{"id":14477,"date":"2025-02-13T18:34:26","date_gmt":"2025-02-13T18:34:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/?p=14477"},"modified":"2025-09-09T16:04:38","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T16:04:38","slug":"data-security-and-tax-administration-insights-with-ryan-minnick-coo-at-fta","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/data-security-and-tax-administration-insights-with-ryan-minnick-coo-at-fta\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Security and Tax Administration Insights with Ryan Minnick, COO at FTA"},"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; 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hover_transition_speed_curve__hover=&#8221;ease&#8221; hover_transition_speed_curve__hover_enabled=&#8221;ease&#8221; background_color_gradient_stops__hover=&#8221;#2b87da 0%|#29c4a9 100%&#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><strong>What You Will Discover:<\/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;4.27.4&#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><span>This week on the SALTovation podcast we speak with Ryan Minnick, COO at FTA, about the crucial role The Federation of Tax Administrators plays in connecting tax administration authorities across the United States, encompassing all 50 states and several major municipalities. 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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><strong>Topics Discussed in this Episode:<\/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;4.27.4&#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<ul>\n<li>The Federation of Tax Administrators serves as a vital connection between tax authorities across all fifty states, enhancing collaboration and efficiency.<\/li>\n<li>The FTA organizes numerous conferences annually, fostering knowledge sharing among tax administrators and offering insights into best practices and emerging trends.<\/li>\n<li>The FTA focuses on providing essential support and resources to tax agencies, enabling them to navigate complex tax administration challenges effectively.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][et_pb_row _builder_version=&#8221;4.17.4&#8243; 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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;4.27.4&#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>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:02\">00:01:02<\/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. Hi Ryan, thank you so much for joining us today on the SALTovation Podcast. It&#8217;s great to have you here.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:19\">00:01:19<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0Awesome. Well, thanks for inviting me. I&#8217;m really excited to chat with you and Stacy today.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:24\">00:01:24<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>So, to start out, can you tell us about the Federation of Tax Administrators and why it exists?<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:30\">00:01:30<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, well, I might be a little biased, but I refer to us often as the most important organization you&#8217;ve never heard of. We are an organization that connects the tax administration authorities of all 50 states, plus D.C. new York City, and Philadelphia.<\/p>\n<p>Those are our members.<\/p>\n<p>We also work with numerous municipalities and large cities all over the country that have some sort of technical connection to the tax filing process. So these are cities like Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, California, Louisville, Kentucky.<\/p>\n<p>So anywhere that tax is administered, we initially focused on sales and use and income tax when we were put together. And over the years we have more than 25 programs spanning dozens of different tax types and different agency operational areas.<\/p>\n<p>So we exist to be that connective tissue. So my stakeholders are anyone who works for a revenue agency in the United States, with the exception of the irs. The IRS is a kind of a.<\/p>\n<p>A friendly affiliate of ours. We work with them really closely, but they&#8217;re not a member so much as they are part of that larger tax ecosystem at the federal level.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Stacey:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:02:34\">00:02:34<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Yeah, that&#8217;s awesome. And even as you list us, the locals, I&#8217;m like, yep, check, check, check. Yep, we know them all. We love to hate them all, and we love them all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So then what is your role within the organization? And then just what are the responsibilities that you view in being that kind of connective tissue at the fta?<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:03:00\">00:03:00<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Absolutely. Well, I guess more specifically. So my role, I&#8217;m our chief operating officer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I also oversee our programs in the areas of technology, data security, cybersecurity, and data safeguarding.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So some of those things sound very similar to probably some of your listeners, but they are all different programs for us because of how data flows in and out of the tax world.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And nine years ago, when I joined the organization, I actually joined as a technical subject matter expert specializing in the translation of really complicated technology issues for executives. So if you think back nine years ago, things like blockchain were really big back then. Super, super interesting, but super hard to articulate concept.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so I started there and then over the years picked up more programs, and then I think a little over three years ago, was appointed our chief operating officer, which is just a fancy way to say I, I do whatever I can to clear roadblocks for the team. And for our executive director, Sean Benardi, we have an 18 member board that we work with that&#8217;s made up of tax commissioners from all over the U.S.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>shiron is our fearless leader who gets everybody aligned in purpose. And I&#8217;m the person in the engine room making sure that the, you know, the spaceship gets where it needs to go.