{"id":14484,"date":"2025-02-19T19:41:10","date_gmt":"2025-02-19T19:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/?p=14484"},"modified":"2025-09-09T16:04:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T16:04:29","slug":"data-security-and-tax-administration-insights-with-ryan-minnick-coo-at-fta-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/data-security-and-tax-administration-insights-with-ryan-minnick-coo-at-fta-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Data Security and Tax Administration Insights with Ryan Minnick, COO at FTA: Part 2"},"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 continue our conversation with Ryan Minnick, COO at FTA, about the technological hurdles tax agencies are facing today. We examine the tension between user-friendly taxpayer portals and the need for strong security measures, noting that legislative complexities and resource limitations contribute to cumbersome interfaces. Ryan highlights the importance of balancing accessibility and security to improve voluntary compliance. 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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><\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>The substantial financial implications associated with updating state tax systems, with estimates reaching upwards of $200 million for comprehensive overhauls.<\/li>\n<li>Data security in state tax administration is critical, stressing that taxpayer trust is paramount for effective compliance and interaction with tax authorities.<\/li>\n<li>Agencies need to navigate statutory limitations while striving for innovation and improved services.<\/li>\n<li>Voluntary compliance: enhancing user experience can significantly contribute to improved taxpayer engagement and satisfaction.<\/li>\n<li>Inter-agency relationships and communication foster collaborative problem-solving.<\/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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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 Salvation show is a podcast series featuring the leading voices in SALT where we talk about the issues and strategies to help you make sense of state and local tax.<\/p>\n<p>In the second part of our episode with Ryan Minick, COO at the Federation of Tax Administrators, we continue our conversation about tax technology from an agency perspective at the state level and how states work to get it right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:01:28\">00:01:28<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we kind of just, I&#8217;m sure this just a tiny little subsect of, you know, all, you know, 25 programs and whatnot. And you had kind of brought this up.<\/p>\n<p><cite>ugh, you know, this year, the:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2024 \">2024<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>State websites basically know how you give states their sales tax. And you know, everyone had their favorite, everyone had their least favorite portal to use.<\/p>\n<p>So kind of just using that little kind of carve out what is your perception of kind of how states view their filing portals and, you know, what they do to try to improve them or just I know there was one fact that, you know, one of the states on the panel, it was either if they wanted to update their system, it would either cost 90 million or like $90 million to upgrade their state website. So just what is, what does that look like? How do you think states view that?<\/p>\n<p>Do you have any examples just kind of looking at that tiny little portal component in isolation?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:02:50\">00:02:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Absolutely. So, yeah, technology from the taxpayer perspective versus the agency perspective.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is, as you saw at Crush, one of my favorite conversations, because I think the scope and scale is so different than people expect when you cross this divide from private to public. So states rely on kind of a multitude of interconnected systems in order to do the work of tax administration.<\/p>\n<p>So you&#8217;ve got inbound flows of data from the digitally filed returns, you&#8217;ve got your public website. Oftentimes your private portal is not in the same platform at all as your public website for a lot of safety and security reasons.<\/p>\n<p>And then connecting it all, and this is a huge oversimplification, but connecting all these pieces is what we refer to as an integrated tax system or an its. So your integrated tax system could be a single vendor. There&#8217;s a lot of states that use particular vendors to implement this.<\/p>\n<p>So they&#8217;re commercial software that get customized for the state, that run either locally.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:03:44\">00:03:44<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Or in a cloud environment that&#8217;s secured.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:03:46\">00:03:46<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>To a certain standard or in some Cases, states have, you know, their integrated tax system. Integrated is a little bit of a misnomer.<\/p>\n<p>They may have a mainframe system that interfaces with a bunch of other kind of child processes that then makes up.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:03:59\">00:03:59<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>A single view for their agency employees.<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:04:02\">00:04:02<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But, you know, beyond that is really a number of different systems that pull together. And I suppose, you know, one important point is that we talk about legacy a lot.<\/p>\n<p><cite>hat, you know, it&#8217;s like that:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"1995 \">1995<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Usually it&#8217;s all running on very modern hardware, sometimes in very modern data centers, but it&#8217;s the code base itself. For the nerds who are listening, like me, that means that it might be written in COBOL versus something more modern.<\/p>\n<p>But legacy doesn&#8217;t necessarily mean out of.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:04:46\">00:04:46<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Date or not modern.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:04:48\">00:04:48<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We use modern and legacy to refer to things like programming languages. But to your. The $90 million, it ranges widely from, from state to state.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So estates to replace that core, that integrated tax system function, that can be an exercise that costs anywhere from tens of millions to more than 100 million. In some cases big states, $200 million to over many, many rollouts and many, many months and years phase out and replace that system.