Making Strides

By Jamshed Behram Gandi, CPA

Considerable progress has been made on the resurrection of the tax committee. As I mentioned last month, a follow-up meeting to the tax partners breakfast was held and chaired by chapter board member Laura Ross. As expected, there was quite a divergence of ideas as to the aims and the goals of the tax committee going forward. Laura has taken up the lead role in volunteering to chair the newly formed committee. I request all tax practitioners in San Francisco to support this endeavor and get at least one or two individuals from your staff involved, as well. As you are probably aware, we are on the precipice of a barrage of tax legislation that will impact our clients substantially.

I also conferred at length with Matt Lombardi, chair of our AP&AS Committee, as to participation and programming. He is working on several topics that will be critical to our practices, such as FASB Codification and the impact of IFRS. As a matter of interest it is my understanding that IFRS is to start appearing on the CPA Exam in the not-too-distant future.

At this time I would like to congratulate and heartily thank all our committee chairs for contributing the time and energy that goes into putting these meetings together. It is through their selfless dedication that our chapter is able to enhance value to our membership at large.

At our chapter board meeting last week we came up with a program for the next year that attempts to engage the full spectrum of our membership There is a constant debate as to whether member meetings are to concentrate on social networking as opposed to technical know-how. Whereas in the last two or three decades, meetings were mostly centered on continuing education, it seems that today’s emphasis is more on social networking. In my opinion, a blend of both is important and significant. To that end, the board is striving to navigate our programs based on member feedback. We have commenced work on the ever-popular golf tournament and the ABC mixer. In the coming year, the board will work on recognition by way of a Young & Emerging Professional Award and a service award to a chapter member.

As always, please stay tuned. I welcome your comments and suggestions.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 30th, 2009 at 4:53 pm and is filed under President's Message. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.