A Court Ruling Just Opened a Path to Billions in Client Refunds

Implementing usage-based pricing successfully requires more than just a pricing strategy. It requires financial and operational infrastructure capable of handling dynamic pricing models, real-time usage signals, and increasingly complex monetization approaches.

In this guide, you'll learn  ⤵

Download the Guide

Summary: MYCPE ONE's CPE Wallet is a free AI system that logs and manages continuing education credits for CPAs, EAs, CMAs, and CIAs — no subscription, no card on file. Why it matters: If you're still tracking CPE hours in a spreadsheet or a shoebox of certificates, this replaces that manual reconciliation entirely, for free. Catch: MYCPE ONE built and describes this tool itself, so there's no independent data yet on how completely it maps to every state board's specific CPE rules — check your own state's requirements before you retire your old tracking method. Unknowns: The source material doesn't say how the tool verifies credit hours against state board databases, or what happens if a state changes its requirements mid-cycle — worth testing with a small batch of your own historical credits before trusting it fully. My take: Worth setting up this week regardless of firm size — the downside is zero and the upside is real time back. This is the kind of unglamorous admin tool that's a better AI use case than most of the flashier ones getting funded right now. [Read more →]

TIGTA Says It Can't Confirm IRS Chatbots Work — TIGTA reports the IRS's own performance data on its chatbot and live-chat tools is unreliable, meaning the agency's watchdog can't confirm whether those tools are actually helping taxpayers. Why it matters: don't tell clients to lean on IRS chatbots for anything beyond basic lookups this season, since the government's own oversight body can't verify the tools are accurate. [Read more →]

Your AI Time Savings May Be an Illusion — New Sage data found 49% of US finance professionals spend 15+ hours a week checking AI output, and 19% spend more than 30 hours. Why it matters: before you count any AI tool's time savings as real, track your own verification hours for a month, because the number you're saving on production may just be moving to review. [Read more →]

Court Ruling Opens Door to Pandemic Refund Claims — A ruling in Kwong v. US found that IRS filing and payment deadlines were automatically postponed for the entire COVID-19 disaster period, opening a window for refunds on penalties and interest paid between January 20, 2020, and July 10, 2023. Why it matters: pull any client's transcript who paid a late-filing or late-payment penalty in that window and file Form 843 before today's deadline — individuals can now submit electronically through their IRS Online Account, but business clients still have to file on paper, and only penalties tied to that specific 3.5-year period qualify. [Read more →]

Encryption Is the One Basic Firms Still Skip — A new piece on Intuit's Tax Pro Center, written by SmartVault's CISO, lays out four cybersecurity fundamentals every tax firm needs: encrypted removable storage, secure file-sharing instead of email attachments, periodic cloud permission audits, and two-factor authentication that skips SMS codes (which are vulnerable to SIM-swapping). Why it matters: run a quick internal audit against these four this week — the piece is written by a security vendor's CISO, not Intuit staff, so while its product picks (1Password, Bitwarden, Keeper, Dashlane) aren't self-promotional, still confirm any tool choice fits your firm's specific setup. [Read more →]

Opening entities in every country can be slow, expensive, and hard to scale.

That's why more companies are using EOR to hire globally faster.

See how Oyster helps teams hire, pay, and support talent in 180+ countries while staying compliant along the way.

Get all the answers

Before you trust any AI tool's output this tax season, time yourself checking it for one full week. Sage's data says US finance pros average close to 13 hours a week on verification, with nearly half spending 15+ — if you're nowhere near either number, either you've found a genuinely reliable tool or you're not checking closely enough. [Read more →]

Usage-Based AI Pricing Is Coming for Firm Budgets: KPMG's newest AI Quarterly Pulse Survey of 2,145 senior execs found 29% have no idea where their rising AI costs are actually coming from, as usage-based pricing replaces the flat-rate contracts they'd budgeted around. The same shift is coming for the AI subscriptions your firm relies on, and if your current tool runs on a flat monthly fee, that pricing model has an expiration date — start budgeting for per-use costs now instead of getting surprised by an invoice during tax season. Why it matters: pull up your firm's AI contracts this month and check for usage-based clauses buried in the renewal terms, before a busy-season spike in usage turns into a busy-season spike in cost. [Read more →]

Fed Chairman Names AI Task Force Leaders — Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh named Marc Andreessen, Stanford economist Charles Jones, and Xbox CEO Asha Sharma to lead a new task force studying AI's economic impact, all three known for bullish views on AI's transformative potential. Why it matters: if the Fed starts treating AI adoption as a macro variable that shapes rate decisions, expect it to filter into guidance to lenders and regulators your clients answer to — long before it becomes a formal compliance requirement you can't ignore. [Read more →]

Cursor's $60B Deal Spurs a New CFO Council on AI ROI — SpaceX's $60 billion acquisition of Cursor prompted the formation of a new CFO council to build a shared framework for measuring AI ROI, as token-based pricing makes AI budgets harder to forecast. Why it matters: BCG's analysis of Cursor's usage data found companies in the top quintile of AI token usage saw 16.5% revenue growth, versus 5.1% for the bottom quintile. If you're advising clients on AI spending, that's the case for measuring usage now — before token pricing swings blow past what's budgeted. [Read more →]

The theme this issue isn't that AI can't do the work — it's that nobody's verified how well it's doing it yet, from IRS chatbots to your own client refund list. Check the output before you sign your name to it.

—Alex

OpenAI and Anthropic could bring a new wave of AI attention to the public markets. But investors don’t have to wait for the IPOs.

MarketBeat’s 7 AI Stocks to Buy Now report reveals 7 publicly traded companies positioned to benefit from the next phase of AI investment.

Send My Free Report

📬 Know an accountant drowning in manual bookkeeping? Forward this.