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re really great projects. I think they should be.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know, I like the tax practitioner community to be aware of these large price tags because that&#8217;s something that they can then support if they have any relationships with legislators or with state agencies that help fund and allocate that budget. Because oftentimes those price tags are shared without context and people don&#8217;t understand why it would cost so much to replace it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And if you think about it, these integrated tax systems are the single point that 94, 95% of revenue for your state comes through.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so you really want them to be secure, you really want them to have that high level of performance, and you really want to then have what we were talking about at crush, really great user experiences to interface with them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so I know that I was interested in the discussion around taxpayer portals because this is often one of our topics internally about data security more so than usability, because it&#8217;s that. That perfect scale, right? The most secure system in the world is one you can&#8217;t get into.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And the least secure system in the world is often the One that&#8217;s easiest to use and there&#8217;s everything else falls somewhere in between. And so for states, they&#8217;re actively making decisions because they want to optimize for.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:06:30\">00:06:30<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A number of things.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:06:31\">00:06:31<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But for this conversation, two really important things, right? One&#8217;s voluntary compliance. Voluntary compliance makes the world go round.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So 51,000 employees of the nation&#8217;s tax agencies that belong to FTA, 330 million Americans, 150 odd individual income tax filers, tens of millions of corporate filers. So that ratio, if you have to talk to every single taxpayer or help all of them, that&#8217;s an untenable prospect, right?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You would need staff many, many, many multiples of what we have. So voluntary compliance is great.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How do we make it easy and then how do we make it secure so that what you&#8217;re providing to the state agencies, as a practitioner, as a taxpayer, is received, reconciled payment, deposited and have all that done, ideally timely and in an automated fashion.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then only have those exceptions be situations where, you know, there&#8217;s a unique situation that needs to be addressed, or maybe there&#8217;s a complex, complex text type issue or really free up the resources to deal with the really chewy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know, maybe I&#8217;m crazy when I say this, but the really fun problems, the ones that don&#8217;t quite fit tax code and the model that you expect, but everything else should just flow through. And so the pain point, the pinch point for that is how accessible do you make a system?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:07:50\">00:07:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>What do you do for identity requirements?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:07:52\">00:07:52<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How do you make sure that these systems are accessed securely, that you can.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:07:56\">00:07:56<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Receive data and that you can trust.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:07:57\">00:07:57<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The data that you receive, and that you&#8217;re not inadvertently disclosing data that could then be used criminally or fraudulently, either against the tax agency or against the taxpayer. So that&#8217;s where a lot of these discussions happen. So, and note that for the last minute or so, I didn&#8217;t mention technology at all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>This is all policy decision making, risk tolerance, risk gradient analysis. And that&#8217;s where I think we talk about it a lot at conferences and I was excited to share it with the audience at crush.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s part of, you know, it&#8217;s not the sexiest headline in the world. You know, tax agency wants to protect your data. Makes it really hard to log in like that. Not really the headline. Usually it&#8217;s insert agency names.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Website has been down for three days and it&#8217;s been hit with pummeled with all these requests. So there&#8217;s a lot going on behind the scenes that I Think, you know, kind of supports empathy more than, more than criticism often.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:08:51\">00:08:51<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, and that&#8217;s as you&#8217;re, you know, after I left that and you know, we do sales tax filings for clients and you know, two factor authentic authentication is, you know, a pain. We appreciate the, the mechanisms behind it and the reasonings for it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But, you know, when you&#8217;re trying to file a sales tax return on like the last minute you make a payment, it&#8217;s, it&#8217;s an annoyance. But I did start developing that empathy for the Ohio Business Tax Gateway. This is an opinion of Meredith Smith, not of Tax Ops, not of the F.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Of the fda.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Just like how clunky or just unfriendly some of these systems can be because of that and just, you know, taking a step back and it&#8217;s like they&#8217;re doing the best they can.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And I&#8217;m sure that they&#8217;re sick of hearing feedback about how people don&#8217;t like their website, but of all of the list of things that money can be funded towards, like, had a little bit greater empathy for, you know, the Business Tax Gateway. Now I haven&#8217;t Two factor authentication mandatory. TFA just went live in Ohio around the recording of this. So my empathy might be diminished.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But again, opinion of Meredith, not of anyone else on this episode.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:00\">00:10:00<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, and it is hard that, like I said, all that risk gradient and every agency is going to make their own decisions based on either the risk tolerance that they have in leadership or sometimes the risk tolerance they have in statute. So there&#8217;s also some things we run into where, you know, a state agency may have a legitimately, you know, they want to do something for, to make.