It's great to be on board.

• Author: Dicker, Eli J.
• Position: Tax Executives Institute's role in the process

Editor's Note: Eli J. Dicker joined TEI's staff as Chief Tax Counsel in March 2005, after stints at Capitol One, KMPG, and the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Chief Counsel. A graduate of Northeastern University School of Law and New York University's LL.M. (Taxation) program, he leads TEI's advocacy efforts. Eli can be reached atedicker@tei.org or 202.638.5601 x 354.

Columns can serve many purposes, among them, informing, provoking, challenging, and questioning. As this space is initiated, my goal is to--at times--do all of these things, focusing primarily on the march (mostly forward, sometimes backward, and often sideways) of tax law and policy as well as on Tax Executives Institute's role in the process.

So, where to start? Tax reform? Tax gap? E-filing? Circular 230? Those topics--all of which have commanded TEI's time of late--would be natural, obvious choices. Instead, I thought this inaugural effort should focus on some of the challenges and opportunities that lay ahead for the Institute, and how we are preparing to meet them.

For more than 60 years, TEI has stood for balanced and effective advocacy on behalf of its membership. At its core, this mission will not change. Yet the legislative and regulatory environment within which tax executives and their companies operate has changed seismically.

One need only look to near-term history (for example, Enron, WorldCom, HealthSouth, Sarbanes-Oxley, Big 4, and the PCAOB) to observe how external events have complicated the challenges confronting tax professionals. No longer is it sufficient for tax professionals to be solely conversant in the Code to do their job effectively. Now, to be effective, and to stay effective, tax professionals must be fluent in a whole new range of initials, acronyms, codes, and regulatory regimes that previously were not in their province or on their radar screen. These include the FASB, PCAOB, SEC, IASB, OPR, and OECD, among many others.

It is within this regulatory labyrinth that TEI must define and successfully execute on its advocacy mission. To do so, the organization must continually place itself in the shoes of its members, asking--

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