Occupational Licensing Abuse Meets the IRS

Writing at The Daily Caller, Institute for Justice attorney Dan Alban highlights a new occupational licensing scheme cooked up by the IRS that threatens to make tax time even worse:

Who would you rather prepare your taxes?  A professional tax return preparer with over a dozen years experience in preparing tax returns for taxpayers without incident.  Or me, an attorney who has never so much as taken a law school class or continuing legal education course in tax law, and gave up on doing his own taxes last year once he started needing to itemize his deductions.  You probably think you'd prefer the first option, but the IRS says you're wrong.

At a hearing that I am testifying at today, the IRS will consider adopting a sweeping licensing scheme that would place the careers of 700,000 tax preparers in jeopardy and likely harm over 87 million American taxpayers while benefiting a few politically-favored insiders.