{"id":14303,"date":"2025-01-24T19:17:55","date_gmt":"2025-01-24T19:17:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/?p=14303"},"modified":"2025-09-09T16:04:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T16:04:52","slug":"grassroots-effort-to-simplify-colorado-sales-tax-with-paul-archer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/grassroots-effort-to-simplify-colorado-sales-tax-with-paul-archer\/","title":{"rendered":"Grassroots Effort to Simplify Colorado Sales Tax with Paul Archer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; background_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; custom_padding=&#8221;7px||5px|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_row column_structure=&#8221;3_5,2_5&#8243; make_equal=&#8221;on&#8221; custom_padding_last_edited=&#8221;on|desktop&#8221; padding_top_bottom_link_1=&#8221;false&#8221; padding_top_bottom_link_2=&#8221;false&#8221; padding_left_right_link_1=&#8221;true&#8221; 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divider_weight=&#8221;5px&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; max_width=&#8221;120px&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.27.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; ul_text_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; ul_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p>This week, Paul Archer joins the SALTovation podcast to discuss his efforts to simplify Colorado&#8217;s complex sales tax system, which he describes as a significant burden for businesses. Currently serving as a senior missionary in Nairobi, Kenya, Archer shares his journey from being a business owner to advocating for tax reform. He highlights the challenges of navigating a convoluted tax structure that varies widely across municipalities. Archer\u2019s commitment to change began when he recognized the detrimental effects of the existing sales tax system on local businesses and sought to collaborate with legislators and community leaders. 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locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h2><strong>Relevant Links:<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#A0CD46&#8243; divider_weight=&#8221;5px&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; max_width=&#8221;120px&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.4&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; ul_text_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; ul_font_size=&#8221;16px&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;||0px|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<span style=\"font-size: large;\">Subscribe on your favorite podcast app <a href=\"https:\/\/truthwork.slack.com\/archives\/D03426YPV5Z\/p1689255898860749\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: large;\">Follow us on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/company\/201050\/admin\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LinkedIn<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/channel\/UCMB1ZQNGXM_F777SIEl8Vjw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">YouTube<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: large;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/taxops.com\/contact\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Talk to a Tax Advocate Today!<\/a><\/span>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.4&#8243; 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header_2_font_size_last_edited=&#8221;on|phone&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h2>Transcript<\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#A0CD46&#8243; divider_weight=&#8221;5px&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; max_width=&#8221;120px&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.27.4&#8243; text_text_color=&#8221;#000000&#8243; text_font_size=&#8221;15px&#8221; text_line_height=&#8221;2em&#8221; link_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; link_text_color=&#8221;#fe4943&#8243; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; max_width=&#8221;800px&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:03\">00:01:03<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>He said it can&#8217;t be changed without a vote of the people, and we can refer a vote to the people, but that&#8217;s a really heavy lift. And the president was looking at something simpler than a significant constitutional initiative. So they backed away.<\/p>\n<p>But at that point my appetite was wet to fix the system.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:26\">00:01:26<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Welcome to SALTovation.<\/p>\n<p>The SALTovation show is a podcast series featuring the leading voices in SALT where we talk about the issues and strategies to help you make sense of state and local tax.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s Paul Archer, a business owner of Automated Business Technologies and humanitarian who joins us today from Kenya where he is engaged in a senior mission. Paul has been instrumental in kickstarting efforts to simplify the infuriating state of sales tax in Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>We start our discussion today with where Paul finds himself now, then circle back to his business story that transitioned into Paul&#8217;s dedicated efforts in sales tax simplification and eventually sparked the Simplified Sales Tax Coalition in Colorado. Paul, thank you so much for joining us today on this Cultivation podcast. Let&#8217;s start by bringing our audience up to speed.<\/p>\n<p>Where are we talking to you from right now and from once you answer that question? What inspired your current mission and how is life treating you out there?<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:02:28\">00:02:28<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m in Nairobi, Kenya. Kenya is a country in Central Africa on the east side of the continent.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re next to Tanzania or Tanzania, Uganda on the north, Democratic Republic on the Congo on the west, Sudan north of us, Ethiopia north of us. Beautiful country here. I didn&#8217;t choose Kenya, so we&#8217;re serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve been here 15 months. We&#8217;ll be here through about the end of January. We are what are called senior missionaries.<\/p>\n<p>And when you serve a mission, this is something we&#8217;ve planned to do for most of our life, Carol and I, my wife been married for 45 years and when I was a young man I served a church mission in the state of Washington.<\/p>\n<p>So as a 19 year old, I was knocking on doors for two years and teaching people about our church and had some marvelous experiences that if you haven&#8217;t done that sort of thing, there&#8217;s not really any way to replicate the experience. You leave home, you don&#8217;t know where you&#8217;re going to go. The church leadership calls you to wherever you go.<\/p>\n<p><cite>And that was the case in:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"1976 \">1976<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s actually now an online system and in the application process they have at the missionary portal a list of senior missionary Needs all around the world. So you can look at senior missionary needs all around the world.<\/p>\n<p>There are, there&#8217;s about 80,000 young missionaries in the world who are the 18 to 24, 25 year old young men and young women. There&#8217;s, oh, probably five or six thousand senior missionaries like us. So there&#8217;s lots of need.<\/p>\n<p>There are leaders all over the world who want senior couples.<\/p>\n<p>So you look through the portal and see all kinds of things that look interesting and you can create a list of eight areas that you would be interested in going. And in that process, we discovered a resource center that the church opened in Washington D.C. for refugees. And it&#8217;s a really awesome resource center.<\/p>\n<p>It teaches about 50 courses about living in America and not just basic skills like language skills, but also skills like business skills and how to improve your education, how to survive in the area, how to get housing, et cetera, et cetera. And so we actually thought we were going there because the leadership there had requested us specifically.<\/p>\n<p>Now, we had Kenya on our list of eight, but thought that anything other than Washington D.C. was superfluous because we had been requested in Washington D.C.<\/p>\n<p><cite>in late March of:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2023\">2023<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We, you know, all of our personal expenses, we pay for, and we serve with our church communication department. We serve with people who work in communications in our local congregations and the several countries that we&#8217;re involved in.<\/p>\n<p>And our whole purpose is Scripturally, we say the purpose is to bring the church out of obscurity and out of darkness. Obscurity is so that people know about it. Darkness is so that people don&#8217;t understand it.<\/p>\n<p>Bringing it out of darkness means a lot of people misunderstand the church. And so we work to help them understand it. So like I was telling Judy, today, we&#8217;re in an event called Trees for Food.<\/p>\n<p>We have significant humanitarian activity all around the world. Our church is well north of a billion dollars a year in humanitarian spend.<\/p>\n<p>And there are in some areas, like here, humanitarian employees whose job is to go find need. And there&#8217;s no shortage of need here. And then there are actually also humanitarian missionaries. So there&#8217;s missionaries like us.<\/p>\n<p>So our humanitarian activities focus on healthcare, food, Security, education, and clean water. So we&#8217;ve drilled hundreds and hundreds of boreholes all around Africa, maybe into the thousands of boreholes. There&#8217;s no municipal water system here.<\/p>\n<p>So you guys think in the United States of walking to a tap and turning on water. There&#8217;s no municipal water system like that. So we live in an apartment building. The apartment building has a borehole, which is a well.<\/p>\n<p>So our water into this apartment building comes right out of the well. It isn&#8217;t purified as we know it. So we don&#8217;t drink the water. We drink bottled water that we buy at stores and bottled water places.<\/p>\n<p>But the church does a lot of drilling boreholes, which changes the whole lives of communities when they do that. We&#8217;ve built and expanded many, many, many healthcare facilities. We have expanded and remodeled many schools.<\/p>\n<p>And we have done a lot in the area of food security, like trees for food.<\/p>\n<p>Or just recently, we made a $12 million donation here to UNICEF, which is going to people who are experiencing food challenges as a result of the significant rainfall that we had in the long rain season last, what would be our spring. They don&#8217;t really have seasons like we have them. Remember, we&#8217;re right on the equator, so the weather&#8217;s perfect almost every day.<\/p>\n<p>Temperatures are 70 to 80 degrees Fahrenheit, low humidity, lovely. We have light rains for a few months, then we have long rains.<\/p>\n<p>Well, we had long, hard rains back in March, April, May, which did a fair amount of flooding. So the church stepped up and donated a significant amount of money for food support for people who&#8217;d been displaced from the flooding.<\/p>\n<p>And so we&#8217;re often with the humanitarian people like we were today, because those are newsworthy things that we cover, write up and post.<\/p>\n<p>And so we post stories in what&#8217;s called the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints newsroom, and you can go to the church website and then click on Newsroom, and you can go find all kinds of news from Africa and some of that news from Africa. There&#8217;s three couples like us here and the three areas of Africa. So about a third of those posts either were written by us or we edited them.<\/p>\n<p>Someone who we trained wrote them, we edited them and posted them. So. And you know, we have a lovely experience working alongside the people in Africa. We&#8217;ve made just absolute dear friends here.<\/p>\n<p>They are lovely people, big hearted, wonderful to us, and all the kind. We&#8217;ve been to four countries and all the countries we&#8217;ve been in, we&#8217;ve had the same experience. They&#8217;re just fantastic.