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s a, it&#8217;s a tremendous amount of fun.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Some of the challenges that you kind of were asking about organization wide, a lot of people think that we speak for tax agencies or that we have influence over tax agencies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m here to dispel that myth because tax agencies are part of sovereign entities, which are states, and those sovereign entities can do largely whatever they want.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So whether it&#8217;s tax law or different code provisions that are passed at the legislative level, or different executive initiatives from the governor&#8217;s office, those get handed awfully, oftentimes in not a perfectly wrapped package to the tax agency to then implement or to carry out. So our work starts when the tax agency receives that information.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So for anybody out there who&#8217;s like, oh, I know, Ryan, now I can go complain about tax rates. Tax rates are above our pay grade at fta.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Those are all just what our members are handed and they have to administer them fairly, equally prevent fraud, and ensure there&#8217;s a measure of efficiency for both the taxpayers and then folks like your stakeholders who are intervening on their behalf.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:05:15\">00:05:15<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Don&#8217;t we all wish that we had a little bit of control over what happened at the states? Right. Maybe we would or would not have a job if we did.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:05:24\">00:05:24<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, there&#8217;s been many conversations I&#8217;ve had with folks. They get frustrated, they call me first, and I&#8217;m always happy to be the first one to get the call because it can be challenging.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of permutations on how states handle things. And so what we do at FTA is we try to find those commonalities, those best practices.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So when there&#8217;s something trending like something like a wayfair decision that comes out, we work with the states really early to not only understand what&#8217;s happening leading up to a landmark legal decision like that, but then our subject matter experts, our team, like our general counsel, Brian Oliner, our directors of various programs, we coordinate with the states to collect those best practices to understand the issue. That way, when something Landmark happens, whether it&#8217;s huge, like Wayfair or small, like the trend in electric vehicle taxation for charging.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All of these different things we try to stay in front of so that we can issue out to our members, you know, we can&#8217;t tell them what to do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But here&#8217;s, we&#8217;ve talked to all of you and here&#8217;s what you&#8217;re all thinking and here&#8217;s some commonality and then oftentimes those common threads get woven into everybody&#8217;s story. And so we can create kind of a semblance of consistency by being that, that interchange and that connection of information for everybody.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:06:35\">00:06:35<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, I know the conversation just started, but I&#8217;m going to give you a pro preemptive thank you for trying to, you know, head off some of that because kind of as you were talking, we&#8217;re talking about like Wayfair landmark decisions, you know, just impact, right?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If all of a sudden you have this influx of, influx of registrations like we did with Wayfair, you know, kind of also getting the attention of non US based companies of, you know, officers that don&#8217;t have a Social Security number, it&#8217;s like, well, we&#8217;re going to require like an online registration. Let&#8217;s maybe kind of give another option for, you know, non US entities or people or, you know, some of those items or those hurdles.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:07:18\">00:07:18<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, I know the team appreciates it, I do. It&#8217;s, we all of us refer to it as our FTA crystal ball.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, we get it from having a national perspective and having really great relationships with all these various stakeholders, public, private, federal, state, other associations that track specific issues. And when you put all that together, you know, our goal is just to try to get the right information to the right people.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That way when they&#8217;re first asked the question, they already have that background info. You know, you still see deviation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, even with all the information sharing in the world, you&#8217;re never going to get the same outcome in every jurisdiction when they&#8217;ve all got different tax based mixes and different priorities.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And you know, even before you get to the differentiation in political parties and things like that, it, it really, it&#8217;s actually kind of one of the really fun parts of what we do because we can strip back the issue to the core information, make sure it&#8217;s shared and be a resource for people to ask questions. And it&#8217;s always interesting to see how things play out longer term.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And my favorite intersection to work on with our general counsel who runs our legal programs. So I&#8217;m technology, he&#8217;s legal.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Almost everything happening in agencies that involve technology is really more of a policy issue than a technology issue.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we frequently get into debates and rabbit holes and looking at how do you accommodate things like registration portals or taxpayer access or information disclosure using statutes that have been on the books for decades and probably haven&#8217;t been updated in the modern Internet era.