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Websites for Tax Practitioners Editor:
Editor's note: Mr. Holub is a member of the AICPA Tax Division's Tax Practice Responsibilities Committee. Professor Adams is a member of the Tax Division's Member Tax Practice Improvement Committee. If you would like additional information about this article, contact Mr. Holub at (813) 222-8555 or stevenh@apcpa.com, Dr. Brown at (804) 395-2365 or wpbrown@longwood.lwc.edu or Prof. Adams at (410) 465-6362 or rdadams@clark.net .
The breadth and depth of information available on the Internet continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Much of that information is available only from proprietary databases, but a lot is free of charge. In either case, a tax practitioner can locate many interesting and useful Websites.
Tax and Accounting Websites Tax and Accounting Sites Directory (www.taxsites.com). The Tax and Accounting Sites Directory is a comprehensive index to both tax and accounting Internet sites. It has little original material, but provides links to virtually all the important tax and accounting information resources on the Internet. The directory is one of the most complete general-purpose Websites. It is a valuable resource for tax practitioners as well as for accountants in public practice, industry, government and academia. The site includes links to various Federal source documents, including several Code versions (although none appear to be completely current), regulations, court cases and other related documents. The State & Local Tax link at this site lists state revenue department Websites, state court decisions and other state tax resources. The site includes printable copies of state tax forms (if available online). A practitioner can search among well over 100 topics, ranging from bankruptcy to wash sales, to gambling, to adoption, to accounting issues. Unfortunately, the number of source documents found online for accounting and reporting issues does not rival those available for tax issues, but the site still has many useful links and examples of financial statements. BenefitsLink (www.benefitslink.com). For a practice that involves employee benefit plans, either from a tax, administrative or auditing perspective, BenefitsLink is a large repository of useful resources. Each day, the site sends its subscribers e-mails with links to other Websites related to its daily newsletter topic. It does an amazingly good job of locating items posted online, whether by the government, professional firms or the popular press. BenefitsLink also hosts Q&A columns and several Web-based discussion boards. Finally, the site maintains a library of links to other Internet resources, which include source documents for both ERISA and the Code. AICPA Online (www.aicpa.org). The AICPA Website contains a lot of useful information, including all AICPA magazines and newsletters. The full text of the Journal of Accountancy, The CPA Letter and The Practicing CPA are available to all site visitors, whether or not they are AICPA members. Access to The Tax Adviser and InfoTech Update, however, are restricted to members of the AICPA Tax and Information Technology divisions, respectively. The site contains copies of outstanding exposure drafts, minutes of various senior technical committees and information about AICPA-sponsored conferences. Discussion forums, which are divided into specialized topics, are limited. IRS Website (www.irs.gov). The IRS provides one of the best-structured and most useful Websites for tax accountants. Most practitioners probably imagine that the Service's Web pages are time-consuming to download, especially using a standard 28.8K phone-line connection to the Internet (and only on a good day when the planets are in proper alignment). However, the IRS duplicated virtually the entire site in a text-only version (available at www.irs.gov/plain/index. html), which saves a lot of time. The Service's Website has the following items:
Many current tax forms are available in a format that users can complete on screen. Most documents and forms are in PDF, PCL or PostScript format, although almost 100 of the most popular IRS publications are also in HTML format. As the Service converts more documents to HTML, the usefulness of its site will increase. Exhibit 1 presents important and useful links to specific information available at the IRS's site. Tax Court (www.ustaxcourt.gov ). Beginning in early 1999, the Tax Court began publishing its decisions on the Web on the day of issuance. The site publishes regular, memorandum and summary decisions of the court. The court posts each day's decisions to the Web at 2:30 p.m., Central Time. The files are in Adobe Acrobat PDF format (which requires an Acrobat reader). The system stores decisions older than one day in a database that users can access. Unfortunately, the Tax Court's Website does not include decisions made prior to 1999. Accessing these decisions from libraries on the Internet requires payment. Because the main entry to the Tax Court's Website has a number of graphics, bookmarking the following "deep" links to the site saves time in accessing available decisions:
