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What accounting firms can learn from technology vendors serving them

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Last week, AICPA brought together leading accounting technology vendors in their annual AICPA Executive Roundtable for these innovators to share best practices and collaborate on joint opportunities. Listening to these tech vendors, it became apparent that accounting firms could greatly benefit from adopting some of the strategies and mindsets these technology companies are using to thrive. Some of them include:

1. Professionalizing the go-to-market function

One of the most evident areas where accounting firms can draw inspiration is in the professionalization of go-to-market (GTM) functions. For technology companies, even at their inception, there is a clear concept of the roles and responsibilities across sales, marketing, customer success, and business development. While startup founders may initially wear multiple hats, the distinct scope and importance of these functions are recognized early on, and teams grow while explicitly balancing the resourcing needs of each GTM function.

Today, many accounting firms are in the process of retrofitting and implementing these functions within their organizations. Historically, client acquisition and expansion have been led more ad hoc by partners, without clear distinctions between the support functions that can accelerate client awareness, acquisition, retention, and expansion. As accounting firms transform their organizational structure, there is an opportunity to learn from the playbook of technology vendors of focusing on the entire client lifecycle from client awareness to services expansion. Structuring distinct roles and defining clear scopes of responsibilities for each part of the client journey, whether in sales, marketing, business development, or client success, will help firms ultimately drive growth.

2. A holistic approach to client success

Technology vendors excel at taking a holistic approach to customer success, something that accounting firms could benefit from adopting. In the tech world, customer success is treated as a distinct function, with dedicated metrics such as gross/net revenue retention, churn rate, and net promoter score that helps assess how well we are serving our customers. Customer success managers often act as the quarterback for each account, ensuring that the customer’s needs are seamlessly met across multiple functions, products, and services. This approach ensures that the customer feels supported, understands the full value of what they are receiving, and is more likely to continue and expand their relationship with the vendor.

Accountants can take a page from this playbook for their practices. One of the topics discussed at the AICPA Executive Roundtable was the transformation of accountants beyond trusted advisors to strategic business partners, blending multiple service lines to deliver a comprehensive and seamless client package. For accounting firms, this means moving away from siloed service delivery, where tax, audit, and advisory traditionally operated separately, and towards a client-first, integrated approach where the client’s needs are addressed across all areas of the firm’s expertise.

For example, rather than simply providing tax advisory as a trusted advisor, a firm can create a cohesive solution that includes tax advisory, audit risk assessments, fractional outsourced finance team/CAS support, and IT risk consulting. The outcome is a much deeper relationship where the accounting firm is seen as an integral part of the client’s team, helping to solve their most pressing business challenges holistically. 

Accounting firms of the future will succeed by breaking down traditional silos and going beyond the trusted advisor model to form a broader and more strategic business partnership with “Client Success Managers” as a discrete function that owns this holistic approach.

3. Value-based pricing and default ROI-first mindset

The accounting industry has been discussing value-based pricing for quite some time, with many firms transitioning from the traditional time-and-billing model to value-based pricing. Here, technology vendors shine with our value-first mindset, focusing on the return on investment (ROI) that our solutions deliver to our customers. As technology vendors, we do not price our products based on the hours spent by engineers, product managers, or designers in developing a solution. Instead, we start with the outcomes that we deliver for our customers, whether it’s time savings, revenue growth, or enhanced operational efficiency, then figure out a fair pricing that is a win-win for all sides.

Accounting firms can benefit by adopting a similar approach, always starting from assessing the value they provide to clients and using that as the foundation for their pricing structure. This transition requires not just a change in pricing, but also a change in mindset. It requires firms to deeply understand the impact they have on their clients’ businesses and to communicate that impact effectively. When accounting firms position their services based on outcomes rather than hours worked, they are able to differentiate themselves in a competitive market and build stronger, more profitable relationships with their clients.

Overall, the accounting industry is at an exciting inflection point, where technology can not only improve the way firms operate but also serve as inspiration for how to improve other parts of the firm. By learning from the technology vendors that are already driving innovation in the profession, accountants can thrive in running stronger, more resilient, and more client-centric businesses. Professionalizing go-to-market functions, adopting ROI-based pricing, and taking a holistic approach to client success are three key areas where accounting firms can make meaningful changes that will help them ultimately position themselves as true strategic partners.

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Accounting

Trump floats new income tax cut in bid to ease tariffs bite

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President Donald Trump suggested Sunday that his sweeping tariffs would help him reduce income taxes for people making less than $200,000 a year, as public anxiety rises over his economic agenda.

Trump has previously argued that tariff revenue could replace income taxes, though economists have questioned those claims.

“When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated. Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year,” he said Sunday on his Truth Social network.

Trump’s tariff stances have roiled markets, led to fears of higher prices for Americans, prompted recession warnings and sparked bouts of concern about the U.S.’s haven status — a fear that Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent questioned in a Sunday interview.

