Michael Burry called the 2008 financial crisis before almost anyone believed him. Now he's looking at a $500 billion AI financing deal and seeing "shades of Enron." He's not wrong. And the reason he's not wrong should worry every accountant paying attention.

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.

Controllers have been the hardest accounting role to fill for four years running. That’s a pipeline problem, not a hiring hiccup. So where’s the pipeline breaking down? New salary data from Accounting Today has the answer, and it's not the story we usually tell about pay in accounting.

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.

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.

Two firms turned down six-figure quotes to have vendors develop custom software and vibe coded their own solutions, instead. It sounds like serious cost savings. But there’s another cost that doesn’t show up on any invoice.

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 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.

I just did two years of bookkeeping in four hours. Tax prep work is being automated, too. Meanwhile, CPA firms are raising fees by 8% a year. Something doesn't add up.