Tax Guide for Investors (www.fairmark.com). This sites provides tax guides on a range of investment-related topics, including compensation in stock and options; a tax guide for traders; spousal liability; and several others. A link to references features tax rate schedules, and standard deduction and personal exemption amounts for tax years 1997–2001. TaxLinks (www.taxlinks.com). Among the more valuable resources at this site are links to searchable databases containing revenue procedures dating from 1995 (www.revenueprocedures.com) and revenue rulings dating from 1967 (www.taxlinks.com/revrules.htm) to the present. Tax Analysts (www.tax.org). This site provides news and analysis pages along with many mailing lists (www.tax.org/text/discuss/discussion.htm) on over a dozen specific topics, including exempt organizations, farm and ranch, international taxation and real estate. Most of the mailing lists are "one-way"; they allow readers to submit questions and responses that a moderator first evaluates before posting them to the site. Website participants do not interact directly with questions and answers. Mailing lists include articles or source documents on topics that previously appeared on Tax Analysts' Web-based TaxBase. ABA mailing lists (www.abanet.org/discussions/home.html). The ABA hosts a number of "two-way" mailing lists, which are "true" discussion lists, with content posted by list participants, not by a centralized knowledge source. While two-way mailing lists have advantages, they are also challenging. Two-way interaction means that questions can be answered quickly, by the whole group of participants (or at least those willing to take the risk of posting a comment, which is generally a minority of the total readership). However, determining the reliability of the various postings and evaluating the quality of this information is challenging. Also, two-way discussions tend to generate a much larger volume of e-mail than one-way lists. Among the lists that welcome CPAs are the ABA-TAX list (tax law discussion) and the ABA-PTL list (for estate planners and administrators). Lists are both moderated and unmoderated. To limit e-mail messages, the ABA's mailing lists are available in digest form. Subscribers to digests receive only one e-mail per day for each list to which they subscribe. That e-mail contains all of the messages submitted in the last 24 hours. By giving up the speediness of a quick answer, participants gain by having to deal with fewer individual messages. The filtering capabilities of most e-mail programs can help manage a list, even if a practitioner does not subscribe to the digest version. Archives of the ABA's mailing lists (which can be browsed or searched) are at the following Web locations:
Usenet newgroups. Some of the most active and useful discussions on the Internet in the tax and accounting arena are newsgroups, a "bulletin-board" method for exchanging messages known as Usenet. Usenet is a primitive technology that is not Web-based. To use Usenet newsgroups effectively requires additional knowledge and tools. Usenet groups can also be accessed on the Web at Deja.com's Usenet site (www.deja.com/usenet). Besides providing access to Usenet groups, this Website archives past discussions as well. A newsreader, available through many Internet service providers (ISPs), is another way to access Usenet (and the best way when using Usenet often). AOL's newsreader is easy to use (keyword "USENET"). Other ISPs may provide newsreaders that are either in Outlook or Outlook Express (from Microsoft), or from Netscape. Detailed instructions on how to configure newsreaders largely depend on each ISP. Most ISPs providing Usenet services assist subscribers in configuring a newsreader. A rule basic to all Usenet groups (and useful to subscribers) is the arrangement of the names of Usenet groups to indicate a group's content. The first part of a name is a general topic. The sections after that (separated by periods) break down the topic into subcategories. Usenet group: alt.accounting (www.deja.com/group/alt.accounting): This is an unmoderated discussion group devoted to accounting issues. Group participants range from accountants in public practice, individuals trying to make their computerized accounting systems work, students trying to get someone to do their homework for them and anyone else that might be interested. Because this group is unmoderated, anyone can post questions and answers (which can become unwieldy), including advertisers that many participants might find offensive. Usenet group: misc.taxes.moderated (Deja.com address: www.deja.com/group/misc.taxes.moderated): This group is a moderated discussion group on tax-related issues. All postings are cleared by a moderator, which keeps away virtually all unwelcome ads and other postings. The group has discussed a number of issues of interest to tax professionals, including entity selection, innocent/ injured spouse claims, compensatory stock options, interest tracing and many other topics. The group is not to be confused with the unmoderated misc.taxes group (the ".moderated" extension is crucial), which tends to attract tax protestors. While the unmoderated Website may contain useful information, a lot of work is necessary to uncover it. Usenet group: misc.invest.financial-plan (Deja.com address: www.deja.com/group/misc.invest.financial-plan): This is a moderated group devoted to various financial planning issues. Several professionals in this field regularly post to this site, as well as many lay people with an interest in financial planning. Other groups: Last but not least, besides accounting and tax-related groups, a vast number of Usenet groups exist on every imaginable topic. This can be beneficial to tax practitioners seeking industry-specific information.
Conclusion Exploitation of information available at no charge on the Web can enhance and facilitate client service. The Web's resources can help practitioners to develop a better understanding of their clients' businesses and the environments in which these businesses operate. By William P. Brown, Ph.D., CPA, Associate Professor, School of Business and Economics, Longwood College, Farmville, VA, and Richard D. Adams, CPA, Assistant Professor of Accounting, Robert G. Merrick School of Business, University of Baltimore, Baltimore, MD |
