Content for tax preparers and enrolled agents

Tax practices range from a seasonal preparer with a PTIN to an enrolled agent who represents clients in collection cases all year, and a website has to make clear which one the reader has found. That difference carries legal limits as well as marketing ones. Within our financial and tax industry overview, this page covers what taxpayers ask before choosing a preparer, the rules on how preparers and enrolled agents describe themselves, and the content gaps common to tax practices.

What taxpayers ask before choosing a preparer

The IRS tells taxpayers what to look for, and a practice's site can answer those points directly. Its guidance on choosing a preparer says to "Avoid tax return preparers who base their fees on a percentage of the refund," to "Be wary of tax return preparers who claim they can obtain larger refunds than others can," and notes that "Good preparers will ask to see your records and receipts." A prospect who has read that may ask how the fee is set, what records to bring, and whether the preparer signs the return and provides a copy.

Practices also hear the same questions every season. Can you file prior-year returns? Do you handle more than one state? What happens if I get a letter in August? A good test is to ask the front desk, "What did people call about last April that our site could have answered?" The list that comes back is usually a better content plan than a keyword report.

How preparers and enrolled agents may describe themselves

Treasury Circular 230 governs practice before the IRS, and section 10.30 is specific about titles. Enrolled agents, enrolled retirement plan agents, and registered tax return preparers "may not utilize the term 'certified'" when describing their designation, and may not imply an employer and employee relationship with the IRS. The regulation offers acceptable wording for enrolled agents, including "enrolled to represent taxpayers before the Internal Revenue Service" and "admitted to practice before the Internal Revenue Service."

Representation rights differ by credential, and pages should match them. The IRS says enrolled agents, CPAs, and attorneys "have unlimited representation rights before the IRS." Annual Filing Season Program participants "may only represent clients whose returns they prepared and signed," and only before certain IRS employees, while preparers who hold only a PTIN "have no authority to represent clients before the IRS" outside returns prepared and filed by the end of 2015. A non-credentialed practice advertising "IRS problem resolution" may be promising more than its preparers can do. The practice knows which credential each preparer holds, and a writer should never have to guess at it.

The Annual Filing Season Program itself is voluntary. Participants are listed in a public IRS database, the Directory of Federal Tax Return Preparers with Credentials and Select Qualifications, so a practice that completes it has something a prospect can check.

Gaps common to tax practice sites

A tax practice site can read like a price board: individual return, business return, amended return. A price list is not a process. The taxpayer also wants to know how documents reach the preparer, how long the return takes once everything arrives, who reviews it, and how the practice gets in touch if something is missing.

Other gaps: what the practice does after filing season, which situations it refers out, and, for credentialed staff, what representation looks like when a notice turns into an examination or a collection matter. A fictional enrolled agent in Georgia knows which notices she sees most and how she walks clients through them. The pages start from her own explanations and go back to her for review. Timing matters in this segment, and our quarterly content planning schedules topics around the deadlines the practice actually works to.