How about another $500 licensing fee to pay as a CPA who works on individual taxes?

That is the propsed fee contained in the report recently released by the Commissioner of Financial Regulation and the Attorney General's Office of Consumer Protection. It appears that  CPAs may be covered and required to file if they “settle consumer debts” , which can often happen when working with individuals and their taxes with the IRS and state tax authorities.

We would argue CPAs are already regulated at the state (and IRS level under Circular 230) in addition to the rigorous education, examination and ethics requirements that CPAS must meet and comply with. We testified on this last year and the bill was withdrawn.

With no mention of CPAs being exempt in this report, it appears that we will need to work on this to exempt CPAs again this year. We did anticpate this for our 2011 legislative agenda.

Attached is a copy of the report Download Debt Settlement Study (Final)