Practitioner Benefits

There are many great perks to being a part of the COST Practitioner program.  Benefits include:

• Access to the COST website with the ability to post technical tax updates produced by your firm to the Practitioner Articles portion of the site.  Those articles are summarized every two weeks as part of the COST Practitioner Connection Publication which is released to almost 10,000 tax professionals – both industry and practitioner.  I strongly encourage firms to add COST to their distribution list for all articles released so that COST can be sure to include them on our site and in the publication.  Additionally, COST highlights any state tax event, both on the website and in the publication.  To the extent you all participate or host such events, be sure to let COST know for that added publicity. 
• The next most valuable portion on the website is the Practitioner Forum.  Once a participating Practitioner partner, this is an excellent area to login and check out.  Many industry members post topics here in search of advice.  Additionally, the individuals you identify from your firm will be listed in the Practitioner Directory, which is another heavy traffic area for industry members searching for firms to represent them.  And, you will have access to the COST Member Directory both online and in print.
• When COST begins planning topics for our various national and regional meeting agendas, first consideration of speakers is given to current Practitioner participants.  During these events, we have several sponsorship opportunities, ranging from hosting a reception to spa stations, coffee breaks, charging stations or room drops and a variety of other options.  Some events also include vendor fairs, which practitioners are encouraged to participate in.  These events are a great time to showcase your services and products to get the maximum exposure to targeted audience (including key decision makers from member companies).  If you are interested in the opportunities at upcoming events, Karen Galdamez can assist you further with all the necessary details.

The fee structure for Practitioner Connection Subscription is detailed below.  It’s based on the number of SALT professionals within your firm who wish to be active with COST.  The number directly corresponds to the number of users listed in our directory and with access to the COST website.  The fee is annual.