shifted her team to a scheduled model of working on tax returns over multiple months instead of handling them as clients submit them, to cut down on the usual congestion.
“Everybody is scheduled a month,” she shared. “We explain how extensions work and we plan throughout the year so there’s no surprises and our team has no overtime to work. And we don’t have ‘bore season,’ which is sometimes worse. This is our second year doing it. We didn’t lose hardly any clients to it. We thought some would be mad about being extended, but we scheduled everyone out.”
Clients, in fact, were given more personalized service under this model, Mitchell reports: “It used to be, anyone who was available would do taxes, but now we know when it’s coming in, and we assign a team. [Clients] work with the same two people throughout the year, every year, and they know what’s going on. It’s far more personalized and we can invest more into people, and getting their tax return out the door.”
As Account Sense enters its second season — Mitchell now refers to it as “filing” or “planning” season — under this model, the firm will also be adjusting its offering into mandated service bundles.
“Part two of the scheduled season is packages; bringing people on for planning,” she explained. “It’s really interesting: We never forced people [to select a service package], but we were here if you need us. Part of implementing it this year is they have to decide which package they want. There are varying levels of planning opportunities for a client — from a couple touch-bases a year to monthly meetings if you want to … . They don’t have the option to not meet with us for planning. It’s the newest piece we’re rolling out this year; it polishes off what we did last year. People have questions, but seem to love it. It’s what they’ve been wanting this whole time but didn’t know how to ask for it, or if we offered it.”
In both phases, Mitchell’s new model was born of trying to solve the problem of burnout.
“I would hire a young person and say, ‘Tax season is hard, you work long hours, but summer is kind of nice. Less hours and a lot of vacation time.’ They’d say that’s just fine. But year after year, literally, they would quit and say ‘This is too hard, I don’t want this for my family.’ After three years of this, I refocused. I can’t keep hiring and losing people. They love the business, love working for me, love the clients, but hated the hours. There’s got to be a solution for that.”
Already a consumer of many books, podcasts and social channels covering the profession, Mitchell picked up “nuggets of information” and brainstormed her new method for tax returns.
After last year’s inaugural season, “we didn’t lose anybody,” she said. “The staff is so grateful and it’s exciting. One gal I hired brand-new last season, she teases me that I promised her happiness. She said we came through on that; she’s thrilled to be here and has good work-life balance. We shared this with the state society CPA chapter and we already have people reaching out to me wanting to come work for me. It feels really rewarding.”
Something specialized
Mitchell describes a similar feeling with another intentional goal she set for Account Sense. In recent years, the firm has made a push to serve women-owned businesses, which now make up just under half of its new client list.
“Deep in my heart, I’m touched to see anything — products, services — with women owners,” Mitchell explained. “I never really acted on it, but I always felt it. Probably two years ago, when we were restructuring the firm, we were figuring out: Who do we really love to serve? And [we wanted to work] with those people to feel good every day about the work we do. Operations and management and I were brainstorming. We love working with women — not to be feminist or anti-men — but we brainstormed that we like building relationships and connections with clients, to explain things to them and help them. They motivate us as much as we motivate them. It felt so good and so right putting the marketing out there [targeting women-owned businesses]. We still have a lot of male business owners. But I have a special place in my heart for women.”
Of course, as a female business owner herself, and a member of local professional women’s group Powerful Connections, Mitchell offers this perspective in advising this burgeoning clientele.
These women-owned businesses span industries, she said, including everything from traditionally male-dominated fields like construction and engineering, to women who are building real estate empires or penetrating the growing niche of medical spas. With that latter industry, Mitchell has found more than one connective thread.
“Medspa and dermatology practice owners, much of the time, are women-owned,” she shared. “The industry is growing so quickly, and changing just like accounting. They don’t want burnout, so they are leaving hospitals and starting their own spas, which is better for work-life balance … . There are a lot of similarities for what I changed in my business when I was done with burnout and what they’re doing. My operations manager used to work as a practice manager in a derm practice, so she knows all the insights. My team, all our accounting and tax work, it’s a perfect specialty for us. We’re doing specialized marketing.”
Like Account Sense’s transition to a scheduled filing season, homing in on specific clients is a change from the firm’s mission when Mitchell first established it as a solo practice in 2006 and grew it through grassroots marketing, getting her face on billboards and her voice on local radio. Through this exposure, the firm eventually expanded to 1,000 clients, but over the last four to five years Mitchell has strategically shaved that down to about 500 — and hopes to eventually cut it down to 350.
“The history of the firm was more clients — we work with everybody and anybody,” she explained. “The last few years, there’s more of a focus on who best to serve, so we get a lot out of it, too.”
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 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.
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.
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.”