Deadlines, Loopholes, and Vaccines
May 17 is the extended filing deadline for individual tax returns. As you might imagine, we’re burning the midnight oil at Marcum. With many of our associates still working from home and social distancing rules in place, we’ve skipped the communal pizza and Chinese food breaks around the conference room table but it still feels like old times.
Many of us in the accounting profession are poised as we await details of President Biden’s American Families Plan. The plan, as it stands now, includes $1.8 trillion in spending for paid family leave, universal pre-K, free community college and subsidized childcare. It must be nice to have an unlimited source of funds (taxpayer-supplied) to just spend money like this.
To fund this spending, the plan would close some popular tax benefits used by high-income taxpayers. It would also virtually double the capital gains tax rate to 39.6% for households making more than $1 million, up from 20%. And the list of potential tax changes (increases) goes on.
Many of our clients fall into that stratosphere. If you’re among them, we encourage you to reach out to your Marcum professional early to plan ahead.
With most of our staff and many of our clients now vaccinated, you might even be able to have your planning meeting in person at one of our offices. We’re moving our New York City team to a new location at 730 Third Avenue – a block south of our present location – on Monday (May 3). Lucky us, we negotiated this lease in November 2019 – as it turns out, the height of the market, pre-Covid. Timing is everything, or not.
Our old office was bursting at the seams and our lease was up, so we’ve shifted to a strategic mix of brick-and-mortar and remote work. As we’ve seen during the past 15 months, it is no longer necessary for everyone to be physically located in one place at one time. So we’re going to have quite a bit of elbow room in our 70,000 square feet. I hope “build it and they will come” holds true for us in NYC.
But take it from me, the office as we know it is not dead. Nor is everyone at their most productive working in the midst of family and home. There is a lot to be said for hunkering down under one roof as a team to tackle a big project. At the same time, remote work has its place and can be very efficient in certain circumstances. So, we are embracing the best of both worlds.
Our new state-of-the-art workspace is set up to encourage in-person collaboration – something many of us missed during the pandemic. In a field like ours, where we have to react very quickly to new developments, there’s a real benefit to being together under one roof where we can share information on the spot.
Not to mention it is much easier for new associates to soak up our entrepreneurial culture when they can see and hear how seasoned members of our team solve problems and work with clients.
That’s a good thing, given that 2021 is starting out to be a busy year for many of our clients and for our firm.
Stay safe, stay healthy, and remember we’re all in this together!
