Keeping on top of tax changes.

• Author: Walker, April

One of the most difficult challenges for tax practitioners over the past few years has been trying to stay abreast of tax legislation changes and communicating those changes to clients. Finding efficiencies and best practices is the order of the day, since the pace of change seems unlikely to slow. The AICPA Tax Practice Management Committee is composed of a mixture of sole practitioners and practitioners in top-tier U.S. CPA firms. They answered a few questions about best practices or tips related to this important topic.

What are your best practices and tips for how you as a sole practitioner or small firm go about staying on top of the tax law changes?

Jeffrey D. Solomon: We utilize updates from the AICPA and our state society. In addition, subscriptions to feeds (BNA, in our case) help keep us up to date as well. We subscribe to notifications from larger law firms and accounting firms, which help supplement our knowledge and understanding of new tax legislation. Of course, taking timely CPE and then communicating that throughout the office helped as well.

Jackie Meyer: Don't be a jack-of-all-trades. ... Being a generalist on new tax law changes will not allow you to maximize strategies for your clients. Pick the strategies that will have the most positive impact for your client base and become the specialist in those Code sections. For example, Meyer Tax, The Concierge CPA, specializes in high net wealth, and so we knew that the child tax credit wouldn't have an impact on our clients, while the ERC [employee retention credit] could substantially still help a few businesses. We then selected one staff member to prepare those claims.

Daniel T. Moore: We have developed the routine of dividing and conquering the tax updates. For individual tax returns, we break down the Form 1040 and assign the different topics to staff members. It is their job to review their topic and watch for and review updates. For example, we have someone assigned to itemized deductions. They will review those sections and watch for any new legislation or significant changes. In addition to our research programs and updated manuals, we also sign up for IRS e-News subscriptions. Staff will also review sources such as Twitter, tax blogs, and news articles for updates.

Jennifer S. Korten: Fortunately, I have been involved as an AICPA volunteer for some time and have lots of contacts from this, which provided a great deal of information. I attended almost every AICPA Town Hall, almost every EY "Tax in the Time of COVID-19" biweekly presentation, and many other webinars that I came across. I found the AICPA presentation extremely timely and useful. The EY presentation was good for current updates and IRS updates, although there was quite a bit in the middle that did not apply to my practice. I also read the daily [Thomson Reuters] Checkpoint Federal Tax Updates and [AICPA & CIMA's] CPA Letter Daily. I shared anything useful with my business partner and other sole/small practitioners I know. As a two-person CPA firm, it was exhausting, and keeping up made it difficult to get work done.

How did your CPA firm work to stay on top of the tax law changes (and keep staff up to date) over the past two years? What specific sources of information did you find the most helpful?

Chris Wittich: We assigned a team of partners/managers to follow the changes and coordinate efforts. The team was meeting daily at one point, then twice weekly, then weekly as the pace of new information slowed. One person was in charge of that group, and that group coordinated all of our updates internally and externally.

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