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Expertise is important! Sometimes.

June 15, 2009

For tax preparers, anyway. That's why there is a move to impose a new worthless bureaucracy to regulate tax preparers:

Requiring paid tax preparers to register or become licensed would establish a national accreditation framework for the industry for the first time, with the goal of improving accuracy of tax filings and ending fraud that investigators say fleeces both taxpayers and the government.

“This is nothing less than a transformational shift,” Shulman said.

Sixty-one percent of individual tax returns are done by paid preparers, according to IRS Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson, the chief ombudsman for U.S. taxpayers, who has recommended licensing of preparers since 2002.

“Untrained and unscrupulous preparers present a serious problem,” Olson wrote in a 2006 report to Congress.

But taxes are hard, and it wouldn't be fair to require everybody involved with the system to know about taxes. Certainly not the chief lawyer of the Department of Justice Tax Division:

Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee voted today to move ahead with the nomination of Mary Smith to head the Justice Department’s Tax Division, over Republican objections that Smith lacks significant relevant experience.

At a committee meeting, three Republican senators spoke against Smith, noting that she has never held a job specializing in tax law. She has never written or spoken on tax issues, does not have a specialized degree, and has never taken a continuing legal education course in tax law, said the committee Ranking Member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.).

But hey, she's not preparing tax returns, so why would she need any credentials?