Professional services solutions provider Intapp, during its Intapp Amplify event in New York City on Feb. 26, announced improvements and upgrades to its solutions for time and billing, cybersecurity and AI assistant. 

Intapp Time

Intapp Time, the company’s time tracking and billing solution, now sports an improved interface in a new, modern web experience, said Beth Cuzzone, vice president of growth marketing during her presentation. 

It also now sports an AI-driven activity log that automatically captures and lists all the user’s daily work activities, allowing them to easily and quickly complete timesheets without things like forgetting about weekends or teleconferences between meetings, as the software captures it all for them. Cuzzone also pointed out a new feature called Quick Add, which allows people to voice dictate what they are doing, and Intapp’s AI can turn that voice into text, and that text into a draft timesheet that is checked for compliance with client billing requirements. 

“Here, you can see the draft time entry includes the word ‘reviewed’ in the narrative. The client does not allow this language in the narrative and will likely reject the invoice. The AI highlights the word or phrase with a warning message, indicating an issue, and even suggests alternatives that comply with the client’s billing requirements,” she said. 

The AI offers a list of acceptable suggestions in cases like this, and if the partner wants more information they can review the guideline that triggered the warning in the first place. Cuzzone noted that timing errors may not seem significant at first, but even the smallest amount of bill and time leakage can have cascading effects on a firm’s revenue. Intapp time, she said, is intended to mitigate this challenge.  

“Intapp’s applied AI, firms can realize millions of dollars they otherwise would have lost. This also supports strategic growth and impacts profits for partners—all by leveraging the data you already have and without requiring professionals to do anything differently,” she said. 

The new Time experience will be released this summer. People can either keep using the existing desktop app or use the new web experience. They also plan to make it available on their mobile app eventually as well. 

Intapp Walls

Meanwhile, Intapp Walls, the company’s data privacy solution, was also enhanced with AI in cooperation with Microsoft, according to Richard Bowes, senior compliance growth director with Intapp who, previously, spent eight years at Microsoft. He said that Walls is designed for CIOs who want to bring the capabilities of AI to end users, but also need to protect against threats and inappropriate internal access, noting that it can be easy to unintentionally overshare. Walls is meant to put up, well, walls that ensure Copilot and AI only reveal the right information to the right people.

“Walls operates at an engagement level for project based industries. It knows the deals and engagement that content belongs to. That understanding of the engagement metadata and what content is associated with. It is what we call engagement context, it protects your most important confidential business data. Engagement context enables wars to manage and enforce access permissions to ensure that neither humans nor digital actors such as CO pilots or large language models can inappropriately access or share confidential information in your deals, matters or engagements,” he said during his presentation. 

One of the biggest changes to the solution has been the addition of numerous new connectors, particularly for Microsoft products, particularly OneDrive, which he said makes things especially easy for a user to unintentionally move sensitive content from a secure server to an insecure laptop. So now they are using connectors to help firms deploy a single centralized system to identify and protect sensitive engagement information across the whole Microsoft 365 ecosystem. Beyond dozens of connectors, he also touted an API to extent Walls to any system that contains sensitive information at all. 

“If it contains sensitive information and It’s plugged in, Walls can secure it,” he said. 

Walls has also been enhanced with new monitoring instruments to assess and track oversharing risks by repository, client engagement or geographic location. This means that professionals can identify and proactively address the highest risk areas of their data, as well as receive “a little nudge” to secure areas that are less protected. 

“You don’t have to go to sleep wondering if your clients’ secrets are safe. Walls will show you,” he said. 

Intapp Assist

Finally, Melanie Fisher, Intapp’s senior product manager, went over improvements to Intapp Assist, the company’s generative AI assistant. She said that the Smart Tags feature has been significantly improved since it was first previewed last year. Smart Tags, she said, scan the cloud and automatically identify companies and contacts mentioned, and link the information to the relevant records—making it accessible across the firm. “It’s like having an assistant who reads all your notes in real-time and adds an @ mention to every relevant company or contact. It’s seamless and simple. Assist can instantly bring critical intelligence to every member of the firm who should have access to it,” she said. 

Intapp Assist now also features a new Prompt Studio. While Assist is very powerful, she conceded that every company is unique and has needs that cannot be addressed by a one size fits all approach. This is why they released the Prompt Studio, which allows people to bolster Assist’s capabilities with custom prompts specific to the user. 

