Senate Committee Plans Hearing on Unethical Tax Preparers

The Senate Finance Committee plans to hold a hearing next Tuesday to discuss how to protect taxpayers from incompetent and unethical tax return preparers.

The hearing will be led by the committee’s new chairman, Senator Ron Wyden, D-Ore., who took over after the departure of former Senator Max Baucus, D-Mont., who was recently confirmed as ambassador to China. In the hearing, senators are scheduled to “examine the risks to taxpayers from tax return preparers who lack proper expertise or engage in unethical business practices and discuss ways to protect consumers.”

The hearing will be divided into two panels. Witnesses on the first panel are scheduled to include Internal Revenue Service commissioner John Koskinen, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, and Government Accountability Office director of tax issues James R. McTigue Jr.

On the second panel will be H&R Block president and CEO William Cobb, Oregon Board of Tax Practitioners chair Janis Salisbury, Brigham Young University associate professor Dr. John Barrick, National Consumer Law Center staff attorney Chi Chi Wu, and Dan Alban, an attorney with the Institute for Justice who represented the three independent tax preparers whose lawsuit against the IRS succeeded in invalidating the IRS’s Registered Tax Return Preparer regulatory program.

The hearing will be webcast at this link starting at 10:00 am ET on April 8.

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