<\/p>\n<p>So when we do go home we&#8217;ll miss the people a lot. We&#8217;re missing our 21 grandchildren and our five married children and lots of friends and the things that we had at home.<\/p>\n<p>So anyway, that&#8217;s what we&#8217;re doing now.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:19\">00:10:19<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>What a wonderful opportunity and just kind of life experience that you get to take back with you.<\/p>\n<p>And we can even kind of bring it back to sales tax, you know, by taxes that we pay in this country in these local jurisdictions is what pays for a lot of those things that we have access to in this country that others don&#8217;t. And so, you know, as we kind of bring this back into a tax podcast. Right.<\/p>\n<p>Can you walk us through your background and how did you first encounter the wonderful world of sales tax and what that felt like trying to figure out as a business owner?<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:02\">00:11:02<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Oh, and I want to step out and say there are 30,000 water districts in America.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:06\">00:11:06<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:07\">00:11:07<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>So, yeah, you know that because we have a client that sells like the back end to the billing system system for them so they can get paid. And then you pay for your water separately. So I buy Denver water, Meredith, and Denver, too. We have Denver water, so it comes out of our tap.<\/p>\n<p>But isn&#8217;t that interesting that there was some type of reckoning done to organize that so you would have water and here you are with boreholes.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:28\">00:11:28<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yes.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:29\">00:11:29<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>There is no organization around the use of water in terms of all of it collectively.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:11:34\">00:11:34<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yes. We see every day lots of them trucks on the road called clean water trucks. So they&#8217;re just big tankers with clean water and they take them to places.<\/p>\n<p>And some places have these huge, like 10,000 liter containers that they pump water into, and that&#8217;s the water for them. You&#8217;ll see people where there&#8217;s a borehole coming with like 15 liter containers that they fill with water and carry home. That&#8217;s their water.<\/p>\n<p>So you find living here, and Kenya is one of the more developed African countries. It&#8217;s one of the wealthier African countries.<\/p>\n<p>But you see so many things that we take for granted in the United States, like turning a faucet and clean water comes out. Right. Or very reliable electricity. Actually, we pay for electricity in arrears here. They pay for it in advance.<\/p>\n<p>So you have to pay for electricity in advance. You get a meter and you watch it tick down and then you have to go add time to it. The roads.<\/p>\n<p>We went back to Colorado briefly in August because we had our 21st grandchild and we wanted to be there for her birth.<\/p>\n<p>And we landed at DIA and we&#8217;re driving our son well, our whole Family that&#8217;s in Colorado picked us up and we&#8217;re driving to where we live and I&#8217;m looking around going, wow, this road&#8217;s amazing. Look at this. This is incredible. And the traffic&#8217;s moving and people are rational on the roads. It&#8217;s awesome.<\/p>\n<p>So we have countless things in the United States that we take for granted. One thing we could all do better in the United States is have a heavy dose of gratitude. So for what a remarkable, amazing country we live in.<\/p>\n<p>So, okay, how sales tax and me and my business. So I&#8217;ve been in the, what we call today the office technology business. In the.<\/p>\n<p>When I first got in the business, we called it simply the copier business. So I started as a 21 year old working for a company that my brother had founded.<\/p>\n<p>And he and my other brother and a third guy were the owners of the company. And it was a go to school job.<\/p>\n<p>So I was going to school, working on an accounting degree and actually started selling copiers while I was a student in college. And I thought, I think I like this a lot more than accounting. No offense, Judy. And you&#8217;re accounting, Both of us are CPAs, yes.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:09\">00:14:09<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, what were we thinking? It&#8217;s way more fun to sell than actually compile the numbers.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Paul Archer:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:14\">00:14:14<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Accounting is a necessary and virtuous profession. But anyway, I was in sales, so I finished with a undergraduate degree and then I went back and got an mba.<\/p>\n<p>And at a very young age I was leading our sales team. And at 29, I was asked by my brother to be general manager of the company. And so as a 29 year old, the company with 160 employees reported to me.<\/p>\n<p>And we were growing, we were doing well. We sold the business at that point in time and the company that acquired us, their operating philosophy was buy good companies and leave them alone.<\/p>\n<p>Now that&#8217;s really rare when somebody buys a company. Most people who buy companies, most companies who buy companies don&#8217;t leave them alone. This company who bought us actually left us alone.<\/p>\n<p>They left us completely alone. We were expected to do two things, achieve a business plan in revenue, profit and cash flow. And don&#8217;t cheat.<\/p>\n<p>So that was basically their imprimatur to us. Make your plan and don&#8217;t cheat. And we were subject once a year to a brief two week audit and they&#8217;d make sure we weren&#8217;t cheating.<\/p>\n<p>So after being in that company we had sold to for a few years, they came to me and asked me to leave Utah and go to Colorado. The way that they would address problem companies is they would fire the President and bring in a new president.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So the headquarters staff was really small in this multibillion dollar company.<\/p>\n<p>There were, I don&#8217;t know, 30 or 40 people at headquarters and most of them frankly were auditors who would go out to audit us to make sure we were doing things according to GAAP and the company&#8217;s high ethical standards and so on. So they wanted to make a change in Colorado.<\/p>\n<p>Things weren&#8217;t going well and the CEO of the company came to me and said, would you consider going to Colorado? He said, I&#8217;m not going to make you go if you don&#8217;t want to go, I understand, but we&#8217;d love to have you go.<\/p>\n<p>And it was clear it was going to be a turnaround. And so I agreed to do it for at least two, but no more than three years.<\/p>\n<p>So I left Utah, I came to Colorado and the deal was they would pay to move me and they would pay to move me back and then I&#8217;d go back at least the level I left. And that was 31 years ago. So we are clearly never made the three year turnaround still in the same industry.<\/p>\n<p>The industry has morphed through technological changes. So today where back in those early days we sold and serviced copiers, today we represent any infrastructure thing that goes into an office.<\/p>\n<p>So printing and imaging networks, desktops, we have a managed IT section of our company that&#8217;s growing rapidly.<\/p>\n<p>We do Building Access, which is a digital solution these days we move people away from locks and keys and so on and turn the whole thing to a digital solution. We do digital displays, we do document management, you know, electronic filing and retrieval. So and we do VoIP phone systems.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Started the company in July of:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2005\">2005<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>So I left that company that acquired us and went out and did a change the world startup which a whole different story is how we did change the world. But I didn&#8217;t get rich doing it. But it was a really interesting experience and it has impacted our industry significantly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I spent a couple of years at hp, realized they called me one day in the latter part of that Changed the World DL and said, hey, how would you feel about coming to work for hp? So I hadn&#8217;t pursued them, I hadn&#8217;t called them, I hadn&#8217;t talked to anybody about that. They called me on the phone and offered me a job.<\/p>\n<p>So I spent two and a half years at hp, decided that I really preferred working in a small business for a number of reasons. And so I came back to. I bought a company in Colorado, and we also have a company in Utah now.<\/p>\n<p>So from a sales tax standpoint, sales taxes have always been a part of our lives. But I had the experience of living in Utah that has a very simple sales tax system. So the Utah sales tax system, you file one return a month.<\/p>\n<p>You file it with the state tax commission, and you include to the state tax commission revenue that came from all of the cities and towns in the state. You don&#8217;t have to be licensed with cities and towns all over kingdom come. You don&#8217;t have to remit to cities and towns all over the state.<\/p>\n<p>You simply have to report what you did in each city. The state pays them, we pay the state one return. Easy peasy. And then you&#8217;re subject to.<\/p>\n<p>I think they could audit you, like, every three years, something like that. But you&#8217;re subject to audit from only one entity. So the only entity that could audit you as the state tax commission.<\/p>\n<p>I knew people in the state tax commission when I was in Utah. They were a customer of ours.<\/p>\n<p>I knew the director of the state tax commission, who was a really dynamic former partner at one of the big today four accounting firms, was recruited by a governor in the state who was asked to come out and lead the tax commission. And I was connected with a lot of cities who would say all the time, the state does a great job, and they&#8217;re perfectly happy with the system in Utah.<\/p>\n<p>Then I moved to Colorado, and, oh, my gosh, we took something that many states do very simply and made it one of the most complicated things that businesses have to deal with.<\/p>\n<p>So at the same time I was in Colorado, my brother was CFO of the Utah company I&#8217;d been with, and I would complain to him regularly about sales tax, and he&#8217;d say, what are you complaining about? It&#8217;s a piece of cake. And I&#8217;d say, oh, my gosh, Mike, we spend days a month on sales tax. And he said, I spend like an hour. He said, really?<\/p>\n<p>He said, yeah, he spent like an hour on sales tax. And I said, no, not here. Not only do we spend days a month, but we get audits from all kinds of entities.<\/p>\n<p>And so it just becomes this huge productivity drain for a business. And so, for a fair number of years, it was just kind of the way it was. And the catalyst that caused me to start thinking about it.<\/p>\n<p>I had long thought that I knew from firsthand experience there was a better way to do it, but I hadn&#8217;t thought about getting involved in Getting to the better way of doing it until the South Metro Denver Chamber came to me. And at the time, I was the chair of the south metro Denver Chamber&#8217;s then healthcare policy task force.<\/p>\n<p>They came to me and said, brandon Schaefer, who&#8217;s the Senate president in Colorado, he was a Democrat, he wanted to sponsor some business friendly legislation.<\/p>\n<p>And he approached the South Metro Denver chamber, which at the time was the third largest chamber of the state, and he said, can you give me some ideas for business friendly legislation that I could sponsor? So the president of the chamber called me and said, hey, do you have any ideas? Is there anything you&#8217;d like to advance?<\/p>\n<p>And I said, yeah, we need to fix our sales tax system. I thought about it for about that long. And he said, well, will you write up something?<\/p>\n<p>So I wrote a white paper on how to fix the Colorado sales tax system. And so I started with, what&#8217;s the problem? And then I wrote, how would you fix it?