The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in a move that reverses its previous stand, has issued regulations that will permit the deduction by practicing physicians of the cost of psychoanalytic training as a business expense. This action marks the end of a long period during which there were frequent reports of candidates whose deductions of training expenses were disallowed, several test cases of the issue in the Federal Courts, and strenuous efforts on the part of the National Candidates' Council (supported by the Association through its Ad Hoc Committee on Taxation and Psychoanalytic Training) to effect a change in the IRS position through legislative, judicial, or administrative means.
The new ruling will be a boon to psychoanalytic candidates; it will lessen to some extent the heavy financial burden involved in the completion of psychoanalytic training, the cost of which is uniquely high because of the expense of the personal analysis.
The new ruling results from a change in the view of the IRS regarding the position of psychoanalysis with relation to psychiatry and medicine: previously it was considered a separate profession; training for psychoanalysis is now regarded as the improvement of the skills of an individual already engaged in a profession of which psychoanalysis is a part.
A detailed analysis of the ruling, prepared by legal counsel (the firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton and Garrison), is available to members and candidates, on request, from the Central Office.