Legislative alert: CPA issues on front burner

Editor's note: The following is a note to MACPA members sent on Feb. 24 by Executive Director Tom Hood:

Greetings colleagues,

I hope tax season is going well. We are in the middle of our “tax season” with the General Assembly in full swing. Some 1,500 bills have been filed in the first 40 days of the General Assembly session. Since we have received some questions about multi-state licensing requirements for filing tax returns, we wanted to give you a brief update.

Mobility: There are now 35 states who have passed “mobility” provisions regarding temporary practice (like tax returns). See our blog post at CPALegislativeInsider.com for the listing of the 35 states that do not require licensing. The other states may require licenses. If in doubt, you are advised to put CPA-MD (or whatever your primary state of licensure is) to avoid any misunderstanding by regulators. There are nine more states with active legislation as I write this. This is a historical success for the CPA profession and makes us more uniform and mobile than any other state-based licensed profession.

Tax preparer licensing will not be in effect until the new State Board is formed. (We have a seat on that board.) All CPAs and your staff are exempt from this newly created license and regulation. We are currently fighting attempts by H&R Block to loosen up the requirements.

Also, we (the AICPA, the MACPA, the California Society of CPAs, the Ohio Society of CPAs and other state CPA societies) were successful in getting H&R Block to back off on their ads against CPAs. Here are details:

Sales tax on professional services: On another note, we have not seen any bills related to sales tax on accounting, tax and consulting services this session and have been told they heard us loud and clear last year and at CPA Day this year. Keep your fingers crossed.

We have your back so you can stay focused on your work, your clients and organizations. Best wishes for a great tax season.

Warmest regards,

Tom and the MACPA team

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