Temporary labor keeps manufacturing lines running, but it can also quietly drain your bottom line if it’s not properly managed. In this video, CK managing principal Deanna Salo and principal Brian Kot draw on decades of experience auditing and advising manufacturing clients across the Chicago area to reveal what’s really happening on the shop floor. They share real client stories that show how temporary labor costs can spiral without the correct oversight. They also talk about the bigger picture: building a skilled workforce through apprenticeships, weighing the trade-offs of automation and AI and knowing when a supervisor or a scheduler could make a difference. If labor costs have you asking questions you can’t quite answer, this video is a great place to start.

Transcript:

Deanna: I’m Deanna Salo, and I’m the managing principal of Cray Kaiser, Limited CPAs. And today I’m here with one of our other principals, Brian Kot. And we’re going to be talking about our manufacturing clients. Cray Kaiser performs a number of services and has for our tenured period of time over 53 years with our manufacturing clients here in the Chicago area. And we want to talk about today some of the key indicators, the key challenges. some of the key observations we have when we’re performing our auditing, advisory, review, tax planning procedures with our clients. The next thing we’re going to talk about is temporary labor. Why don’t you kick us off.

Brian: A lot of challenges in temporary labor as we all know, it’s very hard to get skilled labor. So one thing I’m seeing in temporary labor is having a good production manager. A shop manager is key and very critical to the process because nobody’s paying attention to what’s going on with the hours. And I had one client do a study and they looked into, they were having four temporary people show up every single day and they didn’t know if they even needed a temporary person for that day or not. And they would be there for about two hours and then they would determine their need for the day and they would send some of them home. But they had to pay them for the two hours that they did nothing.

Deanna: Yeah, it’s really interesting. As we go out and audit our clients, we’ll walk the production floor and you just start talking to people, if they allow you to talk to the people. and see people standing around. We had one manufacturer that we were watching the shift change, right. The machines were getting cleaned. It’s actually food manufacturing so they were doing a shift change and they had over 20 people standing around for what was two hours while the shift was getting changed while the machinery was getting changed. And I said, “Who’s running the scheduling on the floor?”

And they said, “Oh, the supervisor’s off today.”

And I went upstairs to the client’s main office and talked to the owner at the time. And I said, listen, I said, you’ve been talking about your labor costs are just skyrocketing. You’re not quite sure why everything was so high. I just was on the floor for 15 minutes and saw 20 people standing there idly waiting for the shift change. You may want to take another look at that. So while temporary labor is so critical to our clients’ success, the seasonality of their businesses, needing more people, needing less people, finding the skilled trades. You know temporary labor is kind of I think part of the brick and mortar of any company right now they need them. They wildly need those people in there. But then how to manage those costs, how to supervise those costs, having a supervisor or a scheduler predictively look at the week’s worth of manufacturing and plan out when those shift changes are, when those people are needed to show up. Clearly, the people can’t just walk in and get on the line. But do we need a 15-minute transition or a half hour transition? Certainly not two hours or three hours and then go home. Right? We also had another client where they were wondering about their labor costs as well. And they had a kiosk for time entry, specifically for the temporary labor and that was connected to the temporary labor company. So the temporary labor workers would come in be logging their time you know key punching in and out and then their full-time employees that work for actually the company had a different keypad that they were keying in their time. And what we found out, we actually did an agreed-upon procedure we actually did a little bit of auditing with respect to the labor and found out that the labor times were not being approved. While their employees’ time records were getting approved by the floor manager, the temporary labor was not getting approved by the floor manager. So really just adding a procedure to verify that all the labor costs, the time entry is appropriate is a huge part of managing that inventory cost as  well.

I mean, right now in today’s market, your labor costs and your rent, your occupancy costs are probably, outside of raw materials, are your single largest cost for any company. Your labor costs and your occupancy costs. Even as people are downsizing in their offices, office space is still pretty expensive, even commercial manufacturing real estate as well. So being able to manage, optimize, and supervise those functions. is another really important part of it, too.

Brian: You know, we’ve talked about skilled labor a couple of times. That term has come up. And we do also have some staffing agencies. And I know that they’re trying to start up actually skilled labor divisions and get people certified in certain areas. But I think you have an interesting story with one of your clients on how are they getting skilled labor inside their plant?

Deanna: Absolutely. So even trying to find temporary employees to come work for their company to then be used as a temporary source. Some of our clients actually created apprenticeships and almost their own little universities to create some skilled training. They’ve gone into high schools, they’ve gone into some of the community colleges, some of the trade colleges that are out there, and actually solicited to them. Hey, you want to get an internship, you want to get an apprenticeship? And it’s a paid apprenticeship, it’s a paid internship to get their certifications while going to school. And then after they’ve graduated, they’ve actually procured their new employees, whether it be for the temporary staffing company or even some of my manufacturers as well. So there’s lots of opportunities to try to build up the skilled workforce. And sometimes it’s just a matter of education. And I can say that from a temporary staffing and even an employee base, getting people excited about working on these lines, which are very sophisticated. They take a lot of skilled labor to do that, is a great career for some of those folks. We talk about the line, the manufacturing line. We’re all dealing with AI, artificial intelligence, and the automation that we see in some of our clients. Brian, speak to some of that automation and some of the AI considerations for some of our clients.

Brian: We have some injection molding clients, and we’re seeing them put in a lot of AI and automated equipment to do that. We see a lot of it in the steel industry as well, too, in welding machines and cutting machines. So that’s replacing some of the employee workforce that is needed.

Deanna: But the CapEx requirements are significant for those. So while you’re exchanging the labor force, you are having CapEx costs. We have some manufacturers that actually do some of the folding and packaging and even cellophane wrapping of the boxes and even as much as rolling it off the line and putting it on a forklift truck. That then an actual human, a forklift truck driver, puts it up on the stack. So you know the automation is not new in manufacturing but I think AI is a definite consideration in terms of even quality control, and food manufacturing, food processing, that’s been there forever. You know, the automation of finding a defect as it leaves the line. But even the packaging and the handling that goes to parts and goods that are coming off of a manufacturing line, automating those processes. You know, you’re exchanging labor with CapEx, but the CapEx needs repairs. The CapEx needs somebody to monitor those improvements. So, you know, each company really has to sit with their own financials and see what are some of the exchanged costs? How can I become more efficient and even provide a better product line with some of that automation? Or maybe I stay to the manual labor piece of it because what I’m making is so fairly procured that I really need that individual hand packing and sorting and moving of items off the line.

