Susan Bennett CPA

Susan Bennett is a member of Ernst & Young LLP’s Tax Services in Houston, TX. With over 28 years of experience, Susan serves in a dual role. She is currently a partner in the Southwest Area’s Quantitative Services Practice leading the area’s Section 41 (Research Credit) and Section 199 (Domestic Manufacturing Deduction) practices and serves as the Americas Tax Director for the Engineering and Construction industry.

As an industry representative for the Engineering and Construction industry, Susan focuses on spearheading industry issues with trade organizations and sponsoring industry roundtables. For example, Susan led an industry group commenting process for Section 199 and wrote two comment letters for the AGC trade organization. She serves on the AGC finance committee and represents the industry in the annual AICPA roundtable. Susan organizes the Firm’s annual tax director’s roundtable for the E&C industry. She is currently leading the Firm’s comment group on the Section 174 regulations. She leads the Firm’s annual tax roundtable and serves our E&C clients globally on a variety of tax matters.

Susan joined the Southwest area after a rotation in our National Tax practice. At National, Susan focused on assisting clients in entering and resolving their current and prior year research tax credit audits through the expedited process of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) Pre-Filing Agreement (PFA) program. In this capacity, Susan has completed nine PFA’s. Susan also represented three of the five taxpayers in the IRS Recordkeeping Pilot Program (RCRA). Susan served as the engagement partner on two research credit court cases: Union Carbide and Trinity Industries.

She is a frequent speaker for the AICPA, TEI, API, Texas Society of CPAs, ATLAS, CITE, and a number of industry organizations. She has been asked by the IRS to do industry-specific training and has participated in joint taxpayer-IRS panels, mostly recently in the Spring of 2013. In addition to Susan’s deep industry experience in Engineering & Construction, she has significant experience with oilfield services, refiners, upstream and downstream companies, automotive manufacturers, semi-conductor and other manufacturing concerns in the United States.