Name: Circular 230 Ethics: An Adventure Through Ethics with Mr. Mal Practise
Uploaded: 2026-09-18T18:33:14.875Z
Duration: 2 h 17 min 8 s
Description: Circular 230 Ethics: An Adventure Through Ethics with Mr. Mal Practise

Transcript for "Circular 230 Ethics: An Adventure Through Ethics with Mr. Mal Practise": Hi, everyone. Thank you so much for joining us today. My name is Tracy Brown, and I lead education for the pro tax group here at Intuit. Just wanted to take a couple minutes of your time before the session begins to make sure you're already to get the most out of your time with us today. If you take a look over at the right hand side of your screen, you'll see two tabs that are constant throughout the session today. Docs will contain all of the handouts for today's session. Please feel free to click and save those to your machine for reference either today or at a later time. And the q and a tab is where you'll ask any questions that come up throughout your session today. We have a number of experts staffed in the backstage waiting to answer your questions as quickly as they can. When your speaker launches a poll, you will see a new tab open up for polls on your right hand panel. 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At the end of today's session, a quick survey will pop on the right hand side of your screen and take over that tab panel. Please take just a couple minutes and give us your thoughts on the session today. We really value your feedback and would love to hear what you thought. A couple best practices, please do make sure you're using a desktop or laptop computer over a cell phone. We do recommend using Chrome or Safari over other browsers for the best experience. If you can turn off your VPN or firewall, that could improve your performance. But if all else fails, just refresh your browser. That seems to help resolve any audio or freezing experiences if you have them. A recording of today's session will be available on demand after we wrap. Please use that same link that you've used today to get into the session. And if you have any questions at all, please reach out to us at protax_training@intuit.com, and we would be more than happy to assist. Today's session is eligible to earn credits. In order to earn them, you need to be in attendance for at least fifty minutes and submit responses for at least three of the interactive polls. Certificates will be emailed after today's session concludes within forty eight hours. If you don't see your certificate within that time frame, please email us at protax_training@intuit.com. Your certificates may end up in your spam or junk folder, so please check there if you don't see anything. If this session is eligible for CE, we will submit directly to the IRS on your behalf within ten days. And finally, for our disclaimer, this session is educational nature and should not be construed as tax advice. Alright. That's all I have to share with you. I'm gonna hand it over to your speaker. I hope you really enjoy your time with us. Thanks again for joining. Hi, everybody. My name is Angeline, and I am here to go through some of the Circular two thirty ethics with you. Since ethics and Circular two thirty has been around for so many years, decided to do something a little bit different and try a more lighter, easier way to kinda digest some of the stuff we've been hearing for years. So I put together a story line for you, and we're gonna walk through the story of a practitioner named mister malpractice. So a little bit about myself. I am a... An enrolled agent and a certified tax resolution specialist. I've been in the field for over twenty years. I specialize in helping people who owe the IRS, have collections issues, have audit issues, employment tax issues. So I've, I've kind of focused on helping people get out of their tax problems, and I've been teaching for, you know, the last few years through the American Society of Tax Problem Solvers and CPA Academy. And in my spare time, I like reading and painting. So today's agenda, we're gonna start off with housekeeping and then kind of go into some stories about, you know, a practitioner that falls into some issues with preparing the returns and then some circular two thirty violations. And then, also, we're gonna touch on a couple different areas. Basically, how the foundations of Circular two thirty are often, enforced through preparer penalties. So we'll be looking at that too. So now we're gonna get into the material. And, ultimately, when we look at ethics, we have to look way back at ourselves. As far as our ethics and our foundations for our morals, whatever we have learned, we've pretty much learned by the age of nine. So as professionals making these ethical decisions to help us prevent preparer penalties started in our childhood. So since our ethical foundation was formed when we were children, we are going to be looking at a storybook form. So today, we're gonna look at the tale of mister malpractice and the ethical issues that he came across in his practice. So this is my first ethics book I put together. I... Hopefully, you can connect with some of your youth and the ethical foundations and your morals. And just to give you a little little touch back to my childhood when I was nine years old, I absolutely loved reading. So here's our first poll. What is your primary reason for attending this webinar? Is it to earn free CPE, to explore new solutions, to solve a specific problem, because you have a general