Brian: So I would ask anybody listening, think about your manufacturing plan. And if you have temporary labor or not. What if you were to cut out two hours a day for four employees for a week for the whole year? How much would that save you on the bottom line?

Deanna: And I think that’s a really important part to the temporary labor. Again, it’s here to stay. We all need that skilled labor force, no matter what industry you’re in, but really making sure that you’re optimizing. paying for that supervisory manager workflow scheduler to make sure that everybody’s being used at their highest and best use.

Brian: And if you have any questions, please contact us.

Deanna: And you can contact Deanna Salo or Brian Kot at Cray Kaiser at www.craykaiser.com. And we’re here to help. Thanks so much for listening.

Managing costs and pricing effectively is one of the biggest challenges facing manufacturers today. In this video, CK principals, Deanna Salo and Brian Kot draw on decades of experience working with manufacturing clients in the Chicago area to discuss the common pricing pitfalls from an incomplete bill of materials to outdated costing models. These can erode profitability. They also explore how frequently businesses should be reviewing and updating their costs in today’s market, how to align your sales force with profitability goals and how strategic focus on core competencies can drive long-term success. Whether you’re a seasoned manufacturer or growing your operations, this conversation offers practical insights to help improve your margins.

Transcript:

Deanna: I’m Deanna Salo, and I’m the managing principal of Cray Kaiser Limited CPAs. And today I’m here with one of our other principals, Brian Kot. And we’re going to be talking about our manufacturing clients. Cray Kaiser performs a number of services and has for our tenured period of time over 53 years with our manufacturing clients here in the Chicago area. And we want to talk about today some of the key indicators, the key challenges. Some of the key observations we have when we’re performing our auditing advisory review tax planning procedures with our clients. So inventory, right, huge item on a client’s financial statements, really the brick and mortar of their profitability. We really want to focus in on you know how clients are modeling their pricing to ensure they’re capturing all of their costs when they’re going out to bid in their pricing. You know the pricing models that we’ve seen some of our clients, I guess what are some of the shortfalls that they have in terms of their pricing models.

Brian: I think the shortfalls having the pricing models is they don’t include all the costs it truly takes to manufacture the product. And they might pick up labor and I know I pay a guy X dollars an hour but they forget about the other employment costs, the taxes that go along with that. And another big thing I see missed is also sometimes the rent costs and the building maintenance some of those other overhead costs that go into your facility to run your plant and your operations, those often get missed.

Deanna: Right. So really what I call making sure your bill of materials, your BOM is fully loaded. You’ve got to make sure that those costs are in your pricing model so that when you’re telling your sales force to go out there and sell your goods that you really know what your gross profit margin might be on those fully loaded costs. Again, the sales force, sometimes the sales force, their drivers are to go out and sell. Go out and sell. And their financial acumen might not be at the calibration that they really know what the gross profit margin is for a certain company. So really educating your sales force to really understanding the financial pieces, the labor costs, the rent costs, the burden costs with respect to how to model the pricing. We’ve also seen some clients shift their commissions, right, and payments to their sales force, not on, you know, sales volume, but also on gross profit margin, right? And making sure that they’re yielding the right profitability consistently. You know, they might have some volume discounts. They might have some other perks for some of their specific customers. But really making sure that they’re honing in on all of their related bill of material costs is a really important part of that, too. What’s some of the other things that they should be doing in terms of making sure that the costing is there?

Brian: One thing I see often is they set a price. They look at their costing once a year. Maybe they did it last year. In today’s economy, the prices are changing so often, you know, depending on what type of raw material that you’re buying. I mean, there could be weekly swings, monthly swings in there. So I do recommend at a minimum, at a minimum, you’re reviewing your costing at least twice a year and you are updating those numbers. And that’s actually very generous when I say twice a year.

Deanna: Yeah. We have a client that does use standard pricing, standard costing. And, you know, they were only updating their prices once a year. So we got them to look at it at least four times a year, and depending upon what the variance might be, to do it even more frequently than just the once a year, right? It was something that it’s an audit client, and we do look at their processes and procedures in terms of their standard costing. And while they were uploading and getting all the pricing there, they weren’t really doing the full roll-up other than once a year. They actually now do it twice a year. But we’ve even leaned in a little bit more on them to say maybe even a little bit more often because the raw material costs is steel imports from China and the tariffs and so forth that, you know, we’ll be going out there this year to audit them. So we’ll be really interested to hear, you know, how frequently they’ve even updated it for the current year. Another thing on inventory is, you know, even on the sales side, you know, some clients are really trying to diversify right through a whole bunch of different types of sales lanes. You know, they want to expand, broaden what they’re selling, how they’re selling to stay competitive in the marketplace. You’ve got a client example that kind of didn’t do that and just stuck true to what they do.

Brian: Yeah. I had a client they were looking to expand into different lanes and kind of take over their supply chain for themselves and they thought maybe we could start manufacturing these items that we’re buying and they decided not to. And the model was we wanted to use the finances and invest in what we do well and do it better. And with that, they have had tremendous success by not expanding out and properly utilizing their capital funds.

Deanna: Yeah. So using their capital funds, reinvesting in the things that they did well, and staying honed in on their costing and profitability, and they’ve been super successful. So there’s a little bit of ying and yang, growing for the sake of growth, which a lot of people could get into that whole wheelhouse of let’s grow to grow, but also stay profitable. And even beyond that is really being able to have the leverage that they had to get the costing at a place in their existing profitability that didn’t compromise their growth. They stayed super profitable.

Brian: And if you have any questions, please contact us.

Deanna: And you can contact Deanna Salo or Brian Kot at Cray Kaiser at www.craykaiser.com. And we’re here to help. Thanks so much for listening in.

In part 3 of our video series about college foundations, Dan Swanson, an assurance manager at CK, shares his perspective on working with college foundations. In this video, he explains key year-end considerations, like tax reporting and nonprofit audits and how proactive planning can take the stress out of the process. He also highlights how CK partners with foundation staff and boards to prepare for audits, maintain clean records and ultimately free up time to focus on fundraising and advancing the foundation’s mission.

Transcript:

Welcome, everybody. I’m very excited to be here today. My name is Dan Swanson. I am an assurance manager here at Cray Kaiser. I’ve been with the firm for about 12, 13 years now, and I wanted to talk about a subject matter that I’m very passionate about, and that is college foundations, and some of the important factors that we need to be considering, some of the hot topic issues.