<\/p>\n<p>So I sent that to the president of the chamber, who took it to the board, and the board advanced my recommendation to senate president Schaeffer, who reached out to me and said, hey, I want to talk to you. So I went down and met with him in his office at the Capitol. And he said, this is great. And he said, you know, I don&#8217;t. I think he&#8217;s a lawyer.<\/p>\n<p>So he didn&#8217;t really have to deal much with sales tax. He said, I had no idea it was this big a headache. And I said, oh, yeah, huge. And he said, I&#8217;m going to sponsor this. Let&#8217;s do it.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Excited about it. This is like:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2009\">2009<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>And then he hooked me up with his legislative chief counsel. So I went down and met with him, walked him through the white paper, and he said, okay, I&#8217;m going to draft legislation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So this was looking like, wow, this is going to be a fast track to fixing this thing. And he said, I&#8217;m going to write legislation. President Schaeffer&#8217;s going to sponsor it, and this is going to be great.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>sh, maybe of heading into the:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2010 \">2010<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So he calls me back a couple of weeks later and he says, hey, we have a problem. And I said, what&#8217;s the problem?<\/p>\n<p>He said, well, it turns out that sales tax in Colorado is not statutory, meaning the legislature created it and the legislature could change it. He said, Sales tax in Colorado is constitutional. And he said, it can&#8217;t be changed without a vote of the people.<\/p>\n<p>And we can refer a vote to the people, but that&#8217;s a really heavy lift. And the president was looking at something simpler than a significant constitutional initiative, so they backed away.<\/p>\n<p>But at that point, my appetite was wet to fix the system. And so I would get invited to these meet a group of legislator things where they wanted to go talk to businesses.<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;d go to meet with these groups of legislators, and they. It would be a bipartisan group, and they would basically say to us, what&#8217;s challenging to you in the business community?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And what would you like to see fixed? And there were businesses from all across the spectrum, and the drum I would always beat was, we have to fix the sales tax system.<\/p>\n<p>And I would walk them through in these. These panels where there might be 10 people from the business community, me being one of them, and four legislators.<\/p>\n<p>And once they&#8217;d hear that it was constitutional, not statutory, they&#8217;d all just say, too heavy a lift. Don&#8217;t want to do that.<\/p>\n<p><cite>And so this was about, like,:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2010\">2010<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>We had no lobbyists, no organization. It was just her and me. And we wrote a bill about common definitions because we knew this.<\/p>\n<p>The same thing was defined 40 different ways around the state.<\/p>\n<p>And so we wanted to be able to create a database of how complicated just the definitions were so that we would have that in our satchel to go to legislators and cities and towns and say, look how crazy this is.<\/p>\n<p>So she and I wrote legislation to fund a study group to go to every city and town and get their whole set of definitions and create a book of definitions in the state and compare and contrast them.<\/p>\n<p>And so the bill passed, and as expected, you had this very lengthy document that defined the same things multiple different ways all across the state.<\/p>\n<p>So from that, she and I started going out and meeting with cities, and we&#8217;d go meet with the mayor and the finance manager, the revenue manager, and we&#8217;d always hear the same thing.<\/p>\n<p>When we talk to cities, we know we have a really awful sales tax system, but we control sales tax in our city, and we don&#8217;t want to give up that control. We trust ourselves more than we trust the state. And we would tell them the same Thing every time.<\/p>\n<p>Why would you impose something this onerous on your whole business community? And we&#8217;re not, you know, we disabuse them right away of the notion of we were trying to take money out of their pocket.<\/p>\n<p>We told them, if anything, this is going to be revenue positive. And they would say, why? And we said, you have a lot of. There&#8217;s a lot of tax cheats in the state who aren&#8217;t tax cheats because they&#8217;re cheats.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re tax cheats because the system is so hard and they&#8217;d rather get caught, they&#8217;d rather run the risk of getting caught than have to comply. And if they got caught, they changed what they were doing.<\/p>\n<p>But there were many of them who would tell me, yeah, we know we&#8217;re not doing it right, but we&#8217;re not going to do it. And so we would tell them, the cities about these tax cheats. And we said, if anything, fixing our sales tax system will be revenue positive to you.<\/p>\n<p>But the answer was always the same. And you know, I was a small business owner with a state representative, one state representative who covered part of Centennial in Littleton.<\/p>\n<p>And frankly, there were times that we were treated completely rudely and there were times we also, we met, went with the state tax commission and same. Or the state department of Revenue. The state Department of Revenue, same result. So one day Kathleen said to me, do you know Jake Jabs?<\/p>\n<p>And I said, well, yeah, he has tigers on television, but I&#8217;ve never met him. And she said, well, I actually know Jake a little bit and I know that sales tax drives him crazy. Why don&#8217;t you call him?<\/p>\n<p><cite>umber. So again, this is like:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2010\">2010<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>And Jake&#8217;s still running American Furniture Warehouse, by the way. Now he has a really strong leadership team, but Jake&#8217;s there every day.<\/p>\n<p>In fact, when I was there in August for a couple weeks, I went out to American Furniture Warehouse and I saw Jake. So I called Jake and said, jake, I&#8217;m trying to get some momentum going to fix the state sales tax system. What do you think of joining me?<\/p>\n<p>And he said, paul, I&#8217;ve been fighting this for 40 years that I&#8217;ve been in business in Colorado. And he said, I just don&#8217;t know if I have any more fight in me. And I said, jake, this time, this time we could do it.<\/p>\n<p>And he said, well, come see me at my office. So I went out to see Jake at his office. And I walked him through. I said, you know what the problem is, Jake?<\/p>\n<p>And I think that we can build a coalition that could fix this. And he said, okay, I&#8217;m in. I&#8217;m going to give you my controller and assistant controller, and they&#8217;ll work with you.<\/p>\n<p>And so then when we&#8217;d go see a city, it was Paul Archer, Automated Business Technologies and American Furniture Warehouse. And American Furniture Warehouse is many, many times our size. They pay a lot of sales tax in every state or every city in the state.<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re one of the largest furniture retailers in the country. You know, it&#8217;s a really wonderful Colorado success story. And so wherever we went, they had to be nice to us.<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;d go in and meet with them, and it was Kathleen, me, the controller of American Furniture Warehouse, and they would be nice and we&#8217;d make our case and they&#8217;d all say, well, we agree it&#8217;s a significant problem, but we don&#8217;t want to give up control.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:30:50\">00:30:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>This podcast is for educational purposes only and is not intended, nor should it be relied upon, as legal, tax, accounting or investment advice. You should consult with a competent professional to discuss specifics of your situation and the applicability of the information presented.<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=&#8221;1&#8243; admin_label=&#8221;Comments&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; background_color=&#8221;#FFFFFF&#8221; background_image=&#8221;https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/podcast-01.png&#8221; parallax=&#8221;on&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; background_size__hover=&#8221;cover&#8221; background_size__hover_enabled=&#8221;cover&#8221;][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;4_4&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; custom_padding=&#8221;|||&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; custom_padding__hover=&#8221;|||&#8221;][et_pb_text _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; text_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_font=&#8221;||||||||&#8221; header_2_font=&#8221;Lato|700|||||||&#8221; header_2_text_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; header_2_font_size=&#8221;52px&#8221; header_2_line_height=&#8221;1.2em&#8221; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; header_2_font_size_tablet=&#8221;&#8221; header_2_font_size_phone=&#8221;36px&#8221; header_2_font_size_last_edited=&#8221;on|phone&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;]<\/p>\n<h2>Related Episodes<\/h2>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=&#8221;#A0CD46&#8243; divider_weight=&#8221;5px&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; max_width=&#8221;120px&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][\/et_pb_divider][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row column_structure=&#8221;1_2,1_2&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_column type=&#8221;1_2&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_button button_url=&#8221;https:\/\/podcasts.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/saltovation-making-sense-of-state-and-local-tax\/id1517450565&#8243; button_text=&#8221;Subscribe on Apple Podcasts&#8221; button_alignment=&#8221;left&#8221; button_alignment_tablet=&#8221;left&#8221; button_alignment_phone=&#8221;&#8221; button_alignment_last_edited=&#8221;on|tablet&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_button=&#8221;on&#8221; button_text_size=&#8221;14px&#8221; button_text_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; button_bg_color=&#8221;#A0CD46&#8243; button_border_width=&#8221;2px&#8221; button_border_color=&#8221;rgba(255,255,255,0.1)&#8221; button_border_radius=&#8221;0px&#8221; button_letter_spacing=&#8221;2px&#8221; button_font=&#8221;Lato|700||on|||||&#8221; button_icon=&#8221;&#xe09e;||divi||400&#8243; button_on_hover=&#8221;off&#8221; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;14px|30px|14px|30px|true|true&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; custom_padding__hover_enabled=&#8221;on|hover&#8221; custom_padding__hover=&#8221;|40px|||true|false&#8221;][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][et_pb_column type=&#8221;1_2&#8243; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221;][et_pb_button button_url=&#8221;https:\/\/open.spotify.com\/show\/7M0RZGgWG8A2Vd4okyR2yc?si=umxHEOq4SbCRp4nLy7LBgA&#8221; button_text=&#8221;Subscribe on Apple Podcasts&#8221; button_alignment=&#8221;left&#8221; button_alignment_tablet=&#8221;left&#8221; button_alignment_phone=&#8221;&#8221; button_alignment_last_edited=&#8221;on|tablet&#8221; _builder_version=&#8221;4.16&#8243; _module_preset=&#8221;default&#8221; custom_button=&#8221;on&#8221; button_text_size=&#8221;14px&#8221; button_text_color=&#8221;#003254&#8243; button_bg_color=&#8221;#A0CD46&#8243; button_border_width=&#8221;2px&#8221; button_border_color=&#8221;rgba(255,255,255,0.1)&#8221; button_border_radius=&#8221;0px&#8221; button_letter_spacing=&#8221;2px&#8221; button_font=&#8221;Lato|700||on|||||&#8221; button_icon=&#8221;&#xe0b5;||divi||400&#8243; button_on_hover=&#8221;off&#8221; background_layout=&#8221;dark&#8221; custom_padding=&#8221;14px|30px|14px|30px|true|true&#8221; locked=&#8221;off&#8221; global_colors_info=&#8221;{}&#8221; custom_padding__hover_enabled=&#8221;on|hover&#8221; custom_padding__hover=&#8221;|40px|||true|false&#8221;][\/et_pb_button][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, Paul Archer joins the SALTovation podcast to discuss his efforts to simplify Colorado&#8217;s complex sales tax system, which he describes as a significant burden for businesses. Currently serving as a senior missionary in Nairobi, Kenya, Archer shares his journey from being a business owner to advocating for tax reform. He highlights the challenges of navigating a convoluted tax structure that varies widely across municipalities. Through Paul\u2019s experiences and advocacy, he emphasizes the importance of understanding the disparities in resources and systems between the U.S. and developing countries like Kenya.