CPA's: An undervalued profession

I love and enjoy being a CPA.  I get excited when I get to "play in the numbers".  Added bonus, we help people. Although I have my own firm, I’ve worked in public and private and from Big 4 (6, 5, etc.) to small. Few professions offer this career breadth. But, the profession has a perception problem.

Want to depict a character as boring and passive? Make them an accountant! I laugh along with everyone else.

However, I get angry when lawmakers use these traits to devalue our profession. They pass unnecessarily complex and pragmatically impossible to implement laws. They decrease our ability to make a living by blaming us for those complexities while simultaneously stifling the organization that’s supposed to administer the tax law. 

Amongst ourselves we discuss how dramatically different the profession is and how the political stalemates stop us from helping clients. We discuss how we agree with the issues highlighted in the Taxpayer’s Advocate reports that show 36% of calls go unanswered and 50% of correspondence is not handled timely. And those of us doing this for a living know that the 64% of calls that ARE answered frequently are answered incorrectly - yes by the IRS.

The implication that CPA’s like the complexity is absurd. I don’t like not being able to help my clients plan. I don’t like being on hold with the IRS for 2 hours and then being subjected to a “courtesy disconnect”. I don’t like waiting to file a simple return because Congress didn’t finalize the law. But inevitably, the public shoots the messenger. We react to tax law complexity, we are not the cause of it.

But are we vocal about these issues with clients, with lawmakers?

There will always be dramatic changes to tax law and the ever changing audit/review/compilation regulations, however currently the respect for the profession also seems to be deteriorating. Maybe it's time for us accountants to be more vocal.

Our job is more complex (sunsetting laws, retroactive extender bills, Sarbanes Oxley, IFRS, ‘small’ GAAP, etc.) but do we explain and charge for it taking twice as long to complete the same task?

We know how disruptive, costly, and economically detrimental it is when tax law is unknown. Unbelievably, the lawmaker’s don’t. Paraphrased from the horse’s mouth, we don’t protest, so it can’t be that big of an issue. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, and accountants don’t squeak.

I like a good accountant joke as much as the next person, but perhaps it’s time to for us to do a little squeaking.  It's December 3rd, and we still don't know what the tax law for the year is.  Whenever something does get passed, it won't be in enough time for taxpayers to actually do anything about it - it will be too late for planning.  And then it will be more time for the IRS to update the forms and the software companies to update software.  We're in for another frustrating tax filing season. 

Next time someone says to me "You CPA's like all this complex stuff, it keeps you employed." My response will continue to be a sarcastic, "Yep, so why don't you please write Congress and tell them how absurd this whole process is."