AICPA News is a collection of recent news briefs from the American Institute of CPAs and the Chartered Institute of Management Accountants.
Accounting Enrollment Increased 12% for Spring Semester
New data from the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center shows a 12% increase in spring 2025 undergraduate accounting enrollment compared to the prior year. The increase amounted to an additional 29,312 students.
Total undergraduate accounting enrollment for spring 2025 was 266,507 students. This marked the third consecutive semester of growth in accounting enrollment across undergraduate institutions of all types. It was the second consecutive semester of double-digit percentage increases.
Accounting enrollment increased at a higher rate than overall business enrollment. Two-year institution enrollment rose 24% to 77,936 students while four-year institutions saw an 11% increase in accounting enrollment, for a total of 188,571 students.
The National Student Clearinghouse data did not include graduate enrollment figures by instructional area, such as accounting. Overall graduate enrollment increased 1.5% from spring 2024.
A student pulse survey conducted by AICPA in partnership with the Future Accountants Sponsoring Organizations (FASO) in April explored factors influencing student decisions. The survey gathered responses from 786 students across 101 schools regarding their motivations for majoring in accounting and related trends. The pulse survey showed:
- Decision to Major in Accounting: 46% of students decided to major in accounting after taking an accounting-related course, while 39% chose it before entering college
- Influencing Factors: The top reasons for choosing accounting included increased job demand (66%), earning potential (56%), and economic conditions (48%)
- Professional Events Attendance: Around 80% of students attended events featuring accounting professionals, with 62% stating these events strongly or somewhat influenced their major choice
- Consideration of Other Majors: 67% of respondents either strongly considered other majors or switched to accounting from another field, with finance being the most common alternative
- Awareness of Job Demand: 56% of students were aware of the growing demand for accountants, which influenced their decision to major in accounting
Business Executives’ Optimism About U.S. Economy Sinks as Recession Fears Loom, AICPA and CIMA Survey Finds
Business executives’ view of the economy continued to sour amid recession fears and uncertainty about tariff impacts, according to the second-quarter AICPA and CIMA Economic Outlook Survey. The survey polls chief executive officers, chief financial officers, controllers, and other CPAs in U.S. companies who hold executive and senior management accounting roles.
The high hopes business executives held about the economy immediately after the November election have ebbed dramatically in the past two quarters. Only 27% now hold a favorable view of the U.S. economy over the next 12 months, down from 47% last quarter and 67% at the end of 2024.
Continued inflation and the chaotic implementation of tariffs have fueled concerns about a recession. One in five business executives believe the United States is already in a business cycle contraction, while another 34% say they expect one by the end of the year. Of those expecting a recession this year or next, 75% predict it will be moderate to severe.
Two out of three business executives said their companies were experiencing moderate to significant uncertainty in business planning due to changing tariff schedules, up from 49% last quarter. Almost a third (32%) said they were increasing prices in response. Thirty-one percent said they were exploring different supply chain options. And a little more than a quarter (26%) said they were reducing operating costs.
Other key findings of the survey:
- Hiring shows signs of tightening. Fourteen percent of business executives say they are looking to hire new employees immediately, down from 20 percent last quarter. Twelve percent said they had too many employees, up from 8% last quarter.
- Projected revenue growth for the next 12 months (1%) is at its most anemic level since the third quarter of 2020, when many businesses were curtailed by the coronavirus pandemic. Profit expectations, meanwhile, swung negative this quarter to -0.3%, down from +1.7% last quarter.
- Only 37% of business executives are favorable about their own organization’s prospects over the next 12 months, down from 50% last quarter.
- Survey takers who expect their businesses to expand over the next 12 months dropped significantly from 57% to 43%, quarter over quarter.
- “Domestic economic conditions” was the top concern cited this quarter, displacing inflation. It was No. 4 on the list last quarter.
A copy of the report can be found on aicpa-cima.com.
AICPA and NASBA Recognize Top CPA Exam Performers with Elijah Watt Sells Award
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy (NASBA) congratulate this year’s winners of the Elijah Watt Sells Award. This award is granted to CPA candidates who obtain a cumulative average score above 95.50 across four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination, pass the four sections on their first attempt and have completed testing in 2024.
