Senate Committee Plans Hearing on Unethical Tax Preparers

[kcjenkins]

Washington, D.C. (April 2, 2014)
By Michael Cohn

The Senate Finance Committee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to discuss how to protect taxpayers from incompetent and unethical tax return preparers.

The hearing will be led by the committee’s new chairman, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who took over after the departure of former Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was recently confirmed as ambassador to China. In the hearing, senators are scheduled to “examine the risks to taxpayers from tax return preparers who lack proper expertise or engage in unethical business practices and discuss ways to protect consumers.”

The hearing will be divided into two panels. Witnesses on the first panel are scheduled to include Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, and Government Accountability Office director of tax issues James R. McTigue Jr.

On the second panel will be H&R Block president and CEO William Cobb, Oregon Board of Tax Practitioners chair Janis Salisbury, Brigham Young University associate professor Dr. John Barrick, National Consumer Law Center staff attorney Chi Chi Wu, and Dan Alban, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented the three independent tax preparers whose lawsuit against the IRS succeeded in invalidating the IRS’s Registered Tax Return Preparer regulatory program.

The hearing will be webcast at this link http://www.finance.senate.gov/hearings/hearing/?id=331dea1b-5056-a032-5215-1df389f40a67 starting at 10:00 am ET on April 8.

[David1980]

I like that it's being led by someone from Oregon, a state that has had preparer regulations for a long time. Should help maybe with some of the doom and gloom predictions people always make whenever anyone suggests the government become more involved in regulating preparers.

I suspect that the risks to taxpayers from tax return preparers... is going to focus on the taxpayers directly affected as in the ones who utilize the unethical preparers. They should also consider taxpayers as a whole - if unethical preparers preparing fraudulent returns lose the US government $X billion dollars a year that ultimately affects all taxpayers. My tax dollars potentially subsidizing that preparer and their clients even though I did not utilize that preparer.

[Richcpaman]

I think they should focus on the IRS budget and how they process refunds, and spend about a billion slowing down the refunds and running checks on them to blow up the bad tax returns being sent to the IRS.

These are NOT being sent by "bad preparers" They are being prepared by criminals. BIG difference.

Rich

[kcjenkins]

I agree, Rich. It's the one's who bought tax software and don't really know what they are doing who are "bad preparers". The ones filing phony deductions and imaginary kids using the same address for hundreds of returns are major criminals, and those need to be sent to prison for a long time. Where they could share a cell with the worst o their clients.

[HV Ken]

The Senate Finance Committee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to discuss how to protect taxpayers from incompetent and unethical tax return preparers.

Big difference between incompetent and unethical. I would contend the unethical group should be a higher priority, and after they solve that problem then look to focus on the incompetent. Perhaps the committee should also hold a hearing on how to protect taxpayers from unethical members of the senate, but I digress....

[JohnH]

I find it ironic that a bunch of politicians are meeting to discuss and pass judgment on anyone's ethics.