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But, there is nothing wrong with preparing someones return as long as you are not paid. So the IRS is not going to be able to assume that every preparer is violating any law. And the IRS doesn't have the man power to check much. Its an IRS scare and not going to change those that want to cheat.

But how do you catch the preparers that are doing returns when they go to all the free filing available on the internet. I know of one lady that I found out thru one of her clients from 2009 that I picked up and the preparers block says "Self-Prepared". The client says she went into the internet, does the return but leaves no clue as to who she is and when finished, runs a copy for the client and boom, there is no record of the preparers name since she is using the clients name, etc. She also charged a pretty good fee for the return; and I'm certain she is not reporting any of the income made like this. She works out of her home in the evenings and week ends. IRS has no way whatsoever of finding these types since they don't leave no trail.

There was a song that had a line about "when soda pop was just a nickel," and Pepsi Cola used to advertize their 12 oz Pepsi as "twice as much for a nickel too." The current price of coca cola and pepsi cola is a good example of how we have cheapened the purchasing power of the dollar. A barrel of oil was $3.00 for many years. Now it is $80 or more. Natural gas used to be 10¢ an MCF and there was no adjustment for higher or lower BTU content. A gallon of gasoline used to be 30¢. Inflation really took off a little after the Secretary of the Treasury said we would never go off the gold standard--and we didn't for a month or two after he made that statement.