interest in education, or do you have an other reason? We'll give a minute for the polls to come in. Alright. Looking great. And we're gonna move on while the poll's continuing. So now to our story. So once upon a time, there was a newly licensed enrolled agent named mister Malpractice. After four years in college for accounting and the pressure of an upcoming student loan payments, he took a leap into practicing by getting his EA and opening a firm with one of his college... Colleagues, miss I made a oops. They started the firm of I made a oops in malpractice after taking out some working capital from a bank loan to purchase a building, furnishings, and cover start up costs. The two prepared and opened the doors during the beginning of tax season. It was a quiet start, but the excitement mounted as the office... Or in the office as they heard the first jingle of the bell on the door as their first client walked in. Mister Malpractice jumped from his desk to greet the new arrival. As they sat down, the client introduced himself. Good afternoon. My name is mister Shifty. My wife, miss Blamish, couldn't make it because she's picking up the kids from soccer, but I'd like you to do our taxes. We have two kids who live with us, but I also wanna claim my niece and nephew who live down the road. My sister has no income since she's on social assistance. The kid's father doesn't file, so it's all good. Someone's gotta claim them. Right? Here's everyone's name, Social Security numbers, and dates of birth. Other than that, all I've got is this w two, but I've got a favor to ask when you prepare the return. You see, I got this w two for cash that I earned, but I don't think I should have to pay the government any taxes. I did have some withholding, but I think it's against the US constitution, the tax people. So I want you to prepare my return, not claiming the wages, and get my withholding back. And, hey, if you can get me some of those child tax credits for my sister's kids, I'll split the extra refund $50.50. You might as well take your fees right out of there while you're at it too. After thinking about the request and the pile of upcoming student loan... Student loan bills, malpractice agreed. He shrugged and thought to himself, well, the customer is always right. He put together the return as mister Shifty requested, ignoring the w two income, including the withholding and picking up the child tax credit. He entered the bank account for oops and malpractice to to, to direct deposit the fees and 50% of the child tax credit out of the refund. Malpractice printed out the eighty eight seventy nine form and has Shifty sign for himself and forge Blameless's signature. Nice meeting you. Come by and pick up your tax return tomorrow, malpractice said as he shaved Shifty's hand and escorted him out the door. So here is your first poll... Or your second poll. What would you have done in mail practices situation? Would you have prepared the return and shift you requested? Would you have prepared the return but included the w two? Prepared the return and leave off the sister's kids? Or would you be inclined to educate, apologize, and send Shifty on his way without preparing the return if he wouldn't comply with tax rules? And you're pulling up? Alright. Awesome. I see him coming in. So coming out of the world of customer service, you know, you're training the customer's always right. But when it comes to us as practitioners, that isn't always the correct thing and the correct mentality to have. And since malpractice took this stance, there are some problems with him saying yes to everything in this case. So does malpractice have to adhere to Circular two thirty? So based on what is in... Currently in Circular two thirty and ten point eight, he would meet the definition of a preparer because it's any individual who, for compensation, prepares or assist with preparing all or substantially all of a tax return or a claim for refund. So this is what has been in circular two thirty for the last fourteen years, but we got a little bit of an upset coming. Based on the Loving case that happened years ago, the... There has been new proposed circular two thirties changes. And some of these come in the fact that during the Loving case, the IRS basically lost their ability to monitor and control the tax preparation industry. So based off of the courts taking that away, they're... They, IRS doesn't have that ability. So they're looking at kind of doing a revamp and a change to Circular two thirty to properly reflect those changes that came from lobbying. So we're gonna look at both what is current in Circular two thirty during this presentation, and we're also gonna look at some of the stuff that has been proposed. It hasn't passed yet, but it's been proposed. They've looked at, you know, public comment. So they're still working on some of these things. But, ultimately, let's look at how many problems we see. And in this case, there is about seven in that little bit of information that we've gotten so far. So we've got some issues here. We've got Shifty and the pile of dependents. So we have to kind of take a look back and see who can Shifty actually claim. He says he's got two children, and then he's also got his niece and his nephew. The other problem is he kind of pressured malpractice, right, into including his withholding, but not the w two earnings. So is there really an issue with him getting cash wages and it being reported on a w two? So we're