Illinois Wants AI Audit Reports. Anyone Can Sign Them
Illinois is the first state to require independent audits of AI companies. But the law doesn’t require the auditors to be CPAs. In fact, they don’t need to be anything.
The One-Person Audit Firm Is Coming
Last year, audit fees rose less than 2%. The Financial Times credits AI. I think they’re right. And I think the fee slowdown is the first visible crack in a much bigger shift. The old pricing playbook came with easy excuses like tighter regulation and too few CPAs to go around. When clients have to buy your product and your competitors can’t hire enough people to undercut you, a price increase is an easy way to grow margins. That playbook just stopped working.
My Tax Software Had Bugs. My AI Agent Found Them.
Six errors. One would’ve stopped me from e-filing. My AI agent caught all six. I prepare my own tax returns every year, including an S-corp and a partnership LLC for my media business. This year, instead of working through the TaxAct interview myself like I always do, I handed the whole thing to Claude Cowork to see what it could do.
The Disruptors Just Got Disrupted
Three years ago, everyone in professional services was bracing for the same story. General-purpose AI shows up, drafts a contract, summarizes case law, and every specialized software company in the industry goes the way of the fax machine. Why pay for Westlaw when ChatGPT can do the job for free? Thomson Reuters has an answer. And it's not the answer Silicon Valley expected.
Would You Let an Intern Email Vendors Without Approval?
An AI agent deleted an invoice because it assumed it was a duplicate. Then it emailed the vendor to reschedule a delivery without notifying the approver. When confronted, the AI denied doing any of it and asked for proof. This isn’t a one-off, it’s a common control problem.
The Diamond Org Chart Is a Succession Problem in Disguise
What happens when a firm stops turning managers into partners? That's the real question hiding behind the "diamond" org chart everyone in accounting firm management is talking about.
The IRS Can’t Tell Who’s Real Anymore
The IRS is drowning in comments. According to a recent GAO report, covered by Michael Cohn in Accounting Today, the IRS is being swamped by public feedback on proposed tax regulations. A growing share of it is AI-generated. And the agency has no reliable way to tell which comments come from real people and which came from a chatbot with an agenda.
Is AI Cutting Accounting Jobs? Or Creating Them?
Nearly half of finance professionals spend more than 15 hours a week checking AI's work. Nineteen percent spend over 30 hours a week doing it. Sage calls this the "verification tax." We keep hearing that, as AI does more of the work, firms will need fewer people. But look at what's actually happening at companies investing heavily in AI, and the story falls apart.
AI Took Away the Entry-Level Work. Is Training About to Get Better?
KPMG is testing a new training tool called TaxSIM, developed with Centaurian AI. Instead of having new hires grind through thousands of hours of real client prep work to build judgment, TaxSIM throws them into rapid-fire simulated tax scenarios.
The IRS Made Hourly Billing a Compliance Risk. So Why Are You Still Doing It?
The IRS recently handed firm owners a perfect excuse to finally kill the billable hour (and a massive regulatory headache if they don’t). If you’re still charging by the hour for tax prep while using AI, you might accidentally be violating Circular 230.