What are they doing with year-end tax reporting? Even though they’re a nonprofit, there’s still some year-end tax reporting that needs to be done. So how do we alleviate that requirement? Nonprofits need year-end audits. So how do we help the foundation get through the year-end audit procedures? We here as auditors kind of have a leg up in that because we know what they’re going to ask for. We know what type of work papers they need. We know the routine so we can be your advisor to get you through that process.

So another value add that I think teaming up with Cray Kaiser has is the year-end audit. So as foundations, as a nonprofit organization. The foundations that we do work with, they’re required to have an annual audit performed. And typically it’s in conjunction with the college’s audit. They’re both separate audits, but they need to be issued kind of simultaneously. So an issue that comes up a lot is, oh no, it’s year-end audit time, what do we do? How do we get prepared? What are the auditors going to ask for? What do we need to do?

So what’s super cool about, you know, teaming up with Cray Kaiser is we’re also auditors. So as auditors, we know the process. We know what questions are going to be asked. We know the expectations that the auditors are going to have on the foundation. So having all that knowledge and all that experience, we can advise and we can consult with the foundation, counting staff, board members, et cetera, okay, here’s what we think needs to happen, and we can get them prepared ahead of time in advance. So come year-end audit time, all that worry, all that stress hopefully goes away because we’re ready. We have clean records. Everything reconciles. We’re super transparent. Any question the auditors have, we’re going to be able to explain, okay, here’s what we did, and here’s why we did it, here’s our work paper to support that balance or to support that transaction. Having a good clean records done monthly really sets you apart come audit time.

You know what we typically do with the foundations, I work with is the auditors will have a request list. And so what I like to do is schedule a meeting with the foundations and we’re going to go through this request list one by one and I’m going to help educate them. Okay they’re asking for this and here’s why. You know we’ll take care of this request as kind of your outside accountants or you guys take care of this because this deals with donor information and you know you have that at the ready. So we kind of divide up responsibilities on the audit. Here’s what we’ll take care of. Here’s why they’re asking for it. And we’ll meet again in a couple weeks and see where we’re at, so when the auditors are here are present they have everything they need to do to get through it timely. And we try to get out ahead of any requests that way the auditors have what they need and it’s simply they just need to get through it.

So again that’s the fun part again because I know what they’re going to ask for. I know what they need. I know how they think. And I can help educate the foundation staff and make sure that they’re as prepared as can be, come year-end audit time so these things don’t drag on and on and on and then becomes this high stress situation. If I can relieve that stress, if I can relieve that angst, then I feel like I’m doing my job.

And so far, knock on wood, the foundations every year, in my opinion, I think the audits have gone very smoothly and so that’s where my cool that’s kind of awesome. You know, we’re doing it we’re teaming up with them they’re getting through this, this year on audit procedure. It’s not this overwhelmingly stressful task. So again a lot of them, they’re fundraisers, so accounting isn’t their fortitude. So if we can come in and help educate on the accounting piece then I can free them up to go out and fundraise and spread the mission on the foundation. So that’s, I’ve got the accounting. I’ll help you out.

But again, selfishly, I’ll do the accounting so you can go out and do what you do best. So that’s where I think coming to Cray Kaiser adds value. If you have any questions that you would want to ask me, please feel free to reach out. You can go to the Cray Kaiser website and you can find me. Again, I’m Dan Swanson. I’m an assurance manager here.

In Cray Kaiser’s Employee Spotlight series, we highlight a member of the CK team. We couldn’t be prouder of the team we’ve grown and we’re excited for you to get to know them. This month we’re shining our spotlight on Brigette Oberlander. Listen to her audio blog and learn more about why she chose to be a part of the CK team.

Transcript:

Brigette Oberlander. I am the Client Accounting and Advisory Supervisor. As the Accounting and Advisory Supervisor, my day-to-day responsibilities involve a diverse range of tasks, ranging from preparing monthly financial statements, navigating complex accounting regulations, and training and mentoring staff.

I joined the team in October of 2025. I was initially drawn to CK for their reputation for culture and personal development. I’m excited to gain more exposure to a diverse client base, giving me more opportunities to solve problems and grow my accounting knowledge, while also providing a chance to make an impact both internally and with clients. as the firm evolves. Since I’m brand new, I really just enjoy the people-first relationship-driven environment that Cray Kaiser provides.

The people, they provide a balanced, respectful work environment, and I really appreciate CK’s commitment to balance and well-being, and they really invest in their staff through multiple things like mentoring, training, and leadership opportunities.

I have a strong foundation in accounting and advisory work, supported by a master’s degree from Keller Graduate School of Management. My career has been built across several industries, primarily manufacturing for the most recent seven years, with additional experience in construction and real estate.

I would have to say, stay curious and always be willing to ask questions. I think the best thing you can do is build a habit of learning and focus on developing really good work habits and being open to continuous growth.

Family is a big part of my life. I have two kids. My son is 18, my daughter is 21, and they are both in college right now, which has been an exciting chapter for all of us. And at home, I have two dogs who keep things very lively and make sure there’s never a dull moment in my house.

Uh, not really a special talent, but I do know a lot of very random movie quotes. It’s never anything useful, but it does come in handy more often than you would expect. So, I recently suffered a pretty major knee injury, which has kept me away from sports for the last six, seven months.

So, I’m currently reading a book called On Top of Your Game, Mental Skills to Maximize Your Athletic Performance. I’m hoping it tries to help me both physically and mentally recover from this injury.

In this video, Matt Richardson and Damian Contreras walk you though how to use our secure client portal. From setting up your account and uploading documents to paying invoices, completing your tax organizer and receiving notifications, this overview will help to make managing your tax information simple and stress-free.

Topics Covered:

How to Access the Portal & Setting Up Your Account – 0:08

How to Upload Files – 1:40

How to Make a Payment – 3:45

How to Edit and Upload Your Tax Organizer – 5:42

Making Changes to Information on Your Tax Organizer – 11:37

Electronic Signatures – 12:05

Forgot Your Password – 13:07

Transcript:

I’m Matt Richardson. I’m a tax senior at Cray Kaiser. I’m Damian Contreras. I’m also a tax senior here at Cray Kaiser. And today we’re going to walk you through our portal that we use and started back in January of 2024. So Matt’s going to take you through the steps of how to set up the portal and how you initially get the invite to the portal.

