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Don’t miss out on valuable tax credits & incentives
Written on Dec 7, 2023
By Jessica Salerno-Shumaker, OSCPA senior content manager
It can be difficult to keep up with changing tax legislation, but it’s critical for practitioners looking to serve as the best advisers to their clients.
“Over the past five or 10 years, there has been so much legislation passed,” said Neil Shah, a senior director at the Alliant Group. “A lot of these congressional acts that were passed, people just don't know what was passed in them and how it might affect their clients.”
Shah will present “Maximizing benefits for your clients: Unpacking recent changes to tax credits,” at OSCPA’s MEGA Tax Conference on Dec. 12 along with Rick Lazio, covering the R&D tax credit, the Inflation Reduction Act, the employee retention credit and the state of IRS reviews. Shah said the focus will be on how CPA firms can identify significant savings for their clients.
Among the changes that should be on practitioners’ radar, Shah says an incentive called Section 179D is one that many organizations are unaware of, despite it being a permanent incentive. It allows a deduction of an amount equal to the cost of energy-efficient commercial building property placed in service during the taxable year and is used commonly by architects, engineers and construction contracting firms.
Shah predicts documentation standards will continue to be added in the coming years, and will also transfer over to compliance matters.
“Even as a tax consulting professional, compliance is everything,” he said. “Compliance is going to be the theme of the IRS and a lot of the credits and incentives that Congress passes for the new few years.”
He encouraged CPAs to reach out proactively to their clients to review if certain credits and incentives make sense.
“I like to say it's always worth the conversation,” Shah said. “Always look to see, especially in the fourth quarter, what your client can qualify for in the beginning. There's nothing lost or gained through this effort, just information.”
Communication between CPAs and their clients is key, Shah said, because there may be situations where the CPA doesn’t know the finer details of a client’s work and could possibly miss an incentive. Even if you think your client doesn’t qualify for a specific credit or incentive it’s still worth a review in case something has been overlooked.
“Communicating freely can really help,” he said. “Make sure nothing is missed and all credits and incentives are identified.