More than 74,000 individuals sat for the CPA Exam last year, with 11 extraordinary candidates meeting the criteria to receive the Elijah Watt Sells Award.
The individuals listed below are the 2024 Sells Award winners in alphabetical order, followed by their Board of Accountancy affiliation, education, and present employer:
Samuel Abram (Arkansas and Texas), a graduate of the University of Arkansas with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting and information systems, is employed with KPMG in Dallas, TX.
Ujjwal Ahluwalia (Montana), a graduate of University of Delhi with a Bachelor of Commerce (Honors), and a Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, is employed with American Express in Gurugram, India.
David Samayoa Alvarado (New York), a graduate of Ramapo College of New Jersey with a Bachelor of Science in accounting and a Bachelor of Science in finance, is employed with PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP in New York, NY.
Matthew DiMillo (Illinois), a graduate of Illinois Wesleyan University with a Bachelor of Science in accounting, is employed with Mowery & Schoenfeld in Lincolnshire, IL.
Esther Drillick (New York), a graduate of Touro University with a Bachelor of Science in accounting, is employed with YVY ECC in Brooklyn, NY.
Priyanka Goyal (Washington), a graduate of Meerut University with a Bachelor of Law and a Chartered Accountant from The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, has previously worked with S. C. Johnson & Son and is currently actively pursuing professional opportunities in the U.S. accounting and finance industry.
Lucas Heilman (Kentucky), a graduate of The University of Kentucky with a Bachelor of Science in accounting and a Bachelor of Business Administration in finance, is employed with Dean Dorton in Lexington, KY.
Sierra Rose Overmoyer (Pennsylvania), a graduate of Shippensburg University with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting and finance, is employed with SEK CPAs & Advisors in Carlisle, PA.
Mac Smigielski (Illinois), a graduate of the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration in accounting and finance, is employed with Deloitte & Touche LLP in Chicago, IL.
Xuan Phuc Tran (California), a graduate of the University of California, Irvine with a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration, is employed with PricewaterhouseCoopers in San Jose, CA.
Kotaro Yoshioka, a graduate of The University of Tokyo with a Bachelor of Arts and a graduate of The University of Edinburgh with a Master of Business Administration, is employed with JP Morgan in Tokyo, Japan. Yoshioka has applied for his CPA licensure in the U.S. territory of Guam and is awaiting approval.
Six CPAs Recognized at AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) and Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) honored six CPAs during AICPA & CIMA ENGAGE 2025 in Las Vegas this week. The awards highlight CPA efforts in a specific accounting specialty area, excellence in volunteer efforts, or significant contributions to the accounting profession.
P. Thomas Austin Personal Financial Planning Scholarship
John H. Chilcott, CPA/PFS, Washington Army National Guard, Camp Murray, WA, was awarded the 2025 P. Thomas Austin Personal Financial Planning (PFP) Scholarship.
CPAs who have fewer than 10 years of experience are eligible to be considered for the scholarship, which covers the registration fee for the AICPA’s Advanced Estate Planning Conference. The AICPA established the scholarship in 2010 to honor P. Thomas Austin, a CPA who chaired the Advanced Estate Planning Conference for three decades and is currently chair emeritus.
Chilcott serves as a quality assurance officer with the Washington Army National Guard, where he provides expert technical guidance to the Financial Manager and U.S. Property and Fiscal Office on accounting programs, financial systems, and operational business processes. In parallel with his public service, he is in the early stages of co-founding an estate planning and estate tax firm alongside his wife, who is also a licensed CPA.
Chilcott holds both a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Accounting from the University of Hawaii at Mānoa.
Sid Kess Award for Excellence in Continuing Education
The Sid Kess Award for Excellence in Continuing Education was presented to Jordon N. Rosen, CPA, MST, AEP®, former Director and shareholder at Belfint, Lyons & Shuman, in Wilmington, Delaware.
The AICPA created the Sidney Kess Award for Excellence in Continuing Education to recognize individual CPAs who have made significant and outstanding contributions in tax and financial planning and whose public service exemplifies the CPA profession’s values and ethics.
