TIGTA reports are, by their nature, often critical of IRS performance. IRS Lacks a Coordinated Strategy to Address Unregulated Return Preparer Misconduct details TIGTA’s view that IRS is not doing enough to curb preparer misconduct.
There is a lot in this report. It lays out the recent history of IRS efforts; starting in 2009 with the ill-fated plan to regulate unlicensed preparers via compliance and background checks, qualifying examinations and continuing education requirements. When Loving struck down the 2009 rules, IRS pivoted and the TIGTA report discusses in detail the IRS procedures at SB/SE for examining preparers and the sanctions that IRS can bring on unscrupulous or incompetent preparers even in the absence of the direct oversight.
The main takeaway from the report is that IRS does not have a consistent national return preparer strategy. As the report details, IRS stated that its “overall strategy for addressing preparer misconduct was generally to use the tools at the IRS’s disposal as effectively as possible within resource constraints to improve tax compliance by increasing the accuracy of tax returns and holding tax return preparers accountable for misconduct.” Post-Loving, IRS has shifted resources to a relatively undersubscribed voluntary program for unenrolled preparers while the vast majority of unenrolled preparers continues to operate outside direct oversight.
read more...TIGTA takes direct issue with IRS claims to address the issue “as effectively as possible.” Starting from a macro perspective, TIGTA notes that there is no evidence of a coordinated IRS strategy; and little in writing that could serve as a blueprint for efforts to address unenrolled preparers. While SB/SE has the main responsibility for addressing preparer misconduct, its Business Performance Review documentation in recent years barely mentions the Return Preparer Coordinator functions in the seven main geographic areas; it also has little discussion of Lead Development Centers, which are the hubs for reviewing referrals of preparer misconduct.
The report goes into great detail as to how this lack of strategy manifests itself in particular problems. Here are some of the highlights:
Limited Priority in Exams: TIGTA notes the relative scarcity of focused preparer examinations (called PACS, or Program Action Cases) in recent years; for example in FY 2016 there were only 140 developed PACs compared to Criminal Investigation’s 248 investigations and 204 indictments in the same period. As TIGTA notes, the lesser number of civil cases “is unexpected given the respective resources of these two IRS functions, as well as the intensive nature of criminal investigations versus civil penalty cases. The SB/SE Division Examination function has approximately 6,500 revenue agents and tax compliance officers compared to Criminal Investigation’s nearly 2,200 special agents.”
Inconsistent Criteria and Limited Impact For PAC Referrals: TIGTA criticized the differing approaches to focused preparer examinations in the seven geographical areas, with some areas focusing on high refund rates and others looking to numbers of taxpayers connected to a preparer. That contributes to a lack of a national approach to the issue of preparer oversight.Furthermore, TIGTA noted that the preparer exam impact is often limited as IRS often failed to examine all of the identified preparer’s tax returns.
Assessment of Penalties Not Maximized: The report examines the failure to assess penalties when conduct may have warranted them. For example, it discusses a lack of PTIN penalty enforcement. TIGTA notes that “if penalties had been proposed when the invalid PTINs were identified, more than $122,747,250 could have been assessed, yet only 215 penalties were assessed for all of I.R.C. § 6695(a)-(e) penalties, inclusive of § 6695(c) penalties, totaling $1,572,055 which is 1 percent of the potential penalty assessment for just one of the possible violations.” Of course, assessing more penalties against a group such as bad preparers in no way guarantees collection of the penalties assessed as discussed in the next section.
Collection of Preparer Penalties is Minimal: TIGTA notes that IRS no longer prioritizes collection of return preparer penalties. TIGTA notes that from CY 2012 to CY 2015, the IRS collected just $46.3 million (15 percent) of the $317.2 million of penalties assessed on individual return preparers; the numbers are even worse for penalties assessed against preparers failing to put a PTIN on returns, with IRS collecting just 8% of those penalties in 2016. Prioritizing collection from this group would not necessarily ensure a higher return. Collection may have directed their limited resources to persons more likely to have the ability to pay.
RPO Doing Little to Combat Unregulated Preparer Misconduct:The report discusses the efforts of the IRS Return Preparer Office following Loving. It is not a pretty picture.
The Return Preparer Office, which was originally established to lead the now defunct regulatory effort, is still in existence but now primarily focuses its efforts on tax professionals and those few tax return preparers who volunteer to be subject to certain annual training. The Return Preparer Office checks tax compliance for tax professionals but not for most unregulated preparers. More than 26,000 Preparer Tax Identification Number recipients acknowledged being tax noncompliant. Additionally, while preparing tax returns without a Preparer Tax Identification Number is subject to a penalty, the penalties are assessed on a limited ad hoc basis. In Processing Year 2016, the IRS failed to assess $121,175,195 in Preparer Tax Identification Number penalties.