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:21\">00:10:21<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The business run smoother or to make.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:22\">00:10:22<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The process run smoother, but there&#8217;s a statutory requirement that prevents them from doing so.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:26\">00:10:26<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then that becomes even more complicated.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:28\">00:10:28<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Because they have to then work with their executive branch, with their legislative liaisons in the agency. They have to articulate that need to their legislators. The legislators have to decide whether or not the issues important enough to either.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:39\">00:10:39<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Put in its own bill or attach.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:41\">00:10:41<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It to a different bill. And so it can be, you know, you can identify one process or procedure issue. It could be, you know, months, if not years to get it resolved.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Not because they don&#8217;t want to do.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:51\">00:10:51<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>The work or they want to, you.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:10:52\">00:10:52<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Know, don&#8217;t want to make it easier. But sometimes their, their hands are tied by something that was written, you know, before computers existed.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so, you know, they can&#8217;t run afoul of it because it&#8217;s statute, but they&#8217;re trying to introduce that flexibility and you know, every agency implements a little differently. But yeah, two factor, we hear a lot about two factor Identity Access management is actually one of the really big challenges right now.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I know the IRS catches a lot of flack for this that I think I&#8217;ll help build some empathy for them too. They&#8217;re not even my member and I&#8217;ll do it. But IRS largely uses that ID me platform for login.gov.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>kind of the linchpin of ID me is that there&#8217;s one account per, per person, like you have to authenticate you as an individual. That&#8217;s part of that identity assurance that you know, for people who are super technical.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>If you want to know more about this, go look up the NIST guidelines and specifically the 863 series. There&#8217;s some really good stuff in there about authentication, identity management and how all of that is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know, NIST guidelines are kind of non prescriptive think tank guidelines and then they show up everywhere else in government. So they show up in a lot of the IRS publications that govern how you design and access systems.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They show up in things like Fedramp where you have to secure your systems in order for them to be eligible for use by federal and state stakeholders. The identity access provisions that dictate a lot of what ID me does are from, they&#8217;re derived from that 863 series.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so even those changes are really hard because people are used to kind of living two lives, your home life and your work life. And when all of a sudden you have to create an authenticated version of.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:12:35\">00:12:35<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:12:37\">00:12:37<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You Meredith, not work Meredith or home Meredith. That can become a friction point. There&#8217;s a lot of pushback that both the private sector, different public sector employees are given about.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hey, why am I providing all this.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:12:49\">00:12:49<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Personal information to create an account?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:12:50\">00:12:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, you&#8217;re providing it so that your identity can be verified, so that you can be led into a higher risk environment, so that you can do what you need to do. And those rollouts are never smooth or well received or seamless for everybody because we&#8217;ve all got our different risk tolerances.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>onto that Motorola Razr from:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"2008 \">2008<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But we have to also kind of keep things moving along and, and two factor identity management, that risk adjustment, that&#8217;s a big element.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Speaker E:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:13:29\">00:13:29<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So I Guess if a state is entertaining, upgrading systems, I mean, are they typically then reaching out to, you know, your team at FTA to maybe get some input, to maybe do have some of your team do some research for them? And I mean, and how much maybe lead time do you guys have in those situations?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:13:54\">00:13:54<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, we encourage people to reach out to us anytime they&#8217;re thinking about any of these issues.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So, you know, sometimes, you know, depending on their, how they&#8217;re handed the project, whether it comes from the legislature, some of the parameters are already set. Generally speaking, our members reach out to us really early in the process.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It may even be before they put together their funding request from their state central IT or from their legislature. So they&#8217;ll do things like engage with.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:22\">00:14:22<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our National Technology Leaders program, which is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:24\">00:14:24<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Made up of agencies, CIOs, CISOs, platform directors.