Yeah, so I’ve just clicked on the link in the email, the notification email you get for setting up your new portal account. It takes you here, and then all you have to do is create a password. And once you’ve done that, you’re in. Once you load in, it brings you to our home landing page, which prompts you at the very top with if there’s any outstanding balances due, as well as right below that is. your to-do list and any recent files that are in your portal for you. If you have multiple accounts, for example, if you have an individual, if you have a trust, if you have a business, if you have children’s returns, you’re managing, to switch between the different accounts, you’ll go down here. There’s a name and there’s a personal. You can switch between a personal and then it’ll show any others that are connected. We just have a fake business client here connected. So anything that’s connected to you with Cray Kaiser, you’ll have a selection there to toggle between. So when you’re uploading documents, you can upload the documents to the specific portal for whatever the documents are for. That way we can kind of make sure everything’s staying nice and sorted.

And now let’s say you are getting your tax documents and you want to give them to us we don’t necessarily even have to request them from you all you have to do is simply go into your portal and upload them and we get notifications that you’re adding new files into your folder. So Matt will show you how to add a new file into your portal. So all you’ve got to do is go over here to files, add a file and then you can select. It’ll bring you over to your computer’s files that anything that you have downloaded to your computer and you can go in and access them and you can click on as many or as little files as you’d like to upload. So you can upload any file type that you would like. The only file type that we request you don’t upload is any JPEGs and pictures. We prefer Word documents, PDFs, Excels, anything of that nature is a great file to upload and our system can handle it. You can even upload zip files if that’s easier for you. If you’re adding in password-protected documents, when you are prompted to rename the file, maybe include the password with it, or else we’re going to have to reach out to you and ask, what’s the password to access this? It is a secure portal, so you are able to do that. Absolutely. And also, if you have a window open, you can just drag and drop as well. Very easy to add something.

Something we have people ask about is how to sort files in the portal. What happens is once you upload it, we’ll get a notification and it will prompt us to sort the files into whatever the relevant tax year or folder is within your portal. So the client doesn’t need to worry about dragging into a particular folder. You can just drop it in here in the file tray and we’ll take it from there. The only thing we ask is you put it in the respective client’s folder. So that’s the only indexing we need you to do is to index it in the proper client, not necessarily the right year and folder type.

So then we can also go down to the billing portion of it. So if you want to go there, let’s say you have a bill due. Any of your bills will be prompted right in the Canopy portal. And you can still, if you’d prefer to make a paper check, you can do that and mail it. But it will give you your invoice in here or you can very easily go and make a payment or view your payment history or what outstanding invoices you have. And to make a payment all you have to do is click the make a payment button. Even if you have no balance due just click on additional payment and you can type in what whatever amount you’re able to pay at that time and you just hit continue and you can pay with either a credit or debit card. There is a fee attached to that. Or you can do a direct bank account debit by putting in your account and routing number.

Whenever we upload documents for you, invoices for you, copies of your tax returns, payment vouchers, we will send you an email notification that’ll prompt you exactly with what we put in there, what’s it called, is it an invoice, is it a copy of your 2024 tax return. So all of that will be sent to you via email and then you can log into your portal, view it, download it, and see all of that within your portal. And it’ll come to you by entity as well. So if you have your personal and then your kids or your business, it will say, you know, uploaded in John Doe’s file or, you know, John Doe Inc’s file for you. So it’ll come to you for each portal you have access to.

Currently, you are not able to see the status of your tax return in the portal. That’s something you’d have to reach out to us for. And whoever’s on your team here at Cray Kaiser would respond to you promptly on where your tax return sits in the queue.

Also something that we’re going to be implementing for the 2025 tax year as it’s creeping up for your individual tax returns is you’re going to see your organizer as a to-do in your personal portal. So when you log in, Matt will show you right there. It says organizer 2025. All you have to do is open that up. We’ll have a PDF file attached. Open it up and there will be our letter and our questionnaire to fill out. And then there will also be your prior information for you to review and see what you need to send us this year. And you can fill this out in the PDF, attach it, re-upload it to us, and we can receive it that way. If you prefer to print it out and re-scan, that’s possible as well. Yeah, and when we send it over to you, you’re going to get an email notification telling you that there’s a new to-do in there for you. It’s going to be the 2025 organizer. And we just request that you review it and write any pertinent information on there. Did you switch jobs, open new accounts, have a kid, expand your family? Are the kids in college? And we have questions on the organizer’s first and second page that go over all major life changes that are very common, that can impact your tax return.

This step we’re going to show you how to download and fill out your organizer through the pdf file. And if you’re not as comfortable with the technology you can still print it out and re-scan it and upload to us but I think for a lot of people it’ll be easier just to do it in the PDF and re-upload it. So the first thing to make sure you have, you do need to have a PDF editing software. So Adobe is a common one that a lot of people have, but there are a lot of other softwares as well. You should be able to do it in any program that allows you to edit a PDF. So make sure you have that. Some of them are browser based. Some of them are desktop based. Again, pretty much anything will let you edit a PDF. So when you’re ready to fill out your organizer, you can just go to the portal. You’ll either have it in your files. There should also be a to-do list item for you as well once we upload them. And then the important thing here is we’ve had some people fill it out in the viewer here, through Canopy. It will let you sometimes edit or type things on here, but unfortunately it does not save back to the portal when you edit just through this viewer. So you do need to actually download it to your desktop computer and then edit it. So we’ll download. And so once you’re in and have it open, you can go through and add all the information you need to. Most of these editors will have comment tools so you can add a check mark, click for yes, no on all these questions. So that’s typically pretty simple. Doesn’t matter, check mark, X, whatever you like to use. If you need to add data or numbers, scroll down to one of these sections for more information. So if you need to add information, there are usually multiple ways you can add a text box. You can add that and tell us, I bought a new rental this year. I’m not sure what you need, but I included some documents. So you can add a note like that for us with a text box. Some of them also allow you to type text directly onto the document without a text box. You know, it looks a little different, but again, as long as you’re putting the information there, we’ll be able to handle it. Same goes for the fields that have number inputs. So if you’re putting in your charity contributions, you can just go in, edit, type the text on here, and then we’ll be good. So what you need to do then, you need to save this once you’re done filling it out. Save the file. And if you want to, just to help us track things, you could always rename it something like filled out, just so we can keep the original one straight from your filled in one. You don’t have to do that, but that would just be a little helpful if you can do it. And then go to files, add a file, and attach your organizer. And then we’ll have it in our portal. So it’ll be in our portal. If we open it up, we’ll see the changes you added to it, the check marks, the numbers, the other information you’ve added. That said, once you’re done, all you do is re-upload it to the portal, add any comments that you’d like, and mark it as complete. And then it’ll let us know that it’s ready for us to review and complete your tax return. If anything changes after you’ve uploaded the initial organizer at that point, it’s probably better just to email or give us a call. Whoever your contact here is and let us know what information has changed that’s definitely something that happens pretty frequently and I think once we’ve got the organizer and looked at it it’ll be much you know easier for us to track down the change and see what we need to do if you just call us and say oh hey I forgot to tell you about this new account I opened or whatever it is then we can kind of get right to it.