She brought up a hypothetical example of someone named Kate, a partner at a multi-strategy investment firm. Kate is focused on making investments for the firm’s private credit strategy. She asks if Intapp Assist can find credit-related information on a company. Her supervisor, Mark, goes into Prompt Studio, where he sees that there are built-in tips for writing effective prompts. He can use the copy from an existing prompt or create a new one. He fills in basic information and selects the type of task he wants to tailor (in this case, summary.) He assigns the AI a role familiar with a private credit partner, then chooses the data his instructions will apply to. Next, Mark describes the AI’s task, giving it specific instructions on the types of information he is interested in, such as EBITDA, free cash flow, or debt service ratios. Once configured, he is ready to test. He filters the dataset through a realistic example and clicks Generate to see the results.

“Just like that, the experience has been tailored exactly to what Kate needs to run her private credit business. That was so easy!” she said. 

Fisher also noted the solution’s new language capacities. She raised an example of a hypothetical worker named Caleb who works in the UK and whose team is pursuing a deal with a Japanese conglomerate. While reviewing deal information, he discovers that his colleagues took notes in Japanese, and no one there understands them. Given time zone differences, she said, it will be difficult to get everyone on a call to resolve this quickly. However, in this case the firm already configured a prompt to translate automatically.

“Firms aspire to grow along many dimensions, including geographic expansion—whether organically or inorganically. While English is the most commonly used language, as businesses cross borders, the need for multilingual collaboration naturally increases,” said Fisher. 

Prompt Studio, Assist can translate over 100 languages into English.

The departure of audit firms from the Securities and Exchange Commission market can prove a boon for those who remain: Pennsylvania-based auditor Stephano Slack brought on the most new SEC clients in the fourth quarter of 2024 thanks to picking up engagements from an exiting firm — a repeat of a similar situation in the third quarter.

Wayne, Pennsylvania-based Stephano Slack grabbed 11 new clients (and netted 10) from Blue Bell, Pennsylvania-based Morison Cogen, which stopped providing audit services to publicly traded companies in the fall of 2025. (See “Net engagement leaders.“)

That isn’t the only way to pick up new clients, of course: Houston-based HTL International added six of its eight new clients in Q4 from TPS Thayer in Sugar Land, Texas, after the two firms created a strategic collaboration in November that included HTL bringing on the audit team of TPS Thayer.

And while it was a relatively slow quarter for the largest auditing firms, the combination of CBIZ/CBIZ CPAs and Marcum late last year looks likely to benefit a range of audit firms, with Marcum shedding a net of 27 firms. Three out of CBIZ CPAs’ six new clients came from Marcum, while lots of other firms picked up individual Marcum clients. (See “Q4 2024 client gains & losses.”)

The total number of new engagements hit 160, roughly the same as Q3 and much lower than previous two quarters (which had been boosted in part by the implosion of audit firm BF Borgers), but still well above the low numbers from the midst of the COVID pandemic.

SEC clients by filing status, and more

In terms of clients by filing status, KPMG once again led among new large accelerated filers, while Stephano Slack took the lead among non-accelerated filers and small reporting companies. (See “Audit leaders“) Everyone tied for new accelerated filers — with one.

BDO USA took the lead among large auditors in terms of new clients in Q4, and that helped it top the league tables for new market capitalization audited, with the overwhelming majority coming in the form of computer server manufacturer Super Micro Computer Inc.’s $49 billion. BDO also took second in new audit fees, thanks again to Super Micro, which accounted for $4.76 million of the firm’s $5.84 million. (See “New client leaders.“)

Meanwhile, PwC came first in new assets audited, thanks largely to adding asset manager Nuveen, while KPMG came first in new audit fees, with natural gas and electric power distribution company UGI Corp. contributing the most, at $9 million. KPMG also came second in new market cap and new assets audited.

Data for the quarterly rankings are provided by Ideagen Audit Analytics, a premium online intelligence service delivering audit, regulatory and disclosure analysis. Reach them at (508) 476-7007, info@auditanalytics.com or www.auditanalytics.com.

What will the firings at the IRS and other developments in Washington mean for tax season? Neil Fishman, returning president of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners, dives into these and other major tax issues.

Transcription:

Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors. Please check the corresponding audio for the authoritative record.

Dan Hood (00:03):

Welcome to On the Air with Accounting Today, I’m editor-in-chief Dan Hood. Massive changes are afoot at the Internal Revenue Service and in the Trump administration and in Congress that all seem likely to have major impacts on tax professionals in both the short and the long term. Here to talk about all of those is Neil Fishman. He’s the president of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners, a practitioner himself, and a frequent guest on the podcast. You were here just a couple of weeks ago as we got ready for tax season and now things are just getting crazier and crazier even I think, than we may have anticipated at the moment. So glad to have you back to help us talk a lot. What’s going on right now?

