Divisive Reform

Yes, it’s more Tax Cuts and Jobs Act talk. It’s the blog gift that keeps on giving, and promises to keep on giving through next tax season, too.

When I have written about this blast of tax reform, I have attempted to not be political about it. What one feels about the reform matters little here, for we must operate under the rules passed no matter what they area. A recent survey commissioned by the Republican National Committee, though, says that many are not happy with the reform measures.

I came across this news in an article on Accounting Today, where it was reported that respondents, by about a two-to-one margin, believe that reform favors the rich. Breaking it down into just whether people approve of the measures passed (because hey, if you’re rich and you think it favors the rich, you’re all for that), 45 percent of people were against the moves and 44 percent were in favor. That sounds like a good microcosm of our country right there.

I only imagine that stories like this are going to proliferate as we move toward tax season. There will be ever more predictions about what tax returns are going to look like, and then we will have feedback once the returns are filed. This isn’t wrong, we should have opinions in a democracy. I do, however, urge you to separate that a bit from your actual tax prep.

Again, these are the rules, we have to abide by them. Some of you reading this are going to love the new rules when you see your return, some of you reading this are going to curse the new rules when you see your return. Just remove that emotion from the actual filing.

Instead, do the things you’re supposed to do, follow the rules you’re supposed to follow. We will help you use them to your greatest advantage and understand why things work the way they do. Whether or not anyone likes it.
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On another note, the Treasury Inspector General has figured out what caused an outage at the IRS on Tax Day 2018 that put quite a crimp in that last-day flurry of activity.

Granted, this doesn’t seem like it should have taken months to figure out – I mean, they did fix the problem, right? Shouldn’t that tell them what went wrong to some degree? – but at least the news was good. Good for everyone who isn’t the IRS anyway.

The final conclusion was that it was a firmware problem. The timing still makes this completely embarrassing for the agency, but at least it wasn’t any sort of outside attack that brought things down. I write a lot in this space about keeping your information safe, and what the IRS does to help achieve this goal, and I do think they deserve some credit for what they do well.

Just stay tuned a week or two, I’m sure we’ll be able to talk about something it doesn’t do well, too.
​Warmly,

Nicole Odeh
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