Annette Nellen Honored by AICPA

Annette Nellen has been named the recipient of the AICPA's 2013 Arthur J. Dixon Memorial Award, the highest honor bestowed by the accounting profession in the area of taxation. The award, given by the Tax Division of the American Institute of CPAs, was presented on Wednesday at the AICPA’s Fall Tax Division Meeting in National Harbor, Md. by Thomas Purcell, professor of accounting at Creighton University.

Nellen is a tax professor and director of San Jose State University’s graduate tax program. Earlier in her career she worked at Ernst & Young, the Internal Revenue Service and in industry. Nellen is a nationally-recognized expert on tax policy. She has testified before the House Ways & Means Committee, the Senate Finance Committee, the California Assembly Revenue & Taxation Committee, and before tax reform commissions and committees on various aspects of federal and state tax reform.

In 2000, Nellen served on the academic panel that advised the Joint Committee on Taxation staff for the tax law simplification study submitted to Congress in 2001. She was the lead author of the AICPA's Tax Policy Concept Statement No. 1—Guiding Principles of Good Tax Policy: A Framework for Evaluation of Tax Proposals.

Nellen has been a dedicated volunteer for the AICPA for more than 20 years. She is now serving on the Tax Executive Committee and the Tax Reform Task Force. Nellen has chaired the Individual Tax Technical Resource Panel and the Fundamental Tax Reform Task Force. She has also served on the Tax Policy & Simplification Committee, the Worker Classification/Workload Compression Task Force, the Strategic Planning Task Force, the Tax Accounting Committee and the Sales Tax on Services Task Force.

A noted author and lecturer, she is the author of two Bureau of National Affairs portfolios, has written over 200 articles and has participated in over 250 presentations to professional organizations and community groups. Nellen is a monthly contributor to two AICPA online newsletters – Tax Insider and Corporate Taxation Insider. She maintains the 21^st Century Taxation website and blog, as well as several websites on tax reform, state tax nexus and e-commerce taxation.

Nellen has been an active member of the California Society of CPAs, the American Bar Association Tax Section, and the California Bar Tax Section. She was the first woman to chair the Santa Clara County Bar Association’s Tax Section.

Nellen is a graduate of CSU Northridge (B.S. Accounting), Pepperdine (M.B.A.) and Loyola Law School (J.D.).

The AICPA’s annual award is in honor of Arthur J. Dixon, a CPA who had an outstanding record of service to the tax profession and to the Institute’s Tax Division. Dixon was chairman of the AICPA's Tax Executive Committee from 1977 to 1980 and posthumously won the first award named in his honor. The award was established after his death in 1981 to honor outstanding CPAs in the area of taxes.