Representing Tax Preparers

The IRS is targeting tax return preparers who aggressively claim earned income tax credits, gas tax credits, and educational tax credits. It is IRS’s goal to impose crippling financial sanctions on such preparers, both driving them out of business and ruining them financially. While I cannot state IRS’s motives, based upon 10 (ten years) of experience representing tax return preparers, the IRS appears to be focusing its attack upon return preparers who focus on the earned income tax credit and other credits used by low-income taxpayers.

If faced with such an investigation, a return preparer must be ready to fight for his professional and/or financial livelihood, no holds barred. It is essential that an experienced attorney be hired at the very beginning of the investigation. Your attorney needs to conduct his own parallel investigation so as to “beat IRS to the punch” and develop facts to support an argument that the return preparer has acted reasonably and in good faith. This involves interviewing the taxpayers whose returns are subject to the investigation, preferably prior to the IRS interviewing these taxpayers. The Weinberg
Law Firm has been successfully representing return preparers for over ten