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"2880","spt_transcript":"Meredith Smith: Let's make sure we're recording. That would be bad. All right. Kim, thank you so much for joining us today on the Saltivation Podcast. It's great to have you here. \r\nKim Blascoe: Well, I'm very excited to be joining you as well. So hopefully we have some really good conversation on different things that we're doing in the industry.\r\nMeredith Smith: Yes. And on that note, so can you give us, um, kind of what your professional background is? \r\nKim Blascoe: Sure. So I'm a CPA by trade. I still am licensed. I practiced for a little over 30 years before I joined CPA.com last year in June. Originally I had a tax and accounting practice, which basically at that point in time had SALT and payroll as part of the service offerings that we did.\r\nAnd then in December of 2010, I was actually merging with an Illinois regional firm when the Whipley opportunity came back around for them. So, I tailcoat merged into Whitley, and at that point, I actually took over the national accounting practice that Whitley had. Now, at that point in time, Whitley was a large regional Wisconsin regional firm. So, we were the first Illinois merger, and we had two offices in Minnesota and two offices in India. And when I actually left Whitley, we were a top 20 firm. So many, many, many mergers later. Uh, I got a lot of experience in adding other accounting practices to the one that I was working with. \r\n[00:03:12] Meredith Smith: Yeah. So then why choose to leave public accounting for CPA. com? What was that drive? \r\n[00:03:19] Kim Blascoe: I'd spent 30 years in practice, like I mentioned, and I loved mentoring younger associates or people that were early on in their careers.\r\nIt was one of the best things that I did. And also I loved working with clients, but I really felt like I wanted to do something more and I had all this experience with, you know, everything I had done. Like I said, you know, with Whipley was a regional firm. And when I joined, I had my own small firm. They were a medium sized firm.\r\nIf you want to look at that way. And when I left, they were a very, very large firm. So I had done the gamut of understanding the opportunities and the challenges of being in different size firms. And I just felt like I really had more to share. So, um, the cpa. com opportunity. Came up and I kind of thought that my background was perfect for the opportunity.\r\nAnd I just jumped at the chance to make a change, which was kind of scary because for 30 years, I'd been doing, you know, really predominantly the same thing, although in in different size environments. But I just kind of switched my mentoring, even though I'd still do mentoring on an individual basis. But I switched my mentoring over to firms.\r\nI look at it just as a different mentoring challenge and an opportunity that I've been given, you know, a little bit later on in my career. \r\n[00:04:32] Judy Vorndran: Interesting. That makes a lot of sense though, at a certain point in my, I'm at that. Getting close to retirement age and kids are almost launched and I'm like, what am I doing?\r\nI have a firm. So, you know, trying to support the younger generation on our team to have a future at our firm and wherever that lies. Yeah, super interesting. And obviously encourage the younger generation to pursue these careers because they're really great.\r\n[00:05:01] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, and I think, you know, when you say, you know, people wanting to become partners, I think 1 of the things that we really work with, um, when we talk to firms as having a career path, especially inside of the cast practice, but even inside of assault practice, you know, salt didn't exist when I came into the practice.\r\nRight? And we did most of those services inside of cast. It kind of more and same with our payroll group. They were all part of CAS originally. And then when I, by the time I left, those were all separate service lines and had matured and added advisory to all of them as well. So, it was no longer a compliance based business.\r\nIt was now a compliance and advisory based business. So, you know, we've seen a lot of changes happen over the years inside of practices. And I think the importance of that is, is all the service offerings that have been added really need to have career paths so that individuals feel like they can, if their desire is to become partner and not everybody's desire is, but if the desire is to become partner, that we give them those opportunities in these other areas of service.\r\n[00:06:03] Judy Vorndran: Right. It's a real great opportunity, I think, to be entrepreneurial, which is why I stayed in public accounting, despite multiple offers to go into industry. I thought, well, once I figure out the problem, because clearly you have 1 that I want, what am I going to do? It's become wrote and no, not the same, but just similar.\r\nAnd so I'm like, I really love the diversity of lots and lots of clients and lots of issues and trying to figure it all out. Yeah. And it's a giant puzzle. \r\n[00:06:26] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, I never did the private side either. And maybe that was part of it. I always thought I'd get bored working with just like 1 company versus the opportunity to work with many companies.  \r\n[00:06:35] Judy Vorndran: yeah. And you're always on the curve. You're always learning. There's always something new to learn in this and all of it. You know, new accounting practices, international, national, new rules, new laws, all the good things. So it's a constantly learning profession, which. \r\n[00:06:49] Kim Blascoe: I'm not going to lie to you, though. I always tell everybody if I had to practice in the salt space, you would probably have to stab my eyeballs. So I'm always so incredibly thankful that there are people that love that space. \r\nJudy Vorndran: I mean, like, why is it though, do you think people hate it so much? I mean, it's just such a negative. \r\n[00:07:09] Kim Blascoe: I think for me, it's like, it's so like standard driven.\r\nLike there's so many rules and regulations that you need to understand. I was always just incredibly happy. Like Jessica Macklin at Whipley is who I always worked with. We were kind of in the same region and actually I'm going to do a session with her at DCPA on the crossover between Salt and Kaz. I saw that on that schedule.\r\nOkay. Okay. So I'm excited about that because I think now it's, it's an opportunity out there that is still very, very, it's a very underutilized practice. Right. So, you know, it's just not experienced.\r\n[00:07:44] Judy Vorndran: I'm an attorney and a CPA, which is probably why I practice in the area because. I think it's incredibly creative to look at the rules and see how they apply, right?\r\nBecause it's not black and white, especially with software and information services and tech and biotech. And there's just so many nuances to business. It's not like everybody sells a thing, right? And that's taxable. So sales tax is very nuanced. Income tax dates are very nuanced. So the creativity aspect of like, what's your position?\r\nWho are you in this state allows for some reattribution of income and also some, you know, obviously some compliance services that you need to manage the expectations of each of those governments to manage your business risk. But, um, yeah, I think that's really interesting though, because so many people do really hate our area.\r\nAnd I really wish that we didn't have that negative spin because it creates like bad energy around it. I mean, all of us on the team, like we dig on it. Like we don't look at it as negative. We look at it like, oh, it's a really cool puzzle. We're going to have to go figure out how to do it. And then we have, you know, because business has one sort of rule.\r\nAnd so, we just have to apply those rules by state. It's not that hard if you know the business, but we get to dive into the business transactionally, which a lot of providers don't. They roll it up. They do what? What is the gross revenue? They don't look at the nuances. We look at the transactions. So, I think it's really interesting as you look how Business makes money.\r\n[00:09:05] Kim Blascoe: And I think a lot of people go, we need all sorts to make the world go around. That's always incredibly happy that people like to actually, even in the payroll space, the payroll space, the payroll tax return space in the sales tax space, but I also think are in salt all the way around, I think the other thing on the SALT side of the house is that, you know, a lot of businesses don't even realize that there's a lot more to salt than a lot of them.\r\nThink of it as sales tax. Right. And even then. They don't know the rules from state to state and the pandemic has so changed the dynamics of how businesses work that a lot of businesses have become national and they don't know what the rules are. Sometimes they think, well, I'm not selling a product.\r\nOkay, but you're sending somebody into that state for a product that you shipped, right? You know, so, like, what are all the rules on that? Where do you have to file? Where do I need to get registered as a business? You know, most people just skate right past all of that. And, you know, I always look at it as, is ignorance bliss, but is it really ignorance? I think it's more of like, they don't even know what they don't know. Right. Right. \r\n[00:10:03] Judy Vorndran: And it's fear. There's a lot of fear of like overwhelm and stress, which I find very interesting because they figured out, I mean, I have clients that have sold 46, 000 products. Right. I'm like, you know, how to like, A plumbing company knows how to tell you this is all the things you buy in order to replumb your kitchen.\r\nHow did you do that? You can absolutely do tax. Absolutely, because if you could figure that problem out, it's very similar. Logical, you know, add the things. But there is this thing out there of complexity, and I think tech has tried to solve some of it, but they lack the knowledge of the tax background.\r\nThey have the tech, but without the tax acumen. So, we've got this marriage happening in, In a software automation, that's not allowing both sides to be the way it needs to be to advocate on behalf of clients, which I know is why CPA dot com years ago chose Vertex as its chosen provider. I don't think that's so much the case anymore. I'm not sure. Cause they were like the preeminent. They've been around the longest and all that good stuff. So yeah, but there are a lot of providers out there now. \r\n[00:11:04] Kim Blascoe: There are. And there are a lot of choices. It's just like all the rest of the technology too. And it's like fairly overwhelming sometimes how many options you have out there, but the importance of those options, I think, especially in the salt spaces, it is an area that, that, that you have to have some expertise and you have to spend some time digging into it.\r\nAnd businesses don't do that on their own. Right. And I think the other thing, you know, the other thing that maybe has some bad connotations around it on the salt side is it's another tax, right? You're telling your clients that. Oh, now you might have to do sales tax, or you might have to do income tax in multiple states.\r\nAnd they're just like, taxed out, right? They're just tax, tax, tax. Everybody always wants money from me. And so it's not always even a pleasant conversation. It's not an area where you can work with client. I mean, you have to work through the value side of it. Right. And, and even like the compliance side of it and like ease of mind that you're doing the right thing, or at least you've been told like what, you know, that right thing is.