POLITICS & GOVERNMENT

Should Tax Preparers Be Certified Competent?

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Four recommendations for Congress.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Sad news for all you enrolled agents, enrolled actuaries, attorneys, CPAs and other trained, competent tax preparers: you wasted your time and money on education. It turns out incompetence isn’t illegal. There are no standards, no mandatory credentials. Anyone can claim to be a tax preparer.

MORE: IRS: Let the Sun Shine In … and Out | IRS Has Big Plans for Its $80 Billion | Can’t IRS Tax Pro Accounts Do More? | Hello? IRS? Anybody Home? | Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service
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Best of all, when an incompetent preparer makes a mistake, it’s only taxpayers and the IRS that suffer.
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IRS: Let the Sun Shine In … and Out

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We need clear answers, not just an info dump.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Could the Internal Revenue Service be a little more transparent?

MORE: SURVEY: Busy Season Looking Good | IRS Has Big Plans for Its $80 Billion | Can’t IRS Tax Pro Accounts Do More? | Hello? IRS? Anybody Home? | Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service
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National Taxpayer Advocate Erin M. Collins thinks so, and her reasons go beyond mere functionality.
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IRS Has Big Plans for Its $80 Billion

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The CBO projects $180 billion more in revenues.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The IRS has revealed its Strategic Operating Plan for FY2023-2031, the period when the service will expend the $80 billion infusion granted by the Inflation Reduction Act.

MORE: Can’t IRS Tax Pro Accounts Do More? | Hello? IRS? Anybody Home? | Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service | Why the IRS Is Still Doing Data Entry By Hand | News on IRS Is Maybe Sort of a Little Bit Good
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The SOP is big, but is it big in the right places?
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Can’t IRS Tax Pro Accounts Do More?

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profile of man shouting TAX and other, starred-out wordsOf course it can. Here are five recommendations.

By CPA Trendlines Research

In 2021, the IRS rolled out its Tax Pro Account program, a relatively quick response to the complications brought down by COVID-19, not to mention the years of dwindling service brought down by congressional budget cuts.

MORE: Hello? IRS? Anybody Home? | Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade | Tax Pros Offer Advice for Small Businesses | Has Early Tax Season Optimism Peaked? | Why the IRS Is Still Doing Data Entry By Hand | Accountants’ Top Problems for Tax Season 2023
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The purpose of Tax Pro Accounts is to allow practitioners to perform basic services online for their clients.

Unfortunately, the services enabled by the program were and still are rather limited. Many of the services that individual taxpayers themselves can access online are not available to their tax accountants.
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Hello? IRS? Anybody Home?

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Pulling people off the phones: not helpful.

By CPA Trendlines Research

The latest results from the 2023 CPATrendlines Busy Season Barometer showed a significant shift in practitioners’ main concern this year. It used to be “Late or Unprepared Clients.”

MORE: Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade | On Business Outlook, CPAs Are Confident … and Concerned | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service | Tax Pros Offer Advice for Small Businesses | Busy Season Barometer Finds Many CPAs in Transition | More CPAs See Worsening Economy | Has Early Tax Season Optimism Peaked? | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’
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Now “IRS operations” has surged to first place, cited by 53 percent of respondents.

Ouch, right? The agency charged with collecting taxes is the biggest problem for those who file tax returns for a living.
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Pros Handle 45% of Income Tax Returns

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data tableRefunds down by double digits.

By Beth Bellor
CPA Trendlines Research

Tax season 2023 has been consistent. Refunds are down, and so are self-prepared filings and IRS.gov visits. By every other marker, though, business is as usual or better.

MORE: On Business Outlook, CPAs Are Confident … and Concerned | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service | More CPAs See Worsening Economy | Marchternity: The Solution Is Community |
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As of Feb. 24, the latest data available, the IRS had received 46 million individual income tax returns, up 1.3 percent from the same period in 2022. It had processed 45.7 million returns, up 4.3 percent.

We always like to see processing go quickly, and the agency is speeding through returns right now at a clip of 99.4 percent.

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Taxpayer Assistance Centers Need Upgrade

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Portrait of an angry man yelling on the phoneEven if they get an appointment, taxpayers are limited to one issue.

By CPA Trendlines Research

Taxpayer Assistance Centers were a great idea that have somehow managed to stumble into quasi-dysfunctionality.

MORE: On Business Outlook, CPAs Are Confident … and Concerned | At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service | More CPAs See Worsening Economy | Marchternity: The Solution Is Community | Why We All Hate the Tax Code | Tax Season 2023: Better or Worse?
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Ideally, taxpayers should be able to show up at a TAC with their papers and count on good advice and assistance. They should even be able to have their paper returns scanned and filed electronically.

But no. Inevitably, this, too, got screwed up.
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At the IRS, Short on Staff Means Short on Service

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Guess who suffers?

By CPA Trendlines Research

It probably won’t surprise the average tax practitioner to learn that in the American Customer Satisfaction Index of federal agencies, the Internal Revenue Service ranks dead last.

MORE: Tax Pros Offer Advice for Small Businesses | Busy Season Barometer Finds Many CPAs in Transition | Marchternity: Just Say ‘No’ | News on IRS Is Maybe Sort of a Little Bit Good
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It accomplished the same dubious rank in Forrest Research’s U.S. Customer Experience Index of 221 companies and federal agencies.

Two sad things about this:
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