LEAD STORY
What If There Were No RISCPA?
This edition of What Counts focuses on the concept of membership -- the benefits of partaking in all that RISCPA has to offer and the value in playing a contributing role in the profession's primary community.
A month after the first-ever, very successful Membership Day (formerly known as Leadership Day), held this year on Sept. 30, it seems appropriate to reflect on the nature of membership as it relates to RISCPA.
To fully appreciate the value of holding membership in the Rhode Island Society of CPAs, let’s take a look at what life might be like without the organization. We asked Society President Arthur Lambi Jr. to help illustrate the void that might exist in the four areas of Resources, Networking Opportunities, Promotion and Professional Support, if RISCPA were suddenly to disappear.
RESOURCES
One of the primary assets that RISCPA offers members is access to a wealth of valuable resources.
First, take its Continuing Professional Education offerings. The Society is a convenient one-stop shop for accountants’ CPE needs, and without it individuals would be left to their own devices.
“Without the Society, many of us would find ourselves searching aimlessly for a preferred CPE topic, with a good speaker, in a location that is close by, at a price that is affordable,” Lambi said.
Further, without RISCPA, practicing accountants wouldn’t have a central location for acquiring the tools, forms and texts relevant to their day-to-day work. Individual professionals would be on their own, having to wade through numerous websites of various agencies, to collect the literature they need to accomplish their everyday tasks.
Once these hypothetical non-members did finally locate all the requisite material, they would certainly be paying full price for it. They wouldn’t be able to take advantage of deals like the current 30% RISCPA discount off many CCH tax and accounting books.
Of course, there are also the RISCPA website and these What Counts newsletters, both of which are regularly updated with the more recent and relevant news and information for CPAs in Rhode Island.
NETWORK
Currently, RISCPA serves a diverse and growing membership of more than 1,800 CPAs and accounting professionals in public practice, industry, government and education. That’s a giant network for individual workers to tap for advice, support and professional relationship building. Without it, each man and woman in the CPA world might feel like an island.
Lambi needed this network when he first started his own practice. At the time, he was involved in the Society’s Small Firms Committee, the Tax Committee and the Accounting & Auditing Committee. Without RISCPA, Lambi would have had much more trouble establishing his own practice.
“I was missing the support of having dozens of experienced colleagues to turn to for feedback, with whom to discuss a technical question,” Lambi said. “Through these committees, the Society allowed me to stay current professionally, obtain helpful feedback and technical assistance for the cost of my time to attend a committee meeting. It was indispensable in those early critical years of establishing my firm.”
Without the Society, not only would professional networking be immeasurably more difficult, but friendships and other benefits of working in teams toward a common goal would also be scant.
PROMOTION
If there were no RISCPA, and no other state CPA societies, how would word get out about the profession as a whole? One major job of the Society is to promote and protect the national reputation of the profession.
“Without the Society, we would have no coordinated manner in which the practitioners of Rhode Island would help shape our profession on a national level,” Lambi said. “Without the Society, who would be consistently promoting the integrity and honor of the CPA designation?”
He went on to explain that without the Society, the profession as a whole might lose out on attracting the strongest talent.
“There is no question that the efforts of the Society have increased the perceived value of the CPA designation in this state, which has led to attracting some of the best and brightest students to the profession (which perpetuates the value of the designation).”
SUPPORT
Without the Society, Lambi noted, government support for the profession at the state level would suffer immensely.
“Whether it is a proposed gross receipts tax on accounting services, or subjecting our tax and accounting services to the state’s sales tax, who else would have effectively advocated in our best interest, and the interest of our many clients and employers?” Lambi said.
Here’s a good example:
Last spring, Congress proposed a tax law change that would impose the self-employment tax on every dollar of earnings reported by most S-Corporations and all other pass-throughs. Concerned for his firm’s family-owned business clients, as well as the effects this tax law change could have on the many CPA firms that service those clients, Lambi said he immediately contacted RISCPA’s Executive Director, Bob Mancini, who promptly contacted Senator Reed’s office, and was instantly put in contact with the government relations people at the AICPA.
“Within hours of expressing my concerns on this tax bill, a successful effort had been put forth on a national level to strike this problematic section from the proposed bill,” Lambi said. “Honestly, I don’t know what I would do without the Society.”
