Analysis, clarity, and a quiz: A preview of the National Tax Conference

In less than four weeks, IRS officials and tax practitioners will gather in Washington for the AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference. The event begins six days after Election Day, when it’s possible there will be clarity about election results and about the future of tax legislation.

On this episode of the podcast, two speakers closely tied to the conference explain what it will offer attendees, detailing agenda specifics. April Walker, CPA, CGMA, is lead manager–Tax Practice & Ethics at AICPA & CIMA, and Brandon Lagarde, CPA, J.D., LL.M., is chair of the event’s planning committee. Walker hosts the Tax Section Odyssey podcast.

Also, a new AICPA & CIMA CEO was named Wednesday. That news is mentioned at the start of the episode.

What you’ll learn from this episode:

• What Lagarde and Walker look forward to about this year’s conference.
• The potential for learning more during the conference about the future of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.
• The reasons Lagarde called the event “the most important conference” for tax practitioners.
• A look ahead to a session on transforming tax practices to include year-round advisory services.
• The topics in a quiz-focused session on tax ethics.
• Why Lagarde says attendees shouldn’t worry about attending one concurrent session over another.

Play the episode below or read the edited transcript:

— To comment on this episode or to suggest an idea for another episode, contact Neil Amato at Neil.Amato@aicpa-cima.com.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Welcome back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. Coming up on the show is a look ahead to the National Tax Conference. But first comes some other news.

Mark Koziel was named Wednesday as the new CEO of AICPA & CIMA, which operate together as the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants.

Koziel, a CPA who holds the CGMA designation, is the successor of long-serving CEO Barry Melancon, who announced his retirement in May after 29 years in the role. Koziel currently serves as CEO of Allinial Global, an association of independent accounting and advisory firms with $6 billion in collective revenues.

He officially starts as Association CEO in January.

You can learn more about Koziel, a previous JofA podcast guest, on journalofaccountancy.com, and we’ll link to the news story announcing his hire in the show notes for this episode. Now, here’s my conversation previewing the Nov. 11 AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference.

I’m excited to be joined for today’s episode by two top-flight tax experts in this special collaboration episode with the Tax Section Odyssey podcast. With our guests, we’re discussing the AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference, which begins Nov. 11 in Washington. Those guests: April Walker, lead manager with the tax practice and ethics team and host of the aforementioned Tax Section Odyssey. Also Brandon Lagarde, tax partner at EisnerAmper and chair of the tax conference planning committee.

We have a lot to get to. We’re excited to have you on. First, a quick welcome, April and Brandon. Thanks for being repeat guests on the JofA podcast.

April Walker: Thanks so much for having me, Neil. I’m excited to be here.

Brandon Lagarde: It’s very exciting to be here, Neil. Thank you for having me.

Amato: We’re glad to have you both on. As I said, the Tax Conference is Nov. 11, less than a week after Election Day. Brandon, for you first, tell me what you’re looking forward to about this event, which is at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington?

Lagarde: Yeah. I’m looking forward to just go into D.C. It’s going to be a week after the election. Hoping that we know who the president will be and the makeup of Congress at that time. Again, it’s going to be a great atmosphere, a great opportunity to go to the nation’s capital, to hear from some of the best tax minds out there.

Amato: April, I know you’re a repeat attendee at that conference. You’re also running sessions, recording podcasts, taking part in panels. What do you look forward to from the event?

Walker: It’s always a busy conference for me, and I love D.C., love being in D.C., and it’s very exciting for me to be there, like Brandon said, right after the election. Speaking of that, really what I’m looking forward to most is hearing more about what the potential legislation outlook could look like based on those results, based on those election results.

I think we’ll hear more about, we’ve talked a lot about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the TCJA, its potential exploration, what that means. We’ll really be able to dig into that, I think, at the conference. I’m excited about that.

Amato: It’s almost like we planned this. My next thing was going to be the TCJA. Some of the provisions of that act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, are scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025. Clearly, there is a lot of uncertainty about the provisions right now as we record in the first part of October. But I imagine that topic is going to be a popular one at the conference. Brandon, what do you think?