We do have a feature within the portal to send electronic signatures. Most of our electronic signatures will come through DocuSign and they’ll go directly to your email from our tax software or our personal DocuSign accounts for those those items. And sadly the IRS is slowly developing accepting electronic signatures so there are still some where we’ll publish documents in the portal that you’re going to have to print out and put a wet signature on. But if we can do things electronically, we definitely try to do those electronic signatures and make it very easy into your emails.

The portal has an automation system in it. So once we set up that to-do for you, we can choose whether it emails you daily, weekly, monthly with reminders until it’s completed. So we’ll probably turn it on to where every week or every other week it’s sending you a reminder to say, hey, this task is in there, this organizer is in there for you to complete. And then until it’s completed, you’re going to keep getting those emails.

What if you forgot your password to the portal? So to get into your portal, all you have to do is go to the Cray Kaiser website, craykaiser.com, and then in the left bar, it’s going to have a little option for portal. So you just click on portal, and it will immediately take you to the Cray Kaiser portal. Once you’re on that landing page, it’ll tell you to put in your email and your password, and there will be an option for forgot password, and it’ll walk you through the steps to reset it.

Thank you for listening to Matt and mine’s explanation and steps on how to use the portal. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out to your team member here at Cray Kaiser, a member of our admin team, and we’ll further assist you with the portal.

In part 2 of our video series about college foundations, Dan Swanson, an assurance manager at CK, shares his expertise in supporting college foundations. With more than a decade of experience, Dan breaks down the complexities behind managing scholarship funds, maintaining accurate financial reporting and leveraging financial systems to ensure transparency and donor confidence. He explains how thoughtful accounting practices directly translate into real opportunities for students. He highlights why strong financial oversight isn’t just important, but essential to fulfilling a foundation’s mission.

Transcript:

Welcome everybody. I’m very excited to be here today. My name is Dan Swanson. I am an assurance manager here at Cray Kaiser. I’ve been with the firm for about 12, 13 years now. And I wanted to talk about a subject matter that I’m very passionate about. And that is college foundations and some of the important factors that we need to be considering, some of their hot topic issues.

I wanted to kind of talk about foundations and how we here at CK have helped foundations on a number of different areas. So when you think of college foundations, what do you think about? What are some of their big struggles? What are they, what’s their mission, what’s their vision, what are their values. So with college foundations, they get funds, they get dollars, they get money, they get to invest, and hopefully those earnings, it earns, returns, which then turn into scholarships, turns into real dollars for real students to pay for real education. So sounds simple, but when you have, if you only had like two or three scholarship funds, not a big deal, but some of our clients that we serve have over a hundred different individual unique scholarship funds or program funds, and they have millions of dollars of investments. So how do we ensure that everybody’s getting their fair share of these investment earnings? How do we ensure that the financial statements are telling an accurate story to the board, to the executive director, to the finance committee, to all those involved to make sure the end of the day, the maximum amount of dollars are going out to students to serve the mission. So that’s where we here at Cray Kaiser can come in and use all of our knowledge and experience to really help these foundations and a number of different factors.

You know, personally, I’ve helped just with the system setup. You know, what financial system are they using? Is there any setup issues we need to update, adjust, add to it, what type of modules does their system have? Timeliness of financial reporting, are they getting accurate financial statements monthly?

So some shared experience I have while working with foundations, some of the things that keep them up at night. I kind of touched upon this as individual scholarship funds or individual program funds. Your more sophisticated donors are going to ask, how’s my fund doing? How’s my scholarship doing? How much do I have left in that fund? How much did you spend in scholarship funds this year? What did it earn? Can we do better? You know, if my balance is running low, do I need to write another check to get my scholarship funds back up there? So in order to answer all those questions, what do you think we need to do? What’s super important? What’s super important is, you know, accurate financial reporting, both on an overall basis and by an individual scholarship and or project fund.

So the way I tell people is if you’re like a for-profit company, you have kind of one set of books that you need to monitor and track. With these nonprofit foundations, you could have 200 different trial balances or general ledgers that you have to track. Because each individual scholarship fund is its own kind of entity. So you can see where it’s not super simple and straightforward. You really got to be very careful and very meticulous about tracking this activity.

So how do we do that? How do we make sure it’s over cumbersome? Because we the goal is we want to give these donors financial reporting accurately and timely because that’s going to drive them to open up their checkbooks and bring in more funds and more opportunities to these to the students. Again what’s the goal? We want to give out scholarships to help educate young students.

So kind of where I come in, where I get passion is about, is we can see, you know, by accurate financial reporting, by accurate accounting, where it has a direct impact, you know, on America’s youth. So it’s pretty cool. So from that standpoint, it’s very cool. Accounting is cool, right? Accounting is cool, guys, you know, because it translates to real dollars to real students. You know, how do we pay it forward? Well, have good solid accounting records will pay it forward and increase scholarship funds.

Other issues I’m seeing, a lot of these foundations use the same type of software package. And over the years, I’ve gotten pretty good at learning the system and its full capabilities. So what I’m always trying to do is, I understand that this is the financial package that has always gone to the board each month, but what else can we do? What are they looking at? You know, I’ll sit in the board meetings or sit in the trenches. You know, what is it that you hone in on? What is it that you’re looking at? What’s important to you? And then I’ll try to see if the system can generate a better, more improved report to help them do what they need to do to keep the foundation on the straight and arrow. Again, transparency is your best friend. So how do I utilize that system to its fullest potential? Because it’s a powerful system, so let’s utilize it. So what is it that you need? What is it that you want? And then let’s work towards that. So that’s kind of fun. It’s fun to kind of see what, hear what they want, what they need, and then going back to the system and seeing if we can generate a new report and make it part of that standard monthly financial package. So that’s a lot of fun.

