August 2001

Letter to the President

Dear President:

I read your President’s Commentary in The Trusted Professional for June 2001. I applaud you on your stance in regard to the survey sent out by the State Education Department (SED) to all the CPAs in New York state regarding many issues affecting the accounting profession. I was excited to see a president have a belief in something and come out and speak to those beliefs.

Unfortunately, I do not agree with you and I hope you give me the same consideration in listening to my explanation of what I believe.

We are living in a very turbulent time for the accounting profession, with the Uniform Accountancy Act (UAA) and possibly the global designation awaiting us in the future. I am chairman of the Issues Committee of the National Conference of CPA Practitioners (NCCPAP) and also a past national president. Myself, my firm and NCCPAP have been fighting the New York State Society of CPAs on the UAA for the past two and a half to three years. I have made it very clear as to why we are against non-CPA ownership, a shorter, less-restrictive experience requirement and a scope of practice that only includes the attest function. We believe that the public we work for is owed the best of our profession—objectivity, integrity and independence. I was glad to see that NCCPAP’s diligence has hopefully ended any thoughts of non-CPA ownership in New York state and at the same time delayed certain provisions of the UAA in the United States.

The survey as sent out by the SED was very basic and while you may pick at certain points in each question, the premise was very straightforward. Easy questions deserve straight answers. With all the confusion that you claim existed, over one-third of the CPAs in New York state responded to this survey, which is an enormous amount of responses in any survey. Over 90 percent of those who answered disagreed with the NYSSCPA’s concept for the UAA, but agreed on the concept against the global designation. If you had asked the questions, would the results be different? Probably. Keep in mind that every survey is one-sided because the questions are slanted to go in one direction. I have disagreed with many surveys sent out by the American Institute of CPAs as well as the NYSSCPA. How many council members on the AICPA thought the New York state survey on the global designation was all one-sided?

With that in mind I do not want this to be a negative letter. It is clearly not my intent. There are two sides to every argument, survey and questionnaire. We can help each other and the place to start is to have meaningful dialogue on the potential global designation proposed by the AICPA. Our organizations, the NYSSCPA and NCCPAP, are in agreement on this topic. We are starting a campaign to defeat this designation by trying to offset the propaganda issued constantly by the AICPA. The NYSSCPA is a leader against the proposed global designation. We would like to work more closely with you, get other organizations involved and spearhead an effort to defeat the designation.

I started this letter by applauding you on taking such a strong position on being president and I commend you again because any organization to be successful needs a strong president for guidance and leadership. I hope we can join together in this common effort and will once again open our dialogue so that our organizations will have meaning to the CPA profession for many years.