\r\nI, prior to me leaving Whipley, I actually did a wealth and asset management build out and CAS was one of the service offerings that we did. And when you think about what that wealth and asset management industry does, they have clients everywhere all the way across the United States, right? And they're flying to all of these places.\r\nAnd I used to have, I used to bring Jessica into my conversations all the time and say, talk to them about nexus, talk to them about their, what their state filing requirements are. They may not have a sales tax, but they may also have a sales tax, some state stacks on service, right? You know? So it's like they need to understand. And then from there, they can make the decision about where they want to file and where they don't want to file. \r\n[00:12:37] Judy Vorndran: want to \r\n[00:12:37] Kim Blascoe: file. \r\n[00:12:37] Judy Vorndran: Well, it's funny being at the big four because I was national. So I really cared about the big states, Illinois, New York, California, Texas, Florida, 10, you know, 10 percent of the U. S. nation. I cared less about South Dakota, North Dakota, but then I worked for Eide Bailey and they were sited in North Dakota, South Dakota.\r\nSo, that was our biggest offices and the build out sprung for there. So I had, I had, Went to, you know, I went to hearings in those states. I flew into Pierre, South Dakota to do a hearing on behalf of a taxpayer. I mean, there are big taxpayers in South Dakota, North Dakota. You would have never known, you know, and also as you get to see America, you see there's a lot happening in our country that a lot of people that the CPA community doesn't understand, which is why I think SALT is so important for the CPA to build that tech stack or that competency so that the CPA firms can be successful.\r\nAnd then they're not. Blame for not telling them because there is this thing I feel like maybe mentioned that before my husband, you know, I'm a lawyer and a CPA and I, my specialty is state and local, but not income anymore from a federal perspective. Right? Even though I have a master's of tax, I've rolled away from being a federal tax practitioner.\r\nI'm state and local. So I can't even do my own personal income tax return. And I think a lot of people think, why, why not? Like, cause I don't know, keep up with the personal deductions and so forth. And my husband says to me, who is a securities lawyer and litigator, he says, I don't understand why CPA say they can do all these things when they can't, they can't do accounting services and compilations and audits and tax returns and, and, and financial accounting and income tax.\r\nAnd there's a lot of things in the CPA world that you could do for a living, and you could silo it and get that great, good competency. You don't have to be a generalist, even you running your own practice that was audit and tax. I can't even imagine. How hard that must have been. \r\n[00:14:18] Kim Blascoe: Well, you know, back then though, most practices were generalist practices. They were about the practices that we merged in at Whipley. Most of those practices were generalist practices. Now I would say, probably maybe 10 years ago, five at for sure at the minimum, that started to change inside of practices. And we started doing exactly what you were saying is like maybe moving towards a focus.\r\nSo a practice focus and an industry focus that became very relevant inside firms. And I think even in the smaller firms, they started thinking about what are we good at and what are we not good at, right? Let's focus on that. And now you see cast practices that are really what we call to as BPO business process outsourcing practices that only focus on CAS. They don't do anything else or they have cast and they have tax and they don't do anything beyond that. There's not a test type of services. So I, I think we're seeing that that transition happen within terms and I, but I will also tell you, there are a lot of firms that are still working on getting rid of the generalist concept.\r\nOh, yeah. It's a hard push to get people. \r\n[00:17:14] Kim Blascoe: I think we look at the CAS side of the practice as an opportunity for individuals that went through accounting curriculums or maybe economics or business majors or something like that, that really thought their only option was to go into private, to go to work for a company because they didn't want to do the commitment of the tax season hours or the audit season hours.\r\nAnd so cast gives them an opportunity and potentially Salt would as well, but it gives them an opportunity to stay into or enter into public practice or come back to public practice because there is now this, you know, these consulting opportunities that didn't exist originally. And they looked at it as all compliance based, and it was a drug of ours.\r\nAnd so we feel like we're transforming that whole. You know, space from the advisory aspect of it, so that there are opportunities for individuals that really aren't compliance based because a lot of practices that a lot of cast practices look at the financial statement as a byproduct of the service offerings that they're doing.\r\nSo, if we have that mentality, and we're thinking cast practices are. You know, focused on the advisory piece that do the transactional and accounting controller type of functions so that they have good data in order to do the CFO and the trusted advisor. You know, that's all really important for firms. And firms are still very much struggling to try to get there. \r\n[00:18:35] Judy Vorndran: Well, yeah, and the data thing, too, we actually hired someone who didn't get a CPA, but is a CPA kind of by training and decided to become a data wrangler, basically, which is not what is he's got some extra studying and understanding all data management.\r\nSo, we can assimilate data with lots of different repositories to get good filing information because people roll things up at the transaction level data is so important. And so that has been an interesting pivot for our team to think that way, because we're really good with Excel and, making spreadsheets and all that. But is there other things that we can do to ingest to create, what do you call it, some kind of a process that's not like us moving it into a spreadsheet and wrangling it.\r\n[00:19:14] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, and I think with all the technology changes that are happening now, one of the things that that we are very focused on in the whole discussion around and what does that mean to practices public accounting firm and cast practices is looking at the processes that you're doing manually, looking at the things that you're still doing in those Excel spreadsheets and saying, this is what kind of technology can help replace this so that I can move on to the advisory piece?\r\nRight? So we're trying to automate as much as we can on that back end. So that the value that we're bringing to clients is the conversations we're having with them and the knowledge that we can share with them. And the, uh. Um, the opportunity to help them grow their, their businesses and, you know, maybe potentially meet their goals, right?\r\nSo that's all, that's our goal is their goal, right? So figuring out how do we work with firms so that we can help or practice businesses so that we can help them, you know, meet their goals and their growth. So I'm not sure how much we got to raid. \r\n[00:20:08] Judy Vorndran: Meredith, \r\n[00:20:09] Kim Blascoe: but you take the rest of it. \r\n[00:20:12] Meredith Smith: So Kim, speaking with that, what is the mission of cpa.com? \r\n[00:20:18] Kim Blascoe: So CPA.com, um, actually started as the technical arm of the CPA. And so we really started with a whole concept of, um, helping firms and practices grow in the digit in a digital transformation space. So, very focused on technology, what has been added over probably the last. Few years is we now have a full professional services practice, which is the cast side of the house is what I lead.\r\nWe also have an audit side of the house, which is the technology that was built. So, you know, working with on the CAS side, working with firms to help transform their practices. Right? So working with them on potentially what's their, you know, what's their vision and mission? What service offerings are they going to have?\r\nWhat clients do they want to work with who's going to do the work? You know, what does that work look like? What processes are there? What technology are we throwing at it? How are we going to price it? You know, how are we going to assess clients coming in? So that we know that we're scoping that work appropriately.\r\nAnd ultimately, how are we going to market all of that? So that people know what we're selling right from a, from a firm perspective. So we're very focused on that side of it. We have a lot of, um, education and training that we focus on. We have coaching and consulting programs that we do. So we've changed a lot from just being the technology arm, but technology is still a very big focus for cpa.com and a huge part of our mission. \r\n[00:21:45] Judy Vorndran: Is that like a fee for service thing as well, though, that part of it? \r\n[00:21:49] Kim Blascoe: So, so we do a lot of different things. So we do have, offerings that there's a fee attached to them. But we do a lot of freemium type of stuff. So we do tons of webinars that are free and we do it on our topics that we help practices transform our coaching and consulting is a fee based practice. Uh, some of our education is free base. The webinar stuff is, uh, is free. And some of it is fee. Like, we do some workshops and stuff like that that are have fees attached to them. We do tons of white paper. Um, if you go out on the CPA dot com website, there's a ton of resources out there that are all free to firms.\r\nAnd we are getting ready to launch a toolkit in our professional practices for transformation, because we have a lot of firms that are DIY firms. They like to do things themselves, but they want. They want the tools that we use, and it's not all the tools that we use, but it's a lot of the tools that we use in our coaching and consulting program.\r\nSo if they want to transform their own practice, we're going to give them the essential tools that they can use to get there. Right. So, but we have a lot of firms that are going through the coaching program and we kind of took our workshop that we've always done the CAS roadmap workshop. That we've done for like 15 years.\r\nI went through it in 2017. Maybe it's only been 13 years. I went through it in 2017 and I was like, so invigorated on what I learned. And I'm like, oh, this is so cool. I'm going to go back to my practice and I'm going to start implementing. Well, then you go back to your practice. Cause this was back pre COVID.\r\nSo we were on site for a few days together. So we went back to our practices. Got busy with my day to day, you know, responsibilities, my leadership role and stuff like that. And then a year later I reached out to my cpa.com rep and I'm like, okay, what do you have for me? Like I'm, I'm ready to get started now.\r\nAnd she goes, well, the workshop is all we have. I mean, this is a long story that I'm going to bring around short. I'm like, oh, okay. So I took it upon myself. So I really took that DIY role and I, I worked through transforming. Now, what was a fairly major CAS practice? Because our accounting practice, because we had done all these mergers, right?\r\nSo I had 37 offices. Everybody was doing everything differently. And we're like. Where do we start? So when I came to cpa.com and one of the reasons I joined cpa.com is they asked me to build out our coaching program, our coaching and consulting program. So I took what I wanted, what I was looking for back in 2018, when I came back and said, I've now spent a year not doing anything, can you help me?\r\nAnd I built it. I you know, with a team of people inside of cpa.com, we literally built out. An accountable program, so we took some content of the roadmap workshop and dove deep into a lot of that content. And now it's an 18 month program. We do a variety of, um, group sessions, and then one on one coaching sessions and round table sessions.\r\nAnd we pick a new topic each quarter, and we work through those topics, building it out with the firms. We provide them with the tools they have homework. So there's accountability. So you don't go back to your practice and not do anything and then wonder why. You know, your practice isn't transforming. So, you know, that was, that was one of the big reasons why I did come to cpa.com so that I could help other firms work through what took me two years to do. It was a two-year project. We had a huge human capital piece of it. So anytime you're working with human capital and change management, there's a lot of warm, fuzzy stuff and, and. You know, our HR team was telling us, you know, you just can't do that.