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re going to reach out to their peers that they connect with through our various platforms and they&#8217;re going to have one on one conversations, you know, to find out, you know, what were some of the constraints that you had, what were some of the requirements that you all foresaw? Because everybody wants to see around the corners as best as possible.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They want to know, you know, are we thinking about, you know, capacity in the right way?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:50\">00:14:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Are we thinking about environment in the right way?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:14:53\">00:14:53<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We have, you know, some states have a state central IT unit that operates a data center for the state. So, so sometimes it&#8217;s do we want to host our data in the data center or do we want to work with a compliant cloud vendor to access.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:10\">00:15:10<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Additional overhead and compute power?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:12\">00:15:12<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And the answers are a little different for everybody.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And a lot of it comes down to how you&#8217;re storing data, how you classify data, things like that, but also what your budget is and what you&#8217;re trying to do. From a capital standpoint, that has even shifted. This is super inside baseball. But, you know, the funding models are different.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:30\">00:15:30<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>When you&#8217;re working with a cloud environment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:32\">00:15:32<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Versus a hardware environment, you&#8217;re not buying a computer every, you know, three to five years. You&#8217;re instead, you know, paying for a computer that exists somewhere else, getting a tremendous amount of benefit for that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:41\">00:15:41<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But you have to even budget differently for it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:15:43\">00:15:43<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so that process takes time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, the earliest, the earlier they reach out to us, the better because we can, you know, we can connect them with people who have, you know, similar, you know, either similar employee sizes, similar tax types. A lot of times they even check with their, you know, they may check with their neighbors in the region depending.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:16:00\">00:16:00<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>On the regionality of Some of the.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:16:02\">00:16:02<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Some of the things that they deal with. So yeah, it&#8217;s. Then it happens on the technology side, but then also I interface with most of those folks.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But we may even during the process of modernization have different functional groups like audit collections, customer experience. They may get together and have a discussion about best practices.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s a lot of states that are modernizing things like call center software and so they allocate how that gets done as well as possible because they want to have that high availability for taxpayers to call in. They want to reduce the amount of times that you&#8217;re transferred when you call them with a question.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They want to put in, in some cases potentially assistive technologies that are going to help those call center agents pull up data faster so that they don&#8217;t have to put you on hold.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I mean everything at every step of every process, what I found in nine years being here, every agency is looking at how do we do it faster, how do we do it better, how do we do it more securely and how do we ultimately at some stage.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:17:03\">00:17:03<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Automate it so that we can free.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:17:05\">00:17:05<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Up our limited resource which is human time for the really high value. Complicated chewy stuff.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:17:12\">00:17:12<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I have to keep reminding myself to come back because as you&#8217;re talking about technology and Stacy and I sit in Colorado and we are still fumbling through, you know, Colorado set system and kind of our own technological woes when it comes to something that is kind of really taking up a lot of capacity from like our clients perspective and like what to do with our Colorado locals of like how could this have gone differently?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>How hopefully you know, not expecting you to spill any tea but like that Colorado locals are or one of them or all of them or CML or whatever has utilized your organization in some capacity. But cause high level being snarky, it&#8217;s like yeah, they didn&#8217;t talk to anyone. It&#8217;s a disaster.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:02\">00:18:02<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a good question. We do get outreach from municipalities and small localities.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I think a lot of the challenges, not only getting the word out, they have to know we exist. Like I said, most in my opinion.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:12\">00:18:12<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Most important organization you&#8217;ve never heard of.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:14\">00:18:14<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that&#8217;s there&#8217;s a reason for it. We&#8217;re infrastructure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:17\">00:18:17<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:17\">00:18:17<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re here to connect very specific stakeholders and we have in the last few years really shifted our kind of publicity practices. So we&#8217;ve got much like what we&#8217;re talking on now. We&#8217;ve got a FTA podcast, it&#8217;s called FTA Tax breaks Shameless plug. So look forward to that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You Know, we, and there we actually talk about stuff sometimes it doesn&#8217;t even relate to tax specifically. We talk about big trending things that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:43\">00:18:43<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Are going to impact tax and government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:18:44\">00:18:44<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So, you know, whether it&#8217;s emerging transparency and AI, whether it&#8217;s something like complex customer experience issues, things like that. So we do things like that to make the FTA brand a little more visible to folks who may not normally discover us. We, you know, really.