Perplexity Eyes Tax Prep While IRS Tests Palantir for Audit Selection

Attention: This is a machine-generated transcript. As such, there may be spelling, grammar, and accuracy errors throughout. Thank you for your understanding! David Leary: [00:00:04] People have called Palantir the most dangerous company on earth. So that's who's going to be picking audit audits. Now for the IRS it's a little bit scary coming to you weekly from the OnPay Recording Studio. Blake Oliver: [00:00:20] Hey everyone, and welcome back to the accounting podcast, your weekly roundup of news in the profession. I'm Blake Oliver. David Leary: [00:00:26] And I'm David Leary. And Blake. I don't know with this being how many days out before the tax deadline here. Uh, six days, six days, seven days, six days. Yeah. If anybody's going to show up to the live stream today, everybody's probably pretty much heads down doing tax work. So we'll see. Give them a second. Blake Oliver: [00:00:42] We got lots of tax stories though. Stuff tax pros should be paying attention to. Perplexity one of the big AI companies out there. Maybe not as well known as OpenAI or anthropic, but definitely a big one. They're going after tax prep. You caught my attention with this David. We're going to lead with that and a story about how the IRS is using Palantir to decide who to audit, or they're scoping out doing that. They spent some money on it in 2025. And so maybe, you know, the company that is working with the Defense Department to pick out terrorist targets is also going to pick out audit targets. Um, and of course, we're going to talk about, uh, Trump accounts. They apparently they've been really successful. But before we do all of that and much more in the world of accounting news, David, let's thank our sponsors. David Leary: [00:01:28] Our sponsors this week we have on pay cloud accountant staffing reframe and worthy. Blake Oliver: [00:01:33] Are you tired of payroll headaches getting in the way of the client experience? You want to deliver manual workflows, creating bottlenecks, compliance nightmares, and endless support calls that go nowhere. There's a better way for your team and your clients on pay is the payroll partner that accountants and bookkeepers actually love. Why is that? Because it's easy to use, packed with value, and backed by support that actually supports you. Their team gets rave reviews for being fast, expert, and actually reachable when you need them on Pei. Handles the heavy lifting. You get a dedicated onboarding coordinator who sets up worker profiles and transfers year to date data from previous providers, all at no extra cost. Their seamless QuickBooks and Xero integrations eliminate manual journal entries, and they support any type of business you serve farms, restaurants, nonprofits, you name it. On Pei can handle unique requirements without adding complexity and on. Pei keeps pricing simple, too. Everything your clients expect from multi-state filing to off cycle Pei runs is included. No hidden fees. No surprises. To book a demo, head over to The Accounting Podcast. That's The Accounting Podcast dot promo 1099 o n a y. Now, David, we got to get to perplexity and IRS audits, but let's do that Trump account story first because we talked about this on a past episode. And I'm curious to hear what's new. Like it's out, it's happening. Right? David Leary: [00:02:57] It's happening. And to rewind a little bit. For those of you who don't know at work, but basically any child that's born between January 1st, 2025 and December 31st, 2028 and has a valid Social Security number, is eligible to get one of these Trump accounts with the money in the savings account started for you with the money in the account. Blake Oliver: [00:03:17] And it's like not a small amount, right? It's like a thousand bucks or something. David Leary: [00:03:20] I think it's $1,000 from the government pilot contribution. But then some billionaires like the Dells, Michael Dell from Dell Computer, they're putting an extra $250 each to the first 25 million accounts that are on low income zip codes. But what's amazing about this is the totals that already the IRS says more than 4 million children have already been signed up for new accounts. Blake Oliver: [00:03:42] 4 million. David Leary: [00:03:43] 4 million. Um, and if you put this in perspective, and that's what I was trying to understand because, because really what this is, this is a government created savings vehicle. And the same way a 401 (K) is or a 529 College savings plan. So if you think about A 401 (K), about 60 to 65 million Americans participate. But there's 160 million workers in this country. So it's maybe 35, 40% of the people participate in 401 (K). And that's including employers who a lot of them auto enroll you. Right. And then you think about 529 college savings plans. There's about 15 million, 16 million of those, but there's 70 million children. So again, that's maybe 20, 25% of families. And if you think about the time for one