Mark Twain once said, “No man's life, liberty, or happiness are safe when the legislature is in session.”
That statement has never been more true, and it's easy to give up and say, “We can't change it.” But we can, and we are.
Below is an e-mail I sent to our members on our tax listservs who have been frustrated with the pending 1099 issue for their clients.
“Just yesterday we got this e-mail from our AICPA Government relations team and we wanted to share the good news with you.
“Just a few minutes ago, the House passed a bill that repeals the 1099 provision included in the new healthcare law. The vote was 314-112.
“Now, both the U.S. Senate and the House have passed bills to repeal the provision, but those bills are NOT the same, so the two chambers must negotiate a compromise. The primary issue for negotiations is how to pay for the repeal –- in other words, how to make up the revenue that the government expected to raise with the provision, because that was part of the funding for the healthcare law.
“We got this good news just with our efforts representing you in Maryland (no grassroots letters needed), there is still one final reconciliation step before we can officially celebrate, but we are in the 'red zone.'
“We have been busy on stopping onerous tax patents at the federal level and have a committee evaluating the 3% federal withholding requirement as well. Stay tuned.
“On the state side, we have been extremely busy (and making progress) as well. You can check out our updates on www.cpalegislativeinsider.com for updates on our Maryland agenda.
“Hope you are having a productive and prosperous 'busy season.' Hang in there!”
This was the result of the collective efforts of the AICPA and the state CPA societies working together.
We did this with PTINs and tax preparer legislation.
We did this with exempting CPAs (and other areas) with the Dodd-Frank bill.
We did this with the FTC “red flags” rule.
We did this with mobility.
We are doing this in the states to protect your CPA license (see www.cpalegislativeinsider.com).
We are 450,000 CPAs strong in the U.S. Many of those CPAs are members of both the AICPA and their state CPA societies.
Now imagine how strong we could be if every CPA was a member of both?
There is strength in numbers.
Numbers count.
Every letter we send to the legislature (federal and state) starts with how many CPAS we represent.
Can we count on you?
The power of WE!