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The retirement of baby boomers is significantly impacting many professions, including accountants, family practice doctors, dental hygienists, veterinarians etc etc etc.

I keep a copy on file and have them sign as POA. “Taxpayer name, by so and so, POA”

About 90 % of my annual income comes from 7 monthly Write up/Payroll/Business Entity Tax Return/Business Owner Tax Return clients. Five of these clients I have had for over 25 years. Including these clients I did less than 40 total tax returns last year. It's a very viable practice niche with less hours and a lot less stress.

Both our family practice Doctor and our Ophthalmologist have retired in the past two years; both relatively young men. In my practice, I am seeing more and more clients opting for early retirement as well. Some have a side line; some just want out. (Of course, some of them want their wives to continue working and carry health insurance); not always a happy situation. On the other end of the spectrum are those of us who have no plans to ever retire until absolutely necessary. Huge retirement plans are fueling some of this; some just think they have enough wealth accumulated. I am finding myself asked to help with more financial planning than ever before. I have had some clients lose thousands by following careless advice from their professional financial planners. There appears to be a severe lack of work ethics in some of the generation that is currently moving into the work force. On the other hand, I have grandchildren making more money than we ever dreamed possible when we were their age and with only trade school educations. I don't know the answers, so I just quietly and happily continue to build my cushion and hope that we never have to use it.

Us boomers have not done a great job of raising those who follow. Also, we are just getting farther and farther from the greatest generation... There is hope, like always, at least if we try to make a difference in our own circles and trust that those folks will build their own positive circle. Politics aside, folks like Mike Rowe, and creating more trades people, and showing the pride in being in the trades, may turn things around. I am a product of shop classes in MIDDLE school, and actual job training in high school. I was a paid mechanic at age 14, and GED'd out of HS to work full time at 16. I eventually taught myself computer programming so I did not have to rely on what I could produce, every hour, spinning wrenches, or how/if I could shortcut book time. (It was great when I was contracted for a specific race team though, since it was not hourly rate.) If we can make trades strong and proud again, the the white collar jobs will follow. Not everyone can work at home in their PJ's.

Final 15T was posted last night. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15t.pdf

"Whether the IRS can accept a durable power of attorney in place of a Form 2848 depends in each case on whether the following requirements are met. As a very general starting point, the IRS will accept a durable power of attorney instead of a Form 2848 if the durable power of attorney includes all of the elements specified in IRS procedural regulations at 26 CFR sections 601.501 – 601.509 (reprinted as IRS Publication 216, Conference and Practice Requirements.). See 26 CFR § 601.503(b)(4) (discussing durable powers of attorney). Specifically, the durable power of attorney must include all the elements of section 601.503(a): Taxpayer’s name and mailing address Taxpayer’s TIN (i.e., SSN, EIN, etc.) An employee plan number, if applicable Name and mailing address of the appointed representative(s) A description of the matter or matters for which the representation is authorized that must include, as applicable— Type of tax involved; Federal tax form number involved; Specific year(s) or non-annual period(s) involved; and Decedent’s date of death in estate matters. “A clear expression of the taxpayer’s intention concerning the scope of authority granted to the…representative(s)."

I always attach a copy of the POA to the 8879.

I attended on 1 Hour online CPE class this morning where Nina Olson, the former National Taxpayer Advocate was the main presenter. One thing she said really caught my attention, that the IRS has a current Backlog of 10 Million Non Filers waiting to be processed. Unbelievable!

These things are a reason why I have pondered (here I believe too) why more do not ask things such as what OS is being used, what security measures are in place, etc., of those I need to trust my data to. I absolutely have customers, who prepare payroll for others, who are most definitely not keeping their OS/system up to date. Sometimes, those customers even complain that I warn about using an outdated OS. Or, like one a few minutes ago, they had a computer issue, no backups, payroll due out today, and no options other than to rebuild all data from scratch.