Neil Fishman (00:35):

Well, first of all, thank you very much, Dan for having me back and yes, it is as I go. It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but of course I used to say that for part of the year. No, I started working for my father back in November of 90, in 89, so 1990 was my first following season, so this one makes 36 for me, and when I started working for him, I was taught the tax season was January through April, and then as the years went on and we would meet other people who said No, tax season runs through October, and now since the pandemic, it just doesn’t

Dan Hood (01:15):

End. It never stop, right?

Neil Fishman (01:16):

It doesn’t end anymore. Tax season is all year round. It’s the most wonderful time of

Dan Hood (01:22):

It. Right? That’s the question is, is there any time that isn’t tax season? It’s probably a weekend in late July

Neil Fishman (01:27):

Season. I think it’s a Thursday in late December. It’s late depending on how the calendar falls.

Dan Hood (01:32):

I still may date, sorry, we’re going way afield here, but I’m always fascinated by, I would love to see the tipping point seemed to be when they took out that mid-June extension date used to, right. You could extend to mid Junee and then I think it

Neil Fishman (01:43):

Was actually that was August.

Dan Hood (01:44):

Was in August, okay. Yeah,

Neil Fishman (01:45):

Personal return, April you had till August, and then if you weren’t done, you filed another, but you had to give, had give an explanation in August, and the standard explanation that we used back then was we need more time to prepare the return. Yeah,

Dan Hood (02:02):

Sure. But then when they got rid of that, when they got rid of that middle extension thing, it seemed like that’s the whole year. Now, as you say, whole year’s tax season

Neil Fishman (02:09):

Now it’s just now it’s just March six months. April six months may for nonprofits, six months, so it doesn’t end.

Dan Hood (02:17):

Yep. But that’s all long-term stuff. Let’s talk about some of the short-term stuff that’s going on. There is a lot of craziness happening in Washington around the IRS and in legislation, and I want to start with the IRS because the new administration has done a ton of things there and made major, major ations, but you can just run us through some of the big things that are going on between the Trump administration and the IRS.

Neil Fishman (02:37):

All right. Well, first of all, I’m going to try to make this as apolitical as possible. That’s going to be hard. That may be hard though in some points. So you have this Doge, department of government efficiency, whatever the heck that means. Just on a side note, I haven’t heard one, and we don’t have to include, I haven’t heard. One member of Congress now says, A, they were taking a pay cut and B, they were cutting back on their staff and that’s on other side of the aisle, but that’s beside the point. But they’re going through and they’re cutting jobs out of every department. The iris included, it seems that most of the people that are being let go that are being fired are what they consider the probationary people who haven’t worked there for a year. So it’s a lot easier to get rid of them. Now, of course, the question is with regard to the IRS, where are these people working? Because remember when they passed the Inflation reduction act, which was giving the IRS 80 billion over a decade, a little more than half of that money was going towards enforcement. So they were hiring people to be auditors and of course, but remember, not every IRS employee is an auditor. You also have the secretarial and you have the other support staff, the administrative staff, and where are these people? Who are the people

Dan Hood (03:58):

Going and taxpayer service, right? This is people to answer phones

Neil Fishman (04:00):

And customer service and train those people. And so the people who are leaving, and then of course you’re hearing in the news, and this is not just the IRS, but in other areas where people are resigning, I think I just heard digital services just announced that 21 people collectively submitted their resignation from the government because they don’t want to be part of what they think what may be happening, and they don’t approve of what they think is going to happen. So the IRIS is in the same way as where are these people being let go? Who’s being let go? What impact is it going to be if we call the practitioner priority hotline, first of all, I get into my office early, so if I have to call them, I’m calling them at 7:00 AM when they go live. But I’ve just learned that because that’s me. I get up early, I wake up somewhere between four and five every morning, even when I don’t have to. I do. Why rule? So we have to wait and see what’s going to happen with the IRS. How’s that going to impact that? I have a client that is being audited.