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Myself, our executive director, Sram Benardi, as I mentioned, Brian, our general counsel, Scott Pattison, who&#8217;s our new director of research and Tax policy.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know, we&#8217;re frequent speakers at various industry and academic events all over the country in order to kind of not only add our national perspective, but, you know, give people an opportunity to get to know some of the FTA team and understand kind of what our role is.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And when we, yeah, when we get outreach from agencies like that, sometimes, you know, in some of these locations, they&#8217;re agencies of a handful of people and because of state statute, they&#8217;re now a handful of people that have to administer something that their state&#8217;s agency does with hundreds of people or dozens of people.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so they&#8217;re trying to find their footing and understand sometimes, you know, we can be that helpful connection to their state to, you know, help them, you know, better, better liaise. I mean, this is true of federal to state and then state to locality. Every agency has a different way that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:20:01\">00:20:01<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They run that liaising.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:20:02\">00:20:02<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so those liaison offices tend to be your one point of contact.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so sometimes, you know, we can be even helpful with the liaison offices on how they kind of structure their internal relationships with, with their, their organization or their agency. I mean, we&#8217;re, we&#8217;re all about how do you connect the right information to the right place in the right time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And you know, sometimes municipalities have like a customer service person that they talk to and that customer service person then has to follow up with somebody to follow up with somebody. Not intentionally complicated, but kind of accidentally complicated.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so, you know, we, we try to be as helpful as possible to, to those, even those that aren&#8217;t strict members of fta. But yeah, it can be really complex.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, post, you know, not being a sales tax expert, I&#8217;ll preface by saying that post Wayfair, from a technology perspective, things got very complex. I mean, you&#8217;re looking at a huge volume of registrations, you&#8217;re looking at a huge volume of returns.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Then you had all of the things happening with different marketplaces and them facilitating returns on behalf of other taxpayers. So Purely from a data non policy perspective, it was an avalanche of change that states and agencies had to deal with.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And I can say that from my seat. I think the practitioner community was super patient with that. And I think the states tried to be as helpful as possible during that transition.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes, I&#8217;m sure depending on where you&#8217;re located, that either went really well or didn&#8217;t. But I know things like trying to.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/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>Provide long runways and changes to different.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:31\">00:21:31<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Digital formats and making things more efficient can start to get us there. I know that there&#8217;s still a lot of changes yet to be made, not only from my time listening at Crush, but also listening at our conferences.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Everybody wants to, like I said, it&#8217;s that if you want to be compliant.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:46\">00:21:46<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You want to pay the tax that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:21:48\">00:21:48<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You owe, the best feedback possible that you can offer either FTA or your respective state&#8217;s tax agency, is how can we make it easier for you to do it?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And if there&#8217;s a part of the process that you perceive needs to be simplified, then what we can do is look at, is it complicated because of statute, is it complicated because of operations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:10\">00:22:10<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Or is it just complicated for no reason?<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:12\">00:22:12<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And we can fix it. And that&#8217;s where I know we talked about feedback a few minutes ago.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:18\">00:22:18<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Provide it all the time. Everybody&#8217;s feedback hungry.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:20\">00:22:20<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I think obviously the fine line between feedback and criticism is really tough to navigate, especially when you&#8217;re frustrated.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But if there&#8217;s something that you can see that can be better, even if we can&#8217;t fix it due to a circumstance that you&#8217;re not aware of on the outside of the government agency, it&#8217;s so appreciated. I know that Jay Waldo, the CIO in Texas who was on the panel with Mia Crush, echoed that sentiment.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>He&#8217;s like, yeah, we love getting feedback because, you know, we want to know, you know, we made the website responsive. Does that work for you? You know, the analytics show us that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:50\">00:22:50<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A lot of you are using iPhones and iPads.