gonna take a look at that. Those child tax credits for the four kids, are those correct? Probably not. And we're gonna look into that more. But, ultimately, some of the stuff that has gone on here has put malpractice in the position of potentially preparing a bad return, and we're gonna look at some of the preparer penalties that can come about if we're put into a similar scenario. And in addition to these, the fee structure that they have where malpractice is direct depositing 50% of the refund into their account, that's something we're gonna, you know, touch upon too. And even the process with the $88.79 form, that was not handled properly either. So we're going to dig through each one of these areas and see what went wrong and what he should have done. So when it comes... When it came to the kids, Shifty has two children. He has a nexus to the other two being that it's his niece and his nephew. But if we look at the qualifying child requirements, they're supposed to live with Shifty and his spouse for more than 50% of the year, which he's blatantly come out and said they live down the road with the... With his sister. And based on this, he doesn't seem like he's providing 50% of their support. So did malpractice have knowledge that they didn't meet these requirements? And if he had knowledge that something was wrong and they weren't meeting the requirement, he should have known. Or if he didn't know, he should have taken that extra step to research and determine whether he was taking the proper stance on the returns. Because, ultimately, in this position, he may have ignored known tax rules. And if he did willfully or he blatantly disregarded the rules, he can potentially be exposed to preparer penalties. So we have false positions, and, you know, we're gonna look at some of the preparer penalties we have on here. When it comes to the child tax credit, we didn't hear any sort of interview or any verification of the children. What did he get from Shifty? He got Social Security cards, dates of birth, and children's names. He didn't go that extra step, do an interview, ask for any documentation, or he got Social Security numbers. So we didn't take those extra steps to verify that the children legitimately are shifties, and are legitimately supposed to be a, a dependent on his returns. So we didn't meet the due diligence requirements. Now what happens when we don't follow these rules? We can potentially expose ourselves to $66.95 g penalties. And these are anytime there is a child tax credit, other dependent credit, American opportunity credit, or earned income tax credit where we don't take the steps, go through the process, do the interview, do our due diligence form. And the thing with these is there's a $665 fine per failure. And failures on a return can be more than one. So if you have a return with a child tax credit and an American Opportunity Credit and also an earned income credit, you can be looking at almost $2,000 in fines for that one return. So that's the children. Now let's take a look into this w two. Does that cash... Do you cash wages not count? Should we not be counting this w two? The answer is that is absolutely wrong. And what we have here is Shifty is presenting a frivolous argument. These are things where taxpayers are talking about the constitutionality of taxes, amendments not being ratified, just pushing for unnecessary delays in cases. Those things can be potentially brought up as frivolous arguments. And as practitioners, we should listen for those because we do not wanna take those clients on, and we're gonna learn about why in a couple moments. But now we have a position where we've omitted an income source. Our our malpractices omitted an income source. So we have knowledge that there is an omission on the return, basically. And what are we supposed to do? At this point with Circular two thirty, we're instructed to... If we get a copy of our... Of a prior year tax return and we realize something was missing off of it, we are supposed to tell our client, hey. This is what is missing. This is the tax implications. You're potentially looking at penalties and interest in addition to this. It is your decision to decide whether to correct this or not. That's the current Circular two thirty rules. However, what is being proposed is because of that loving case, they're bringing in basically the representation aspect, not necessarily just preparation anymore. And the first part of it is pretty much the same. You know, you find that there's an error omission. You advise the clients, tell them of the consequences, and recommend that they correct it. So that's pretty much what we've had. But the proposed changes go further. And if you are going to continue representing the clients, you should inform the client that this change should be disclosed, and then also go back and make sure that there are no repeats of that error or omission. And if the taxpayer refuses to correct or make those changes or make that disclosure. As a practitioner who does representation, we're put in the position where we are supposed to disengage from the client's case. So this is things that have been proposed. They haven't passed through yet. But if you are doing representation cases as well, it's just good to know what might be coming down the pipeline to us. So what do we have here ultimately? We've got a bad position on here. We've got a few bad positions on this return, and we've got basically a tax protest position. So we