CSTC Greater Long Beach Chronicle
From Nikki LeBrun, EA GLB President
"Dear Congress,
I would like to know why you think it was okay to only work 106 days of the year and still get aid for your 259 days of absence when you haven't done your job? Employers with any employee with that kind of record of absences, and no viable excuses for it, would have fired you after missing the first week.
I would like to submit my bill to you for what you have cost me in wasted time and money attending tax classes that couldn't teach me about the new tax laws for 2012 because you didn't bother to even discuss or pass them until 2013 and then retro'd them back to January of 2012. I will add to that bill all the resource books that were printed in November and December prior to your changing the 2012 tax laws that were obsolete and incorrect before I even received them.
Let's not forget the "trickle down effect" that is costing everyone except Congress clients, time and money. Our tax practices all started late while we waited for you to tell IRS what you passed or let lapse so they could re-program and update all the tax forms, then test them for flow thru integrity before they sent them to our software companies. Then we had to wait for the States to catch up and do the same process. Next we had to wait again for the software companies to do the same things so we could be somewhat confident that the returns we were submitting for our clients were correct or could even be filed by the April 15th deadline. Did you even bother to think it might be a good idea to extend the due dates this year?? Oh, and how about what you have done to the taxpayers?? They have had to wait for delayed refunds and they ARE YOUR EMPLOYERS!!!
It is very evident that you do not care about your constituents or the citizens of this country by the behaviors you have displayed for the last few years. You are worried about deficits, but you can't get our taxes done. We can't spend our refunds, if there even are any, to help ourselves stay afloat or the economy if our refunds are constantly delayed. How about if you don't get paid for not working - isn't that what happens in a regular business?? By the way, don't you dare blame this mess on the IRS - you did this to them, to the taxpayers and to us by your own outrageous "school kid" behavior that is beyond comprehension!!!
Sincerely, A tax practitioner who is mad as hell at you and will vote you out of your position in the next election!!!
That being said, I suspect that the majority of us are still in the "tax season from hell". I've been doing taxes since the early 1970's and I don't ever remember a tax season like this one - not even in the 1980's when we had the 5 year phase out plan or the 1990's when the tax code once again was revamped almost on a daily bases. It looks like I will be doing taxes up until the October due taxes as my clients are so angry about this mess that most of them waited until the week of March 25th to send in their paperwork - they have all been placed on extensions."
