The relationship between CPAs and financial advisors has never been more important. That is one of the reasons I am excited to be involved with Modern American Advisor.

I started my career as an investment advisor and have worked as a CPA, auditor, tax preparer, professor, author, and editor. Over the years, I have written extensively about accounting, finance, business decision-making, and the practical realities behind the numbers.

My conclusion?

Wealth management has never been more complex.

Managing Complexity

CPAs and financial advisors help clients make decisions in an increasingly complex world. Consider these facts:

• The IRS Tax Code is thousands of pages long and changes frequently. As an example, the recently passed One Big Beautiful Bill Act made dozens of changes to the tax code. Many of the Act’s provisions change from one year to the next.

• The three major U.S. stock exchanges (Nasdaq, NYSE, and OTC) list more than 12,000 publicly traded stocks.

• As of December 2025, the total number of index-based and actively managed ETFs, including commodity ETFs, domiciled in the United States stood at 4,495

Without guidance from both a CPA and a financial advisor, investors can make mistakes that increase taxes or expose portfolios to more risk than planned.

Different Views

CPAs and wealth advisors may view financial advice differently.

A CPA is trained to look for the facts. What does the return say? What does the balance sheet tell us? Where is the risk? Where is the opportunity? What is the client not seeing yet?

Successful CPAs don’t just prepare tax returns. They conduct tax planning and adjust the plan as the tax code changes.

A good financial advisor asks many of the same questions, but often through a different lens. How does this client preserve wealth? How do they plan for retirement? What should they do with a business sale, inheritance, liquidity event or changing family situation?

How do they build a plan that is both technically correct and useful in real life?

Collaborating on a Plan

The more complex clients’ financial lives become, the harder it is for those two worlds to stay separate.

Tax planning, investment strategy, retirement income, estate planning, business succession, charitable giving and family wealth are all connected. A decision in one area can create consequences in another. That is why the best client outcomes increasingly come from coordinated advice, not isolated advice.

That does not mean every CPA needs to become a financial advisor. It does not mean every advisor needs to bring tax preparation in-house. But it does mean both professions need to understand each other better.

Modern American Advisor is being built around that idea of better understanding.

Our Publication’s Mission

The platform is not here simply to report headlines. It is here to interpret the forces changing the advisory profession: consolidation, technology, succession, client expectations, tax-aware planning, practice growth, culture, women in finance, private markets, AI and the changing relationship between advisors and the professionals around them.

For CPAs, that matters because the advisory market is increasingly relevant to their clients.

For financial advisors, it matters because the CPA relationship is often one of the most trusted relationships in a client’s life.

And for clients, it matters because they do not experience their financial life in professional silos. They experience it as one life, one business, one family, one set of decisions, and one set of consequences.

That is where the market is moving.

Modern American Advisor wants to help make sense of that movement. My role is to bring a practical, accounting-aware perspective to the conversation: clear thinking, useful interpretation and content that helps advisors, CPAs and other professional partners understand where the market is going next.

The future of advice will not be built by one profession operating alone.

It will be built by trusted professionals who know how to work together.