have here a frivolous... Exposure to a frivolous penalty. So under sixty seven zero two, there is a $5,000 penalty when something, you know, doesn't, purport or purports to be a tax return. So it looks like a tax return, but doesn't have the proper information or doesn't have enough to do a proper assessment and... Or it includes things that the IRS identifies as frivolous arguments. So what happens with these cases is the taxpayer and the practitioner can be... Both be subject to a $5,000 fine. So in this scenario, if this return gets picked up and deemed a frivolous argument, malpractice is looking at a $5,000 fine on himself and a $5,000 fine on his client as well. And it's just not related to returns. If there are things being used to unnecessarily delay a case or just prevent the IRS from collecting, For example, if people file a collection due process hearing, what's supposed to happen is you're supposed to say, hey, IRS. Rather than levy this client or rather than file this lien, here's a collection alternative. Here, I qualify for an installment agreement or I qualify for, an offer in compromise or whatever financial resolution makes more sense. But if somebody is filing a collection due process hearing just to stop the levy and not have any sort of resolution or not have any sort of answer on that, that is something that could be looked at as a frivolous submission. So some of these things that actually stop the IRS from collecting and toll the collection statute, Those are things that the IRS could potentially look at with... As frivolous submissions if they are only done with the sole purpose of stopping collections. When it comes to actually practicing, you want to use these tools to resolve your client's case. So in this scenario, do you think malpractice acted properly? And this is our third poll of eight. And here's our choices. Yes. He is obligated to follow all of Shifty's wishes. Or, no. He has to adhere to ethical standards and rules regardless of Shifty's wishes. Alright. I'm seeing a lot of good answers here. Awesome. Awesome. I think everybody's got that one. So let's take a look at the return now. So has he actually prepared a proper return? I don't think so. Right? We're missing income sources. We've got the wrong kids. So we've got some omissions. We've got some things on there that really shouldn't have been. We've got some questionable positions in reality. And let me tell you a secret. These are things that the IRS looks at as badges of fraud. So the IRS has these badges or sometimes they're called indicators of fraud. And we're gonna take a look at some of the ones that potentially are hanging out there in a case because of this return that was prepared based on Shifty's wishes. So if you've got a situation where the taxpayer is including some items but not others, For example, if they're self employed and they're including some of their ten ninety nines but making a conscious decision to not include income from others, or they're completely ignoring or not including income sources. Now if it's an overlook or a mistake, but this is more looking at things where there's that latency and that willfulness where they didn't actually include them because they meant not to include them. We have that scenario here. We also have the inability to explain a lifestyle. Now let's take a step back. We just had a scenario where malpractice prepared a return with him, his wife, and four kids, but no income. So we definitely have an inability to explain lifestyle there. If you're working resolution cases, if your taxpayer is trying to conceal or hide bank accounts, or if your taxpayer has got a business and they're keeping more than one set of records, or including... Or the returns prepared including questionable items. In this case, we've got the sister's children. Sometimes if the taxpayer is... Has income and fails to file for multiple years, that's a badge of fraud. Generally, the IRS will... If the taxpayer, you know, comes forward, files their most recent six years, the IRS will kind of consider them caught up. But if the taxpayer's got that consistent history, especially if they're high income earners, sometimes the IRS can, you know, look at that as a potential badge of fraud. If the taxpayer is using check cashing services, that's something that some people do to try and hide their income. Or if they're claiming or taking fake deductions or making false entries. So we've got some of these indicators of badges of fraud. Now these are the ones the IRS looks at. Whereas the courts, if you look at tax court cases, the indicators of the badges of fraud are a little bit different on there. Some of them have similarities, but most of the ones relating to the tax court have to deal with either, manipulated records, destruction of records, hiding things, providing bad testimony. So in our case, we have those making false entries or alterations, you know, false... If there's false invoices or documents or if they destroyed records or with your collection cases of their hiding income or their hiding assets, failing to cooperate with authorities, and filing false documents, providing false text... Testimony, and implausible or inconsistent explanation. So that's kind of similar to that not being able to support the family base... The family size based on the income that's being reported. So let's look at due diligence. So when it comes to preparing returns or affidavits or documents that are being submitted to the