Rosen is a member of the AICPA Tax Section and is a past member of the AICPA Trust, Estate and Gift Technical Resource Panel and Tax Reform Resource Task Force and has more than 43 years of experience in public accounting, speaks locally and nationally on tax planning and related issues and has published more than 100 articles.
Standing Ovation Honors
The AICPA honored four CPAs for contributions to their specialty areas with the Standing Ovation award.
The AICPA’s Standing Ovation program recognizes young CPAs who exhibit exemplary professional achievement in personal financial planning, business valuation and forensic accounting, and information management and technology assurance
Personal Financial Planning Standing Ovation The two recipients of the 2025 Personal Financial Planning (PFP) Standing Ovation all hold the PFS credential. They are (in alphabetical order):
- Andrew Christakos, CPA/PFS, CFP — Christakos Financial, Cranford, NJ
- Matthew Kidd, CPA/PFS — Blunden & Kidd Accounting & Consulting, Livonia, MI
Technology Advisory Standing Ovation The two recipients of the 2025 Technology Advisory Standing Ovation award all hold the CITP credential. They are (in alphabetical order):
- Justin Headley, CPA/CITP, CISSP, CISA, CISM – Warren Averett, LLC, Birmingham, AL
- Joenny Marin, CPA/CITP, CISA, CISM – CBIZ, Troutman, NC
AICPA Submits Recommendations for 2025-2026 Priority Guidance Plan
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) submitted comments to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) containing 183 recommendations regarding the 2025-2026 Priority Guidance Plan. The AICPA’s recommendations come from the organization’s Tax Technical Resource Panels (TRP), which cover the following areas: Corporations and Shareholders; Employee Benefits; Exempt Organizations; Individual and Self-Employed; International; IRS Advocacy & Relations; Partnerships; S Corporations; Tax Methods and Periods; and Trust, Estate and Gift Tax.
Each area’s top priority is listed below:
Corporations and Shareholders’ Tax TRP
Provide final guidance related to the key definitions and application of the corporate alternative minimum tax under section 55 including regarding mergers and acquisitions issues and clarification of the definition of an Applicable Corporation under section 59(k) and the definition of Adjusted Financial Statement income under section 56A.
Employee Benefits Tax TRP
Provide a Revenue Procedure related to Section 305 of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, as part of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, addressing the expansion of the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System.
Exempt Organizations Tax TRP
Provide an update on the potential revisions to Rev. Proc. 80-27 regarding group exemption letters as described in Notice 2020-36. Modify Rev. Proc. 80-27 to retain the group exemption letter structure where parent organizations can continue to obtain group exemption letters for their subordinate organizations while eliminating the option for the central organization to file a group return filing.
Individual and Self-Employed Tax TRP
Provide guidance on applying the state and local tax deduction cap under section 164, including:
Provide guidance on an S corporation’s inability to specially allocate items and the single class of stock requirement.
Provide guidance on Notice 2020-75 and section 461 accrual basis taxpayers.
Provide guidance on Notice 2020-75 and sections 469 and 163 on nonpassive versus passive income and interest expense tracing.
Provide guidance on section 111 application to state tax refunds at the individual level and ordering between passthrough entity income tax payments and nondeductible estimated payments and withholding.
International Tax TRP
Issue further guidance on the application of sections 959 and 961 to passthrough entities, including treatment of non-recognition transactions.
IRS Advocacy & Relations Committee
Issue regulations regarding accuracy-related penalties under section 6662, section 6662A, and section 6664. Existing regulations contain outdated rules that misrepresent current law.
Partnership Tax TRP
Remove Treas. Reg. § 1.6011-18 (Basis Shifting TOI Regulations) from the Income Tax Regulations (26 CFR part 1).
S Corporation Tax TRP
Issue a revenue procedure modifying the eligibility of any currently effective automatic relief for inadvertent termination or inadvertent invalid S corporation election such that a taxpayer may rely upon multiple revenue procedures to obtain relief for multiple matters affecting S corporation status.
Tax Methods and Periods Tax TRP
Provide guidance under section 179 for the specific types of assets that qualify as “qualified real property” under section 179.
Trust, Estate, and Gift Tax TRP
Provide for the ability to e-file the following:
Form 706, U.S. Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return
Form 706-NA, U.S. Estate (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return – Estate of Nonresident Not a Citizen of the U.S.
