An Education and Enforcement Approach to Dealing with Unscrupulous Tax Preparers

Abstract

In both her 2002 and 2003 Annual Reports to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate (NTA) proposed national registration, examination, certification, and enforcement requirements for all Federal Tax Return Preparers (FTRPs). An FTRP is defined as someone, other than an attorney, CPA, or enrolled agent, who prepares more than five federal tax returns in a calendar year. This proposal was primarily motivated by the NTA's experience in dealing with taxpayers who were exploited by unscrupulous tax preparers, especially with respect to the earned income credit (EIC). Although the IRS believes that all taxpayers should have access to quality tax return preparation, it contends that it is premature to consider a legislative remedy to tax preparer problems since the full extent of the problem is unknown and the related financial impact on limited IRS resources has not been quantified. The purpose of this paper is to examine the proposed regulation of FTRPs by reviewing the development of similar regulatory proposals over the past several decades, outlining current and proposed federal regulation of tax preparers, discussing state regulation of tax preparers, describing concerns with increased regulation, and offering alternative recommendations to regulation, specifically education and enforcement.