IRS, we are supposed to, you know, prepare them based on as accurate of information that we have. And if there's things that don't seem right, we're supposed to determine the correctness. And this even counts if it's a verbal submission to the IRS or a written submission to the IRS. So if it doesn't pass the smell test, go back to your client and get a little bit more information, get a lit... Little bit more background, make sure what you're preparing to and submitting to the IRS, is accurate and proper. And if you are working in a larger firm where it's not just you on your own and you have somebody that works the cases as long... Or works the returns, prepares the returns with you. As long as you are, you know, engaging supervisor... Supervising training and evaluating that person, you can rely on their work product. So that's what... In Circular two thirty now. What is being proposed in the future is this is going to, like, go back to... Because of that loving case, they're pretty much kind of centering that that 10.22 based upon representing. So, you know, returns, some, documents, affidavits, paperwork that's submitted when you're representing a client, or verbal or written representations when you are representing a client in front of the IRS. And this is because of that loving case and the inability for the IRS to basically control the the, industry for tax preparers. Now even though the IRS doesn't... One thing that I think is probably worth mentioning here is even though the IRS does not have the control over the preparation industry because of this loving case, that does not mean that practitioners can go and do what they want. There's still... The Department of Justice does have the ability to investigate preparers. They do have the ability to do injunctions and shut down people's businesses or, you know, reprimand them or penalize them. So there is still basically an oversight to preparers, but it's just not the office of professional responsibility that controls Circular two thirty actions. So let's get back to our due diligence. So we have issues because these returns technically weren't prepared with care. We have scenarios where tax laws have been completely ignored. Malpractice knew the things that he was doing were not right, but remember what he thought about. He thought about his tuition bills or about his student loan bills, and he thought about his, you know, getting his practice up and going, and the customer is always right. That's not really the case here. Right? So we've got a scenario where we've got somebody that basically took... Willfully took improper actions, and they might even deem it as a recklessly prepared return. So let's look at our standards when it comes to preparing tax returns, affidavits, and other paperwork. What is in Circular two thirty right now and ten thirty four is that we can't willfully rec... Recklessly or incompetently sign or return a claim for a refund that we should have known or or that we knew or should have known concluded a position that lacks reasonable basis, is an unreasonable position or is an unreasonable position without substantial authority. And we're gonna look at the levels of authority in a couple willful attempt to disregard the rules, and we can't, besides this, tell clients to do these things and not sign the returns. So it does... It doesn't necessarily just stick with things that we are preparing. It could be things that we are inputting to. So what they're proposing is because of that loving case kind of centering that 10.34 around representation matters and representing a client. So the language is all similar. It's just that they've built in that representation aspect. So there are four standards of review when it comes to return. We mentioned substantial authority. So this means that there is case law, and there is facts, and there is actual law out there that has been analyzed and looked at versus the facts and circumstances of the case. So that law and those cases and those, decisions are basically your authorities. So those things have been looked at, reviewed, weighed, looked at the similarities between your client's positions and what happened in those cases. And based on that, there is some scenarios where the taxpayer wins with the position that your client is proposing. And it doesn't have to be more than 50% of the time. It... There just has to be something there. Now the next... A much lower standard is the reasonable basis standard. And with these, you're going to also disclose the position as well. And these are situations where you're dealing with something that is kind of newer. For example, years ago, when digital currency came out and the industry wasn't really sure what should be taxed, what should be not, That may have been a situation that warranted including the income and disclosing it because there wasn't really that foundation or that groundwork of what was taxable and what was not in the very, very beginning. So these are scenarios where it's not necessarily just an arguable position, but there is some sort of law or some sort of rules that you're using as guidance to the position that you're taking. Now we've got a situation with a frivolous position on this return with the w two income. And frivolous is when there is no courts or laws or decisions that, you know, support that scenario, and most... And everything that you're finding is contrary to it. And the last position is a more likely than not, and this is