Tax discussions online.

• Author: Holub, Steven F.

Newsgroups can be valuable Internet resources for tax professionals. They can provide a forum in which the general public and tax professionals can interact with questions and answers about various topics.

Newsgroups are either moderated or unmoderated. With moderated newsgroups, readers can submit questions or responses to the newsgroup. The moderator reviews them and posts them to the newsgroup (if approved). The advantage of the review process is in the elimination of gratuitous advertisements and "off-topic" posts, as well as the personal attacks frequently found in many newsgroups and chat rooms. The disadvantage is that the process is not in real time. However, multiple daily postings minimize this problem.

Misc.taxes.moderated (MTM) is a moderated newsgroup. It exists for the discussion of taxes, including, but not limited to, proposed and existing tax laws, regulations, procedures and current developments. While most online tax forums and listservs have a few hundred posts each month, MTM often has 100+ posts per day, averaging about 2,000 posts per month (with 3,000 posts per month during tax season). The volume is the result of growing public awareness of the newsgroup and continuing support of tax professionals.

Value to Tax Professionals

Moderated newsgroups provide a timely source of information on emerging tax issues. For example, regular posters to MTM frequently analyze proposed and new tax legislation in detail. There were immediate in-depth discussions of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 and the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998. Some issues, such as Roth IRAs and the personal residence gain exclusion, were thoroughly discussed. The same is true for revenue rulings and precedent-setting court decisions. Often, these are explained and analyzed on the same day the matters are made public. Second, moderated newsgroups may also serve as timely sources of professional education on tax matters. Practitioners who participate in discussions and questions can more effectively deal with the practical, hands-on application of the law. In recent years, MTM discussion topics have included qualified and nonqualified stock options, innocent spouse relief, qualified plans, estate planning and state taxation of workers in interstate commerce, just to name a few.

One well-discussed "thread" (a series of postings on the same topic) dealt with an airline pilot who lived in Seattle and commuted to work, piloting...