Brooklyn Bar CLE seminar provides tax advice at St. Joseph’s College

November 3, 2015 By Rob Abruzzese Brooklyn Daily Eagle

The Brooklyn Bar Association gave tax tips at St. Joseph’s College on Monday. Pictured from left: Jill Rehmann, dean of the Brooklyn campus of St. Joseph's College; Mark Gottlieb; Dewey Golkin; John E. Johnson and Peg Horan. Eagle photo by Rob Abruzzese

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The Brooklyn Bar Association (BBA) escaped Remsen Street for one evening as it relocated to St. Joseph’s College, where professor Dewey Golkin hosted a Continuing Legal Education (CLE) seminar titled “Tax Tips: Updates and Audits” in Clinton Hill on Monday night.

Golkin, who is the chair of the BBA’s Commercial Law Committee, was joined by forensic accountant Mark Gottlieb; Peg Horan, who runs the accounting department at Wagner College; and accountant John E. Johnson for the two-hour seminar.

“We try to give a practical approach that targets the serious issues that face our clients,” Golkin said. “We had an amazing panel tonight. This is a tax seminar — it’s a little eclectic because we have a few kinds of topics, but we had a very distinguished panel here tonight. At these seminars, I learn a lot from the other practitioners who are here, so I love doing this. And the more diverse the group, the better it is.”

The seminar explored many topics, including recent tax audit and examination trends. Gottlieb discussed finding tax return treasures as they relate to litigation and forensic accounting issues in his speech titled “Gottlieb’s 50 Shades of Gray.” Horan went over the differences between a hobby loss and a business loss and related updates; and finally, Johnson covered year-end tax planning.

As the CLE session was hosted at St. Joseph’s College, many college students attended. Golkin said that he somewhat tailored the seminar for them, but added that many of those students already have a background in accounting, while some of the lawyers may not.

“The group here is diverse, so we have lawyers with no accounting or tax background, and I have some students who probably have more accounting and tax background than some of the lawyers,” Golkin explained. “I try to gear it toward the middle and hit the most important things. You are going to lose some of the participants with some of the more sophisticated stuff, but you give them the basics and they figure it out.”

The CLE seminar was hosted at St. Joseph’s at the request of Golkin, who is a professor at the school, but this might not be a one-and-done scenario. All of the presenters said they enjoyed the space and the free parking, the students responded positively, and perhaps most importantly, the school’s dean was thrilled to host.

“We’re so happy to have you here with us tonight at the beautiful Hill Center,” said Jill Rehmann, the dean of the Brooklyn campus. “I just want to thank to Dewey Golkin and the Brooklyn Bar Association and Patrick Gilbride of Edward Jones for their support and sponsorship of tonight’s events. Hopefully, this is the first of many wonderful CLE events that we can host at St. Joseph’s.”

The next BBA CLE seminar will be back at the bar association building on Remsen Street on Friday, Nov. 13. It’s the “2015 Annual Update,” with eight attorneys presenting a comprehensive update course covering a year’s worth of changes to cases and statutes.