Lexington, KY - Erica Horn always knew she wanted to be a lawyer. "The accounting thing was kind of a detour," she said.
But, like a side quest in a role-playing game, Horn picked up some valuable tools, skills and experience that would be useful later.
Accounting, she said, "is a really good craft," and certified public accountants "wear a lot of hats these days." Those hats include auditing and ensuring compliance with government programs, preparing tax returns and providing financial advice.
After graduating from Transylvania University with a degree in business administration, Horn wore some different hats for a diverse group of business clients in her four years at a national accounting firm, learning different businesses from the ground up. That helped her level up quickly after getting her law degree from the University of Kentucky in 1990.
She maintains her CPA certification (she said she never wants to take that certification exam again) while working as an attorney. She uses both sets of skills in her specialized area of SALT - state and local taxes.
"It's a really interesting area," Horn said. It can deal with areas of constitutional law, such as whether a taxing authority is operating within its legal authority, as well as tracking and interpreting legislative changes and comparing tax structures of different states.
"It's a nice little niche," she said.
A recent switch
After spending the first part of her law career working out of the Frankfort office of Stites & Harbison, interacting with business clients that included multinational corporations, she recently switched to the Lexington office of Stoll Keenon Ogden.
"I was blessed that some folks that I work with came with me," said Horn, who just started at SKO on Jan. 1.
She spends a lot of time talking and corresponding with those clients and state and local government officials, and preparing presentations for the Kentucky Board of Tax Appeals or for trial courts on tax cases that are appealed. Although, as with many areas of the law, "a lot of stuff settles," she said.
She also shares information with CPAs and tax professionals and often learns something in the exchange.
She mostly recently was a presenter at the KyCPA State Tax Conference in Louisville, where she discussed changes in income taxes in Kentucky and other states, including continued fallout from Kentucky's attempt at tax modernization in 2005, corporate income tax, and, on a more national level, interpreting implementation of the new health care law.
One specific area of tax law that businesses are dealing with these days is changes on tax withholding requirements for some limited liability companies with partners in different states. Such business arrangements are more common in the era of e-commerce, and Kentucky and other states are asking that some employees who normally would not have taxes withheld from their paychecks have some income withheld to help ensure that those employees file the necessary tax returns.
"You know that has to have impacted businesses," Horn said. "E-commerce is huge these days."
She also will be following progress of Gov. Steve Beshear's call for a study committee and special session on tax reform.
In a year when a large number of legislative seats are up for re-election, that is "an idea with some risk," Horn said, adding that the idea of tax reform means different things to different people.
"It's very hard to create real tax reform," Horn said.
Another side quest
Horn also is interested in a different kind of change at a very grassroots level.
"I am in favor of people eating fruits and vegetables," she joked.
While she doesn't consider herself much of a gardener, she helped organize a community garden at Beaumont Presbyterian Church in Lexington.
From that work sprouted another effort: Faith Feeds, a nonprofit that gleans unsold fruits and vegetables from Kentucky growers and distributes the produce to agencies that serve low-income people. In 2011, Faith Feeds gleaned and distributed more than 66,000 pounds of food to 15 different agencies.
She said the efforts of the organization help the growers feel good as well as the volunteers, and it improves the nutrition of low-income Kentuckians.
"Fresh fruits and vegetables are unaffordable to a lot of folks," she said.
That is a side quest with a different set of rewards.