'A Little Confusing'

On a Friday night in late December — three days before Christmas — longtime CPA Steve Brettholtz' smartphone began to buzz like a carnival in his Fort Myers home. Ditto in Sarasota for tax attorney John Wagner.

This wasn't a late-night call from Santa. Instead, the drumbeat of attention came from a bevy of clients, many of them small business owners, executives and entrepreneurs. President Donald Trump had just signed the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — the first federal comprehensive tax reform in a generation. “We were inundated with calls,” recalls Brettholtz, shareholder and president of Fort Myers-based Myers, Brettholtz & Co. “People were asking, 'What can I do? What will my deductions look like?'”

A month after President Donald Trump signed the bill, those questions, and many more, linger. Questions come everywhere from some of the region's largest companies to one-person firms. The queries kept people like Brettholtz, Wagner and longtime Tampa tax attorney James Goodwin III abundantly busy as 2017 turned to 2018.