The AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference will take place on November 11 and 12 in Washington, DC. Join Brandon Lagarde, Tax Partner at EisnerAmper, and April Walker, Lead Manager on AICPA & CIMA’s Tax Practice & Ethics team, to learn more about what to expect from the upcoming conference.

Conference sessions will feature topics such as:

The impact of election results on tax legislation: Investigate the potential legislative outlook based on the recent election results and how it might affect tax policies.
Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) expiring provisions: Provisions of the TCJA are scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025; learn more about how to prepare and explore planning opportunities.
Practical tax strategies: Sessions at the conference will cover various tax tactics, including gifting and income tax planning strategies, for clients who are not currently subject to estate tax.
Ethical dilemmas in tax practice: A session will discuss common ethical dilemmas faced by tax practitioners and provide insights on how to handle them.
The future of tax practice: Investigate the importance of transforming tax practices with year-round advisory services and how to implement these changes in a tax firm.

AICPA resources

AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference — For tax practitioners, there’s no better place to get immersed in current events than the AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference; in-person and virtual options are available.

Reimagining your tax practice — Join us for free upcoming live roundtable sessions to tackle today’s top practice management issues with insights and tips from pioneers in the tax community.

TCJA expiring provisions — This detailed, downloadable resource offers an in-depth look at the expiring provisions under the TCJA and other recent legislation. It categorizes changes across individual tax, estate and gift tax and business tax provisions, organized by year of expiration.

Transcript

Neil Amato: Welcome back to the Journal of Accountancy podcast. This is Neil Amato with the JofA. I'm excited to be joined for today's episode by two top flight tax experts in this special collaboration episode with the Tax Section Odyssey podcast with our guests, we're discussing the AICPA & CIMA National Tax Conference which begins November 11th in Washington.

Those guests, April Walker, lead manager with the tax practice and ethics team and host of the aforementioned Tax Section Odyssey. Also Brandon Lagarde, tax partner at EisnerAmper and Chair of the Tax Conference Planning Committee. We have a lot to get to. We're excited to have you on. First, a quick welcome, April and Brandon, thanks for being repeat guests on the JofA podcasts.

April Walker: Thanks so much for having me Neil. I'm excited to be here.

Brandon Lagarde: It's very exciting to be here Neil. Thank you for having me.

Neil Amato: Yeah, we're glad to have you both on as I said, the Tax Conference is November 11th, less than a week after election day. Brandon for you first, tell me what you're looking forward to about this event which is at the Omni Shoreham Hotel in Washington?

Brandon Lagarde: Yeah. I'm looking forward to just go into DC. It's going to be a week after the election, hoping that we know who the president will be and what the makeup of Congress will be at that time. Again, it's going to be a great atmosphere, a great opportunity to go to the nation's capital, to hear from some of the best tax minds out there.

Neil Amato: April, I know you're a repeat attendee at that conference. You're also running sessions, recording podcasts, taking part in panels. What do you look forward to from the event?

April Walker: It's always a busy conference for me and I love being in DC and it's very exciting for me to be there, like Brandon said right after the election. Speaking of that, really what I'm looking forward to most is hearing more about what the potential legislation outlook could look like based on those results, based on those election results. I think we'll hear more about we've talked a lot about the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the TCJA, that it potential expiration, what that means. We'll really be able to dig into that at the conference. I'm excited about that.

Neil Amato: It's almost like we planned this. My next thing was going to be the TCJA. Some of the provisions of that Act, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, are scheduled to sunset at the end of 2025. Clearly, there is a lot of uncertainty about the provisions right now as we record and the first part of October. But I imagine that topic is going to be a popular one at the conference. Brandon, What do you think?

Brandon Lagarde: Yes, absolutely and that's why, again, being there at the heart of it all after the election and getting to hear from presenters and speakers about just what the future holds for tax professionals, end of 2024 is going to be really important for us.

2025 is going to be incredibly important for tax practitioners to understand and remind ourselves of here are all these provisions that we've been dealing with for the last seven years that are going to expire. What's going to happen? Where are we going to be? A lot of planning opportunities, lot of reason to get in front of clients to learn about what we have in the horizon. Again, that's why this conference, particularly just the time of the year. It is in the election cycle, and heading into 2025, 2026. It's probably the most important conference that's ever taken place.

This is just a really important time for us to get together and to really try to figure out what's going to happen. Of course, we're not going to know exactly at that time, but at least start to have a better understanding, a clear picture of what we can expect and what should we be talking to clients heading into 2025? What are some things that need to be doing?

Because you can't just turn on the switch in November of 2025 and start to really think about this. Right now is really the time to get ahead of it and remind ourselves what provisions are expiring? What do we need to start thinking about planning opportunities to get ahead of it? That's what's at stake at this time.

April Walker: I love Brandon that you're setting the bar really high. The most important conference of all time. Here we go.

Neil Amato: Yeah, that's great and because it's the most important conference of all time, we will include a link to the conference registration page with the agenda information and all of that in the show notes for this episode. One of the items on that agenda is being led by Marty Finn. He's a previous guest on the podcast. He has a session on tax and financial planning. When estate taxes don't matter. Now not to steal Marty's thunder. But can you give me a little preview of the highlights of that session?

Brandon Lagarde: Certainly. We will spend a lot of time at this conference again, learning about the estate tax world and the sunset provisions and trying to navigate that. But the reality is a lot of our clients are not subject to estate tax. A lot of our clients are not having to worry about the sun setting provisions.

We thought it was important to have sessions that not just focused on the top 1% of our clients, but to the 99% or to the large majority of our client base. Things like gifting strategies, what we need to be talking to clients about, who aren't necessarily dealing with the estate tax. Income tax planning strategies around that.

Really just as practitioners, what do we need to be talking to clients about? We're not super focused on just estate tax and the ultra wealthy or the wealthy. That's one thing that we really try to work hard as committee in this conference is to find sessions that have a very practical application.

That we can take away tips and tricks and things to our client base and back to our hometown and not just focused on the very academic discussion that a lot of tax practitioners like to have. That they can relate to. Try to have sessions that are very practical in nature and the Marty session is definitely one of those. He's going to do a great job giving some really good tips and tricks to people to bring home.

Neil Amato: I liked the practical part you mentioned, and that leads me into another session that I want to ask you about. This is one that April is taking part in with Dan Moore and Mark Gallegos.The title of the session is Tax Practice makeover, transforming with year-round advisory services. Tell me some more about that session.

April Walker: Yeah. I'...