(05:08):

The audit started last year and we have not heard anything from the auditor for a while. So the client actually last week contacted and said, why don’t you reach out to the auditor to find out what’s going on? Because they would also like to get it done. If they have to pay, they want to pay and move on. And so unfortunately, we don’t know exactly what’s going to happen, but we have to wait and see how everything’s going to play out. No immediate impact will be waiting longer to get a live person on the phone to help resolve a problem,

Dan Hood (05:42):

Right? Right. So I mean that’s the expectation for this tax season is that there was a number of people they had offered an early buyout from basically that we might lay you off later on, or you could take a buyout now and then they said, no, no, no, you all have to stay through 10th through April.

Neil Fishman (06:00):

Well, the court stepped in, well, first of all, the courts stepped in and said, can’t do that. Then also, I’ve heard some news in the news about how they can only be furloughed or they can only be let go for so long that they couldn’t be given In corporate America, you could be let go and you could get a year severance and pay for year, and supposedly the government can or cannot do that. I’m really not sure. But

Dan Hood (06:29):

There was this trade of people who were, they said, and it was probationary people and stuff like that. Sub you’re all out then actually even those people for tax season. And they said, all right, we’re re sending that offer.

Neil Fishman (06:39):

And of course a lot of people who might be taking up the offer of the leave early, but get paid through September the end of the fiscal year. I would anticipate that those are people who are most likely, and this is government-wide, who are basically planning on leaving anytime soon anyway. So they say, Hey, I was going to leave in June, but now I can take my retirement and I can get paid through September.

Dan Hood (07:04):

But as you say, it’s interesting because a lot of those people are the people. Some of there’s a portion of them are the people who were hired from the IRA funding over across year, but those are the probationary period early within the year, so they can be fired more easily. But you see then if you’re looking at people who are taking an early retirement, those are in many cases are going to end up being some of your most experienced IRS employees.

Neil Fishman (07:26):

And that’s even before that, that’s been the problem. You have the people who have been there for the 20, 30 years retirement eligible and now they’re starting to retire. And as you know, before inflation reduction, the IRS was hamstrung by limited budget that they could basically hire one person for five people and so forth. But then the knowledge that is going with the people retiring, you’re bringing in somebody new. You’re bringing in a 30 something who may have worked for an accounting firm out of college for several years. How much knowledge do they have, how much experience? Now with this audit, with another audit I did a couple of years ago, we had to take time to explain to the person how this business, how this industry operate, how the person got paid in the previous one, it was an independent contractor. In the second one, it’s a person who actually has a media company of their own.

Dan Hood (08:29):

Yeah, it’s interesting because even before Doge and the new administration’s approach to staffing and all that, the IRS was facing a brain drain anyways. They just had this as every part of the economy. This facing this issue of a lot of experienced people, baby boomers and so on, are retirement, right? It’s a natural period fund, but that means that there’s this tremendous amount of institutional knowledge and expertise that’s going on anyways, and now it’s being a little bit exacerbated by the hiring and really, really the firing policies of the current administration. So is the expectation, as you say, it’s going to take longer to get an answer from the IRS, your longer wait time’s on the phone? It could be less

Neil Fishman (09:08):

Expertise. That’s what I would expect. It’s going to take longer to do that. It’s going to take longer to get responses. Even if it’s something as simple as submitting a S-corp election,

(09:20):

Sending you fax it over to Utah or Kansas City, wherever, depending on your location where you send it to, how long is it going to take for that to be processed and to get the approval? And now if you’re, say 25 is the first year of the business and you’re making the election, you follow the return, will it get accepted as an S-corp when you file that? And it may not just be the 25, it could also carry over to the following year because if it’s still sitting in the pile of things to be done the second year, it may get rejected. That actually happened to a client

Dan Hood (09:58):

Really. So obviously the broad lesson is people should be expecting longer wait times. They should be prepared for that. They should be getting into their office at seven o’clock in the morning. Well, can’t even imagine.

Neil Fishman (10:09):

I tell you, if you’re going to call the IRS, whether if you’re a practitioner calling or you’re just a taxpayer calling, have a large mug of tea coffee with you, have something to keep yourself busy because you may be waiting a while depending on when you call,

Dan Hood (10:30):

Which is too bad because things have been getting a little bit better over the last couple of years, at least it seems wait times were down and so on. But we’ll see how that plays out. Hopefully it won’t be too bad as we go forward. So that’s the short term, right? We’re talking about tax taxis and what’s going on. The IRSI want to take a step back and maybe take a little bit of a longer term view. There’s just been some stuff in Washington as we record this. As you listen to it, it won’t be as recent as it is for us now, but there have been some bills passed and some movement on what they’re going to do with particularly tax cuts and Jobs Act provisions and basically the Trump administration’s tax agenda, a huge portion of which, if not the entirety of it, is to continue on with a lot of the TCGA proposals or provisions I should say, because they’re not proposals. They actually haven’t. So maybe you can talk a little bit about that and what the tax legislative agenda looks like and what.

