I must admit when I started this class, I was terrified. I knew I would
have to put a lot of time aside to make sure everything was done, and
I thought reading tax code was daunting and boring. But after taking
this course, I have learned so much and this might be one of my
favourites. I regularly must send correspondence to the IRS or state
agencies. I have been able to write these letters efficiently and get the
point across, but I have never written a research memo. Our firm does
not even document where our resources come from. We just write a
letter and do not reference any code section and just send out our
response.
After every class I create a presentation to share with our firm about
what I learned that can change our firm for the better. I started this
presentation yesterday and the biggest point is to document our
research. I still cannot believe that we have not done it in the past.
Granted, sometimes I may print out a secondary source, highlight it,
and save it in the clients file but NEVER a primary source.
I am working on a large audit right now and I have saved primary
source information to our clients’ file to ensure how certain expenses
were deducted is correct. This is not requested by the IRS, but I feel it
is necessary to ensure we are presenting our client with the most
accurate information.
While I have been preparing tax returns for over 15 years, there are
some things that just become second nature. All the research topics I
have thought of from a tax perspective but one of them I have never
really researched was the depreciation options. I know that if I have a
client who purchased new equipment and they have a positive net
income I am going to elect to take bonus depreciation under code
section 168(k). I have never really dived into the tax research aspect
of this topic. I frankly did not even know the code section until we
had to research it. I just knew what types of assets qualified through
office conversations and tax seminars.
This was a great course for myself. Since I am a former IRS employee
this reminds me on what the taxpayer and the representative use to
provide me to support the findings on why things were reported on
the tax return. Now being on the other side within this class and
having to provide the research and information to persuade the Agent
to understand the reasoning is very difficult and interesting at the
same time. As I continue in my accounting career and eventually
doing taxes again, I will use this class to sharpen my skill more to have
a clear and concise approach on how to prepare these letters to the
IRS. c The research done now with your client will help you later if
things arise from it.
The research within the Tax Cut and Job Act, was research that I
would not have though so much changes were made within it. It’s like
we know about most of the things because they were adverted on the
TV about the standard deduction increasing and the tax rates being
reduced and losing the exemptions but things about inversion to stop
companies from moving assets overseas to reduce their tax rates or
the amount of taxes to be paid in the United States really got me.
With the inversion was a technical process to do before the law was
enacted.
