Impact Recap: Leveraging Your Voice in Sacramento.

• Author: Fox, Jason

The California Legislature recently wrapped up a rollercoaster of a 2021-22 legislative session amidsl a significant remodeling project at the Capitol that physically moved the legislative offices to a temporary space across the street.

CalCPA was active in leveraging the voice of our 42,000 members throughout the legislative session. Here's a recap of some of the topics CalCPA's government relations team worked on this session.

CPA Pipeline

CalCPA remains one of the few public stakeholder groups that's present and active at nearly every meeting of the California Board of Accountancy. A big focus of the efforts this year was to find ways to add efficiency and flexibility to the current licensure process.

A significant effort along these lines was supporting the passage and implementation of legislation (AB 298) that last-tracks the process for a candidate to sit for the Uniform CPA Exam and adds flexibility to the current ethics education requirements for licensure. CalCPA helped shepherd this legislation through the legislative process quickly and without opposition.

When the CBA rolled out a new online application and renewal process to speed up processing times, CalCPA partnered on outreach about the new process, licensure requirements and tips to work through the nuances of the application process. CalCPA is actively assisting with some of these new processes, including working with the CBA on streamlined ways to upload CPE records into the new CBA system.

Adoption & Improvements to Pass-through Entity Tax

CalCPA actively engaged with the Legislature and the administration to establish an elective pass-through entity (PTE) tax as a framework for California taxpayers to structure their state income lax compliance in a maimer that provides some relief from the current federal limits on individual state and local tax (SALT) deductions.

When the new PTE tax strategy was pieced together in AB 150, CalCPA worked with key decision makers to outline the importance of this policy and was key in helping it get fast-tracked through the Legislature. Subsequent to passage of the initial framework, CalCPA worked to provide comments and recommendations for key expansions and improvements to the framework as outlined in SB 113 earlier this year. Our work has directly translated into significant savings for most partnerships and S corps, including most CPA firms.

Tax Treatment of Pandemic Relief

Early in the legislative session, CalCPA advocacy was key...