Neil Fishman (11:21):

Well, first of all, the bill that just passed the house, the vote was 217-215. The Republicans had won no vote, which personally I thought was a little surprising, but apparently the president worked the phones, which was something he never really wanted to do before, but he did it this time and he got the votes. Because when you are in the minority, I think it’s a lot easier for everybody to say unified. When you’re in the majority, it’s a little harder because now you have the various factions who are all going to be clamming for things that they want taken care of. Now, leading up to this vote, you heard that there were a number of Republicans who I would call them deficit hawks. They did not want spending cuts unless they did not want tax cuts unless they were going to be spending cuts. Now they want the proverbial balanced budget, which is what we had back, which we’ve had last under the Clinton administration, I believe. I think we even

Dan Hood (12:19):

Had

Neil Fishman (12:20):

Surpluses

Dan Hood (12:21):

During, it was a late afternoon in a December where we had briefly a balanced budget,

Neil Fishman (12:25):

But then on the other side you had a number of members of the house, Republicans from New Jersey, New York, California, which what they all have in common, aside from being Republican, is that they’re from states with high taxes. And if you recall, as you know right now under tax Hudson Jobs Act, salt is capped at $10,000 a year ago. Several of these people tried to get that $10,000 threshold raised two 20. Now, what was being reported this time around is they wanted the cap on salt eliminated altogether. I mean are, look, I’m here in New York, but I live in Florida and there are parts of Florida, Miami, Boca, Wellington and so forth where the property taxes aren’t greater than $10,000. Whether these people can itemize, otherwise, I don’t know. And then you come to New York to New Jersey to California, the property taxes, in addition to the income tax are rather high, but they can only get $10,000 on their federal return. So the house passed their version, the Senate passed their version. They have to have their reconciliation conference. So we have to wait and see what’s going to be going on. I know, speaking with colleagues of mine at Nick Pap, we anticipated that most of tax cuts and Jobs act would be extended. The one thing that would be changed would be the salt cap,

Dan Hood (13:51):

Right? Well, on the campaign tail, president Trump had sort of expressed some openness to that. He’d had some high tax state GOP representatives down to Mar-a-Lago to talk about it while,

Neil Fishman (14:03):

Well, his big thing was doing away with the tax on tips, the tax on Social Security. But remember pre 86, pre the 86 Reform Act under Reagan Social Security, you had the formula, but the max was 50%. Since 86 it’s been 85%. But remember, if you look at it, those who are collecting Social Security or will be collecting, technically they’ve only paid for half of that because the employer pays the match. Now, you take the people who are self-employed, are they paying both ends? Yes, but they are getting a tax credit, let’s say an income credit for half the self-employment tax in determining their taxable income. Therefore, and thus their income tax. But still, it’s only half. So I remember my father, who in April will be gone three years, always talked about that social, his idea was Social Security should be tax free for three years and then after that taxable, don’t know if that would fly. I mean, Social Security now they talk about was another six or seven years before it starts running out of money. Okay, well, one thing that people forget, or I should say a lot of people do not know or realize is that Social Security is not part of the budget. The problem is the federal government has borrowed heavily against it. So when you hear politicians, senators, representatives talk about Social Security benefits being cut, you could basically take it that they’re saying, you know, all that money we borrowed, well, we’re not paying it back.

Dan Hood (15:53):

Pretty much. Yeah. I mean, well, it is one of those weird things with, as you say, there’s a lot of things people don’t know about Social Security and how Social Security works, and there’s a lot of misconceptions about how Social Security should be viewed. Should it be viewed as yes, here’s all the money. It shouldn’t be viewed as a savings account. This is, sorry, wildly editorializing here. I think too many people view Social Security as a retirement account. I put money in, so I should get money out where the point of social security is old people shouldn’t die in poverty. So

Neil Fishman (16:22):

Well, Social Security is really three things. It is retirement, it is disability, and it is also a death benefit. The big one is of course the retirement because if you pass away, you have a minor child, they can get Social Security benefits up until the age of 18. If you become disabled, you can get Social Security benefits up until the point you hit, at least until you hit retirement age. And then you can see which is the better way to go. It’s just like if you are married and you become eligible when you go in, they look at how much you could get under your earnings history, but they also look at your spouse or in the case ex-spouses, because if you’ve been married to somebody, I believe it’s 10 years, you can still get benefits based on their income as opposed to yours.