“I don’t think that this is necessarily losing confidence,” Bessent said on ABC’s This Week. “Anything that happens over a two-week, one-month window can be either statistical noise or market noise.”

Trump’s administration is “setting the fundamentals” for investors to know “that the U.S. government bond market is the safest and soundest in the world,” he said.

“We’re going to make a lot of money, and we’re going to cut taxes for the people of this country” through income from tariffs, Trump said on his way back to Washington from his golf club in New Jersey. “It’ll take a little while before we do that,” he added.

For now, a CBS News poll released Sunday said 69% of Americans believe the Trump administration wasn’t focused enough on lowering prices. Approval of Trump’s handling of the economy in the poll declined to 42% compared with 51% in early March. 

Trump wants to extend reductions in income taxes that were approved in 2017 during his first presidency, many of which are due to expire at the end of 2025. 

He also has proposed expanding tax breaks — including by exempting workers’ tips and social security earnings — while slashing the corporate tax rate to 15% from 21%. 

Trade deals

Bessent said the administration is working on bilateral trade deals after Trump imposed so-called reciprocal tariffs on many countries in early April, which he subsequently paused for 90 days for all affected countries except China.

The effort involves 17 key trading partners, not including China, Bessent said on ABC.

“We have a process in place, over the next 90 days, to negotiate with them,” he said. “Some of those are moving along very well, especially with the Asian countries.”

Bessent reiterated the administration’s argument that Beijing will be forced to the negotiating table because China can’t sustain Trump’s latest US tariff level of 145% on Chinese goods.

“Their business model is predicated on selling cheap, subsidized goods to the U.S.,” Bessent said “And if there’s a sudden stop in that, they will have a sudden stop in the economy, so they will negotiate.”

Trump has said the U.S. is talking with China on trade, which Beijing has denied. Bessent said he didn’t know if Trump and Xi had spoken. 

He said he saw his Chinese counterparts when the world’s financial officials gathered in Washington last week “but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings.”

Bessent said he thinks there is a path forward for China talks, starting with “a de-escalation” followed by an “agreement in principle.” 

“A trade deal can take months, but an agreement in principle and the good behavior and staying within the parameter of the deal by our trading partners can keep the tariffs there from ratcheting back to the maximum level,” he said.

In Congress, the framework for a bill that Republicans agreed on in early April would allow for as much as $5.3 trillion in tax cuts over a decade. Trump trade advisor Peter Navarro has suggested Trump’s tariffs will generate more revenue than that, while most economists project that they will bring in significantly less. 

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Accounting

Draft bill would eliminate PCAOB, empower SEC

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The House Financial Services Committee is considering draft legislation that would transfer the responsibilities of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

The bill would also end the support fees that public companies and broker-dealers pay to support the PCAOB. “The proposal would transfer the authorities of the PCAOB to the SEC,” said a spokesperson for the committee. “It modifies PCAOB’s authority to collect and spend accounting support fees and directs fees to be remitted to Treasury.” The PCAOB did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The bill might be included in the larger tax and spending reconciliation bill that’s currently making its way through Congress, according to the Financial Times. The PCAOB has come under criticism from Republicans, including the new chairman of the SEC, Paul Atkins, who was confirmed by the Senate last week. He was listed as a contributor to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which called for eliminating the PCAOB and rolling back SEC regulations, and was critical of the PCAOB while he was a commissioner. 

Under the draft legislation, all intellectual property retained by the PCAOB in support of its programs for registration, standard-setting and inspection would be shared with the SEC and any pending enforcement and disciplinary actions of the Board would be referred to the SEC or other regulators in accordance with Section 105 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act originally established the PCAOB in response to a wave of accounting scandals in the early 2000s involving Enron, WorldCom and other companies.

Effectively on the transfer date from the PCAOB to the SEC, all unobligated fees collected under Section 109(d) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act would be transferred to the general fund of the Treasury, and the SEC would not be able to collect fees under that section. The duties and powers of the PCAOB in effect as of the day before the transfer date, other than those described in Section 107 of Sarbanes-Oxley, would be transferred to the SEC. That section already grants the SEC general oversight of the PCAOB and the power to review the Board’s actions, including general modification and rescission of Board authority.

The draft legislation says, however, the SEC may not use funds to carry out Section 107 of Sarbanes-Oxley Act for activities related to overseeing the Board. The PCAOB would have to transfer all intellectual property to the SEC, along with existing processes and regulations of the Board, including existing PCAOB auditing standards. Those would continue in effect unless they were modified through rulemaking by the SEC; and any reference to the PCAOB in any law, regulation, document, record, map, or other paper of the United States would be deemed to be a reference to the SEC.

Any PCAOB employee as of the date of enactment of the bill may be offered equivalent positions on the SEC staff, as determined by the Commission, and submit to the Commission’s standard employment policies; and receive pay no higher than the highest paid employee of similarly situated employees of the Commission, according to the draft legislation. That provision could in effect lower the salaries of PCAOB board members, who are some of the highest paid employees in the federal government.

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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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