Right at the halfway mark and we are making great progress. Thanks again to all of you who joined us on CPA day and those who have been testifying and supporting our efforts.

Here is the latest developments:

1. Changing CPE rules to be more flexible for Accounting Educators – We sponsored these bills with the State Board of Accountancy's support SB 128 Passed the Senate 47-0 & HB 69 Passed the House on Second Reader yesterday, expected to be passed by the weekend.

2. Stopping Sales Tax on Accounting, Tax & Consulting Services(again!) – No bills submitted yet (deadline is March 9th) – feedback from CPA day is that this is unlikely to happen this year – keep your fingers crossed!

3. Stopping the Lawsuit Taxas Trial Lawyers attempt to change Maryland's Tort system – No bills submitted yet (deadline is March 9th) – we are watching this closely.

4. Watching for possible negative legislation like the 2% payroll surcharge for insurance in the 2,500 pieces of legislation that will be introduced during the 90 day session

5. Technical Corrections to Peer Review necessary to reflect updates in Professional Standards SB 204 This is a Department Bill (DLLR) and passed the Senate 47-0 on February 20, 2009, now on its way to the House.

6. Stopping Proposed Amendments to Tax Preparer Registration from last year. HB 24 We testified against this bill in January and it received an unfavorable report by the House Economic Matters Committee last Friday.

7. Mandatory e-Filing of Tax Returns SB 96 proposed by the Maryland Comptroller was defeated in the Senate Budget & Taxation Committee this week. We were on record in support of this bill due to our prior work with the Comptroller's office.

8. Tax Legislation – members of our State Tax Committee have been instrumental in helping the legislators deal with a host of tax bills in the estate, business, and individual tax areas.

Some updates you might find useful:

Mobility: There are now 35 states who have passed “mobility” provisions regarding temporary practice (like tax returns). See our blog post at CPALegislativeInsider.com for the listing of the 35 states that do not require licensing. The other states may require licenses. If in doubt, you are advised to put CPA-MD (or whatever your primary state of licensure is) to avoid any misunderstanding by regulators. There are nine more states with active legislation as I write this. This is a historical success for the CPA profession and makes us more uniform and mobile than any other state-based licensed profession.

Tax preparer licensingwill not be in effect until the new State Board is formed. (We have a seat on that board.) All CPAs and your staff are exempt from this newly created license and regulation. We are currently fighting attempts by H&R Block to loosen up the requirements.

Also, we (the AICPA, the MACPA, the California Society of CPAs, the Ohio Society of CPAs and other state CPA societies) were successful in getting H&R Block to back off on their ads against CPAs. Here are details:

• Truth prevails: H&R Block to stop running offending ads
• Can somebody making $7 an hour really beat a CPA?

Read MACPA's Legislative Alert on our website

Post on our initial legislative agenda here

See the Maryland Chamber's Legislative Blog for general business updates

Federal Stimulus Act's impact on Maryland courtesy of Will Burns at the Chamber