K plans, it's been decades and they're only at 3,540% participation. College savings plans. It's been 25 years, 25% participation. It's been about a year. And they're at there's 4 million accounts for about four and a half to 4.7 million kids. So it's pushing 85, 90% adoption in one year, which is this is really amazingly successful. And I think the reason why is because it's just a form. You just fill out that whatever the stupid name is because Trump put his, uh, is it 45, 47? Blake Oliver: [00:04:57] Yes. Form 4547 Trump account elections. David Leary: [00:05:01] But it's a one page form and you just file it with your tax return. So the barrier to entry is, is relatively a lot smoother than some of these other like I don't even know how to set up that chill. The, the savings plan for the college. Like that's way too complicated and you wouldn't do the 41K if the employer didn't offer it. But this is I think it's because they've made it simple for people to enroll. And then the other carrots there, there's money, right. So it's a combination of both. But but but to have 80%, 90% participation is for anything the government does is very. These are crazy successful thus far. Now, it doesn't mean that these funds will get locked in with other legislation one day. And then these kids can't get their money. Who knows? But as of right now, it is a successful government program. Blake Oliver: [00:05:49] And I got to say, the website actually looks pretty good. Trump accounts.gov The headline is Trump Accounts Jumpstart the American Dream. These are tax advantaged investment accounts for US citizens under the age of 18. Fill out IRS form four five, four seven when you file your taxes, or by clicking below to make your election for the 2026 tax year. So this is all children under 18. So when you did that calculation, David, on the success, like you were dividing the number of accounts that have been created by what population? I'm just wondering how you figured that out. David Leary: [00:06:25] For the Trump accounts. Blake Oliver: [00:06:26] Yeah. David Leary: [00:06:27] Um, it's the number of births that have taken place since those two days. Blake Oliver: [00:06:30] Oh, well. But can't anyone. David Leary: [00:06:32] January 1st of 2025. Blake Oliver: [00:06:33] Can't anyone get these if they're under 18? David Leary: [00:06:37] No, but you have to be born in that window. Blake Oliver: [00:06:39] Oh. Got it, I see. David Leary: [00:06:41] Which is by default. You'd have to be under 18. Yep. Blake Oliver: [00:06:46] Well, that's, uh, that's interesting. You can contribute. Families can contribute up to $5,000 a year. And according to this math on this website, if you did that for your kid by the age of 18, they would have $271,000. That's based on an account opening at birth with a $1,000 opening deposit. And the rate of return is derived from historical S&P 500 averages. That'd be pretty nice. Turn 18 and you get $271,000. Maybe that would be a down payment on a house someday. All right. Welcome to our live stream, viewers. Hey, Mesay doctor or Dre the dream, Edgar Decker, CPA. Anis. Oh, Heather Smith. Hey. Hello. Great to see you. Welcome, everyone. Don't forget, you can earn free continuing professional education for listening to this episode and past episodes of the Accounting Podcast and many other fine accounting, tax and audit podcasts on the earmark app, go to earmark app and your web browser, or download the free app for iOS or Android. Create your free account. Earn one free CPE every week. And if you have an accounting firm, we offer team subscriptions. Contact sales at. Earmark CPE. Com to get set up with a team account for everyone in your firm. We offer great discounts for firms that sign up for more than. What is it? More than ten users. Five seats. Oh, more than five seats. David Leary: [00:08:11] And it just goes up from there. Blake Oliver: [00:08:12] So if you've got more than five CPAs and EA's at your firm, get in touch with us. Sales@earmark.com. We also have this amazing feature called a private channel, where we can take your lunch and learns your internal trainings, and we can turn those into self-study CPE that your team can get anytime, anywhere. And it's an awesome feature. Nobody else has it. Get in touch if you want to learn more. Okay, let's talk about perplexity. They're going after tax. You spotted an ad in your Instagram feed, right David. David Leary: [00:08:45] Yeah. So I'm going to share this. This might be Instagram or Facebook. So I'm sharing my screen. For those of you that are just listening only, it's a simple black and white ad and all it does is it says, find every duplicate duplicate entry hiding in your QuickBooks. Blake Oliver: [00:08:59] So I said text, but this is actually for like bookkeeping. David Leary: [00:09:02] What put me on the tax discovery. So, so I saw this. Of course, I'm going to click through. I'm a sucker for these things. I'm like, why is perplexity, you know, advertising about Quic