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s this how do we help move tax administration as a, as a practice towards excellence and that continuing practice of excellence while also operating in environments that are legacy environments, both from a policy and a technology standpoint.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know, complicated issues that come up, especially with changes at the federal level that then have to flow down through the states will shock you. I&#8217;m sure that not all federal policy is crafted after polling every single state and finding out what&#8217;s going to happen to them if they do something.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So even, you know, responding to those issues in real time, as bills are moving through Congress or as court cases are working their way through, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s really, you know, our, our job is to try to see things coming before they happen. We&#8217;ve got a pretty good track record.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t, we don&#8217;t hit them all, but it&#8217;s something that I think our members appreciate and hopefully the downstream effects, whether you all directly see it in your work as practitioners or not, something that we&#8217;re pretty proud of.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:09:47\">00:09:47<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, and as you represent, you know, all of the states, D.C. and you know, some of the locals that you had referenced, like what does support for those tax authorities and whatnot, what does that mean?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Right, because when you talk about, you know, we started with sales tax and income tax, and then we&#8217;ve expanded the programming, like, what does support look like or what does that mean?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:10\">00:10:10<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;re, you know, we&#8217;re not, you know, we have many attorneys on our team. We&#8217;re not all attorneys, so this analogy only goes so far, but we&#8217;re almost like a law firm on retainer.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we are a tax administration resource on retainer. We not only push information out, but we also are available when someone encounters an issue they&#8217;ve never encountered before.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re the folks you generally come to and ask what to do or what you need to know when you&#8217;ve encountered a new issue and you&#8217;ve, you&#8217;ve never seen it before for. Because one of two things happens.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Either we&#8217;ve seen it somewhere else in a different state and we can connect the dots and we can help people find the information they need, or if we&#8217;ve never seen it before, we can actually facilitate Some of that research and information gathering to try to understand the issue better, to try to facilitate a solution, whether. And it&#8217;s so varied across the organization.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I mentioned we have 25 different programs that range from E filing of taxes, which I suppose a fun fact is we&#8217;re the custodian for all of the state formats for E filing for any of the tax types. So the IRS has their E filing system, they have their schemas, their formats that they require the state versions of those schemas.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>FTA is the custodian. We facilitate that development. We host those files for states to pull down.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In fact, the one part of tax administration we don&#8217;t get involved in is anything involving taxpayer data.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So one of the big perks of our role is that we get to look at all of the application and resources and how all of these different regulations impact things, but we don&#8217;t have the burden of analyzing or looking specifically at taxpayer data.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, that&#8217;s a sovereign responsibility of those various states or in some cases, a shared responsibility for different national programs that they belong to. But fta, we&#8217;re the knowledge as opposed to the data.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So when I talk about things like sharing information, just so everybody&#8217;s clear and on the same page about it. But every agency is a little different. I mean, everybody&#8217;s organized a little differently.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Everybody, you know, some people or some agencies organized functionally where they, you know, you put your audit collections, customer experience, call center, you put them all in verticals, and you coordinate the work across all tax types.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Some agencies organize functionally where they have, within those larger verticals, they may have a dedicated group that&#8217;s just income tax or just corp tax or just sales tax. That way they can kind of rotate and huddle knowledge. There&#8217;s no, there&#8217;s no best approach or worst approach. And, you know, the.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our largest agency that&#8217;s a member has, you know, several thousand employees. Our smallest agency that&#8217;s a member has, you know, a little over 100 employees.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So it really depends on the taxes they&#8217;re charged with, administering their role, how they interface with other state agencies. So we talked about this at the, at the CRUSH panel. Not all states, state agencies have control over their IT environment within their agency.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A lot of them have to coordinate through a state central authority. And that state central authority then has to collate the priorities of every state agency.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And in some states, those agencies can number in the hundreds depending on how the state structures all their various programs.