SpeakOut!

CPAs AS FIDUCIARIES: THE 15TH REASON

I'm both a CPA and an attorney and practice somewhere between the two professions. In the course of my estate planning work, I've recognized the special training that makes CPAs such logical candidates for serving as fiduciaries for their clients.

Michael Allmon expressed this very well in his November [California CPA] article. Allmon mentioned 14 reasons why CPAs make good fiducairies, but he omitted a very important one: the CPA's knowledge of the client's family situation.

When Allmon and I work with a client in preparing his tax returns, after a number of years we can't help but find out intimate details of the client's life: any possible marital problems, his children's accomplishments or difficulties, friction with partners or other co-owners and other personal concerns. By knowing about these concerns, and often counseling about them, we are better able to deal with them than a fiduciary coming cold into the situation.

What I hope you'll publish is a note adding this as a 15th reason why CPAs should volunteer to help administer clients' affairs after the clients are no longer able to do that themselves.

DAN OLINCY, CPA

Los Angeles

MEMBERS RESPOND TO IMPACT OF ENRON COLLAPSE

As a result of the Enron bankruptcy, the accounting profession must change the licensing regulations of all CPAs. This also requires changing and expanding the definition of "accounting" and the term "accounting practice." Here are my thoughts concerning this matter:

1. All accountants working in private industry, government and in educational institutions must be required to be licensed actively like those in public practice. Accountants who are CPAs working for these entities and institutions must be actively licensed as CPAs so they will be held accountable and to avoid the term "cooking the books" of private and public industries.

2. All accounting firms doing audit on a certain company must be precluded from offering consulting and other management services to the same company. This will strengthen the term "independence" to those performing audit services.

3. The...