Groups’ Letter To Congress In Support Of Taxpayer Service Standards Legislation

We are writing to express our support for much-needed Taxpayer Service Standards legislation to protect Americans from tax return preparers who do not meet basic standards of competency, training or ethics.

In 2014, the GAO found widespread and significant errors during a “secret shopper” test on paid preparers, with only about 10% of preparers calculating the correct refund amount.

The Federal Trade Commission ranked tax preparer fraud in the top 30 most common types of fraud in 2017.  And yet, the IRS has had little authority to prevent bad actors from becoming tax preparers or remove them once they’re in the system.

We urge Congress to take action to provide some basic protections that will ensure the well-being of American taxpayers and equip the IRS with the tools it needs to do so.