Dan Hood (17:15):

But the point being, sorry I leave straight way. It’s

Neil Fishman (17:17):

Right.

Dan Hood (17:17):

We straight way into, like I said this, these are my opinions, not the opinions of accounting today. I just say people need to think differently

Neil Fishman (17:23):

About or the opinions of Nick Pap. I will say that

Dan Hood (17:25):

Exactly. We’ve gone off the recordation

Neil Fishman (17:26):

If I’m talking these things, this is Neil Fishman practicing CPA talking.

Dan Hood (17:30):

Yes, but that’s the thing people should be thinking differently about Social Security. It is not meant to be your savings account. It’s meant to be. You get this regardless of whether you,

Neil Fishman (17:37):

It was never meant to be a be all and an end all. You still have to have other monies put aside. Right.

Dan Hood (17:43):

Sorry. Anyways, we’ll come back onto the reservation in a second. You can ignore the last few minutes if you want, but I think I want to explore what all this means. Everything before the last couple of minutes means for tax practitioners, obviously the changes that the IRS in terms of staffing and tax season and then some of the things about the legislation and how tax preparers and professionals should be looking about that. But first, we’re going to take a quick break. Alright, and we’re back and we’re talking with Neil Fishman of the National Conference of CPA. Practitioners Returning president recently returned president for a second non-consecutive term. It’s becoming a trend, a fad. You started that fad, you and Grove Cleveland, but we were talking, we talked a lot about what’s going to be happening in the IRS. We talked about the legislative changes. It looks like a lot of the tax cuts and Jobs Act provisions are going to be continued. I’m not sure as you say about what’s going on with salt and some of the details may be hashed out differently in reconciliation. We are going to

Neil Fishman (18:45):

Have to wait to see what the House and Senate Conference does in compromising, because if you recall when tax Cuts and Jobs Act was passed the first time around back in 17, they wanted to reduce the original bill in the house, reduce the million dollars of indebtedness for mortgage interest down to half a million, and then the compromise was right in the middle at seven 50. So we have to wait and see what they’re going to do. Like I said, I think most of the provisions will probably stay there. The big one that I expect to change is on state and local taxes.

Dan Hood (19:20):

So that one we can leave aside for the but from all the rest of it. Anything tax preparers should be doing things they should be warning their clients about or celebrating with their clients or just basically getting their clients ready as they look towards year’s end and that sort of thing?

Neil Fishman (19:34):

Well, first of all, I had been talking with clients last year about the fact that Tax Hudson Jobs Act, the 17 bill is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. So the 25 returns next year would be under that provision. Who knew what was going to happen, but now it looks like they’re going to be extended. So when I start talking with my clients, well the ones that will be coming in over the next month or so and afterwards, I can talk with them about what the changes. Once we know them, we can say, but it looks like everything’s going to be extended and we will see what happens. And of course when things happen, we will have to let them know, for example, just on a side note, BOI, beneficial ownership information report that’s now been reinstated by the courts, even though the Fifth Circuit is first still going to have their formal hearing on March 25th, but now all the companies that haven’t done it have to go online and register.

Dan Hood (20:35):

They’re all keeping their fingers crossed that some other court will pop up and say, no, no, no, no, this is all out of shape. But yeah,

Neil Fishman (20:40):

Yeah. But the question is now is, but right now the fifth Circuit hearing is technically moot because everybody now has to register and regardless of now, so I said March 25th, they’re having their hearing, how long will it take for them to give their ruling? And then of course whoever loses is going to appeal that to the Supreme Court.

Dan Hood (21:04):

So it’ll just be dragged on and on and on and on and on forever.

Neil Fishman (21:07):

But right now if you haven’t done it, do it.

Dan Hood (21:09):

Right, right. Well, since we’ve opened it up and gone beyond taxes, any other beyond that sort of stuff, what specific things are you guys looking at for your members as you look out over the course of the next year or even tax season, whichever that you’re telling, Hey, you guys should be paying attention to this or doing this or getting ready for this?

Neil Fishman (21:27):

Well, we’re just making sure. We’re trying to make sure that as things come out that we let our members know what’s going on.