Some of the other issues I see is there’s different, like there’s like a dual-based system where one tracks all the donor information and all the contribution information. And then there’s a different system, which is your standard kind of general ledger accounting software. and they talk to each other and they’re integrated to each other. So making sure that both systems talk appropriately is super key. You know, if we have a bunch of donor information, a bunch of contributions in one system and it’s not being linked correctly to the other system, you can see how financial reporting can become out of whack and then you can see how come year-end. When it comes to audit time, it’s going to create a lot of headaches. So how do we get in front of that? How do we make sure the system is set up initially? So both systems are talking to each other and are integrated. So again, over the years, I’ve kind of learned both systems and we know how to make them work. Or at least know who to contact to help us when we notice issues.

If you have any questions that you would want to ask me, you know, please feel free to reach out. You can go to the Cray Kaiser website and you can find me. Again, I’m Dan Swanson. I’m an assurance manager here.

In this first video in our series about supporting college foundations, Dan Swanson, Assurance Manager, shares his passion for helping college foundations fulfill their missions. With more than a decade of experience in the firm and a lifelong connection to education, Dan explores the unique financial challenges and opportunities that college foundations face.

Transcript

Welcome everybody. I’m very excited to be here today. My name is Dan Swanson. I am an Assurance Manager here at Cray Kaiser. I’ve been with the firm for about 12-13 years now, and I wanted to talk about a subject matter that I’m very passionate about. And that is college foundations and some of the important factors that we need to be considering, some of the hot topic issues. I want to talk about some success stories, some issues that they commonly face.

One of the reasons I’m very passionate about this, because we always hear that question, if I wasn’t an accountant, what would I be doing? You know, I’m a big fan of education, my parents were teachers, I have brothers that are teachers, so if I wasn’t an accountant, I would be a teacher. So by serving these college foundations, I feel like I get the best of both worlds. I’m helping students, while getting to use my accounting knowledge and expertise. So, it’s very near and dear to me. So, I wanted to kind of talk about foundations and how we here at CK have helped foundations in a number of different areas.

So, when you think of college foundations, what do you think about? You know, what are some of their big struggles? What are they? What’s their mission? What’s their vision? What are their values? So, with college foundations is they get funds, they get dollars, they get money, they get to invest, and hopefully those earnings, it earns returns, which then turn into scholarships, turns into real dollars for real students to pay for real education. So sounds simple, but if you only had like two or three scholarship funds, not a big deal, but some of our clients that we serve have over a hundred different individual unique scholarship funds or program funds and they have millions of dollars of investments. So how do we ensure that everybody’s getting their fair share of these investment earnings. How do we ensure that the financial statements are telling an accurate story to the board, to the executive director, to the finance committee, to all those involved to make sure the end to the day, the maximum amount of dollars are going out to students to serve the mission.

A big thing that I see with a lot of these foundations is the budgets. Every year, the board, the finance committee comes up with budgets. How much are we going to budget to spend out in scholarships? How much are we going to budget for various, just kind of general expenditures? So how do we make sure on a monthly basis our budgets to actual are being monitored and tracked and appropriately recorded. So that’s the overall goal. That’s the overall purpose of what we here try to accomplish when working with foundations.

The board, the finance committee spends a lot of time coming up with budgets. Whether it’s kind of revenue budgets based upon donations that are coming in or investment earnings. But it’s also some of those management in general costs, you know, because we all know that there’s some just overhead that they need to cover. They need software, they need to pay for people, supplies, printers, etc. So, it’s not 100 % of it’s not going to scholarships. There are these overhead manager, we try to minimize it or they try to minimize it, but there are those costs. So a good way to kind of monitor and track that is through like is through budgets.

So how do we make sure as expenses are being incurred and checks are being cut, that we’re matching up the right expense item to the right budgeted line item. Seems simple but it can get it can get kind of tricky depending on the volume of invoices and who’s coding the invoices. You know, are we consistently coding this vendor to this budgeted line item? So again, what I like is kind of being on the outside is we’re that second set of eyes. You know, we can go in there and kind of build some of these expenses and enter your payables and run your checks for you. But you know, you are the kind of the initial person at you being the foundation, but we’re that second set of eyes. Hey, did you think about that? Did you think about this? Does this match up with the budget? And then we can kind of catch some inconsistencies in real time. And as we catch them, we can try to implement best practices because consistency is key. So, if we can implement these best practices, we’re consistent. And then the financials, again, tell the story. If you have any questions that you would want to ask me, you know, please feel free to reach out. You can go to the Cray Kaiser website and you can find me again I’m Dan Swanson. I’m an assurance manager here.

In this video, Brian Kot, a Principal at CK, shares valuable insights into the most common questions clients ask about tax planning, document retention, business sales and financial reporting. From strategies to reduce your tax liability and organize your financial records to best practices when selling your business and improving accounting processes, Brian highlights the importance of proactive planning and collaboration with your CPA.

Transcript

My name is Brian Kot and I am a principal with Cray Kaiser Ltd. I’m often asked by my clients, “How can I reduce my tax liability?” The answer to this question comes with a lot of strategic planning between the client and your CPA. You want to at least minimally have an annual meeting with your CPA to discuss your tax situation and your financial planning on what’s going on with your business.

There are many suggestions typically that are offered such as contributing to an IRA or a sub-contribution or vehicle expenses might be missed or maximizing the depreciation deductions and purchasing certain assets within your business. In that conversation, it’s also very important to discuss the current tax rates and future tax planning. For example, you may want to try to defer income, or you might want to accelerate certain income to maximize current tax rates that are in effect today, for example, the capital gains tax rate. So having an effective meeting with your CPA in discussing these strategies is the optimal way of reducing your taxes, and it’s different between each individual and organization.

I’m often asked how long should I keep my documents for, especially in this age of digital world. The answer depends on the type of organization and also the type of documents that we’re discussing. Some documents you need to keep indefinitely, such as your corporate resolutions, your bylaws, your tax returns, your financial statements. We should always keep those forever and never destroy those and keep them in a digital format. There are other documents such as a lot of payroll documents need to be kept for a minimum of seven years and then there’s other documents especially on the individual side that you only need to keep for only three years and it also depends on the statute of limitations on how long you need to keep these documents for. I definitely recommend you check out our website if you click on the resource tab and search document retention. We have a guide that explains and gives an example of what documents you should keep either indefinitely or for seven years and remember that’s just a guide but it can be used as a rule of thumb.