Form 709, U.S. Gift (and Generation-Skipping Transfer) Tax Return
Provide taxpayers with the ability to electronically pay estate, gift and generation-skipping transfer taxes.
AICPA Expresses Appreciation to Senate for Efforts to “Improve and Correct” House Bill
For several weeks, the American Institute of CPAs (AICPA), along with various other stakeholders, have raised concerns over proposals to eliminate the pass-through entity tax (PTET) state and local tax (SALT) deduction for specified service trades or businesses (SSTBs). Following the release of the reconciliation bill by the Senate, the AICPA has identified several provisions it supports. The Senate bill includes the following provisions that the AICPA has endorsed in the past:
- An increase in the standard deduction for years 2025-2028.
- Inclusion of legislation to expand the use of section 529 accounts for costs associated with obtaining a post-secondary credential, which grants financial flexibility to those pursuing or advancing in the accounting profession. This is a longstanding priority for the AICPA and the accounting profession.
- Repeal of the American Rescue Plan Act’s lowered threshold for Form 1099-K to $600 for an unlimited number of transactions; the reconciliation legislation will return the requirement to a $20,000 threshold and over 200 transactions.
- Increase in the filing threshold for Forms 1099-NEC and Forms 1099-MISC from $600 to $2,000, adjusted for inflation.
- Provision regarding section 174 research and experimental (R&E) expenditures, which may now be expensed for domestic research or experimental expenditures under new section 174A and provision of transition rules for remaining domestic R&E expenditures.
- Provision regarding the extension and enhancement of Paid Family and Medical Leave Tax Credit, which would provide certainty to businesses by making a temporary paid family leave tax credit permanent.
- Continues permanency of the qualified business income (QBI) deduction provision but expands the QBI deduction limitation phase-in range for SSTBs to $150,000 for married filing jointly and $75,000 for others. This is an increase from $100,000 and $50,000.
- Retention of the TCJA higher exemption amounts for the individual alternative minimum tax (AMT), which simplifies filing for many taxpayers.
- Provision regarding section 163(j), which reinstates the earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) limitation.
- Permanent extension of section 954(c)(6) of look-thru rule for controlled foreign corporations.
- Restoration of the limitation of “downward attribution” of stock ownership under section 958(b).
- Removed from Senate Bill: Restriction on regulation of contingency fees with respect to tax returns.
The AICPA also notes that the individual rates and individual standard deductions remain the same as proposed in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Child Tax Credit is also included and reflects a permanent increase to $2,200.
AICPA Submits Recommendations to Senate Finance Committee on Reconciliation Bill
The American Institute of CPAs (AICPA) has expressed concerns with proposals pertaining to the pass-through entity tax (PTET) state and local tax (SALT) deductions in reconciliation bills introduced in the Senate and passed House of Representatives. In a recent press release, the AICPA outlined several provisions in the Senate bill it has previously endorsed, as well as analysis of several other provisions, including the PTET SALT deduction. This week, the AICPA submitted a letter to Senate Finance Committee leadership which included its endorsements, its concerns regarding the PTET SALT deduction, its request for clarification of the SALT proposal and two other recommendations.
The additional recommendations include:
The AICPA expressed concern over the excess business loss (EBL) rule in the Senate Finance Committee’s reconciliation bill, which would effectively provide for a permanent disallowance of any business losses in certain circumstances. Even though the bill included a provision to allow carryforwards of EBLs from an estate or trust to beneficiaries thereof, the underlying problem remains in that the beneficiaries may not have business income to use the losses and, therefore, the unusable losses may carry forward indefinitely.
The AICPA also recommended restoration of the casualty loss deduction to all taxpayers, rather than limiting it to taxpayers that have suffered casualty losses from federally or state declared disasters. The Senate version of the reconciliation bill would make the limitation permanent, which means that a taxpayer whose residence is burned down in a federally declared wildfire may claim a casualty loss, while a taxpayer whose residence is destroyed by a fallen tree in a local storm has no tax relief. Ultimately, this permanent limitation would ensure that similarly situated taxpayers are not treated similarly, and this should not be the case.
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