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So it&#8217;s very different to make a change when you have control of your entire technology stack versus when you have to compete with other state agencies for that coding time and that technology resource. So yeah, it makes our jobs very interesting day to day because there&#8217;s no easy translation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>In fact, even for most roles in the middle of the agency outside of your executive leadership, oftentimes the titles don&#8217;t match.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we rely heavily on our experience and our knowledge of the states to even connect person A with person B of the same, you know, the same role and responsibility because everybody&#8217;s civil service is different in those states as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:13:59\">00:13:59<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I have a question. So when would a agency I guess kind of decide and what might be a decide deciding factor for them to become a member?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:08\">00:14:08<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we&#8217;re really lucky in that from the outset we&#8217;ve had all 50 states as members of FTA. So the, you know, all 50 states plus DC have been in from the start or largely close to the start.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So you can tell probably by looking at me, I haven&#8217;t been here for the full almost 90 years that FTA has been around. I know a few things.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But you know, along the way, very early on we had complete participation, which is a lot of the secret to our success because we were, we have knowledge representative of all the regions of the country, large states, small states, income tax states, non income tax states, sales tax states, non sales tax states. It. We also have insights into excise tax administration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So things like tobacco and motor fuel, which are highly complex things to administer both from a compliance and a tax standpoint. And then along the ways we started adding large cities. So Philadelphia and New York City are full members of fta.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They, they joined due to their, their size and scope of tax administration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we have, you know, requirements for kind of full membership that require you to administer a tax very specifically and to administer it for a large enough population to where, you know, your work is analogous to other members over time. We&#8217;ve also worked with all these municipalities that I mentioned. So it&#8217;s the handful I mentioned the outset.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also, you know, even large counties like Cook County, Illinois, which is, you know, one of the larger than some small states in population, just one county. Yeah. So anyone that has that tax administration responsibility.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so from a membership standpoint, if an entity qualifies or an organization qualifies for membership, you know, if their priority is administering tax, having access to that real time communication, also having access to that lifeline of reaching people outside of your state, your agency, your municipality, there&#8217;s no other organization that provides what we provide.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re really proud of that because everyone in their role, if we worked for state agencies, our job is heads down, focused on our state, our environment. We know our statutes, we know our regulations, we know our systems.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But when something novel comes up, we don&#8217;t immediately have a national relationship that we can tap into individually. People build that by working with fta. So they do it in a couple of ways.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One is this is probably a good segue into how we deliver some of this information. So we have a national circuit of conferences and working group meetings.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We do just shy of 30 a year, which is actually quite a big lift for a team of 11. There&#8217;s 11 of us, we got eight full time, three part time and they range in subject matter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So some of them are regional meetings that deal with the executive perspective and agency leadership. We have a national meeting in June every year of our tax commissioners.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All of the governor appointed or elected tax commissioners in the United States for these state agencies. They get together with their top legal counsel and top deputies and talk about like the 50,000 foot issues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So things that are trending best practices.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s also where we recognize excellence with our FTA awards, where any programs they&#8217;ve implemented over the last year they can submit and get judged by a panel of tax administration experts on what qualifies as innovation and excellence in tax administration. You flow that through to the fall when a lot of these meetings happen. We have a technology conference.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We have the only technology conference in service to state tax administrators. A lot of the technology tax conferences really cater more to the practitioner community.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then states might attend from a subject matter perspective.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But we host a 4 to 500 person technology conference every year that focuses on solutions, best practices for administering tax and those systems that impact that. We have specialized conferences for revenue estimation and tax policy, for E filing and fraud prevention, for tobacco and motor fuel taxation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>t finished that at the end of:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2024\">2024<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so we bring together government only folks with a few private sector guests that can come in and present and then we kick them out so they, they can&#8217;t hear the government, only discussions. But that&#8217;s where we talk about the business, the work of tax administration.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So audit compliance, collections, customer experience, criminal investigation. So it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s these national platforms for connecting with each other.