Lagarde: Yes, absolutely and that’s why, again, being there at the heart of it all after the election and getting to hear from presenters and speakers about just what the future holds for tax professionals. The end of 2024 is going to be really important for us; 2025 is going to be incredibly important for tax practitioners to understand and remind ourselves of here are all these provisions that we’ve been dealing with for the last seven years that are going to expire.

What’s going to happen? Where are we going to be? A lot of planning opportunities, a lot of reason to get in front of clients to learn about what we have on the horizon. Again, that’s why this conference, particularly, just the time of the year it is, and the election cycle, and heading into 2025, 2026. It’s probably the most important conference that’s ever taken place.

This is just a really important time for us to get together and to really try to figure out what’s going to happen. Of course, we’re not going to know exactly at that time, but at least start to have a better understanding, a clearer picture of what we can expect and what should we be talking to clients about heading into 2025? What are some things that we need to be doing? Because you can’t just turn on the switch in November of 2025 and start to really think about this.

Right now is really the time to get ahead of it and to remind ourselves what provisions are expiring. What do we need to start thinking about, what planning opportunities to get ahead of it? That’s what’s at stake at this time.

Walker: I love, Brandon, that you’re setting the bar really high. The most important conference of all time. Here we go.

Amato: Yeah, that’s great, and because it’s the most important conference of all time, we will include a link to the conference registration page with the agenda information and all of that in the show notes for this episode.

One of the items on that agenda is, I guess, being led by Marty Finn. He’s a previous guest on the podcast. He has a session on tax and financial planning: “Estate Planning for the 99%: Tax and Financial Planning Strategies When Estate Taxes Don’t Matter.” Now, not to steal Marty’s thunder, but can you give me a little preview of the highlights of that session?

Lagarde: Certainly. We will spend a lot of time at this conference, again, learning about the estate tax world and the sunset provisions and trying to navigate that. But the reality is a lot of our clients are not subject to estate tax. A lot of our clients are not having to worry about the sunsetting provisions. We thought it was important to have sessions not just focused on the top 1% of our clients, but to the 99% or to the large majority of our client base.

Things like gifting strategies, just what do you need to be talking to clients about, who aren’t necessarily dealing with the estate tax, income tax planning strategies around that. Really, just as practitioners, what do we need to be talking to clients about? We’re not super focused on just estate tax and the ultra wealthy or the wealthy.

That’s one thing that we really try to work hard as a committee in this conference is to find sessions that have a very practical application that we can take away tips and tricks and things to our client base and back to our hometown and not just focus on the very academic discussion that a lot of tax practitioners like to have. We like to have sessions that are very practical in nature, and Marty’s session is definitely one of those that he’s going to do a great job giving some really good tips and tricks to people to bring home.

Amato: I liked the practical part you mentioned, and that leads me into another session that I want to ask you about. This is one that I guess April is taking part in with Dan Moore and Mark Gallegos.

The title of the session is “Tax Practice Makeover: Transforming With Year-Round Advisory Services.” Tell me some more about that session.

Walker: Yeah, I’m really excited about that session. A lot of what I do here at the AICPA is try to help tax practitioners think about the future, the future of tax practice, the future of what a firm could look like, and so we had this idea to do like a makeover of a practice.

We’re going to talk about some of the different aspects of a practice that you could make over: billing, client focus, one of those is about adding advisory services. We’ll talk more about that. So come and join us and learn how you could do a makeover of your practice.

Amato: That’s great. Now another session with an intriguing title, this is you, Brandon, and you, April, “Test Your Tax Ethics IQ.” Now, one, that sounds like one that people have to do some homework on or some prereading, maybe. I don’t know, but tell us about that session. What’s a flavor of it that you can tell attendees about now?

Lagarde: We’re going to try have fun with this session, play some games, have almost like a quiz atmosphere. I think April is going to try to bring a buzzer for people to buzz in and answer our questions. But really we are focused on ethical dilemmas.

