What is our goal?

We would like you to write the AICPA and assure them that workload compression continues to be a serious problem, which you want them to address in their legislative efforts.

Why is workload compression so important to CPAs?

CPAs have always had a heavy first-quarter workload due to calendar year-end audits and tax filing deadlines for individuals and calendar year-end businesses. But the Tax Reform Act of 1986 seriously aggravated this busy-season problem by requiring nearly all small businesses to use a calendar year-end. CPAs call this "workload compression." The CPA profession chiefly cares about the workload compression problem for three reasons:

• CPAs' clients are harmed by not having fiscal-year accounting available to them.
• Working conditions in CPA firms have become very difficult during the first third of the year.
• Obtaining qualified staff to work just part of the year has become a serious business challenge.

Why do CPAs' clients care about the inability to select fiscal years?

Subject to the grandfathering of existing fiscal years, TRA '86 took away from small business clients and trusts the ability to decide their own accounting period. Now the tax code makes the decision for them. Except for rare, extreme cases where the IRS will grant permission to use a fiscal year, the client's actual business cycle is no longer relevant. This matters to clients for the following reasons:

• These small business clients can no longer arrange their affairs so that their heaviest accounting activity occurs during slower times for the rest of the business.
• Financial information from these clients has become less useful to banks and other lenders. The annual reporting period should measure the activity from the beginning to the end of an annual cycle. The federally mandated, calendar-year reporting period measures activity from an arbitrary point in the middle of one annual cycle to an arbitrary point in the middle of the next.

How is workload compression hurting CPAs?

Thirteen years after TRA '86, workload compression continues to doggedly affect CPA practice, creating practice problems such as the following:

• Workload compression makes it increasingly difficult to give clients the attention and high-quality service their problems deserve.
• Workload compression lowers the quality of life for CPAs and their staffs.
• Workload compression contributes to staff flight from the profession. Witness the extreme difficulty in finding experienced staff.
• Because of its impact on working conditions, workload compression may well be affecting student decisions to enter into a CPA career path.
• Workload compression drives up the cost of CPA services.

Why should workload compression continue to be an issue for the AICPA?

The AICPA sets the national agenda for the CPA profession. Problems as serious as those caused by workload compression must not be ignored by the AICPA; and these problems are more distressing than ever! It is time for the AICPA to resolve the workload compression problem. If you agree, please write

Alan E. Weiner, CPA, President, NYSSCPA, 530 Fifth Avenue, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10036. When you write, tell the AICPA that you consider workload compression to still be a serious problem that you want solved. Use examples and anecdotes that are specific to you and your practice to illustrate the point.

Thank you in advance for your help!

REMEMBER OUR MAIN OBJECTIVE WITH THIS EFFORT IS TO ALERT THE AICPA ABOUT THE CONTINUED URGENCY OF THE WORKLOAD COMPRESSION PROBLEM.

©1999 New York State Society of Certified Public Accountants. Legal Notices