Blogs

By Mark A. Stewart, Jr., CPA, National President, NCCPAP

January 12, 2021—On the eve of the 2020 holiday season, CPA practitioners received both a gift and a lump of coal in their stocking—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021.

While the provisions of this Bill are mostly good news for practitioners and their clients, there are many issues we must now face as practitioners. The good news includes numerous tax extenders, deductibility of Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) expenses, the potential for second-draw PPP loans, removing the requirement to reduce PPP forgiveness by EIDL grants and perhaps, most importantly, a simplified PPP loan forgiveness process for loans under $150,000.

On the challenging side, the Bill is a whopping 5,593 pages long! Granted not each and every page is applicable to every practitioner, but many pages are. The practitioner community is now faced with absorbing all this information right on the heels of a new tax season.

So how might we handle this year’s challenges? We know two things for certain: 1) This Bill will be followed by weeks and months of regulations and interpretations by the IRS and the U.S. Department of the Treasury, and 2) We will all be pressured by our clients to rush into interpreting this Bill ourselves. While it may be tempting to give into that pressure, there’s no shame in telling your clients that you would be doing them a disservice to act before more regulations are issued.

One final important thing to note – you don’t have to go this alone. The National Conference of CPA Practitioners (NCCPAP), along with other CPA/tax preparer communities, is here to help and offer support to practitioners everywhere. As regulations are issued by the IRS and U.S. Department of the Treasury to bring some clarity to aspects of the Bill, NCCPAP will be at the forefront of education, advocacy, and support. Look for future announcements, webinars, and other guidance from NCCPAP.

About NCCPAP

The National Conference of CPA Practitioners (NCCPAP) is a professional organization comprised of Certified Public Accountants practicing in the United States. In addition to serving as a forum for education, networking, and community impact, NCCPAP also advocates for its clients. NCCPAP influences tax administration and tax policy by regularly meeting with Internal Revenue Service representatives, state taxing authorities, and elected officials. NCCPAP members represent over one million businesses and individual clients. The organization is headquartered in Woodbury, NY. For more information visit, www.NCCPAP.org.