Iowa Proposing to Regulate Tax Preparers — And EAs Get Shorted As Usual

UPDATE: THE BILL FAILED TO MAKE IT OUT OF “FUNNEL WEEK” AND IS DEAD … FOR 2016 ANYWAY

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The Iowa legislature still hasn’t set the state’s tax laws for 2015 (as far as conforming with federal law). But the legislature has had time to propose a bill to regulate tax preparers in Iowa.

And as usual, enrolled agents are treated as the outcasts.

Here’s a link to the text of the bill.

It would require tax preparers in Iowa to pass an exam (to be administered by the state) over federal and Iowa tax law.

Of course, CPAs are exempt from the licensing requirements, as are attorneys. Of course!

But EAs are not exempt. In fact, the bill specifically calls out EAs (my emphasis added; 31 CFR part 10 is the federal code relating to EAs):

(T)he board shall license as a tax consultant a person who is, on the date of the application for licensure as a tax consultant, enrolled to practice before the internal revenue service pursuant to 31 C.F.R. pt. 10 if the person has passed to the satisfaction of the board an examination covering federal and Iowa income tax law, theory, and practice, the provisions of this chapter, and the code of professional conduct prescribed by the board.

In other words, EAs will have to take a test over federal and Iowa tax law and jump through all the hoops as if we had no license at all. As usual, EAs are treated as Liechtenstein and walked all over.

A big hat-tip to the National Association of Enrolled Agents for being on top of this and alerting me to it — I hadn’t heard about this before.

Stay tuned. I promised NAEA I’d use my blog as a bully pulpit on this issue. (UPDATE: AS NOTED ABOVE, THE BILL IS DEAD FOR 2016. HOORAY!)