(21:34):

Steve Mankowski, Sandy Zinman, our tax co-chairs, they do phenomenal work in letting our membership know Steve as our primary person at the National Public Liaison meetings in Washington. In fact, I went there last month with him, they just had their February meeting. He’ll go in March and it all depends on what they have to say. No, because unfortunately you don’t get the agenda for those meetings until we’ll say a day or two before to know what they’re going to be talking about to let us know what’s going on. And it’s always great to have the opportunity to provide input and help the IRS do their job maybe a little bit better, give them some insight in, I had the privilege 15 to 17 of serving on Rsac IRS advisory council, great experience, and anybody who is interested in having an opportunity to actually have an opportunity to have a say on what the IRS does and how they do things, great opportunity to apply for do it. But remember, it is a commitment. It is time consuming, just like being involved in any organization, but it is a commitment worth having and experiencing.

Dan Hood (22:51):

It is. I mean, I think for a lot of people may be surprised. The degree to which the practitioner community can have a voice at the IRS though they say requires that, I

Neil Fishman (22:58):

Mean my three years, what they called me, they called subcommittees the groups. You’re broken down into those. I spent, my primary focus was on identity theft issues and in my last year they talked about they were going to create a portal where you would go online and create an account for yourself. I prepare your return, you sign the authorization form and give it back to me. And then you would go online and you would unlock your account. Now I could submit the return. There would be a window, say 48 or 96 hours, whatever it is, that I would have to submit the tax return. Once the return hits, it’s automatically locked again. But of course my job was to try and poke holes into it. So of course several questions are what if it’s a married couple and this year they decide to file separately and also with identity theft, because remember, tax return, tax fraud was a big thing, still probably is a big thing. So the people who are filing or attempting to file the fraudulent returns, if they’re just say robo filing, okay, once that portal is open, your fraudulent return that they’ve prepared hits the system than the legitimate return is locked out automatically.

Dan Hood (24:20):

So yeah, it is the haven’t gotten better though. There is still plenty of tax fraud out there, but it has gotten better from that. There was that period, that brief period, well, actually not that brief period where it was really skyrocketing. It was insane. They brought it down from those levels, but there’s still plenty of it. I’m curious, you talked about Nick PABs evolvement and Sandy and Steven, it’s always worth pointing out Nick Pep spends a lot of time working with in Washington, bringing tax prepares concerns and issues inside the beltway, but also bringing a lot back out. So,

Neil Fishman (24:53):

And of course, in just over two months, first week in May, we have our spring meeting. It will be in Washington. And for those who are listening and don’t know about Nick, pat, we take part of this time. We go to Capitol Hill, we set up appointments with congressional offices, house Senate, both sides of the aisle. We talk about these issues, and I’ll just bring up one if I may. That is going to definitely be on our, well, actually two I’ll bring up that are definitely on our agenda. The first is regarding casualty and theft. Losses, casualty and theft losses right now can only be taken if you are in a declared federal disaster area, but that includes theft losses. What if you are a victim of a theft and you’re not in there? And one of our colleagues brought this up, he’s in Texas and one of his clients, an older woman, she got scammed out of, I think it was about $180,000 out of a retirement plan. Okay, out of the retirement plan. So what happens, she gets a 10 99 R for the 180,000, she can’t claim a theft loss for $180,000. So that’s one is to get those two things differentiated.

Dan Hood (26:08):

Makes sense.

Neil Fishman (26:09):

Okay. A second thing is bonuses. Well, right now, under the law bonus, if you’re getting, you have your salary, you get your bonus, whether it’s a profit sharing bonus or any type of bonus, they don’t have to do a lot of withholding, the employer does not need to do so. We have recommended that depending on the amount of the bonus, that the minimum amount for withholding should go up incrementally.

(26:33):

One thing that I have noticed, especially the last couple of years, especially following season last year, is that a lot of people are under withheld. Now, of course, what happens if you’re under withheld, you could be subject to underpayment penalties and interest. So I’ve had to advise clients, you need to have go to your employer and say you want more withheld. When they did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, so prior to that, the circular determined your withholdings. So it was either single or married, how often you got paid, how many exemptions did you claim if you got paid at least this much, but no more than this much. Here’s how much the employer had to withhold. They were required, but we don’t have exemptions anymore. What we have is withholding single, withholding married, that’s it. So I have to advise clients to have more withheld, even retirement money. I have found that normally if it’s IRA pension, what have you, that you generally need at least 20% withholding done. I have found that to be, for most clients, a safe harbor, that that usually covers their liability. Remember, the rules are last year’s liability or 90% of this year’s liability to avoid penalties and underpayment penalties and interest. But

