Welcome to Bizora Brews, the podcast where tax professionals share the stories behind their careers.
Guests open up about their early beginnings, the turning points that defined their expertise, the challenges they’ve overcome, and the wins they’re proud of. You’ll hear practical advice for young accountants, insights on how technology is reshaping tax work, and thoughtful perspectives on the future of the industry.
It’s real conversation, real experience, and real guidance for the modern tax professional.
Jim Chapman enlisted in the Army as a private and retired twenty years later as a major. After stints as a county budget analyst, in insurance and investments, and running a fine art print business, he joined H&R Block in 2004, became an enrolled agent as part of the first computerized exam group, and has run his own practice since 2010. Since 2009 he has represented more than 3,000 tax returns in face to face IRS audits.
Adam and Jim met at the NAEA conference in New Orleans. In this episode they talk about why the number of active enrolled agents dropped by roughly 10,000 names in a year, and what Jim believes every EA should do about it.
In this episode:
Jim’s path from Army surveyor to enrolled agent
Why he tells every candidate to take Exam 2 first
What 3,000+ audits taught him about representation, manager conferences, and knowing when you’ve reached the end of the road
A Form 3115 case headed to Tax Court over one administrative step
Next steps after the EA: NTPI, advanced training, and the USTCP exam
His case for every EA recruiting at least one more
26 Oct 2026
Functioning in Chaos, Olga Brochstein
What happens when an information systems graduate gets handed a sales tax audit and a tax engine implementation before she has ever filed a return?
Olga leads indirect tax at Avanos Medical, a medical device company recently acquired by private equity. She studied management information systems at Wayne State University and fell into sales tax when a small Detroit company she interned at got hit with a Michigan assessment. Her path since then runs through Citrix, Ryder, RockTenn during its WestRock merger years, and Workday. She treated each stop as a deliberate step in a field with no formal degree behind it.
Together they explore how tax engines like Vertex depend entirely on the data your ERP feeds them, why use tax often creates more audit exposure than exemption certificates, and how AI first entrants are pushing indirect tax professionals toward advisory work while states expand sales tax on SaaS and digital products.
Olga also explains why she left a sales tax manager title at WestRock and took a pay cut to join Avanos as it spun off from Kimberly Clark. It meant building the sales tax function from scratch, through an SAP to S/4HANA migration and a Vertex upgrade, and years later that process held up under private equity due diligence. She closes with an audit that ended in a minimal assessment and a thank you email from the auditor. Tune in for a conversation about building a sales tax function that survives audits and acquisitions.
24 Oct 2026
The Last 10 Percent, Cos Nicolaescu of Accrual
What does it take to sell AI into the largest accounting firms in the country when the hardest part has nothing to do with the technology?
This founder series episode features Cosmin “Cos” Nicolaescu, CEO and co founder of Accrual, the AI native platform built for Top 100 accounting firms. Before Accrual, Cos was CTO at Brex, an early engineer and manager at Stripe, and started his career at Microsoft. Two years in, Accrual has grown from individual tax returns into a full platform spanning tax, audit, and client advisory services, with Armaninoamong its first customers.
Together they explore why Cos treats accounting as an enterprise market and sells to firms above $100 million in revenue, how Accrual rewrites a firm’s SOPs with its leadership and L&D teams so practitioners stop reviewing work the AI no longer gets wrong, and why the models can handle roughly 90 percent of a complex return while the real value is pinpointing the 10 percent that still needs human judgment.
Cos also walks through how a K1 prototype built in a couple of weeks turned into a yearlong partnership with Armanino, why Accrual acquired Puzzle after he spent years closing his own books on it every week, and the launch of Arc, which brings the Claude Code way of working to CPAs. Tune in for a conversation about building AI for the firms that set the pace for the profession.
Reach and audience
Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.
Spotify
5.0 / 5
5 ratings
Contact Bizora Brews
Guest appearances
Books guests
Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.
Host of Bizora Brews?
Claim your podcast to manage its listing and keep your show details accurate.
Pod Engine is an independent podcast discovery and analytics service and is not affiliated with or endorsed by this podcast. Artwork and show content belong to their owners. Full legal notice.
Explore this show Podcast research with Pod Engine
