Talking Tax

For decades retailers have held onto the sales taxes they collect from consumers for weeks before sending those funds to state revenue agencies.

States are becoming increasingly impatient with this process. Some are pushing for accelerated collection schedules and a few are even talking about real-time sales tax compliance strategies.

Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker (R) has long highlighted accelerated compliance as a way to realize revenue faster and reduce opportunities for tax evasion. On April 1 the Bay State launched an advance payment tax program that shortens the remittance period. Longer term, Baker is recommending a requirement that third-party payment processors convey sales tax to the state on a daily basis, beginning in 2024.

On this week's episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, reporter Michael Bologna talks with Liz Armbruester, senior vice president for global compliance at tax software company Avalara, and Patrick Reynolds, senior tax counsel for the Council on State Taxation. Armbruester talks about why she believes that "all signs point to a future where payments will be defined by near-real-time tax compliance," while Reynolds highlights the business community’s concerns about the costs and burdens associated with these compliance strategies.

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Thalia Smith, a partner at Deloitte, is using her experience as a Black woman in the Big Four to help students looking to break into accounting.

Smith, an audit and assurance partner, is leading Deloitte's $75 million effort to close the diversity gap in the accounting profession. Just 2% of the firm's partners, principals, and managing directors are Black.

On this week's episode of Talking Tax, Smith talks with reporter Amanda Iacone about her journey to becoming a Deloitte partner and the hurdles she faced as she advanced in an overwhelmingly white profession.

Smith earned scholarships that helped her pay for her education and had other support as she prepared for the CPA exam. Deloitte is trying to take out the "luck" element of the process, she said. The firm has committed $30 million to scholarships for hundreds of Black and Latino students.

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Tens of millions of families across the U.S. this week received their first monthly advance on the child tax credit from the IRS.

The new monthly payments, which launched Thursday, are the result of a pandemic relief law that also temporarily boosted the credit's value. Households will receive up to $300 per month for each child under age 6, and up to $250 for each child ages 6 to 17.

While the expanded credit is currently only on the books for this year, Democratic lawmakers are pushing to make sure it stays around long-term.

House Ways and Means Committee member Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) is among the lawmakers who have long championed an expanded tax credit as a way to help reduce child poverty. On this week’s episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, DelBene talks with reporter Kaustuv Basu about why Democrats pushed for the advanced payments and whether a permanent extension is possible.

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The U.S. audit regulator is slated to get fresh leadership after a turbulent few years that culminated in the removal of its chairman last month.

But it could take months for a new slate of leaders to be selected and installed as members of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. The board faces a challenge in improving the morale of the PCAOB’s 800-person staff after a report released last month detailed leadership failures that cultivated a culture of fear and mistrust.

Among other issues, the incoming board will have to address a 2020 law related to its oversight of auditors in China and international rules that lay out how firms should police their compliance with ethics and audit requirements.

Lynn Turner, former SEC chief accountant, was among those who called for leadership changes at the board. Turner and Daniel Goelzer, a founding PCAOB member, spoke with Talking Tax host Amanda Iacone about what's next for the small regulator and what new board members should do to restore trust. Listen to the episode here.

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Large multinational corporations have for a few years now been required to report to the EU how much they pay in taxes to each European country they operate in. But now, after an agreement last month, it looks like those reports will soon be made public.

On this episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, Willy de Molina, a transfer pricing partner with Deloitte, talks about the impact this new rule might have. Molina, based in Spain, told Bloomberg Tax editor Joe Stanley-Smith that the headaches this rule could cause go beyond logistics, with possible reputational risks for some companies.

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Pandemic-related budget fears have prompted states to search for new sources of tax revenue. Lawmakers across the country are beginning to look toward social media as a mother lode of untapped corporate tax revenue.

Social media tech giants, of course, aren't a fan of that approach. Maryland’s first-in-the-nation digital advertising tax has drawn legal challenges from Comcast Cable Communications, Verizon Media Inc., and other corporate heavyweights who argue the tax is unconstitutional.

On today's episode of our weekly podcast, Talking Tax, Bloomberg Tax's Michael Bologna hosts a pros-and-cons discussion on state digital advertising taxes. Peter Enrich, a law professor at Northeastern University, and Pilar Mata, executive director of the Tax Executives Institute, debate whether states should try to tax Twitter, Facebook, and other media giants.

After years of grueling negotiations, the world's wealthiest countries reached an agreement on how—and how much—to tax multinational corporations.

Now comes what could be a heavier lift: Getting buy-in from the rest of the world.

Kate Barton, EY's global vice chair for tax, joins this week's episode of Talking Tax to sort through what the recent G-7 agreement means. She also touches on how getting approval from dozens of other countries—not to mention each of their respective legislatures—could be a more difficult task. Barton tells Bloomberg Tax's Hamza Ali that the pact is indeed as big of a deal as it seems.

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The first loan approved through the Small Business Administration's Paycheck Protection Program went out the door just one week after the program was created last spring.

At the time, with the pandemic shutting down nearly the entire country, the economic devastation looked like it could be limitless. The PPP was designed to help small business owners survive, offering government-backed loans that could be entirely forgiven if used to cover payroll and other approved business expenses.

As the head of the SBA's Office of Capital Access, Bill Briggs was in right in the eye of this hurricane. Briggs joins this week's episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, to reflect on the PPP, which stopped processing new loans about two weeks ago. Briggs, now in the private sector, speaks with Bloomberg Tax's David Hood about the launch of the program, its future, and efforts to stop pandemic relief fraud.

A federal tax credit has played a big role in speeding adoption of electric vehicles and plug-in hybrids, offering consumers up to $7,500 off their year-end tax bill if they buy a qualifying vehicle.

But Congress designed the credit to phase out as manufacturers established EVs as viable parts of their product line, setting a sales threshold that Tesla and General Motors passed a few years ago.

Rep. Dan Kildee (D-Mich.) is among the lawmakers who want to expand the credit as a way to keep encouraging electric vehicle sales as part of a broader climate strategy. Kildee has been fine-tuning a proposal with Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) and the White House to expand the credit.

In this week’s episode of our podcast, Talking Tax, reporter Kaustuv Basu speaks with Kildee about the future of the tax credit, how it fits into the Biden administration's infrastructure plan, and the move towards all-electric pickup trucks.

A few weeks ago, a Talking Tax listener reached out about an episode from last summer that focused on why so few CPAs are Black.

Lynnwood G. Campbell's stories from a more than 40-year-long career in accounting were so fascinating, we invited him on this week's show. Campbell, now retired, started out at what is now PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP, then spent decades at the Treasury Department.

Campbell spoke with podcast hosts Amanda Iacone and Jeff Leon about why he went into accounting in the late 1960s, the fortuitous way he landed at PwC, and how he managed to thrive at a time when most other Black accountants weren't able to.