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then even deeper than that, since I didn&#8217;t list off 30 just now, there&#8217;s other working groups that get together regularly to learn best practices to talk about very specific issues. So we do that in person, which is a big chunk of how we engage. We engage with just shy of about 4,000 tax administrators every year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>4,000 of the roughly 50, 51,000 people that work for our members. We have also an online platform called our FTA community. I&#8217;m actually repping my FTA community pin today for the podcast.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that community platform is really kind of a bespoke version of LinkedIn just for the tax administrators and those state agencies so can engage with each other in subject matter areas. So those 25 programs we have, they all have many sub communities on that website.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So anybody who has varied responsibilities or has an interest in learning, all those resources are available there for them. We, we engage with, you know, thousands of tax administrators there as well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then we also have our kind of infrequent, you know, either infrequent webinar and learning opportunities, some of which are open to the private sector. So we do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our website is taxadmin.org Most of your practitioner folks, if they don&#8217;t recognize FTA, they may recognize that URL because we host lists of sales tax holidays and different tax rate tables and things that are really valuable. We actually have a page that almost every practitioner I meet has bookmarked and they never knew it was us.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a list of all the website links for every tax agency in the country. So that&#8217;s their, that&#8217;s their homepage and they go through. If you need to get to Alaska or, you know, Nevada, you can click through.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So our public website has a great calendar of events. What&#8217;s open to people in the private sector, what isn&#8217;t. So we host a lot of those opportunities in person and online.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We also do regular sharing calls so that states can build relationships and talk about emerging issues. Yeah, we also author a lot of things for our members. Working papers on various emerging trends. Some of those we talk about publicly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We also conduct every couple years a survey of tax administrators. So anyone who&#8217;s really curious about trends nationally. It&#8217;s a publicly available survey.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We do it in partnership with EY and Georgia State University, the Andrew Young School of Business there.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>f the survey was conducted in:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2023\">2023<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s collated nationally, regionally by category and it talks 47 page report that talks about, you know, what are the priorities, where are they allocating resources, what are challenges that they&#8217;re experiencing, what are the, you know, what&#8217;s recruitment and retention look like?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So all of those really important issues that we want to help communicate to the outside world that tax administrators are going through in their agencies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:25\">00:21:25<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, it sounds like you need some more stuff to do, right?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:27\">00:21:27<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You got any projects for me?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:29\">00:21:29<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Right, right, right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Your technology conference that you said that you held in the fall, is that just for kind of the public tax agencies, or do you make that available to practitioners or the private sectors that&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:44\">00:21:44<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Open to the private sector for attendance. It&#8217;s. I might be biased. It&#8217;s the first.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When I was, when I joined the organization and took over our technology programs, I inherited responsibility for that conference. So it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s been my, my conference child. I have the primary responsibility for kind of keeping that one on the rails.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, you know, our entire team contributes content from their subject matter viewpoint to all of our conferences. But we all have one that we kind of run point on and coordinate in. The technology conference is mine.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I&#8217;m a little biased, but I think everybody should go to it because it&#8217;s a great opportunity to hear from technologists and business leaders about what their priorities are, what they&#8217;re working on, what their challenges are.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We have a lot of now kind of the startup community that&#8217;s looking to serve government in some way, shape or form with some of these innovative technologies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We have a few that now attend our conferences even before they&#8217;ve defined their product because they want to understand the issues that tax administrators are going through so that they can, as they&#8217;re developing their solution, actually be in lockstep.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>s, early:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2000\">2000<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>great conference. Actually in:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2025\">2025<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the second week of August. All those details typically get posted to our website, you know, about, you know, three to four months before the conference with agenda information.