CPA Trendlines Subscribers Sound Off About 2015 Self-Filers

bullhornSome predict those clients will be coming back for cleanup.

Tax professionals are sounding off in CPA Trendlines Comments on an apparent upsurge in do-it-yourself amateur self-filers while e-filing by professionals is lagging last year’s rates for four straights weeks so far.

Bea Nahon
Nahon

“Interesting that self-prepared is up and professionally prepared is down on a YTD basis,” says Bea Nahon, a Bellevue, Wash., CPA, and long-time advocate of women’s and small-firm interests.

“Is that because business is shifting to the do-it-yourselfers?,” Nahon says. “I suspect instead it’s due to the professionals bogged down in the mire of the TPR regulations. And the increasing trend of fraudulent self-prepared returns,”

“In fact,”Nahon adds alarmingly, “some of those self-prepared returns are likely going to turn out to be our clients, which we don’t discover until we attempt to e-file.”