John Majer, Partner, RSM US LLP

Global uncertainty, interest rates, and ongoing tariffs continue to impact company decisions. As such, having a dedicated local tax team with access to experts around the globe is key as companies navigate through their unique business cycles. In an interview with Invest:, In Palm Beach, RSM US LLP’s partner John Majer highlighted the value of the firm’s integrated approach to tax and audit strategies and the importance of guiding clients through evolving tax challenges. “We want to serve the client and make sure that we suit their needs in a whatever-it-takes team-centered approach,” Majer added.

How does RSM’s holistic approach to tax planning benefit your client base?
RSM takes a big picture approach to make sure that our strategies help our clients achieve their goals. For example, when clients have multiple jurisdictions, we want to make sure that we optimize their overall tax rate, and not minimizing taxes in one jurisdiction without looking at the impact in another jurisdiction.

How do you strike a balance between RSM’s global expertise and local knowledge to best help clients in the Palm Beach area?
We have many clients that are global so we need to serve them with domestic expertise, as well as bringing in teams that we have in other countries to help serve them. For example, I have a US client that just acquired several companies in Canada. We immediately introduced our Canadian tax team to make sure that we implement tax planning from a global perspective making sure that by tax structuring from a US perspective that we don’t hurt them from a Canadian tax perspective. We bring in the best resources across the country, as well as across the globe, in order for our client to be served the best.

How do you ensure that assurance services meet the evolving needs of your clients?
Our clients face challenges from evolving market dynamics, rapid industry shifts and complex regulatory requirements. RSM ensures that our assurance services meet our clients’ needs through a multi-faceted approach that combines technology, talent development, and global quality standards. We are the fifth largest accounting firm in the country, but we focus on serving the middle market with almost one hundred offices in the US and operate in approximately 120 countries worldwide. We bring the highest level of expertise and depth to serve our clients, which means we do not just rely on local experts. If there is some expertise that can be leveraged from across the country or globe, those experts are just a phone call away. We want to serve our clients and make sure that we meet their needs in a whatever-it-takes team-centered approach.

How do you see the future of auditing and assurance services evolving in the coming years?
Technology, as well as the lessening amount of college graduates with accounting degrees is ever changing our approach to auditing. As a firm, we are investing more than a billion dollars in the next few years on AI and other technologies to see how we can make the audit process easier for our clients. When a company is being audited, it is a distraction from having them focusing 100% on running their business. Therefore, our goal is to be as noninvasive as possible, while getting the information that we need to substantiate, audit, and issue their financials. Additionally, there are fewer students pursuing accounting degrees, so we have to make sure that we can attract, train and retain the best possible accounting professionals to serve our clients.

What does guiding clients through evolving tax challenges entail?
Tax laws are continually changing, including the recent One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), and as tax professionals we need to provide guidance to our clients as quickly as possible so that they can plan far in advance. As a firm, we have a Washington National Tax Practice that quickly analyzes any tax changes and disseminates that information such that all our tax professionals are quickly educated on any changes. For example, even before the OBBB was even finalized, our Washington National Tax Practice held conference calls to inform us on proposed tax law changes and provided us information regarding these proposals to pass along to our clients. Subsequent to the signing of the OBBB, our firm hosted a series of different webcasts specific to each industry so that we could devote the time to going through changes that would specifically impact each industry our clients are in, and they could join in to listen to what is most relevant to them. Our firm makes it a priority that we are reach out to our clients, listening to their questions, and letting them know that we have resources who can get them the answers they need.

What goes into managing short-term challenges and long-term growth?
From a short-term perspective, everyone wants to be able to save money and pay less taxes. As a firm, we try to find solutions that do not take a whole lot of organizational change to be able to save our clients’ money. In addition, we need to look long-term, evaluate if they are structured correctly, or if we can change how they are currently structured to be able to generate tax efficiencies, especially when looking globally. Some clients have never devoted time or energy to make sure that they have the most tax efficient structure. In an always evolving tax world, we need to continually analyze and make sure that they are structured correctly, which entails proper long-term planning.

What are the most common tax challenges facing clients today?
Two of the common tax challenges are the limitation on the amount of interest expense that companies can deduct, and tariffs that have been assessed on imported goods. Most of my clients are private equity-owned companies, such that they incur a lot of debt in order to purchase their companies, therefore, their interest expense is very high. By utilizing some tax code sections, we analyze how we can reduce the amount of interest expense that is subject to that limitation. In addition, President Trump has implemented tariffs on imported products from various countries. We have been helping our clients with analyzing the impact of these tariffs to their business operations, so that they can implement changes to reduce that burden.