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Trump tells House Republicans he wants funds to finish wall, tax cuts

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President Donald Trump told House Republicans that he hoped they would pass legislation funding the completion of the border wall and stepped up deportation efforts as part of an ambitious agenda that includes extending his signature tax cuts and enabling more oil and gas production.

“I’m looking forward to working with Congress on a reconciliation bill that financially takes care of our plans to totally and permanently restore the sovereign borders of the United States once and for all,” Trump said Monday as he addressed GOP lawmakers gathered at his Doral resort in Miami.

Trump said he wanted “full funding for a record increase in border security personnel and retention bonuses for ICE and border control” — referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — as well as a “massive increase in the number of detention beds and funding for all border security infrastructure and barriers, including completion of the border wall.”

Trump also indicated that he was pursuing the ability to deport undocumented migrants, even if they couldn’t be returned to their home countries.

“Let them be brought to a foreign land and maintained by others for a very small fee as opposed to being maintained in our jails for massive amounts of money,” Trump said.

While the president said such a program was “subject to getting it approved,” his remarks appeared to validate a recent CBS News report that his administration was negotiating an agreement with El Salvador’s government allowing the U.S. to deport migrants there as a “safe third country.” That plan would revive a deal struck during Trump’s first term that was never implemented.

House Republicans gathered to hear directly from the president on how to make good on his campaign trail message: lowering taxes, unleashing domestic energy production and cracking down on U.S.-Mexico border crossings.

Trump said he was “eager to get to work with Congress on the largest package of tax cuts and reforms in American history” but agnostic on what legislative vehicle they used to accomplish that goal.

“One bill, two bills, I don’t care,” Trump said, adding he did not “want to get hung up on the budget process.”

GOP discussions

Republican lawmakers offered mixed reactions to Trump’s speech. One lawmaker called it not helpful that Trump did not provide specific guidance on whether one, or two, reconciliation packages should be pursued.

But Blake Moore, vice chair of the conference, said Trump showed “he’s fully aware of the obstacle ahead, or the challenge that it’s going to be.”

“So knowing that he gets that and he’s asking us to stick together and think it’s really good for members to hear,” he said.

Speaker Mike Johnson said the members are spending much of the two-day retreat behind closed doors in an attempt to coalesce behind a strategy to advance those goals and on how to offset the hefty price tag attached to those priorities.

Also on the agenda is finding consensus on raising the nation’s debt limit, an issue that pits Trump — who wants quick action — against hard-line members of his party, who want to use the vote to extract controversial spending cuts. Republicans also face their first real legislative test since they assumed control of Congress and the White House, funding the government before a March 14 shutdown deadline.

Republicans have a rare opportunity to pass tax, energy and border legislation with only votes from their own party, if they can all stick together. Narrow margins in both the House and Senate mean that Republicans can only afford to lose a handful of votes in either chamber. 

That slim majority is likely to most acutely be felt in the House, where a fractious majority, disparate priorities and an inclination to play political hardball means that getting enough Republicans to sign onto a bill implementing Trump’s policies will be difficult.

“President Trump wants his agenda passed. We have to put our differences aside, and stop thinking about ourselves, and start thinking about the country as a whole,” said Representative Carlos Gimenez, a Florida Republican. “I am sure there are going to be some things in that package I may not like personally, but the package is going to be good for America and we need to move it forward.”

Trump wants additional tax cuts that could increase the price tag of renewal.

He told lawmakers he intended to “keep my promises, starting with no taxes on tips, no tax on Social Security and no tax on overtime.”

Budget process

Republicans have yet to decide whether to produce one massive bill, or tackle border security first and come back for the remaining issues later in the year before a Dec. 31, 2025 deadline to extend a series of expiring tax cuts.

Even more divisive is how to pay for these plans, which could cost several trillion dollars. Republicans have floated using revenue from higher tariffs and slashing spending to offset the costs of tax cuts and additional border security measures.

But some GOP members are wary of deep spending cuts, which could gut benefit programs popular among voters. House leaders are also hesitant to include the tariffs — which Trump can impose on his own without Congress — because it removes the White House’s leverage to use import duty threats to settle disputes with trading partners.

Trump has done little to settle some of those intra-party squabbles, and again avoided charting a course on Monday night. Johnson has set an ambitious goal to pass a bill out of the House this spring. The speaker has set an even tighter deadline — Feb. 24 — for Congress to adopt a budget resolution that outlines how much the bill can cost.

House Republicans will meet again at the Doral golf club on Tuesday, where they will hear from Vice President JD Vance. Trump is scheduled to return to the White House Monday evening.

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Accounting

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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Accounting

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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