\r\nYou have to go about it this way, you know, so just the human capital part of it for me, because I had a team of like 180 people at that point in time that were between India and the U S you know, so we had a lot of changes that we did inside of our practice and you know, all of that kind of got rolled and rolled into our coaching and consulting.\r\nInteresting. So, freemium and stuff that you have to pay for. Because is it self report? Well, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say a lot of our freemium stuff also comes with CPE, so if you join our webinars and stuff, you get free CPE hours, and you can get a lot of them. And I think it's like, a lot of CPAs that are looking for CPE don't realize that there's so much free CPE out there with really good topics and substance.\r\n[00:25:50] Judy Vorndran: Yeah, we've really got, we've taken advantage of it because we're a small firm. We teach and go to things just because we want to stay current with the legal changes and so forth. But we've done it, taken advantage of a lot of that because there's so much out there that's free content that'll give you the CPE hours you want and get some information.\r\nIt's very interesting the way how that shifted. You know, I know a lot of, and a lot of associations made their money off the CPE, right? Or the, I'm a lawyer to continually education, but now other providers are giving it and they're being paid sometimes by a vendor or something. So it's really transformed the way you and I get up to date as opposed to sitting in a conference room, you can get an hour and still move on with the rest of your day and not be completely bonked down, losing several days at work. Yeah. Super interesting. \r\n[00:26:34] Kim Blascoe: I will tell you though, when we went virtual with everything during the pandemic, I'm like, I missed people. I missed going to conferences. I missed my friends like Jenny Hattori that had the same pain points back then as I had, cause our practices were very similar that you can't shift that part of it but you definitely can look at other opportunities.\r\nAnd there's so many now, from a virtual perspective, there's just so many that you certainly can solve a lot of that with freebies. \r\n[00:27:42] Meredith Smith: So then with that coaching and mentoring, what do you see CPA firms struggle with a lot? Or is there a common denominator of just kind of reoccurring items that just continually come up when you work with various CPA firms and leadership and whatnot?\r\n[00:27:59] Kim Blascoe: Tom Hood just, um, put out a new slide that I thought was really, really interesting. I asked him if I could steal it and I told him every time I talked about it, I'd throw his name out there. Um, and it talked about, it looked at April, 2023 and April, 2024. And it was talking about exactly what you just asked me, like, what are firms struggling with?\r\nRight. And I thought it was interesting to see some of the movement of the topics and like, You know, one topic actually went away, but for 2024, it was literally like technology, keeping up with technology due to accelerated digital transformation in gen AI and how AI is like in every conversation that we have these days.\r\nRight. Almost like it had never existed before. And, and really, I talk about it all the time. It's like I do a lot of work with Sage Intact and Nicole Kasich is always like, we had AI. It's just people didn't know we had AI. Right. So now it's like, A buzzword, so that's our, that's our current buzzword.\r\nThe other 1 was upscaling existing talent, which is still a big struggle with firms, even though we are making some headway on resolving that, especially in the cast practice space and then finding and retaining talent is another 1. now, finding and retaining talent was at the top of the list in 2023 and it moved down to, I think, number 3 or 4 in 2024.\r\nSo. Maybe we've made a little headway on it, but it's not going away. And part of that is probably because we know that there aren't as many accounting candidates coming out of universities as much as we had, like, you know, when I came out of university. So that's a little bit different. And then the last 1 is, you know, still working through maintaining a firm culture and a hybrid environment.\r\nI think, you know, there's still our struggles with that. We, we hear firms are talking about pulling people back in a couple of days a week. So that there is some of that. Sense of community inside of the firms and, you know, kind of continuing to build culture because it is kind of hard to build culture when you spend all your time on virtual calls.\r\nRight? You know, so. We're seeing a lot of those changes, but, you know, the people side of it is still a big struggle and technology, you know, is changing faster than it ever has before. So people trying to keep up with all of that is, you know, also a big pain point for firms.  \r\n[00:30:13] Meredith Smith: So, when you talk about upscaling existing talent, what exactly does that mean?\r\n[00:30:19] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, so, so I'll speak from a CAS practice perspective, but it really is something across the, across the entire gamut of public accounting firms. So, we have people that come out of school, And have basically been taught compliance based stuff, right? It's all still technical training, not very much, even soft skill training.\r\nWhen you think about that. So, we have these kids coming out of school and, and we're looking at them and we're saying, okay, it took me 20 years to build my advisory level skill set that I have. You don't have 20 years. So how can we get you to an advisor level type of role? So, as quickly as possible and, and, and what do we, what can we do to do that?\r\nSo, first of all, you know, we're looking at our practices and we're saying, you know, let's take a skills gap assessment on what you have today, because if you want your services to include advisory services, you have to have the people that actually can deliver the advisory services. And so often in our practices right now, we don't have that, especially in our cast practices.\r\nWe have a lot of cast practices that are really, really good at transactional through. Um, consult or controller type of services and they can't figure out how to move beyond that. So, you know, that's one of the things we work with firms on in our coaching program is, you know, thinking about the whole build.\r\nSo we call it kind of building a factory. Like, you wouldn't open a door to a factory with only 1 piece of equipment. If you need 6 pieces of equipment to do the, to deliver the product that you want to deliver. We need our cast practices to think that way too. So if you look at your services. We look at who you're going to work for, like the clients, basically the industry niche that you're going to work in, like who's going to deliver that and how do we get those people upskilled to those, to those different skill sets that we have today.\r\nSome people will never be able to deliver. Consulting services and advisory services. It's just not in their DNA. They're technical people. We need technical people. That's all good. I think we just have to, embrace the fact that not everybody's going to be an advisor, but the people that you do see, like, a glimmer, like, early on in their, in their careers, it's like, those are the individuals you grab, you mentor, you put in upscaling programs.\r\nWe're actually working. I'm hoping by will have a launch on this for 2025, or at least, uh, um, uh, here's what's coming in 2025. We are building out kind of like, how to build a trusted advisor. How do you build an advisor type of role that will have, like, a boot camp basket aspect to it. So, like, they can come and spend 3 days on site somewhere, and it literally is like, you know, doing, like, um.\r\nWorking with other people and doing role play type of stuff, you know, so that individuals get more comfortable doing that. Because again, we don't have 20 years to build these advisors. We need it now. Clients are asking for these services that they weren't asking for 10 years ago. Certainly the pandemic has changed a lot of that too.\r\nThat scared a lot of people. There were a lot of businesses that ended up not making it because they didn't have the cash flow. That they needed to sustain a pandemic, right? So there was no cash flow planning. There was nobody. I mean, nobody realized a pandemic was going to happen. Right? I don't know.\r\nMaybe some doomsday people were saying it was going to happen. Most of us didn't believe it. Right? And I think even when we were still home, almost a year later, we still didn't believe we were like, in the situation that we were in. But, you know, you think about, like, how do we get the, how do we get individuals.\r\nTo a point where, where the skillsets that they have match the services that we're providing inside of practices. And, and firms are looking all the time for opportunities to upskill those individuals. There's just not a lot out there. That's still an area that's being widely built out from a training and education perspective.\r\n[00:34:04] Judy Vorndran: For sure. Because you learn rules and we should clarify that CAS means client advisory services, which is a very broad based word. I mean, right, acronym because honestly, client advisory, like. What does that mean? \r\n[00:35:14] Kim Blascoe: One of the things that we're really working with now advisory leaders.\r\nSo one step up from CAS leaders, because most of our cast leaders roll up through advisory inside of public practices, especially the large firms. Right? So one of the things we're working on at CPA.com is how do we take all those advisory services, right? There's a lot of them. Anything that doesn't fall into tax or audit or a test.\r\nFalls into advisory or consulting services, right? So how do we take all of those services and start focusing on the client centric model where what's the best for the client? So like not thinking about a lot of times in bar, which is the direct technology build for a client rather than going through like a client advisory services practices, where we build the technology for the client, right?\r\nThat we're going to use for that client. So a little bit different. Model like they're very focused on a get in and get out model. CAS is very focused on get in and stay model, right? You know? So it's a, it's a very, very different model, but you know, one of the things on the bar side of the house is they're very focused on selling this and moving on to my next sale.\r\nWe're not like that, right? So we're like, how do we get everybody thinking bigger? So, and also a lot of the larger firms have an outsource CFO practice. So if you take those, the bar, the outsource CFO, the cast practice. And you start getting them to work together on what's the best opportunity for the client?\r\nWhat's best for the client? And what's also then does that make it good for the firm? Right? So, you know, we want to say to the bar practice is just building out that technology for client the right move. Or should you be talking to the client about potentially client advisory services? Maybe they don't need a tech build.\r\nMaybe they just need outsourced accounting and CFO services. So, and that could solve their problem. And then the firm benefits from that too, because it's not a one time fee and it's recurring revenue. Yeah, it's recurring revenue and everybody loves recurring revenue. You think about all the, oh yeah.\r\nStuff that's happening now. They love the re recurring revenue, so they immediately go to the advisory. They love cast practices because it is based off of recurring revenue. \r\n[00:37:20] Judy Vorndran: Yep. No, it's a huge. And I found that myself, cause we've done a lot of automation where we'll set people up to click sales tax, get them licensed, all the things, and then they don't maintain it.\r\nOr the people that started it helped get it set up, leave. And you're thinking, oh, my gosh, nobody's watching it anymore. You were watching it. Who's going to watch it now? And I think there's a lot of that happening in the co sourcing outsourcing area and in software where people are thinking, set it, forget it is just not correct.