AICPA beats drum of tax simplification. (tax info).

The AICPA Tax Division recently sponsored, along with the American Bar Association Section of Taxation and the Tax Executives Institute, an Invitational Conference on Tax Law Simplification. The conference was held in response to the Joint Committee on Taxation staff's recent three-volume tax simplification recommendations. During the day-long event on Capitol Hill, AICPA, ABA and TEI tax professionals discussed the need for simplification with their colleagues from academia, the Internal Revenue Service, Treasury and congressional staffs.

Panels focused on individual, corporate and international tax issues responsible for considerable complexity, including dependent care and child credits, the earned income tax credit, education incentives, corporate and individual AMT, and capitalization and depreciation issues. Although increasing numbers of taxpayers use tax professionals to help them file returns, Capitol Hill staff repeatedly pointed out that senators and representatives were not hearing constituent complaints about tax complexity.

House Ways and Means Committee Chair William M. Thomas (R-Calif.) suggested that the assembled professionals approach Congress with one simplification issue at a time. Thomas estimated the cost of repealing the individual AMT at "half a trillion dollars"; thus, his first choice for simplification was to eliminate the corporate AMT ($26 billion) as part of the economic stimulus compromise.

Copies of the papers presented at the conference will be available online (www.cpa2biz.com/CS2000/ResourceCenters/Tax/ default.htm) later this month, as will a transcript of the proceedings.