We’re faced with ethical dilemmas daily, with clients who are either trying to push the boundaries a little bit or just get into some situations where they find themselves in a bad place, and we’re constantly being asked to address the situation with our client base.

Whether, do you amend a return for XYZ reason, can you take on a client because of what they have going on? Do you need to fire a client because they may be trying to push the envelope a little bit. Really, there’s a lot of ethical dilemmas that we face as practitioners. This is really a time for us to, again, have some fun with it, to the extent that ethics is fun. We’re going to try to test the audience and see what they think.

It’s always amazing if you ask a room of people what they think about certain tax ethics issues or really just a tax topic. If we ask a room of 100 people, there are probably 100 different opinions on what should be done. I think it’s going to be fun. We’re going to try to have fun with it. Again, just really try to provide some education on if you find yourself in these situations, here’s some things to consider when doing this. But again, April and I, we hope to have fun with that.

Walker: Just come visit us. There is no pre-work, to answer your question, Neil. There is no pre-work to the session. We’ll take a lighthearted take on a potentially tough, dry subject.

Amato: Great, and this quiz is not graded. You still get the CPE as long as you’re showing up, right?

Walker: Absolutely.

Amato: Well, good. One of the themes that I’m hearing is obviously there’s advice on the topic of expanding services beyond just, “Hey, we’re going to do taxes for someone.” But if someone said to you, maybe after a session, “Hey, I really liked what you said there. But, gosh, I’m a smaller firm,” or “It’s only me. I don’t know where to start.” What do you tell them?

Walker: What I would do if they came up to me, and I hope they do. You can come up to me at our booth. You can come up to Brandon and I — we will likely be posted up in the bar at the Omni. Come see us anytime. But what I would tell you — we talk to small firms all the time — and one thing I recommend them is come to a session that I do that’s on the computer.

It’s not live at the conference, but it’s called reimagining your tax practice. I guess I’m really more about reimagining and having makeovers and that sort of thing, it seems like. But in those sessions, we really talk about the nitty-gritty. Sometimes it’s hard to think about this big process of going from X to Y.

We like to talk in those sessions about practical ways. I like to focus on the practical, how to actually get where you’re going or how to change things in your practice or how to change how you’re operating. That’s probably what I would say if you came up to see me, wherever you might find me.

Amato: This has been great. We’ve mentioned a session by Marty Finn. We’ve mentioned some sessions you are taking part in. Of course, we’ve mentioned that key acronym these days, TCJA. Brandon, in closing, anything you’d like to add as we wrap up this Tax Conference preview episode.

Lagarde: Yeah, certainly. A couple of other terms you’ll hear out there — AI, which we have a session on AI, again, transforming your tax practice. One thing we like to emphasize about all of our conferences, but certainly this one, is there’ll be lots of sessions with lots of smart people speaking at these sessions with great content.

A lot of times your challenge is, “Which session do I go to?” Because it’s such a great hour, hour and a half of content. You have to choose, at the moment, you do have to pick a session, but you have access to recordings of all the sessions after. I often go back and watch sessions that I wasn’t able to attend because of that great content. It’s just a wealth of information.

Again, you get a little parting gift when you leave. Not only do you make new friends, meet people at the conference, talk about challenges you’re facing with your colleagues, and also hear some of the best speakers in D.C. and have a great time there, but you also get to have access to all the recordings after and watch the sessions after that you missed. That is invaluable to have access to that content.

Amato: April, how about you? Anything to add in closing?

Walker: I think one thing that’s really important about this conference being in D.C., and we haven’t mentioned it yet, is the ability to have IRS speakers that come and speak to us. We’re going to have the National Taxpayer Advocate, Erin Collins. We’ll have other IRS speakers scattered throughout the conference. That’s another opportunity to really hear where they are on certain things and be able to ask them questions.

Amato: That’s great. It’s a good reminder that there is that access to IRS officials every year at this conference. Really thank both of you for your time. Again, look forward to the conference Nov. 11. Brandon, April, thanks for being on the JofA podcast.