Tax CPE Seminar Recaps

The September 15 session stood out for its payroll and employer-expense implementation work. Michael Miranda and AJ Reynolds moved beyond the broad Fall update to show how qualified-overtime rules, post-2025 meal deductions, and the multiple-jobs W-4 worksheet affect the questions practitioners should ask before applying the new provisions.

• Overtime nugget: The deduction applies to the Fair Labor Standards Act overtime premium, not every amount labeled overtime. The discussion highlighted excluded owner-employees, collective-bargaining and agricultural situations, and the updated federal fact sheet practitioners can use to test eligibility.
• Employer-meal nugget: Meals furnished for the employer's convenience become nondeductible after 2025, while snacks and beverages require a more careful Section 274 analysis. A participant question applied the distinction to meals a farmer provides nonemployee workers at the worksite.
• The closing W-4 walkthrough used the multiple-jobs worksheet to translate two wage streams into additional withholding per pay period and explained why the online estimator is preferable when the adjustment begins midyear.
• Qualified-tip and overtime planning also requires correct W-2 or information-return reporting, income-limit testing, and documentation that separates the qualifying premium from ordinary wages.
• The broader update still covered retirement, business, digital-asset, estate, gift, and due-diligence developments, but this date supplied the most concrete payroll and withholding implementation examples.
• Practitioners were encouraged to preserve the underlying payroll facts and employer policies instead of relying on labels generated by payroll software.

Program

Fall Topical Update

Audience

CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and tax practitioners looking for practical guidance they can apply in client-facing planning, compliance, and advisory work

Attendee access

Use your attendee account for available recordings, session materials, and certificates.

The September 17 session put extra weight on compliance controls and emerging digital-property issues. Kristy Maitre and Michael Miranda connected the new automatic penalty-relief process with preparer due diligence, identity-theft safeguards, and practical examples involving NFTs and smart contracts.

• Penalty-relief nugget: The IRS's Automatic Exemption from Penalty changes the old first-time-abatement workflow. A small eligible first penalty may be removed automatically, so practitioners should preserve reasonable-cause arguments for a later, larger penalty that is outside the automatic program.
• Due-diligence nugget: The session traced heightened due diligence across EITC, the child-related credits, head-of-household status, and the American Opportunity Credit, including how penalties can stack when one return contains several unsupported claims.
• Identity-theft procedures received added attention, including asking clients about prior incidents and retrieving an IP PIN when the annual notice is missing.
• Digital-asset examples went beyond basis and broker reporting to explain NFTs as unique blockchain records, illustrate possible smart-contract uses, and show why hard-to-value digital rights can create valuation and estate-administration problems.
• Retirement discussion distinguished life-expectancy treatment, the ten-year rule, and five-year treatment for non-designated beneficiaries rather than treating every inherited IRA alike.
• The practical theme was to build a defensible file: identify which relief or due-diligence regime actually applies, ask the follow-up questions, and retain support before a notice or preparer review arrives.

Program

Fall Topical Update

Audience

CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and tax practitioners looking for practical guidance they can apply in client-facing planning, compliance, and advisory work

Attendee access

Use your attendee account for available recordings, session materials, and certificates.

The September 22 session emphasized planning opportunities that were less prominent in the earlier dates. Larry Johnson and Kristy Maitre worked through year-of-death RMD responsibility, domestic research-expense choices, DSUE portability, charitable structures, and the line between taxable and nontaxable digital-asset activity.

• Inherited-IRA nugget: If an owner dies after reaching the required beginning date without completing the final RMD, the beneficiary of each specific IRA is responsible for that account's share of the year-of-death shortfall; naming an estate or non-designated beneficiary can compress the payout period.
• Portability nugget: A surviving spouse may preserve a deceased spouse's unused exemption by filing Form 706 even when no estate tax is due. The discussion highlighted the extended five-year relief procedure and the later reporting of DSUE on Schedule C of Form 709.
• Domestic research and experimental expenditures can again qualify for current expensing beginning in 2025, while taxpayers with existing amortization have choices to model and foreign research remains subject to different treatment.
• Digital-asset examples separated taxable sales and crypto-for-crypto exchanges from nontaxable holding or wallet-to-wallet transfers, then applied charitable-contribution rules to appreciated cryptocurrency donated directly to a public charity.
• Donor-advised funds at community foundations were presented as a lower-administration alternative to a private foundation for clients who want to bunch deductions, contribute appreciated property, and recommend grants over time.
• The date's planning focus tied these opportunities back to beneficiary designations, timely elections, valuation records, and coordination with legal counsel before a deadline or transfer closes the option.