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:52\">00:22:52<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>But, you know, we want to make sure that you&#8217;re getting what you need.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:22:55\">00:22:55<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, well. And one of the examples, I won&#8217;t call out the states, but they&#8217;re like, you know what, we know our websites, we&#8217;re going to change platforms.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We know our website&#8217;s not ready for primetime, but we&#8217;re going to do it anyway. We&#8217;ll figure it out. You know, and it, I think, came back to bite them. And it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s been a kind of an uphill battle since then.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then another state was kind of, maybe timeline was similar and looking to make that switch. And they&#8217;re like, I&#8217;m gonna step back a little bit and let you all figure that out. And we&#8217;re not gonna go if we&#8217;re not ready, we&#8217;re gonna delay.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I think they delayed it maybe a year or 18 months or something like that. So, yeah, it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s all perspective.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And there&#8217;s so many things that happen behind the scenes, so many parties that, you know, all we can do is complain about what we can see, but we have no idea what&#8217;s, you know, what it takes to put something on a screen.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:23:45\">00:23:45<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, no, it definitely can be. It can be super challenging.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, you know, and in cases like that where you have, you know, different methodologies, just like in tax, in the tech world, there&#8217;s a million different methodologies you can follow for a product rollout. You know, in my private sector days versus my time at fta, I&#8217;ve seen.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:03\">00:24:03<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>A variety of them both work and.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:04\">00:24:04<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Not work for a lot of different reasons. And it is nice that at least the agencies are connected enough through us that when somebody tries something, it doesn&#8217;t work out super well.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We don&#8217;t end up Groundhog Day style seeing it too many places. Very rarely do you see the same error or the same kind of issue in multiple states at the same time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Some of them will have an error, and then the other states that are similar will learn from it. You know, kind of the. The visual effect that I, you know, I think you all can see from.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/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>Time to time of the work that.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:38\">00:24:38<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;Re doing behind the scenes, because they will. They&#8217;ll show up to a sharing call, and, you know, they&#8217;re. They&#8217;re happy to say, hey, we tried this.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:44\">00:24:44<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It didn&#8217;t work.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:45\">00:24:45<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so here&#8217;s our advice to anybody else who&#8217;s thinking about it, and they take that advice to heart. The relationships are super close among people who serve in those roles.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:24:53\">00:24:53<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>One, I love that you say that as we kind of begin to wrap, because that&#8217;s kind of been a common theme for, you know, those listeners who get. Continue to stick with us over all the episodes. It&#8217;s like when it comes to state tax, it&#8217;s really those relationships that matter.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And I think it maybe it provides like, a modicum of comfort that, like, the states even have relationships with each other and they have this opportunity to share or, you know, make things known of what worked for them. Because us as practitioners, you know, we can&#8217;t know everything everywhere.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So we rely on our friends and our colleagues and, you know, all over the country to help us get our work done.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that it&#8217;s great that organizations such as yourselves, you know, provide that opportunity and that resource to build those, you know, relationships. And as you said, states are sovereign nations.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They can do what they want, but they do still have that sense of community in those relationships to figure it out. And so while they can do what they want, they&#8217;re not alone and they have that context and that, that availability to them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:25:52\">00:25:52<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Yep, absolutely.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And it is, I think, you know, because of those relationships and because of the overall, you know, the passion of people who, I mean, people don&#8217;t get into tax administration for the money.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:03\">00:26:03<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Right.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:03\">00:26:03<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I mean, these are, you know, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re in a public servant role.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:06\">00:26:06<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You&#8217;re there because you believe in the.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:07\">00:26:07<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Mission and making sure that hospitals and fire trucks and critical public services are funded.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And, you know, you&#8217;re, you&#8217;re part of that community of helping kind of bring the critical ingredient, you know, in my opinion, for government, you know, money in order to do whatever happens downstream. You know, they&#8217;re really dedicated to that, to that mission.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so as a result, even when you find a kind of a sovereignty differentiation among states, oftentimes they&#8217;ll look at best practices from each other and they&#8217;ll.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:34\">00:26:34<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Try to do things in a consistent.