By Michael D. Colgan, PICPA CEO and executive director

No one signed up for this.

Not the doctors, nurses, or first responders. Not the grocery store workers and truck drivers. Not the factory workers. And not you.

Here you are, though, on the front lines of a worldwide crisis, fighting to sustain the livelihoods of your clients and businesses while also navigating the risks to your own health and safety. CPAs are taking on roles completely unfamiliar to them – crisis response coordinator, building manager, unemployment specialist, loan officer, and therapist, to name a few – while also mastering complex new legislation and readjusting to new tax and A&A guidance and deadlines. CPAs are doing this with poise, resilience, and determination, further elevating public trust in your profession. To demonstrate our thank you for all that you are doing, we at the PICPA put together the short video below.

Today is April 15, traditionally a day for CPAs to celebrate the end of tax season. While the date lacks the same significance this year, please know that your contributions to your clients and communities thus far are certainly worthy of celebration. The PICPA team is cheering you on, each and every day, and we will continue to support you and advocate for you in every way possible.

We have successfully fought to push back payment and filing deadlines at the state and federal levels, and remain in constant communication with the Pennsylvania Department of Revenue (DOR) and local tax municipalities to address your questions. We have worked with Gov. Tom Wolf’s office to keep CPA firms on Pennsylvania’s list of “life-sustaining businesses.” We are addressing the countless concerns resulting from the CARES Act and Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). We have hosted Q&A sessions with the Pennsylvania DOR and the Philadelphia revenue department. We are working with industry leaders to generate blog posts, podcasts, and webinars spanning a range of COVID-19 accounting issues and updating our COVID-19 technical resource page daily.

Tax Day 2020 is now July 15. Will we welcome it with familiar fanfare? That’s uncertain, but this isn’t: the people of Pennsylvania are truly lucky to have you protecting our economy, and you can count on the PICPA team's boundless motivation to serve you.

Michael D. Colgan, CAE, is CEO and executive director of the PICPA. He can be reached at mcolgan@picpa.org.

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