\r\nIt's not set it, forget it. So there's a huge disparity between what software companies and tech, you know, all the things is just rolling up where people like, I don't know. They want to hand it off because they're CEOs that are visionaries, but they are like, I didn't pick the right pieces to get my business in order.\r\n[00:38:16] Meredith Smith: So then kind of in the, in the spirit of that kind of dynamic, Software recurring revenue kind of changes in what ways are you seeing CPA firms kind of pivoting and transforming their practices?\r\n[00:38:32] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, so I think 1 of the most important things that we need to think through is that. We are still a fairly compliance based industry, right? And there's so much competition other than a test, which we own, right? The audit space. Accounting firms own that space. Other than a test, though, we really public accounting firms don't own anything else.\r\nRight? So tax, CAS services, all these additional advisory services, technically, anybody with a skill set can do those. And we are seeing competition come into the space that is very compliance based, but also very client centric. Right? So they throw a bunch of technology at it. They're they have a very specific ideal client profile that they're going after and they have way more money.\r\nA lot of them are back, so they have a lot more money to throw at things. So I think the importance to the accounting industry is to take a step back and say, where are we only doing compliance? And can we add advisory to everything that we're doing from a compliance perspective? And then also looking at what advisory and outsourcing opportunities are we not, do we not have in our, in our toolkit today that we should potentially look at adding.\r\nAnd the importance of that is, is that CPA firms still have the relationship with the majority of clients, right? So if you look at we mentioned in the beginning, there's 46,000 CPA firms out there, right? And you think about that. So they're the ones that hold the majority of the relationships. If we don't keep up with the competition or stay ahead, really, I think I look at adding advisory to everything we do as staying ahead of the competition because the competition is still very compliance based.\r\nIf we don't do that, we're going to lose our leg in the industry and we don't want to do that. So it's very, very important to AICPA and CPA. com that we continue to advocate. For that, um, in, in the industry for adding advisory services to everything we do for compliance so that we maintain the relationships and stay ahead of the competition.\r\n[00:40:36] Meredith Smith: Well, and that's where we even see from, we work with, with sales tax software vendors to help our clients solve a problem that they have, right. They need to collect sales tax. They need to get on an invoice. What's the best way to do that? And so often we partner with various sales tax software platforms to But what we also are finding them doing, it's like, you know, that same kind of vein of, well, we can solve this problem by way of putting tax on an invoice.\r\nOh, but then we can help you register. Oh, and then we can help you research the tax rules. And then we can help you put all of that collected tax on a tax return. So they are. Expanding and kind of, I would say, kind of doing what you're suggesting CPA firms do, but at the same time, you've got to understand, like, really, what's your core competency and what are you really good at?\r\nBecause as a software vendor, you're not good at advisory services when you're also not an advisory firm, but also the advisory firms, it's like. We do, and kind of going back to some of our earlier conversation, we do want to be kind of like all things for our clients, because that is that relationship.\r\nAnd we value that connection and want to assist you with your problems. But at the same time, that's where we look at it. And it's like, well, we've got to also partner with other firms because we can't be all things to all people. So let's get to know really good people that we can refer you to. And us as state and local tax experts, we don't have to also be competent in.\r\nPermanent establishment for some of our non U. S. based businesses, but let's partner with some of those other firms that are really good at that. \r\n[00:42:16] Kim Blascoe: Yeah. And you know, I think we, a lot of times talk, even in our coaching program, we talk about, we work, cause we work a small, medium and large firms, right. When we do coaching and consulting and you know, I always tell everybody, I'm like, okay, think about, think about the difference in the service offerings that you have between small, medium and large firms.\r\nRight. So your large firms, they probably have a huge. Amount of service offerings that they do, including assault practice, including a payroll practice or an HR consulting practice. So they have, they have like, you know, really like honed in on different services that in a generalist practice, they're going to keep it high level.\r\nAnd the large firms have kind of scoped that much in more, much more detail. Then you think about the medium sized firms and they probably have a good number of services, but not as many. So, they have to go to find resources in other places, and they just build those relationships. And then you think of the small firms where they're really focused on maybe a small number of services that they have to offer, and they absolutely have to go out and find other resources to help them. I always said, you know, one of the, you think of one of the beauties of merging in like a smaller firm, merging into a larger firm, it's like heaven on earth. The first year, when it comes to the service offerings you have available to your clients, right?\r\nSo you have like all this growth in the very first year, because you're like, Oh my gosh, we can do cyber. We can do R&D credits, you know, like all these things that before you had to go find resources for, and, and you realize like how many more. Service opportunities your clients have inside of those large firms, but, you know, there's trades to everything you do, you know, you get into a large firm environment and it becomes a little more of like.\r\nI hate to use the word silo, but, you know, like, you've become more practice and industry focused and now that generalist concept is a little bit different and not all clients like that. So some clients like working with small firms because it's a more intimate relationship. But then you have to go and find some of those additional resources. \r\nI don't know if we talked about this, but, you know, this whole India thing, we had a huge facility in Hyderabad at Deloitte. And what I found that was challenging for our team was we had to do things, have them do things 3 times. So even though we got this huge cost differential and the salaries, we have this huge training cost to the people in the US and these 4 people had to work in the middle of the night.\r\nAnd I see this going on this, this dilution across the nation, where using different countries to take advantage of wage disparity. And I wonder how you feel about that, given the CPA community in America, because it's almost like we're lowering the costs by giving other work to other countries, instead of making American business recognize the true cost of doing business in America by paying US wages. And sometimes I don't, I struggle with that, even though there's a need for it. \r\n[00:46:25] Kim Blascoe: Yeah. So, I mean, I guess I have maybe a couple of thoughts on that one. I think the philosophy today is different than when we first started getting into the foreign countries from a workspace. I think now we have, we, we really have a problem filling seats in the accounting space and hiring offshore helps solve some of those problems.\r\nI think initially the, the stars in the eyes were all about, Oh my gosh, we can get these individuals. For a much smaller fee, but I agree with you, it wasn't a dollar for dollar trade. There definitely was a, a learning and education difference between the individuals. in the offshore teams in some of the offshore countries versus, you know, what we saw on the US side.\r\nSo it really did require additional training. The other thing is, is I think when we 1st went into the offshore world and with at least have their offshore world for a really long time. They had it when I came in in 2010, we already had a cast practice, like a bonafide cast practice offshore, which was kind of cool because they were way ahead of their time.\r\nI had nothing to do with it. It already existed. I inherited it, but it already existed. But I think back then, you know, it was like, you know, let's, let's look at the profitability aspect of it. Then we very quickly learned that it is really important. Yeah. To do a very defined job description and what you're looking for skill sets on the offshore piece so that you make sure that everybody's hired for success.\r\nOtherwise, you're going to constantly be disappointed in the quality of the work that that you're getting over on the U. S side. And I think we all learned from that, right? It was very much a struggle and we all learned from it. And I tell my firms that I'm coaching with that are looking at doing an offshore piece because that's the other thing that offshore piece used to be a very big firm.\r\nThing right now, everybody does offshore. \r\n[00:48:17] Judy Vorndran: I get pitched for it every day. Somebody's finding me and say, I have resources in India, Philippines. I'm like, holy moly. I don't even know who you are, but they're pitching me to use them. \r\n[00:48:25] Kim Blascoe: It's all over the place and, you know, and all different service offerings.\r\nIt's just the way people are solving. You know, some of their employment issues nowadays, but, you know, I think the importance of that, you know, goes back to make sure that, you know, what you're hiring, right. And make sure that the skill sets that you're hiring fit the service offerings that you expect them to do.\r\nBecause when I talk to firms that I'm like, what do you want your offshore piece to do? And I've been here, right? Like I have done the offshore piece. I get it. And they're like, I want them to do everything from transactional to controller. Everything that's not automated. And I'm like, okay, but you understand controller type of services is a higher-level service.\r\nThat's a manager level service on the U S side, right? So, think about who you're hiring over on the offshore side, because in order for them to do those services, they have to have the proper training to do them. You can't expect, you can't expect those individuals to be able to do it on their own and their education systems.\r\nAre different than the U. S. education system. So, you might need to send some people over to do some training and, you know, maybe the, I always said the beautiful thing would have been to have had somebody that was willing on the U. S. side, a couple of people that were willing to maybe go spend a year over.\r\nYeah. We did a ton of secondments at the light tons of people spend, we would send a lot of people over there. I went over there many times, you know, so we send a lot of people over there, but nobody was there for the long haul, right. You know, go spend a year, help us train up our people. So, I think that's all really important and something to take into consideration when you're looking at the officer.\r\nSo, I don't think it's necessarily about profitability anymore. I think it's about finding people to do the types of services that we need to do for our individual practices because we just don't have as many bodies on the US side\r\nI think younger generations just wants more time and not as much, you know, hands on and wants to utilize tech.\r\nBut there's, there's a dichotomy going on here where they think tech solves all and there's still talent and operations that need to be done. In fact, Just talking to some other firm leaders recently at this boomer conference, which I assume is kind of similar to the cpa. com is doing, which I didn't realize was doing something similar.\r\nThat's why we're talking to you, but I'm lucky to these other teams. And they're like, well, I did it all the way. Like I know how it needs to be filed. So now I know the automation is right. And there's something to be said about that. You count on automation. We don't, I was taught never to count on automation.