Lobbyists at the Association of International Certified Professional Accountants (AICPA), which represents 597,000 finance and accounting professionals globally, have their list of priorities ready to discuss with the 119th Congress, which begins on Jan. 3, 2025.
Melanie Lauridsen, VP of tax policy and advocacy at AICPA, recently shared the organization’s 2025 congressional lobbying priorities with CFO Brew, and the focus is on tax policy tweaks, Internal Revenue Service funding, and disaster tax relief.
Taxman. Why not start with something universally loved and unobjectionable, like…the IRS? Gutting the tax-collection agency and rolling back IRS funding allocated in the Inflation Reduction Act are common rallying cries from Republicans.
Lauridsen said the IRA funding allocated for ensuring that large corporations and wealthy individuals pay taxes is “critical and important,” but so is improving service and technology. According to the IRS, the money it got from the IRA to help the agency maintain “an adequate level of service” will run out in 2026. If Republican lawmakers do opt to defund IRS enforcement, they should think about moving that money to service improvement and new tech instead of simply taking it all back, Lauridsen said.
“We would like to see a reallocation of that money versus a clawback of that money,” Lauridsen said.
Low service levels from IRS employees translates to many headaches for taxpayers and their accountants. The IRS reported that agency employees answered just 31% of the 40 million calls it received during the 2024 filing season.
“We’re talking [about] really basic services that taxpayers and their tax preparers really should be able to access,” Lauridsen said.
The organization is also continuing its yearslong quest for more uniform and immediate disaster tax relief, Lauridsen said. The AICPA has a set of 14 recommendations to “improve the patchwork situation” that currently exists, according to its website.
“When there is a disaster, [the] IRS, generally speaking, is pretty good about issuing disaster relief, meaning they can give an extension of time to file” tax returns, Lauridsen said. (The IRS did this recently for Hurricane Helene victims.)
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“The issue is,” Lauridsen continued, “it’s not always automatic, it’s not always immediate, and sometimes it can take months to issue that relief, and depending on how widespread it is, it can take many, many months for certain counties and areas to receive it.”
Looking ahead. The AICPA also supports some modifications to the Trump-era Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, according to Lauridsen.
The supported changes, which were included in the failed Smith-Wyden bill, would have changed provisions requiring companies to capitalize and amortize R&D costs over five years and tightening limits on how much companies could deduct business loan interest. The bill would have also extended the 100% bonus depreciation benefit. The bill made it through the House but stalled in the Senate.
AICPA is also monitoring a possible extension of the deduction for pass-through business income (aka the “199A Deduction”), which is set to expire at the end of next year.
Of course, these reforms would mean lost tax revenue for the federal government. For example, a permanent extension of the pass-through income deduction would mean $684 billion in lost revenue over 10 years, according to Congressional Research Service estimates. Lauridsen made clear that AICPA understands lawmakers will need to balance tax policy with tax revenue (and spending deficits) in mind.
“We’re not naive to the fact that there does need to be a balance in the cost of all these provisions,” she said.
Get educated. AICPA also supports the expansion of 529 college savings plans to cover expenses students incur in becoming a CPA, including exam preparation fees and test fees, Lauridsen said.
Federal legislation would have allowed a 529 account “to pay for expenses associated with obtaining or maintaining recognized postsecondary credentials”—but the bill didn’t pass the House. It’s worth noting, however, that the bill has nearly 149 cosponsors from both sides of the aisle.