Program

Fall Topical Update

Audience

CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and tax practitioners looking for practical guidance they can apply in client-facing planning, compliance, and advisory work

Attendee access

Use your attendee account for available recordings, session materials, and certificates.

The September 24 session put extra weight on 2026 return-preparation changes and practitioner controls. Randy Adams and Larry Johnson connected the new W-2 reporting framework, gambling-loss limits, employer-meal rules, retirement distributions, due diligence, conflicts, and identity-protection procedures with concrete questions practitioners should ask before filing.

• W-2 nugget: The 2026 form adds Box 12 codes TP and TT for qualified tips and overtime, plus a Box 14B tipped-occupation code. The discussion stressed verifying employer data rather than assuming first-year payroll reporting is accurate.
• Gambling nugget: Under the rules discussed for 2026, professional gambling expenses are treated as wagering losses and total deductions are limited to 90% of winnings; the presenters cautioned that pending legislation could change the result again.
• Employer-provided meals and snacks received special attention because the convenience-of-the-employer deduction changes after 2025, while compensation, reimbursement, recreational-event, and business-meeting exceptions still require separate analysis.
• Retirement coverage distinguished the required beginning date from the annual RMD, then connected inherited-account timing, Roth planning, qualified charitable distributions, and Form 5329 relief to the client's actual account and beneficiary facts.
• The ethics segment applied Form 8867 and Circular 230 due diligence to return information, oral and written representations, and conflicts of interest, emphasizing inquiry and documentation when client answers appear incomplete or inconsistent.
• Identity-protection procedures included the IP PIN and IRS online accounts, while the broader filing-season checklist tied those controls to updated reporting forms, digital-asset questions, and defensible workpapers.

Program

Fall Topical Update

Audience

CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and tax practitioners looking for practical guidance they can apply in client-facing planning, compliance, and advisory work

Attendee access

Use your attendee account for available recordings, session materials, and certificates.

The September 30 session gave extra attention to new 2026 implementation details and the records practitioners will need to defend them. Kristy Maitre and Michael Miranda connected Trump accounts, automatic penalty relief, retirement-distribution and Roth-conversion timing, meal substantiation, digital-asset reporting, and estate portability to concrete filing and advisory decisions.

• Trump-account nugget: The presenters walked through the separate election for the federal newborn pilot contribution and the broader account election, the current $5,000 annual contribution limit, Form 4547, eligible investments, and which contribution sources create basis.
• Penalty-relief nugget: The new automatic exemption generally attaches to the first qualifying penalty rather than the penalty a taxpayer would prefer to remove; once used, later relief may depend on a documented reasonable-cause case, while partnership relief under Revenue Procedure 84-35 remains separate.
• Retirement coverage separated required beginning dates from annual RMD obligations, explained how designated-beneficiary trust terms affect payout treatment, and clarified that a new Roth conversion starts its own five-year holding period even when an older Roth IRA has already satisfied its period.
• Meal and travel substantiation focused on business purpose, participants, amount, date, and place. The discussion stressed that the under-$75 receipt rule does not eliminate the need for corroborating records and does not permit estimates where Section 274 requires documentation.
• Digital-asset examples distinguished nontaxable wallet transfers and soft forks from hard forks that produce new currency under the taxpayer's dominion, then tied airdrops, staking, basis reconstruction, Form 8949, and Schedule 1 reporting to the transaction facts.
• Estate planning emphasized that DSUE portability is not automatic, requires a timely and complete Form 706 election, and can materially expand a surviving spouse's basic exclusion amount; GST exemption, by contrast, is not portable.

Program

Fall Topical Update

Audience

CPAs, EAs, attorneys, and tax practitioners looking for practical guidance they can apply in client-facing planning, compliance, and advisory work

Attendee access

Use your attendee account for available recordings, session materials, and certificates.