The Washington Post recently reported here and here on a new plan by the IRS to test, register and screen paid tax return preparers. I think the most enlightening quote in either article comes from IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman; "In most states you need a license to cut someone's hair...most tax-return preparers don't have to meet any standards when they sit down and prepare a federal tax return for an American taxpayer."
Whether he knew it or not, Mr. Shulman proposed a good analogy of the silliness of mandatory restriction of services. I've got a friend in West Virginia who can give a fine haircut, yet if she does so for one of her friends and gets paid in return, she's breaking the law.
This is patently ridiculous; giving someone a haircut is no more risky than shoveling their sidewalk or washing their car, and anyone should be allowed to assess the skill and honesty of their prospective barber. However, there are solidly invested lobbies involved, and for good reason. If anyone were allowed to set up shop as a part-time barber, it would cut down on the number of customers that full-time barbers would entertain. Serious part-time competition is effectively eliminated by a licensure requirement of at least 2,000 hours of courses and training.
Along the same lines, it should come as no surprise that H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt are fully on board with a requirement that the IRS test, register and screen paid tax preparers. I know at least two people who, for a fee, prepare the occasional tax return (the one I spoke to today mentioned that he's discovered errors in mainstream automated tax preparation software in the past). If they have to submit to stringent and time-consuming new regulations, they'll simply stop preparing tax returns. This measure will certainly cut down on the amount of competition big tax preparing companies face, so it's no wonder they are a fan.
As an aside, there are three more serious problems with the reasoning presented in these articles.
First, both articles (and the IRS) present as a problem tax preparers intentionally giving bad advice to clients for personal gain. That's a legitimate problem, but it isn't going to be solved by education.
Next, when asked if some of the genuinely mistaken advice from tax preparers is a result of the complexity of the IRS code, the IRS response is that "they don't have the data to answer that question." Well, duh. Of course it is. I, and most of the millions of people (snicker) reading this article are unable to prepare our own taxes because the tax code is ridiculously complex. When CPAs start getting confused by it, yeah, it's too complicated. That the IRS, though, is more interested in regulating tax preparers than simplifying their code comes as no surprise.
Finally, the IRS points to studies conducted in 2006 and 2008 where 60% and 89% of tax return preparers arrived at an incorrect bottom line. Notice a kinda large leap? Did preparers really get 29% worse in two years? Or was the discrepancy due to the unusually small sample size of 19 return preparers in 2006 and 28 in 2008? Don't those seem like kinda small numbers to use for a sample when the number of paid preparers is estimated at around a million?
If you use a part-time tax preparer, and he doesn't have the time to undergo competency testing and 15 hours of continuing education annually, then by gum you can't use him anymore.
On a final note, I think it's safe to say that the IRS can be viewed as an antagonistic agency to quite a few Americans, and the tax preparer as a line of defense. Why is it that the IRS gets to choose who represents us before them?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment