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Thursday, March 13, 2014

Brick wall hit by IRS in its efforts to regulate all return preparers

In February 2014, the IRS lost its appeal in the Loving decision. This means that the IRS needs to end its efforts to regulate about 350,000 tax return preparers who are not attorneys, CPAs or Enrolled Agents.  So, no testing or continuing education requirement for this large group of preparers.

I have a short article in the AICPA Tax Insider (3/13/14) with more details and possible next steps for the IRS. There are also links to the case and related documents. see Regulating all return preparers: Back to the drawing board.

President Obama's recent budget proposal supports a statutory change to let the IRS resume the program it rolled out in 2010 to regulate all return preparers (see FY2015 Greenbook, page 244). Other proposals exist as well (see links in the article).

What do you think? Should the IRS be allowed to resume its broader regulation program? 

http://www.cadc.uscourts.gov/internet/opinions.nsf/B63C3129A4FE761985257C7C00539949/$file/13-5061-1479431.pdf

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