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And if there&#8217;s any subject matter experts listening who want to share their knowledge with the states, I encourage them to, you know, reach out to me or the FTA team because we&#8217;re always looking for speaker proposals.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes we&#8217;ll put emerging experts on panels together it&#8217;s how we cover things like ethics and transparency and you know, an era of artificial intelligence. We, we have a lot of partners in various other, various tax compliance spaces that, you know, they, they see things a little differently.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They, you know, when you work with your customers as practitioners or if you&#8217;re a large taxpayer, you know, you&#8217;ve got a view on some of these emerging issues. And you know, we&#8217;re, we like to break the echo chamber. So wherever possible, we bring in as many diverse viewpoints as much relevant information.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Even if it feels, in the case of technology, a little science fiction to government. Sometimes new technology is always adopted first by the private sector.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And they correctly, happily for us, they get to try and fail and experiment a little bit before we bring it into a sensitive environment like government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But we often bring those topics up early because we want our stakeholders to be thinking about them in their day to day work before it becomes part of their workflow. So that when it does come time to use these tools, they can use them most effectively for what they need to get done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:37\">00:24:37<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Days. Feel like going to Washington in August. I mean, it&#8217;s a nice time to be in Washington.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Maybe, maybe not in like the fall or the winter, but I mean, Stacy and I went to Texas in June a couple years ago. So, you know, this is something we want to get involved in. I don&#8217;t really want to go to Texas in June.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>No offense to Texas, but it&#8217;s, we live in the mountains now. It&#8217;s dry. It&#8217;s very not dry in Texas in June.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:25:01\">00:25:01<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Oh yeah. Second week of August, Tacoma outside of Seattle. Really, you know, really great, great spot where we moved that conference. Yeah. Not raining yet. Nope.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Nope.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:25:12\">00:25:12<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Can probably still see Mount Rainier out there.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:25:14\">00:25:14<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nice. Pretty view. Yeah, we, that conference does move around. Actually all of our conferences move around. So because we serve national stakeholders.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>t&#8217;s going to be, you know, in:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2026\">2026<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So our annual meeting in June that I mentioned, that&#8217;s going to be actually in Chicago, Illinois, which people get very excited about because who doesn&#8217;t love Chicago? And I&#8217;m sure we&#8217;ll see really great attendance there.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And again, that&#8217;s more targeted towards the maybe tax practitioner leaders who are interested in kind of legal and policy perspectives from the states. We have a really robust legal and policy track that Brian Ollen or our general counsel puts together.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;ve got a great speaker series in our general session that SRAN works with all of our agency and various organization partners to bring in really great speakers on emerging trends, economic data, things that are going to impact tax administration over the next 12 months. So it&#8217;s a really great opportunity to, you know, anybody who&#8217;s interested in the 50,000 foot view of tax come hang out with us in June.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then anything that emerges from that conference you want to know more about, join us at the appropriate conference in the fall and we we dig a little deeper, we go down into that 10,000, 5,000 foot view that help people functionally get their jobs done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:28\">00:26:28<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>That sounds great. Look Stace, we&#8217;re going home in June and then we&#8217;re going to go, you know, take it back west in August. Let&#8217;s do it. Sign me up.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:37\">00:26:37<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Awesome. Can&#8217;t wait.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:39\">00:26:39<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/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 on the SALTovation podcast, Ryan Minnick, COO of FTA, discusses the Federation of Tax Administrators&#8217; crucial role in connecting tax authorities across the U.S. and promoting collaboration among them. He highlights the organization&#8217;s efforts to streamline communication, share best practices, and provide vital resources to navigate the complexities of state and local taxation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":14482,"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-14477","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\/03\/Ryan-Minnick-1.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477","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=14477"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14579,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14477\/revisions\/14579"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14482"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14477"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14477"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14477"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}