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Extra, Extra
Following the Rules of the Road, Both the Society’s and the Regents’

By Alicia Korney, Public Relations Associate

There was a lot of good-natured jostling to be the first to grab a ringing phone line as more than 30 CPAs participated in a two-day tax hotline at the offices of the New York Daily News.

The NYSSCPA has cosponsored the hotline with the newspaper for several years. Business Editor David Andelman estimated that the four phone lines at the paper took in close to 500 calls over the course of six-hour days on March 16 and 17. The CPAs provided taxpayers with advice on everything from the new sales tax deduction to when it’s appropriate to begin taking a depreciation on horses (after five years).

“Our readers look forward to this every year,” Andelman said. “It’s a wonderful community service that we love being able to do with the help of the Society. The accountants that the NYSSCPA lines up are absolutely top notch.”

Early in the afternoon of March 16, Christopher Arato, of Friedman LLP, said that after his first hour manning a line he had already fielded a few questions about the tax code change allowing New Yorkers to take a sales tax deduction. And he said he had taken several calls from senior citizens with little income, who wanted to know whether or not they had to file.

“The questions today, like always, have really run across the whole spectrum of things,” said Barry Picker, who has his own practice in Brooklyn. Picker said one of the more interesting questions he received was from a man whose wife had passed away, leaving him to inherit her IRA. But because she was 10 years his senior, the caller was left with the question of whether to either take over the account as its owner (and begin collecting distributions), or to stay as the beneficiary of the fund and continue making contributions.

Participating CPAs divvied the days into one-hour slots with some overlap, usually completely turning over the mix of professionals in the Daily News conference room every two hours. As Micki Levine, of Satty, Levine & Ciacco CPAs P.C., answered a line and assured a caller that, “There are no silly questions,” Robert Nanfro, of Lazar, Levine & Felix LLP, picked up a call from someone who hadn’t paid their taxes since 1990 and was looking to come clean. In the background, Laurence Foster, who works in Manhattan, joked with Arato about heading down to Atlantic City to try his luck.

Foster, who had taken quite a few calls from people inquiring about how to declare winnings from Atlantic City, said the concerns he’d heard ranged from detailed investment and inheritance questions to things rooted a bit more in common sense. “One caller wanted to know how to get in touch with the IRS and find out if they had received her payment yet,” Foster said. “I told her to check with the bank and see if her check had cleared.”

Passing Quickfinder Handbooks and blank federal tax forms back and forth across the table to other CPAs for reference, Henry Garris, of Great Neck, who teaches at a local college, said he’s manned a phone for at least the past three years at the newspaper. “It’s a fun thing to do, to get out of your office during a stress-filled time of year for everyone and really help some people with their questions,” he said.