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From: wrf@ernie.BERKELEY.EDU (W. Randolph Franklin)
Newsgroups: net.taxes
Subject: Re: tax questions answered
Message-ID: <11495@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Wed, 22-Jan-86 10:50:46 EST
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.11495
Posted: Wed Jan 22 10:50:46 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 23-Jan-86 21:57:17 EST
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Reply-To: wrf@ernie.UUCP (W. Randolph Franklin)
Organization: University of California, Berkeley
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I get the feeling that the IRS is trying to terrorize the large tax
prep services and turn them into agents of the IRS instead of the
customer who is paying them.  The goal appears to be that,

1) in any grey area, the tax prep firms will favor the IRS since they
have so much to lose if they get on the IRS's blacklist, and

2) the firms will do a lot of the IRS's routine checking for evasion.

Assorted evidence for this:

1) A court has ruled that an accountant's working papers prepared for
his client are not privileged and can be read by the IRS.

2) the new rule that requires a taxpayer to sign a statement for the
preparer that he has car records. The taxpayer who does his own work
doesn't have to sign it (he is still liable under general rules of
course).

3) The proposal to file returns electronically where the taxpayer would
sign a statement for the preparer.  If there were a disagreement
between the IRS and the taxpayer, say, as to the authenticity of the
signature, whose side would the preparer be on?  Why is H&R Block so
eager to help the IRS minimize its paperwork?


I suspect that you can (legally) pay lower taxes by doing your own more
agressive return than by using large firms.  What do people who work at
H&R Block think about the IRS's chilling effect on them?

Finally, whenever I talk to H&R Block people, they always try to make
me feel good about going to them by giving me case histories of
people who did something slightly wrong and were sent to debtors'
prison (or whatever).  Suppose I wanted, as is my legal right, to use a
tax shelter that on the IRS's abusive shelter list.  (The IRS can
disallow my claim but I still, if I am careful, have the right to
try.) Would H&R Block agree to prepare such a return?


Wm. Randolph Franklin, UC Berkeley,  
Arpanet: wrf@ernie.Berkeley.EDU
USPS: Computer Science Div., 543 Evans, University of California,
	  Berkeley CA, 94720, USA
415-642-9955