TIGTA notes that a main part of RPO, the Suitability Office, produces limited benefits:
The resources used by the Suitability Office to conduct credentials research are not commensurate with the benefits realized. At best, preparers who have misrepresented themselves will stop after being notified by the Suitability Office. However, if the preparers continue with the behavior, the IRS is not taking additional steps to address it. The Suitability Office takes no further action if the preparer is unregulated. Even when cases are referred to the OPR, nearly all of them are closed upon receipt because the preparers are not currently practicing before the IRS and therefore, the OPR lacks jurisdiction. The appropriate function to report unregulated preparers misrepresenting themselves as tax professionals is TIGTA’s Office of Investigations.
The report notes that “an even more significant problem is that the Suitability Office no longer devotes any resources to unregulated preparers. Ensuring the tax compliance of tax preparers yields benefits to tax administration; however, the Suitability Office is only checking the status of the relatively small number of tax professionals and volunteers for the AFSP, e.g., those who present the least risk to tax administration.”
IRS Failing to Use Its Information: One of the key benefits of a uniform preparer identification number is the greater ease that the number affords the IRS to track preparer behavior. The report notes that PTINs “allow the IRS to keep track of preparers’ behavior, such as the number of returns they prepare and file, the number of returns by filing method (paper or electronically filed), returns filed with refunds, and returns filed with balances due.”
All of the IRS’ information on preparers is consolidated in the Return Preparer Database. Despite the presence of the information, TIGTA notes that IRS has failed to maximize its potential:
IRS has not yet taken full advantage of its capabilities. Much of the analyses and resulting corrective actions could be performed systemically, with minimal need for employees’ direct involvement. Expansion of the database’s capabilities could allow the IRS to identify and deter additional preparer misconduct, while also freeing employees who are currently performing manual tasks that could be performed systemically by the database.
Given the resources reductions over the past several years, it is particularly important for the IRS to continue developing and taking full advantage of its available systemic capabilities.
Conclusion
No doubt the IRS could improve its police role for return preparers. Many of the recommendations presented by TIGTA could assist the IRS in improving this role. The IRS has continued to push for a legislative fix to Loving – a fix that would have come quickly in past decades but not in the Congress since 2010. The hope for a legislative fix that would allow the IRS to go back to the strategy it had finally decided to employ coupled with the diminution of resources may have something to do with the sluggish action TIGTA perceives coming out of the IRS. Collection from bad preparers will never be easy. The IRS will not fix the problem of bad preparers by assessing more penalties. It needs strong tools to stop them from preparing. Getting the return right at the outset saves the IRS and taxpayers from time consuming efforts to reconstruct a correct tax assessment. TIGTA is right to keep reviewing IRS efforts on this important issue. The IRS is right to keep pushing for legislation to allow it to robustly regulate preparers. While waiting for Congressional approval, the IRS should look carefully at those suggestions from TIGTA that will allow it to shut down bad tax preparers and pay little attention to the suggestions that cause it to assess large amounts of penalties it will struggle to collect and that may not stop the bad action.
About Leslie Book
Les, thanks very much for this post. I got the headline summary from TIGTA but hadn’t read the report. Very discouraging. A key benefit to be derived from the imposition of statutory obligations on preparers is the leverage from stopping a lot of bad returns by taking action against a single preparer. As you and TIGTA point out, use of automated processes to at least start enforcing those obligations against preparers should be possible with a very limited use of scarce human resources.
Ron Wiener
One not-so-obvious issue reflected in the Report is the IRS’s internal cultural taboo against personnel from one unit within the IRS asking or concerning themselves with the affairs of other internal IRS units. This results in a situation whereby, proverbially speaking, not only does the left hand not know what the right hand is doing, but the left pinky does not know what the left thumb is doing.
[The IRS’s internal culture stands in contradistinction to that of the Department of Defense’s procurement and contracting functions, in which I was employed in various positions prior to my IRS stint, where it seems that EVERYONE seems to take an unabashed interest in your activities.].
Not too long ago, I discussed a manifestation of this IRS internal cultural taboo [ https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2015/01/why_should_he_need_to_even_ask.html ], and two decades previously the taboo played very prominently in a Tax Court case [Berg v. Commissioner, T.C. Memo. 1993-77].
The IRS seems to be allowing its hang-up with taxpayer confidentiality (a matter in which it has proven to be most severely neglectful and incompetent) to impede its sound functioning. Valid and legitimate as concerns over IRS funding may be, a bigger budget alone will not and cannot bring about the cultural changes required by the IRS to effectively carry out TIGTA’s recommendations.