As you may know, the Bush administration is trying to push through new regulations that will make it easier for your accountant to sell your tax records to other people for profit. Sick, no?
Well, the House Dems are offering legislation to stop this practice before Bush lets it happen. Here's some background from House Dems:
The IRS has proposed new regulations (under IRC 7212) which would prohibit tax return preparers from sending tax information overseas unless the taxpayer gave consent. The new regulations also would expand the ability of tax return preparers to solicit the sale of products and services to their taxpayer-clients using their confidential tax return information, again with taxpayer consent.Currently your tax preparer can't sell your records. Under the new Bush regulations, they can sell them if they get your consent. But here's the rub, will the consent be buried in 6 pages of documents you have to sign in order to hire your tax preparer? Will tax preparers require "consent" for anyone who tries to file their taxes at the last minute - sort of as an added penalty for filing late, a penalty that you'll have no choice but to accept because you're late on your taxes, what else are you going to do? Will tax preparers offer discounts to people willing to give up their consent, people who don't fully appreciate what they're giving up?
Current regulations, adopted 35 years ago, limit solicitations only to products offered by the tax preparer company and its affiliates and require some level of taxpayer consent. The proposed regulations would allow tax return preparers to market the sale of any product or service and require clear taxpayer consent after written warning that the tax information may not longer be protected.
Members have expressed a fundamental concern about tax return preparers using confidential taxpayer information for purposes other that preparing and filing tax returns (e.g., marketing the sale of car insurance, high-interest rate loans, stocks and bond purchases, real estate, any product you can imagine).
The proposed bill would (1) ban the overseas transfer of tax return information by a tax return preparer and (2) prohibit tax return preparers from using taxpayer information to market the sale of any \product or service.
Taxpayer consents allowing return preparers to use or disclose their tax information would no longer be valid.
There are lots of ways that this new "consent" can be abused. Bush should stop trying to find new creative ways to give corporations more giveaways.
