The American Rescue Plan, signed into law on March 11, 2021, contained $1.9 trillion of relief for taxpayers (Segers, 2021). The new law, with several retroactive 2020 tax return items, passed in the middle of filing season. Tax preparers scrambled to quickly understand how to process the remaining tax returns and how to handle the millions of already filed tax returns. Tax professionals and individuals seem to now have a handle on the changes that were retroactive, but the 2021 expanded Child Tax Credit and its advance payments are still causing much confusion among individual taxpayers. Tax preparers need to be able to explain this credit to their clients.

Although there have not been many ta law changes this year, one tax policy change being implemented this year is sure to cause confusion for a plethora of our clients. That change is the new reporting requirements for the 1099- K. CPA firms are already beginning to get calls from clients about these information reporting forms. If you are a tax preparer, you will no doubt have to help your clients sort through the tax consequences of this form if they use third parties such as PayPal, Venmo and many others for day-to-day cash transactions [...]