CPAs Point Back After Obama’s Accountant-Blaming Fingerpointing

Posted on by Adrienne Gonzalez

Poor Obama doesn't have a lot of friends these days, and as we know from last week, he just managed to piss off every accountant in the country by implying it's the accountants' fault businesses are using legal avenues to avoid corporate taxes.

New York State Society of CPAs president Scott Adair had something to say about Obama's finger waving and, oddly enough, his comments were almost exactly what we said last week:

As President of the New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants, I believe President Obama should be aware that U.S. corporations hire accountants for their distinct ability and expertise in seeing that clients fulfill their tax obligations as required by the laws adopted by Congress. In fact, it is a CPAs’ unique ability to legally navigate an extraordinarily complex tax code that makes CPAs’ services so valuable to their individual and corporate clients.

If President Obama wants to point fingers, perhaps he should point them at Congress for creating the very loopholes he vilifies. Sustainable corporate tax reform is the elephant in this room. President Obama’s goals would be best served by looking to his fellow lawmakers if he wants a solution to this problem. The accounting profession stands ready to help.

TAKE THAT, dude. Or, as we said last week, if you have a problem with companies making the most of our complicated, ridiculous tax code, then holla at your boys (and girls) in Congress to CHANGE THE LAW. Problem solved.

In his statement, Obama said "Well, it’s not fair. It’s not right." You know what's not fair? Blaming the wrong group of people for an issue so messed up that a reasonable person might assume the tax code is complicated as a feature, not a bug.

As Adair mentioned, I'm sure the accountants would love to help the president out on this once Obama can figure out to which group he should be wagging his blame finger.

 

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The DOJ Is Not Waiting to Weed Out Sketchy Tax Preparers

Slimy.jpgEarlier this week we learned that the hammer will be coming down on small tax prep shops.
Despite the news of the fresh measures, that didn’t prevent the DOJ from getting some of the riffraff off the streets this week.
Web CPA:

On the heels of the IRS’s plan to begin regulating tax preparers, the Justice Department announced that it has filed six lawsuits this week to stop preparers charged with generating fraudulent income tax returns.
The cases included five civil injunction lawsuits in Detroit, Cincinnati and Chicago filed against several individuals and their tax preparation services. However, the trend didn’t start this week. In December, the government filed a civil injunction suit against 12 individuals and entities in Providence, R.I.

Long/short: thousands of tax returns were falsified by throwing all kinds of deductions on the returns that couldn’t be substantiated including cash donated to The Human Fund and bogus business expenses.
As Joe noted on Wednesday, it’s difficult to reason that even after the new requirements are in place, some of the more dodgy tax preparers won’t slip through the cracks. Consumers dumbfounded by our mind-job of a tax code will continue to going to shiesty 1040 jockeys that will promise low fees and bigger refunds. Ultimately they’ll pay more in the long run.
Justice Department Cracks Down on Tax Preparers [Web CPA]

Can We Get a Show of Hands From People Who Plan to Declare Their Super Bowl Gambling Winnings?

You may have heard about or even watched a sporting event known as the Super Bowl that was played last night. This particular mother of all bowls saw the Green Bay Packers defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers 31-25, paying a tidy sum for anyone that picked them last spring. Which brings me to my next point: while the Super Bowl is a grand occasion that involves athletes at the top of their game, expensive ads and shitty, over-hyped halftime shows, it’s also means an epic amount of wagering. Everything from the coin flip to last year’s odds on Reggies Bush’s total yardage versus Kim Kardashian’s measurements are popular ways to earn yourself some free money (or, if you’re on the losing side, a broken tibia).


And believe it or not, most gamblers appear to be a honest lot with over $27 billion declared gambling winnings in 2008 (the most recent data available). However, because avoiding taxes is as American as, well, the Super Bowl you can bet that a lot of the winnings don’t ever see a 1040. The exact amount of unreported winnings is, like that the secret ingredient in that dip you were inhaling last night, a mystery. Kay Bell reports:

As for how many taxpayers didn’t completely ‘fess up on 2008 returns about their gambling income, the IRS won’t even venture a guess. Or as an IRS spokesman once told me, “We can’t tell you what we don’t know.”

But guesstimating that a whole heck of a lot of gambling income never gets taxed is a very safe bet.

But don’t worry if you missed some sweet, tax-free action on last night’s game. March Madness isn’t far off.

By the Numbers: $27.197 billion [DWMT]

Latest Poll Suggests That Most People Think Paul Ryan’s Deficit Reduction Plan Is a Lousy Idea

[A McClatchy-Marist] poll reported that roughly two out of three registered voters — 64 percent — would be in favor of increasing taxes on annual income over $250,000. President Obama reiterated in his deficit-reduction speech last week that he favored allowing taxes to rise on families in that income level. Independents favored that plan of action at roughly the same percentage as the country at large, with more than eight in 10 Democrats also behind the idea. A majority of Republicans, 54 percent, opposed it. The poll was conducted both before and after Obama’s Wednesday speech, with support for higher taxes on wealthier Americans picking up afterward. Meanwhile, fully four in five registered voters oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. The House GOP’s fiscal 2012 budget, largely crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), makes fundamental long-term changes to both health entitlement programs, converting Medicaid into a block grant and turning Medicare into a type of voucher system. [The Hill, Earlier]