You’re considering selling your business and often I’m asked how much do I owe in taxes? That’s a very challenging question to answer right off the bat, and a lot of planning needs to go involved. The first thing is to determine the market value of your business. And we recommend that you use an outside third party to assist you in determining the market value. Once the market value is determined, the way that the deal is structured and the sale is put together will significantly have an impact on how much you will pay in taxes, along with your personal tax situation. So we recommend before you, at any time, sign any agreement or sell your business. You consult with your tax advisor to go over that agreement in detail to determine if it is the most cost and tax efficient way for you to sell your business. Too often, we hear after the fact that our clients may have sold their business, or for that matter, entered into any type of a transaction. And if you would have consulted your tax advisor before entering that transaction, you may have saved a significant amount of taxes, as the transaction could have been structured differently.

Often, my clients will ask me, “How can I improve my financial reporting or get more timely reports, or I’ve lost my accountant, what do I do?” Here at Cray Kaiser, we have a dedicated team to assist you in your financial reporting. If you use a software such as QuickBooks or similar to QuickBooks, we can offer training on the program to ensure your employees properly know how to use the software. And we can also offer customization and create customized reports to help you understand your business. Having timely and accurate financial information available to you will enable you to make business decisions and help you grow your business.

Please consult a member of Cray Kaiser to understand the benefits that we can offer your organization to help you improve your financial reporting. Please review our website at craykaiser.com as we recently launched our Client Accounting Advisory Services webpage. You can find more information there and you can contact a member of our team at 630-953-4900.

International tax law is undergoing some significant changes. Under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (O3B), new rules like the U.S. remittance tax and updated controlled foreign corporation provisions will reshape how individuals and businesses handle cross-border transactions. In this audio blog, we break down the major updates, explain their potential impact and share strategies to help you stay compliant.

Transcript:

Welcome everyone to this edition of CK Thought Leadership. My name is Eric Challenger. I’m a tax manager here at Cray Kaiser and I’m joined by Damian Contreras.

Hi everyone. As Eric said, my name is Damian Contreras. I’m a tax senior at Cray Kaiser. I’ve been here for a little over three years and started as an intern.

Today we are diving into some major updates to international tax regulations recently enacted under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, also known as O3B. We’ll cover the new remittance tax, explain what a controlled foreign corporation is, go over the changes to guilty, and wrap up with some important foreign reporting reminders. Let’s kick things off with a new and intriguing remittance tax. Damian, can you walk us through this piece of legislation and what it means?

Absolutely, Eric. The remittance tax, while new in the U.S. effective January 1st, 2026, isn’t entirely new globally. Several other countries already have similar systems in place. Let’s focus on how this will work in the U.S. Remittance tax is a 1% tax on funds sent out of the U.S. for non-commercial purposes, that is personal, not business-related transfers. The sender is responsible for the tax unless an exemption applies to them. The facilitator of the transfer, common groups are Western Union, PayPal, or money orders sent, is responsible for collecting and remitting the tax to the U.S. Treasury on a quarterly basis. If the facilitator fails to collect the tax, they’re still liable for the taxes due. The tax applies to cash transfers and cash equivalence exceeding $15. Notably, cryptocurrency transactions and transfers are currently excluded from this tax. So what qualifies for an exemption? Transfers funded by a US-issued debit or credit card or transfers withdrawn from an account held in an institution subject to the Bank Security Act. While we’re talking about new international tax provisions, what’s happening to the old ones? I saw there were changes to GILTI now renamed net CFC tested income taking effect in 2026. Can you first explain what a CFC is and then we could dive deeper into what’s changing?

Yeah, this is a big update. Let’s start with the basics. A controlled foreign corporation CFC is a foreign corporation that is more than 50% owned by U.S. shareholders which may include corporations and individuals. U.S. shareholders who own at least 10% of a CFC are required to report their share of the NCTI, previously known as GILTI, on their annual tax returns. These rules primarily impact U.S. multinational corporations and individuals with substantial foreign investments. So even if you’re not a big business, it’s something to be aware of if you’re planning to invest abroad.

Eric, now that we understand what a CFC is and what exactly GILTI, you know, net CFC tested income is under the new law, what’s changing?

Great question. The GILTI provisions were introduced under the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act to discourage U.S. companies from shifting profits offshore and avoiding U.S. taxation. GILTI imposed a minimum tax on profits from CFCs regardless of whether those profits were brought back to the U.S. Under O3B Act, these rules are being tightened significantly. Key changes include country-by-country calculation of GILTI, now NCTI. Previously, companies could offset low tax income with high tax income across countries. That’s no longer allowed, which increases the exposure for low-tax jurisdictions. The qualified business asset investment deduction is being phased out and eliminated. The foreign derived intangible income FD2 deduction is being reduced. Formally 50%, it’s now 37.5% which raises the effective tax rate from 10.5% to 13.125%. The high tax exception threshold is increasing from 18.9% to 21%, aligning it with the U.S. corporate tax rate. One piece of slight relief, the foreign tax credit limitation is being loosened from 80% to 90%. Originally the cut was 80%, but now it’s going to be reduced to 90%, meaning that taxpayers can now use more of their eligible foreign taxes to offset U.S. taxes. Bottom line, the overall U.S. tax burden on CFC income is going up, and affected shareholders will start to feel this on their returns beginning in 2026.

Now that’s a lot to digest. What advice do you have for multinational corporations or individuals who may be impacted by these changes?

As these changes are implemented over the next year, it’s critical that both multinational corporations and individuals work closely with their tax advisors. Strategic planning now can help minimize exposure under the new NCTI framework and ensure compliance moving forward.

Absolutely. On that note, let’s not forget the penalties. Failing to comply with foreign tax reporting rules can be very costly. Penalties start at $10,000 per violation and can add up quickly. And it’s not just Guilty that we’re talking about. These penalties apply to the F-bar, foreign bank account reporting, foreign financial asset reporting, and needed CFC disclosures. So if you even think you might have an international reporting obligation, reach out to your advisor. Don’t risk non-compliance in this fast-evolving tax environment.

Well, thanks for tuning in to the CK Audio Blog on International Tax Changes under O3B. For more information on how these updates may affect your business or personal tax situation, visit us at www.craykaiser.com or give us a call at 630-953-4900.

In this episode, Karen Snodgrass, one of our tax partners, breaks down the major business tax changes introduced by the newly passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act. From the return of 100% bonus depreciation and expanded Section 179 expensing to new R&D expensing rules and the phasing out of clean energy credits, Karen explains what these updates mean for your business in 2025 and beyond. If you’re a business owner or financial decision-maker, tune in for practical insights on planning, compliance and maximizing the bill’s benefits.