Dan Hood (27:57):

As you say, leaving aside even the penalties and the interest and stuff, it’s just the shock and surprise of, wait a minute, I owe this. Wait, hang on. Because a lot of people are, what is it surprised by that don’t realize that how much they needed to actually withhold and so on. I want to just briefly talk about, I think we’ve amply demonstrated how tied in you guys are to Washington and what’s going on. You mentioned while the Republicans control all three branches of government currently in both houses in Congress, they are, it is an extremely thin margins. So I’m just thinking as, just as a final thought, as you look at the sort of tax legislative landscape, we know the issues that are still to be resolved in terms of the tax cuts and Jobs act provisions and those sorts of issues. And we know what’s pretty much going to happen and what we’re still waiting for. Final decisions are, do you see any further tax legislation over the next year? I mean, is the Trump administration pretty much we want to make sure we get these provisions extended, and that’s about it. Do you think we’ll see movement on taxes, on tips? Do you think we’ll see any other big tax legislation coming out?

Neil Fishman (29:03):

Hard to say right now, I would say this, the president basically wanted everything done in one huge bill, one huge beautiful bill, one huge beautiful bill, which apparently he’s getting through the house. Okay, what they’re going to do after that, who knows? I mean, that’s where it could go really political, but we’re not going to do that

(29:27):

Here. So I don’t anticipate anything happening for probably for the rest of this Congress. Nothing. I don’t think much is going to happen. How the midterms go, so we’re talking with the midterms, so we’re talking two years from now when the next Congress takes office, what can happen then? Again, it would depend on if there is a change in control of either chamber in both chambers, and also more importantly, how big that change is going to be, whether it is the Republicans increasing, gaining more seats or the Democrats regaining control of the house and how big of a majority do they have. Unfortunately, politics in Washington is not as friendly as it used to be. There was a representative who’s been gone, who’s been passed away a number of years ago from Florida. His name was Clay Shaw. True. And I remember reading an interview that he had given years zero, and this was republished after he passed around the time he passed away, and he said the worst thing that happened to Congress was the development of the jet engine.

(30:53):

Because now think about it, they’re there basically four days a week when they’re in session. So they’re there Monday through Thursday or Tuesday through Friday, whatever is the last day. There is usually a shorter day because home, they all want to go home for the weekends. Whereas when they had to stay in Washington for more extended periods of time, at least then even people across the aisle would socialize and they would get to know each other. And if you know a person, it’s a lot harder to characterize them. It’s a lot harder to condemn them, to criticize them, because you only know about their position on say, one issue or two issue. If you know the person and know where they’re coming from, it’s a lot easier

(31:43):

To work out things. I mean, I’ll give this example back. I think it was in 2012 before he became Romney’s running mate, Paul Ryan. He came out with a plan for dealing with the deficits. What I read of it, I did not like to be honest, but I applaud him. I applaud him for coming forward and saying, if it was up to me, this is what I would do. Because by saying that, I know where he stands and if I am his polar opposite, okay, now he knows where I stand. I know where he stands. We can start talking, we can start negotiating, and he will get a couple of things, and I will get a couple of things that we really want and everything else we’ll find somewhere in the middle. We may not like it, but we can live with it. As a colleague of mine said, in a negotiation, when both sides walk away, both sides do not walk away. When they both walk away unhappy. That was a good meaning. Yeah.

Dan Hood (32:45):

That’s usually a good sign of a successful negotiation. Exactly. Not quite as happy as they could be, but alright. But certainly it prevents Washington from achieving as much as we might hope they could achieve that different atmosphere down there. But with the margins as they are, we’re not looking at huge changes once we get these tax cuts and Jobs act provisions and the few other things taken care of, relatively quiet on the tax legislation front, at least until, as you say, we find out the results of the midterms. Excellent. Well, we can spend a lot more time talking on it, but I know you got, oh, could we, you’ve got tax returns to prepare.

Neil Fishman (33:23):

Yes, and I have clients to go see,

Dan Hood (33:26):

So we’ll cut it off there. But Neil Fishman, president of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners, thanks as always for joining us.

Neil Fishman (33:33):

You’re very welcome. Always glad to be here anytime. Excellent,

Dan Hood (33:37):

And thank you all for listening. This episode of On the Air was produced by Accounting Today with audio production by Kelly Malone y Ray to review us on your favorite podcast platform and see the rest of our content on accounting today.com. Thanks again to our guest and thank you for listening.