Media Contacts: Barbara Fornasiero, EAFocus Communications, 248.260.8466, barbara@eafocus.com
Rochester/Lapeer, Mich. – April 9, 2015 – CPAs will be celebrating along with consumers on April 15 as the 2015 tax season comes to a close. Between forms being delayed from the IRS to wrong information being sent to thousands regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this tax season has been anything but boring says Vince Mattina, Jr., CPA and managing partner of Mattina, Kent & Gibbons, P.C. (MKG), a Michigan-based CPA firm providing audit, accounting, tax and business consulting services to a variety of industries.
“This year marked the first year taxpayers were obligated under the Affordable Care Act to report healthcare insurance compliance on their tax returns and indicate whether they received tax credits to help pay for it,” Mattina said. “This in turn created a more complex and essentially shorter tax filing season because of the additional information that had to be gathered and processed.”
Compliance with the ACA required new forms and additional taxpayer information, resulting in longer preparation time to gather the information and prepare the tax return. As a result, CPAs, individuals and business owners spent more time in the overall tax preparation process.
“CPA firms were especially challenged this tax season when the government delayed providing Form 1095-A (for taxpayers receiving government-backed insurance from the marketplace) until late March” Mattina said. “That was a setback of several weeks, yet the key tax deadlines of March 15 and April 15 still had to be met.”
As accounting firms like MKG forged ahead with the ACA requirements this tax season, they also saw their role as business advisor expand. Questions that would traditionally be directed to insurance companies or agents are now being posed to CPAs.
“Because the Affordable Care Act is part health law and part tax law, individuals and business owners not only have to decide which insurance plan best meets their health care circumstances and that of their employees, but also take into account how these choices and ACA compliance are going to impact their broader financial picture,” Mattina said. “The result is that clients are increasingly seeking out our advice on issues that are a cross between health insurance and tax law.”
Mattina says his firm is looking forward to the end of the 2015 tax season and hopes the issues that arose this year will be worked out before the 2016 tax season.
“A monumental new government program such as the Affordable Care Act was bound to be challenging. While CPAs anticipated obstacles this tax season, we underestimated their scope,” Mattina said. “Hopefully lessons learned in 2015 by the government, CPAs, business owners and individuals will make the 2016 tax season much smoother.”
About Mattina Kent & Gibbons
MKG is a Michigan-based CPA firm providing audit, accounting, tax and business consulting services to a variety of industries including manufacturing, construction, professional services, governmental, agribusiness and non-profits. To learn more, visit http://www.mkgpc.com.