Transcript:

My name is Karen Snodgrass. I’m a tax partner with Cray Kaiser Ltd. As you know, the president signed the One Big Beautiful Bill over the July 4th weekend. There’s a lot of change here that we’re going to unpack, and really today we’re going to focus on the business provisions. And these are going to affect your taxes in both 2025 and over the next several years.

If you’re a business owner, you’re used to the benefits of bonus depreciation, but you’re also used to the reduced benefits we’ve had over the years. Before this bill, 2025 bonus depreciation was down to 40%. A significant win for business owners is we’re now back to 100% bonus depreciation. This is only effective on purchases made after January 19th of 2025. It’s a weird cutoff date, but purchases before January 20th, they’re still required to use 40% bonus. Even better news is this 100% bonus depreciation does not sunset, meaning future administrations may change this, but for now it’s a permanent provision that won’t be reduced below that 100%.

A significant change in the law related to bonus depreciation is a new class of qualified assets. Real property being referred to as “qualified production property” is now eligible for bonus depreciation. So, what does this mean? Think of a building that is used in manufacturing or a production process. The property related to the actual production would qualify, not necessarily attached offices or other non-production space. These properties must have a construction period between January 20, 2025 and the end of 2029. Given this is an entirely new provision, we’re going to need to wait for more clarity on this. We expect regulations will be issued to address a number of questions we have. It seems a cost segregation study will be needed if a client wishes to claim this deduction. With such a study, an architect or an engineer is going to be able to look at the building and parse out exactly what will qualify for the 100% bonus depreciation.

Another pro-tax provision related to capital acquisitions is expanded section 179. Like bonus depreciation, Section 179 allows for the immediate write-off of qualified property. The 2025 limitation on Section 179 is now increased to a whopping $2 and 1/2 million in property that can be expensed. As long as certain income qualifications are met. The phaseouton eligibility applies after four million has been acquired in any given year and they’re going to keep adjusting these limitations for inflation going forward. Once again these are provisions that look to be permanent.

But let’s talk about why someone may claim Section 179 versus bonus depreciation. I mean really they’re both immediate write-offs, what’s the difference, right? It’s important to note that some states don’t follow bonus depreciation, but they do conform to federal Section 179. So depending on the state, it may be more beneficial to claim Section 179. We recommend working with your tax advisor to ensure the maximum tax benefit for your cut-backs costs.

Our top question so far is about one of the few retroactive changes in the bill. Businesses that perform a significant amount of research and development activities, or R&D, were surprised with somewhat recent legislation that curtailed the deduction of these costs. This started in tax years beginning after December 31, 2021. Taxpayers were required to capitalize and amortize R&D costs over a five-year period for domestic costs and over an even longer 15-year period for any costs that were incurred internationally. That was quite the change from the immediate expensing that we enjoyed in prior years. What we found was that the benefit of the R&D credit was not sufficient to cover the additional tax due from not being able to write off these costs. The popular argument was that this policy actually harmed American taxpayers. The new bill actually creates a whole new code section, section 174A, which partially restores expensing of R&D costs. Domestic research costs are now fully deductible, but foreign R&D costs are still being advertised over 15 years. And this applies to tax years beginning after December 2024. But here, we need to talk through two different tax treatments based on your company’s size. Let’s start with what the IRS calls small taxpayers. These businesses have average annual gross receipts of $31 million or less. The bill actually allows these businesses to retroactively apply full R&D expensing for domestic costs to tax years beginning after December 31st, 2021, by amending prior returns. Or they can elect to continue to amortize these costs in 2024 and then expense the remaining domestic costs that haven’t been written off in either 2025 or 2026.

We’ll dive deeper into that in a little bit with an example. But let’s not forget about the larger businesses. Unfortunately, they don’t get the same retroactive treatment. However, they can elect to accelerate the remaining amortization over one or two tax years beginning in 2025. But let’s go back to the small taxpayers. And here we’ve actually walked through a case study with a client of ours that was considering do they use the retroactive R&D treatment or not. So what we did was we did our own study. What we found was that in 2022 we’ll definitely be able to decrease taxable income if we choose to immediately expense R&D. Now, in order to do that, the business is going to have to amend their 2022 return and, because this is an S-Corporation, all the owners are going to have to amend their 2022 returns as well. There’s a compliance cost associated with this and that needs to be measured against the refunds to be received. Fast forward to 2023. While, again, we’re going to be able to claim all those 2023 costs immediately. We actually lost the benefit of the amortization of the 2022 costs. And in this client’s case, 2023 taxable income is actually increased by applying these rules retroactively and the same holds true for 2024. Although it’s not the tax result we wanted in 2023 and 2024, once you make the election to apply the retroactive treatment, you still need to go through the process of amending all the business and owner returns for 2022 through 2024. So we had to weigh the benefit of the 2022 refund against additional tax in 2023 and 2024. Also, you have to think about the compliance costs. What’s it going to cost to amend all of these tax returns? And finally, let’s keep in mind the IRS has cut their staff by roughly 30%. We’re all used to waiting for our refunds, and that’s not going to change. We came to the conclusion with our client, we are not going to amend the prior returns. We’re not going to use the retroactive treatment even though it meant a better result in one tax year. Instead, we’re going to utilize the remaining deductions into ‘25. What we’ll be able to do is get cash flow benefit immediately. We’re going to reduce their quarterly tax payments due in September of this year. It’s a thoughtful easy button approach in this case.

We should talk through some other changes that will affect businesses. Clean energy credits appear to be on the chopping block. The bill eliminated some of these credits, too much to get into detail and to hear. But the president has already said he’s going to revisit this and perhaps further reduce the availability of clean energy credits.

Businesses that have had limitations on their deduction of business interest got a win under this bill. The computation of allowable expense has been expanded in a pro-tax pair away. And really, these are just the highlights. What are we recommending you do now? We know there’s a lot of clarifications needed on the bill. These are going to come in the form of regulations that may not be issued for months. There’s also rumbles of corrections to this bill. But at least we can see the direction of the congressional intent. While we usually start looking at year-end tax planning in the fourth quarter, now is really the time to talk with your advisor about the impacts of the bill on your specific situation. In particular, you may be able to reduce planned payments for the remainder of 2025, given the benefits you’ll see in this bill. As always, you can contact your advisor, Cray Kaiser, and we’ll be happy to walk through the situation and how it may affect you.