MSCPA members met with our Senators and Representatives or their staff on issues important to the accounting profession during the AICPA Spring Council meeting in Washington, D.C. Our team included Chairman Tom Walker, Vice-Chairman Anita Goodrum, Legislative Committee Chair Linda Keng, President/CEO Karen Moody, and AICPA Board member and newly elected AICPA Vice-Chair Jan Lewis.

We advocated support for or reconsideration on several key issues:

•Establishing the accounting profession as a STEM career pathway.

•Expanding eligible uses of 529 savings plans to include fees and expenses required to obtain or maintain recognized postsecondary credentials, such as the Uniform CPA Exam.

•Disaster tax relief which would allow the IRS to postpone deadlines following a state governors’ disaster declaration, which could provide certainty and reduce unnecessary stress while waiting for the issuance of federal tax relief. Thanking Representatives for their support of H.R. 517 which passed the House earlier this year, we urged support for S. 132 on the Senate side for their Filing Relief for Natural Disasters Act.

•Retaining the current ability for all pass-through entities to fully deduct the entity’s state and local income taxes (PTET) on the business at the federal level. With the House tax bill dropping earlier in the week which eliminates this deduction for specified service trades or businesses (SSTBs), including accountants, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and other professionals, discussions focused on the discriminatory and unfairness of this provision. MSCPA has since put out a call to action to the membership to contact their Senators and Representatives on this matter.

•Guiding principles of good tax policy developed by the AICPA as an aid to analyze and incorporate tax proposals that are balanced and in the best interest of the public. The 12 principles are accountability to taxpayers, appropriate government revenues, certainty, convenience of payment, economic growth and efficiency, effective tax administration, fairness and equity, information security, minimum tax gap, neutrality, simplicity, and transparency and visibility.