Not Loving Tax Preparer Regulation: A Court Challenge by CPA Firms

Three Small Preparers Sue IRS Over Tax Preparer Licensing

A Biography of the Plantiffs

The libertarian Institute for Justice and three small tax preparer businesses brought suit against the Internal Revenue Service in regards to the new regulations for paid tax preparers. The three, based in Illinois, Wisconsin and New Jersey, argue that the new regulations exceed the authority of the IRS, are applied unevenly (based on the exemptions for CPAs and attorneys) and are unduly hard on small tax preparers. To the best of my knowledge, the IRS has yet to respond.

I, while lukewarm at best on the new regulations, do not expect this suit to be successful. This looks like the equivalent of one of the taxpayer lawsuits about paying taxes with gold, perhaps with some technical merit but no practical chance to succeed. The one difference--the gold issue has been adjudicated so frequently in the past to become frivolous now, while at least this suit bring a new application of issues to the court.