IRS asks U.S. lawmakers for 'OK' to police tax preparers BY PATRICK TEMPLE-WEST WASHINGTON Tue Apr 8, 2014 4:32pm EDT 0 COMMENTS inShare Share this
Email Print IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is sworn is before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on ''Examining the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Response to the Targeting Scandal'' on Capitol Hill in Washington March 26, 2014. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas IRS Commissioner John Koskinen is sworn is before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing on ''Examining the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) Response to the Targeting Scandal'' on Capitol Hill in Washington March 26, 2014. CREDIT: REUTERS/YURI GRIPAS RELATED TOPICS Regulatory News » Breakingviews » (Reuters) - The U.S. Internal Revenue Service asked Congress on Tuesday for legal authority to regulate thousands of unlicensed tax return preparers, but lawmakers were neutral on the idea.
"I will have to talk with my colleagues to see what's doable," said Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden, a Democrat, after gaveling an end to a hearing on the issue.
He gave no indication of when legislation might be introduced along the lines sought by the IRS, which failed last year in an effort to begin policing tax return preparers on its own, without explicit statutory authority from Congress.
IRS Commissioner John Koskinen told lawmakers at the hearing that many Americans are hurt by incompetent and dishonest tax preparers. The tax preparation business is not regulated at the federal level, though some states have started policing it.
Up to 60 percent of tax return preparers are unlicensed, Koskinen said, and the IRS wants to require those individuals to pass a competency test and take continuing education classes.
"I urge Congress to quickly approve ... explicit statutory authority to regulate all paid tax return preparers," he said.
The hearing was Congress' first look at the tax preparation industry since a U.S. appeals court in February struck down the IRS' first attempt to regulate tax preparers.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said the IRS did not have the authority on its own to impose rules on up to 700,000 preparers who are not already licensed as attorneys, accountants or "enrolled agents."
Wyden called the court's decision a "baffling outcome."
Tax return preparers often make more mistakes on tax filings than people who file their own taxes, according to a report released on Tuesday by the Government Accountability Office, the investigative branch of Congress.
Undercover GAO agents who visited commercial tax return preparers found inaccurate returns put taxpayers at risk of IRS enforcement actions, the report said.
"If Congress agrees that significant preparer errors exist, it should consider legislation granting IRS the authority to regulate paid tax preparers," the GAO report said.
About a third of the $9.4 billion tax return business is controlled by H&R Block Inc and three other large companies. The remaining two-thirds is divided among licensed and unlicensed preparers, many of them mom-and-pop operations.
Finance committee Republicans largely used the hearing to grill Koskinen about other issues, including the IRS' proposed rules for tax-exempt "social welfare" groups and its role in implementing the Affordable Care Act of 2010.
(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Kevin Drawbaugh and Dan Grebler)
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
The linguistic construction of early modern textuality thematizes the socialization of communicative interaction.
The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. John Kenneth Galbraith
Our tax prep person said this is going to be a clusterfu(k!!! Actually they said it already is!!!
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
because what it boils down to is me doing my own taxes. can I? or will I be forced to go digital? everything is digital now and it's really a piece of cake to do your own taxes on turbo tax. pretty soon we'll just be 'signing off' on the 'correct' amount of with holdings by the IRS police......
we wont be involved any more....
BORN INTO THE VIRTUAL VALUE UTOPIA where we are given an arbitrary value.....
...you are a product of your environment, your environment is a product of your priorities, your priorities are a product of you......
The replacement of morality and conscience with law produces a deadly paradox.
STOP BEING GOOD DEMOCRATS---STOP BEING GOOD REPUBLICANS--START BEING GOOD AMERICANS
Recently a close associate had money removed from his bank account without notice by the State. THey used to notify you first. Now they can just take it without notice. My suggestion do not leave "money" in a bank.
the fully fledged "war of terror" was the "new pretext" of predation on civilization
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the fully fledged "war of terror" was the "new pretext" of predation on civilization 
