Every
year for as long as I can remember the National Association of Tax
Professionals has offered a 2-day year-end tax update program during November
and December – the first day devoted to updates for the upcoming tax filing
season (The Essential 1040) and the second day a more detailed discussion of
specific tax topics (Beyond the 1040).
And
every year for as long as I can remember (I have been a member for 30 years) I
have attended at least one of the two days.
I have often attended the offering in Atlantic City. This year I signed up for day one only – I
was not interested enough in the day two topics (tax reporting requirements for
occupations such as clergy members, truckers, cannabis farmers, gamblers,
barbers and beauticians, home flippers, Airbnb operators, and foreign-sourced
income) to pay the additional fee – held last Friday at the Holiday Inn Parsippany located conveniently
on Route 46.
I
stayed overnight at the Holiday Inn this year, considering I was coming from
PA. The hotel was, as expected, clean
and comfortable, with an excellent complimentary breakfast buffet. The “spread” in the conference room, however, for those who did not stay at the hotel, was truly pitifully “skimpy” – and
certainly not “diabetes-friendly”, a common complaint of all CPE workshops and not
limited to NATP offerings.
As
for lunch – thankfully there was a WENDY’s across the highway as an alternative
to the only “in-house” option – a Cuban restaurant. The hotel should have offered to sell box
lunches to participants, as I have seen done at other locations.
The
workshop leader for the two days was Helen O’Planick, an EA and a CSA (Certified
Senior Advisor) from Manchester PA. I do
believe this is the first time I have “had” Helen. While obviously some NATP workshop and
seminar leaders are better than others, all are good and I have never been disappointed
with any. Helen was a good leader with
some good anecdotes from her life and practice.
As
is the case with this workshop each and every year since the Enron scandal, I
paid for a full 8 50-minute hours of tax education, but got only 6 – thanks to
the annual redundant ethics preaching, which I neither want nor need. As I have said time and again, if I’m not “ethical” by now after preparing
tax returns for 45 years, being forced to sit through 2 hours ain’t going to
perform a miracle! Of course, I did
not sit through it – thankfully it was the last topic of the day, so I just
walked out.
If
the workshop is to be truly an “update”, any discussion of “ethics” should be
limited to true “new developments” – new legislatively-required due diligence,
new IRS rules and regulations, and related recent Tax Court decisions.
To
be fair to NATP, I do understand its reasons for including ethics redundancy in
this workshop each year. The fault for
this nonsense lies not with NATP or other CPE providers, but with the idiots in
government and regulatory agencies who create these requirements and
regulations.
The
true value to this workshop, at least to me, lies in the level of “new
developments” in tax law and regulation.
This offering does include a detailed review of the new COLA and
inflation adjusted numbers that will affect tax returns prepared during the
upcoming filing season, and this is important for many tax preparers – but I
literally “write the book” on these changes each year in the form of my annual
“What’s New For” compilation, and am made well aware of them when they are
first released in October of the previous year.
There was really not much new of any consequence that will affect 2017
returns, and most were covered in the NATP National
Conference and NATP Tax Forums I attended earlier in the year.
So, this
was not an especially informative workshop for me, although I do always learn
one or two new things and am reminded of or review other things at every
session. NATP, as usual, did a good job
of what there was, and certainly continue to deserve kudos.
Do any fellow participants have anything to add?
TAFN
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