\r\nThat was just my training. You can't trust it. But I think we've got a generation that's saying, well, trust it. Yeah. But verify, right? We don't know how to verify it, though. So we've got to kind of figure some of that out nationally, nationally. \r\nMeredith and I years ago, we wrote this article about Sweden because Sweden loves their taxing authority. They love the part of their government that's involved in their life from birth to death.\r\nAnd so there's something about it. They've done really well, maybe because they're a homogenous society. I don't know. But we have this very anti tax. Thanks. Culture in America. And I'm like, but you know, you have roads and schools and fire departments and police and, and, you know, people taking care of science and airports.\r\nI mean, that all took tax dollars. Like you didn't, it didn't get built out. People were going on their wagons and riding horses just a little while ago. So that all paid for people coming together. \r\n[00:53:27] Kim Blascoe: Yeah. You know, an interesting story about that. Back when I was doing tax work, I had a. Client a new client they came into the country.\r\nThey were Canadians. They came into the country And so they were living here full time and so they had to file a tax return So I did their tax return form and I told them and he was he was a contractor So he had to pay social security tax and income tax and they They had not been paying at all. Right.\r\nHe was a 10 99 subcontractor. And so I prepared the tax return for him. I'm like all stressed out because like they owed just a ton of money. Right. In my mind, they owed a ton of money in company. Cause there was no planning. There was no planning on the upfront. It was like, they walked in my office. They said, do this tax return for me.\r\nAnd I'm like, Oh, where are you from? They're like, Oh, we're Canadian. And I'm like, Oh, cool. Okay. So we did the tax return. I handed them the bill and they go, that's all we owe. And it was, it was a husband and wife. They were sitting in front of my desk and I'm like, Oh, Really? I thought that was horrible. And they're like, Oh my gosh, no, in Canada, we give minimum 50 percent of our income back to taxes.\r\nAnd he's like, we think nothing of it. And you all complain about, you know, how much it costs you in income tax. And even if you ask social security and Medicare tax to that, you're not giving 50 percent your state tax. You're not giving 50 percent for most people. Right. So I thought that was a really interesting, like eye opener, like You know, it's a us problem, right?\r\nOur, it's like our, our, um, you know, kind of thought process about our taxing system and how everybody feels like they get taxed all the way around. And in all actuality, most countries are much worse than ours. \r\n[00:54:55] Judy Vorndran: They're much worse. And I feel like I wish people would appreciate that. I always try to get from a perspective of appreciation.\r\nI mean, certainly we advocate on behalf of taxing. Fairs, but we also recognize that got, they haven't complied. So we've gotta rep, you know, rep say with governments like, Hey, you know, give these guys a little grace so that we can get them in compliance. 'cause they do wanna do the right thing they just didn't know.\r\nSo, you know, but you can only plead the fifth so long . \r\n[00:55:19] Kim Blascoe: Right? And you know, the acknowledgement that government is a business, right? So if you're running a business. Which the government should be running a business. You have to be able to make money in order to do things like you said. Nice roads, clean cities, you know, like all those things that take a lot of money, people's time, and infrastructure to do.\r\nSo somebody has to pay for it. Right, but also, you know, I don't want to pay any more than my share. So that's right. My whole deal, but that's the challenge But I feel like everybody needs to actually pony up some money But it does it \r\n[00:55:51] Judy Vorndran: actually I feel it works out from my experience big Porter regional to small.\r\nI'm like the big firms The big companies bear the brunt of the tax obligations and small companies get away with murder, which is why the Wayfair decision did even the playing field. And there's no reason that decision need to go forward. Wayfair could have given a rip about South Dakota. They did it out of the goodness of their hearts because they're very wealthy individuals that started that company and they and Newegg and overstock.\r\ncom all came together, paid the legal fees to hide that fight on behalf of taxpayers. And I think there you have 3. Come some young tech entrepreneurs who are open to this process as they've learned to deal with America. Right. Okay. If I've got to do it because I've made myself a big name, I'm going to sue, get sued, get audited.\r\nI'm going to kind of settle. I'm going to let it go forward. And that's how that decision came forward. Because it was 100 percent a plan thing. It was not, it did not need to go to the Supreme Court. It was, it was a deprived, uh, procedure. And the fastest way the great Supreme Court was to go through South Dakota.\r\nBut it did even the playing field. To some degree from a regulatory things. \r\n[00:56:53] Kim Blascoe: Yep. Yeah. Definitely changed things and I think, you know, to some degree made things a lot more complicated or maybe. Yeah, \r\n[00:57:02] Judy Vorndran: oh, \r\n[00:57:03] Kim Blascoe: way complicated. \r\n[00:57:04] Judy Vorndran: I've never seen states act that quickly in my whole flipping life. I've been doing this almost 30 years.\r\nI've never seen every state get on board within 3 years. Every state has a wayfair law. Now they all are varied, but they all have 1. you just do not see that kind of conformity. Ever, but they're like, there's a huge amount of money not coming to my front door because it's coming to my, I'm getting packages delivered to my front door now.\r\nAnd so I'm going to even it. And you know, the other thing, the cost of doing business is slower now because of tech and people are open for business everywhere, including myself. I don't just have Colorado clients. We have clients all over the world. We can help anybody because we have tech. We can talk to you like we're doing now.\r\nWe're not barrier. We don't have barriers to entry by having someone drive up to our office. So, and even though we have offices, we work remotely because why go in if we don't need to. So it's really changed the dynamic of our ability to help 1 another. And with tech, we can do it. I would, of course, we were pandemic proof because.\r\nYou know, we're we're we're a necessary job. Yeah. \r\n[00:58:03] Kim Blascoe: Yeah. I did say it was 1. I thought that the 1 thing 1 really beneficial thing for cash practices coming out of the pandemic was clients now realized that you didn't have to be sitting in their office to have a conversation with them. Right? Yes. You know, even though a lot of, um, staff on cast practices were already working remotely, they still had a regional draw to them to some degree.\r\nSo like, if they had clients that still wanted them to come and sit in their offices, they did that. Yeah. When the pandemic happened and we spent a year on zoom and then like, I'd have clients and they, I'd be like, do you want me to start coming out again? They're like, no, like we like this. We're used to it.\r\nRight. And it was really the birth of virtual. Um, the virtual conversations and the, and CFO and trusted advisor conversations that individuals were having, having with their businesses and the feeling that sitting next to them wasn't as important anymore. \r\n[01:00:52] Meredith Smith: Well, and as we wrap up, and I can't believe we're kind of coming to the end of Q3, right? Looking into the end of Q4. As 2025 quickly approaches, does cpa.com have a focus that they're looking into that could impact the industry and kind of forward thinking? \r\n[01:01:09] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, so I think 1 of the, you know, I've, I probably mentioned today already, like, one of the big things that we're focused on is the advisory transformation piece.\r\nRight? So we will continue to focus on our audit and cast transformation and offerings that we have. And and we have a lot of firms that haven't even started any of that. You know, I think if you think about the audit transformation, it's a. It's a much slower move than cast transformation has been right, you know, because audit has been the same for many, many years.\r\nSo we now have, um, you know, things being built that change the way audits are done and and that's. Amazing and there's technology being thrown at it. So spreadsheets may be a thing of the past, even in the audit world. Um, so that's really cool. And we continue to work with cast practices on their transformation as well.\r\nBut I think overall, that whole, you know, discussion that we had earlier on the advisory piece of it and what that advisory transformation looks like, um, from an overall firm perspective, and then how do we get things, you know, aligned appropriately, you know, From a service offering perspective, so that we are more client centric and thinking about what that client experience looks like working, you know, with the firms, which is maybe a little bit different approach than we've had in the past.\r\nYou know, we've been very practice or service offering focused, not necessarily thinking about the client experience. So that's a big part of it with what we're doing today. We upscaling piece because we have a long way to go. And there, you know, you had mentioned when we were talking about. Like, you know, things that the younger generation doesn't know how to do a bank reconciliation.\r\nThey don't know how to do bank reconciliations. They grew up on their computers. Everything is on their phones. Everything is in real time. They don't have any of those skills yet. We still do that inside of cast practices, uh, from a business perspective. So, you know, building out even some of those, what we would consider to be entry level skills into a cast practice, because the service offerings in cast.\r\nAre different than what they need from an audit and tax perspective. So we continue to work on our upscaling programs and education that we have. Um, and I think, you know, that is 1 of the areas we know that firms come to us all the time and say, we need this. Right? So we have this thing called cast core at, which is.\r\nUm, an education packaged education platform for, uh, cast. Associates that they can go, they also have something called MBA express, which is really like a leadership soft skills thing, but we don't really have anything on that, that lower end, you know, in our, in our cast leaders are saying to us, you know, could you please build something so that when we have new people coming into our cast practice, we can give them, uh, you know, uh, cast 101 training on what cast is, because this is not something that is being.\r\nUm, trained and educated inside of the university level stuff. So we're working on a lot of that as well. So very much still focused on the education and training piece of it. But transformation is our number 1 focus and continuing to build vendor relationships that help the firms that we work with.\r\nYeah, \r\n[01:04:13] Meredith Smith: that's awesome. And I think we're so kind of grateful and helpful that there are resources out there like cpa. com. Um, especially because I think the industry is changing. We're not just green visors sitting in a desk, you know, not moving anymore, not talking to any people and, you know, it is truly a relationship.\r\nField, and so, Kim, we really, really appreciate your time today and thank you so much for being here and we look forward to continuing the relationship. \r\n[01:04:45] Kim Blascoe: Yeah, so much fun. Thank you for having me. \r\n[01:05:19] Meredith Smith: Well, this has been another episode of SALTovation. \u2018Til next time.\r\n","footnotes":""},"categories":[723,229,226],"tags":[252,167,284,126,265,476,999,30,1007,80,141],"class_list":["post-14303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-podcast","category-state-and-local","category-tax-news","tag-accountant","tag-california","tag-cfo","tag-cpa","tag-finance-professional","tag-franchise-tax","tag-public-law-86-272","tag-state-and-local-tax","tag-tax-cases","tag-tax-provider","tag-tax-returns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Paul-Archer.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14303"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14338,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14303\/revisions\/14338"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14311"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}