IRS Grants Tax Relief for Hurricane Katrina Victims

  “People affected by Hurricane Katrina have more than enough concerns –– taxes shouldn’t be among them,” said IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson. “We hope the relief we are providing will help taxpayers in their financial recovery from this devastating storm.”

 

Besides high and complicated taxes, another big area of contention has to do with ridiculous regulations that overly control our personal and professional lives.  This news piece from Spidell, claiming that Illinois and some other states are requiring CPAs to be licensed in their states if they prepare any nonresident tax returns for their states, borders on insanity. 

Maybe it’s because I prepare income tax returns for over 20 states (including Illinois) from here in my home office on a mountain top in the Ozarks. It’s bad enough that I have to maintain my CPA licenses with both Arkansas and California and deal with their different renewal and CPE requirements, even though I haven’t even been to the PRC in twelve years.  To imagine having to go through that with 20 different state boards of accountancy is mind boggling.

Perhaps this is just meant to be a method of generating more business for CPAs who are residents of those states.  My clients who need Illinois tax returns would have to hire an Illinois CPA to do those returns after I prepare the Federal and other state tax returns. 

I can understand licensing CPAs who open physical branch offices within a state.  However, requiring all of  us who may prepare state tax returns from outside their borders is a classic case of over-reaching.