Archive for tax preparer
Classes at The Income Tax School featured for new tax preparer rules
Posted by: | CommentsThe following is an article by John Reid Blackwell from the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Sept. 21, 2010. View the original here.
Starting next year, professional tax-return preparers will have to meet new requirements to prepare federal income-tax returns.
The requirements, announced by the Internal Revenue Service this year, include registering with the IRS, passing a competency test, and completing 15 hours of continuing education in topics such as tax laws and ethics.
That means an estimated 900,000 to 1.2 million people nationwide who sell tax-return preparation services will need to register and pass an exam.
“The majority of them will need a review course to prepare for the IRS exam,” said Chuck McCabe, president and chief executive officer of Henrico County-based Peoples Income Tax Inc. and The Income Tax School. “All of them are going to need continuing education.”
While it is unclear exactly how many tax preparers in Virginia will need to enroll in training, the Virginia Community College System is preparing for a wave of students by offering continuing-education classes geared toward the new IRS requirements.
The community college system has signed an agreement with The Income Tax School to provide e-learning courses in tax preparation through most of its campuses around the state, said Mindy Fast, coordinator of customized training and continuing education for the community college system.
Tax preparers may sign up for a variety of courses of different length and cost. Among those being offered is a comprehensive, 20-lesson course designed to prepare them for the new IRS competency test, McCabe said.
McCabe said The Income Tax School is offering the courses under a revenue-sharing agreement with the community college system.
“A lot of tax preparers, particularly those that have started in the past 20 years when tax return software was introduced, use software to prepare the returns,” McCabe said. “The software does so much for them, they do not know the tax law. They need to know the law to make sure they prepare the returns correctly.”
The Income Tax School is a private career school that was spun off this year from Peoples Income Tax. The school, which has been offering tax-preparation courses commercially since 1993, also is providing textbooks and materials to the community college system for on-campus courses.
IRS Nationwide Tax Forums Report
Posted by: | CommentsI just returned from the last of the six IRS Nationwide Tax Forums in San Diego, which had about 2,000 attendees. The previous Forum in Las Vegas had over 6,000 attendees. The first two Forums in Atlanta and Chicago in late June and early July were uneventful. Then the flood gates opened in Orlando and New York City with 3,000 attendees each. Beginning with Orlando, our booth has been swamped with tax professionals and tax business owners seeking solutions to their needs for tax education. A growing number of tax professionals are concerned about complying with the new tax preparer regulations (link to videos).
At the NY Forum I met privately for 90 minutes with the IRS Return Preparer Implementation Project Lead for Testing and Continuing Education to provide input on curriculum standards. He indicated that IRS plans to review the content of each Continuing Education (CE) program of every approved provider. This process will be a major project and will most likely result in the Continuing Education requirement being delayed until 2012 instead of 2011. CE Providers will be assessed program review fees, which will result in higher prices for CE. At the Orlando Forum I talked with the director of the IRS Office of Professional Responsibility who is leading the IRS Tax Preparer Regulation program. She is committed to eliminating unqualified tax preparers including, ultimately, CPAs and attorneys who prepare tax returns without adequate education in the tax laws. I also had discussions with the director of the IRS National Public Liaison office who is a member of the IRS team for Preparer Regulation.
The tax industry vendors in the Expo Hall included the usual tax software companies, service bureaus, franchisors, financial services firms and providers of various resources for tax professionals, including bank products. Notably, several new vendors surfaced that provide stored value credit cards as an alternative to traditional RALs and RACs. In San Diego we were next to one and directly across from another. I recommend looking into the Get It Prepaid MasterCard from ADVENTafs info@adventafs.com. This RAL/RAC alternative will enable you to collect your fees and your clients to get their refunds quickly at a very low cost. With the elimination of the Direct Deposit Indicator, the price of RALs will increase and fewer taxpayers will be approved. However, RALs will not go away. Who will provide RALs and what they will cost is still not determined. We may not have details on all the available options until November.
IRS should be announcing preparer registration procedures soon after Labor Day. We can also expect an announcement about Continuing Education during September. As far as we know, the IRS Exams are still scheduled to be available by July 2011 and preparers will have until 12/31/2013 to pass the test. Anyone who is not registered as a tax preparer by this December 31st will not be able to prepare tax returns during the 2011 tax season. Therefore is you will need to hire tax preparers, you should recruit them and get them trained and registered before the end of this year.
Preparing for the Enrolled Agent Exam
Posted by: | CommentsWhat is the best preparation to become an EA? They say there is no substitute for experience and I don’t know anyone who has passed the EA Exam without at least 2 tax seasons of tax preparation experience. I’m sure there are people smarter than me who can pass by just studying, but will they be good tax preparers? My belief is that both education and experience are needed to pass the EA exam. One source of the education is the Chartered Tax Professional-CTP certificate program (link below) which consists of six 10-lesson (30-hour) courses in basic, advanced and small business tax preparation (180 hours). If you employ tax preparers, do you provide access to professional education as a career track leading to the EA credential?
http://www.charteredtaxprofessional.com