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:36\">00:26:36<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Manner as long as they can accommodate.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:38\">00:26:38<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It with their own specific requirements.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:26:40\">00:26:40<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So, you know, you kind of don&#8217;t run into that classic sovereignty problem of we&#8217;re all going to do it differently just because we can. And that&#8217;s not at all the attitude of the states. They want to.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They recognize that there&#8217;s a lot of taxpayers that have obligations in multiple jurisdictions. And while they can&#8217;t all ever get to that perfect synced up one button place, they can try to make it as consistent as possible.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They can share behind the scenes to best practices. Here&#8217;s what worked well, here&#8217;s how we&#8217;re making sure.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And then above all, it&#8217;s the number one priority that I talk about on stage, in podcasts, at conferences.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:27:15\">00:27:15<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Our number one priority is data security.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:27:18\">00:27:18<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Trust is hard to earn and easy to lose.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And no one, hopefully listening to this, at least no one I&#8217;ve met in the last year, no one thinks anything of clicking submit on a tax return and that data going to an agency because they trust that it&#8217;s going to be secured, that it&#8217;s not going to be stolen and used against them by a criminal. That is a high, high trust.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Because there&#8217;s other places where we, you know, submit our information that we do think about it, you know, there&#8217;s, you know, there&#8217;s different websites, different vendors, third parties that, you know, you may think twice before you click submit. People don&#8217;t do that with tax agencies.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And so as a result, we are laser focused both at FTA and the agencies, our members, they want to deliver this like next generation, great, excellent experience for taxpayers. The priority is securing that data. That, that is the most critical data set in government.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s income, its identity, it&#8217;s all of these different business situations. And in the case of complex returns, business activity, indifference.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>They want that to be locked down, secure, and only use for the purpose of tax administration for what they received it for. And that I think people keep that in mind. Sometimes other things that you encounter will make a lot more sense when it&#8217;s.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:28:33\">00:28:33<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Hard to do and you&#8217;ll be like.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:28:34\">00:28:34<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>You know what, maybe this is hard to do because somebody somewhere decided that they wanted to prioritize protecting me over making this one particular step easy. I can&#8217;t promise it&#8217;s the case all the time, but it often is when we, when we hear feedback and we look at how to improve processes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:28:49\">00:28:49<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Well, Ryan, I think that&#8217;s the perfect spot to end. Thank you so much for all the work that you are doing that, you know, the FTA is doing. You know, you and your 10.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t believe there&#8217;s only, you know, you have a. You&#8217;re a team of 11. That, that of all of the numbers that you&#8217;ve thrown out there, that&#8217;s a number that&#8217;s really kind of sticking.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Speaker E:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:13\">00:29:13<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s an impressive number for the amount of work that you guys have to do. Yes.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:18\">00:29:18<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>So thank you so much and thank you for, you know, spending your time with us. We really appreciate it.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Ryan:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:22\">00:29:22<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Awesome. Thank you for having me. Look forward to seeing you in Chicago and Tacoma next year.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:27\">00:29:27<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>I know it&#8217;s. It&#8217;s out there, Stace. It&#8217;s gotta be real.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Speaker E:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:30\">00:29:30<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Exactly.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:32\">00:29:32<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>All right, that&#8217;s another episode of Saltivation.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:34\">00:29:34<\/a><\/time><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Till next time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><cite>Meredith:<\/cite><span>\u00a0<\/span><time><a class=\"cp-timestamp\" data-timestamp=\"00:29:36\">00:29:36<\/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>[\/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 technological challenges faced by tax agencies, focusing on the tension between user-friendly portals and necessary security measures. He emphasizes the importance of balancing accessibility with security, the financial investment needed to modernize tax systems, and the need for greater understanding from tax practitioners regarding state tax administration complexities.<\/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-14484","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\/14484","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=14484"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14580,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14484\/revisions\/14580"}],"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=14484"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14484"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/taxops.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14484"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}