generally reserved for positions where they can become abusive tax shelters. So, for example, if you've got cases where there was a conservation e... A a syndicated conservation easement, Those are things that the IRS is looking at because they were promoted and used as abusive tax shelters. So when it comes to those, there's a higher standard. It's a... It has to have over a 50% chance of being approved. So though... Those, those are usually the areas that the IRS looks at and, like, the dirty dozen, those type things are gonna qualify under the more likely than not. So in this case, do you think malpractice met the standards of substantial authority? Yes or no? And this is our fourth poll. Alright. Awesome. Looks like everybody is getting that one right. So let's look at the actual substantial authority for these positions. So first off, we've got income, and we're looking at that w two situation. And under the law, under 26 USC 61 that defines gross income, guess what's on there? Compensation. So compensation includes your wages, for services or fees or commissions or fringe benefits. So we've got a position on there that is contrary to law. So, ultimately, that's why that is potentially a frivolous position. The law is there. It's been tried. It's been looked at many times. The... Those arguments about things not being constitutional have been thrown out by the courts. And so we do have a frivolous position based on that, so it didn't meet the substantial authority. The other scenario we're dealing with is the dependents. So under 26 USC one fifty two, there... It defines the relationship test, which we do have because we've got two kids that Shifty has and a niece and nephew. So they do have that nexus and that connection. But here's where we've got some issues. They have to reside with the taxpayer more than 50% of the year, And we don't have an interview. And based off of what was provided, it... The kids for the niece and the nephew definitely aren't there 50% of the year. We also would look at the the age requirements and then the support test. If the sister is supporting the kids with her social assistance money and Shifty is not, you know, putting in at least 50% of the support, the kids aren't lifting... Living with him, then, you know, you don't meet that support test either. So we've got two positions on this return that are basically contrary to law. And, you know, when it comes to substantial authority, it's gotta be the more likely than not. So our... It's, you know, it's gotta be a position that isn't necessarily over 50%, but there's gotta be something there that shows the history and shows that it should apply here. Now the big question, did malpractice actually prepare a bad return? And in this case, we've got an understatement potentially due to an unreasonable position. We've kind of looked at and defined that. Right? So under sixty six ninety four a, if a preparer prepares a claim for refund or any part of a return with an understatement that includes a position that they should have known was unreasonable, AKA lacking substantial authority. That was that substantial authority we just looked at the laws behind. There's a potential exposure for a penalty of a thousand dollars or 50% of the revenue from preparing the return, whichever is greater. So we might have some exposure to that. But also under sixty six ninety four, a step up from that is if there's a blatant disregard. So if it's looked at and it's determined, you know what, you just didn't not know what you were doing with that position. You knew that there was a a proper... This was contrary to proper positions, and you willfully or you recklessly took that scenario, you could be subject to a $5,000 fine or 75% of the revenue, whichever is greater. So in these cases, these are gonna be where the preparer basically willfully attempts to understate the liability. So they're not including income sources. They're... You know, these are some of the things that we run into with... If you've ever seen the dose preparer returns where they've got fake schedule c's, they've got fake schedule a die... Or fake itemized deductions and things being included on the return to try and bring down the income or pat the the the refund and get, you know, a larger refund for the taxpayer or lying about the withholding amounts that are reported on there. Those things fall under, like, this willful or reckless conduct. So there's also exposure to sixty seven zero one penalties for aiding and abetting the understatement of a liability. So these are gonna be situations where you're working on the return and you are basically manipulating the return to understate how much is due, and there is a penalty of a thousand dollars relating to that one. Now the heavier ones, those were civil. There's also potential exposure for criminal things in some of these situations. So seventy two zero two is fraudulent returns. So this is very similar to what is in the civil side. So if you've got somebody who willfully delivers or discloses the IRS annual list return or account or statement, or document that is known to be fraudulent or false as to the material matter. There's a potential fine up to 10,000 or or... And or a year in prison. Under $720.06, if there are false statements on here. And let's take a moment and think about this. How are returns signed? Tax returns are signed under the penalties of perjury. So this is one where both the, you know, where the taxpayer has exposure to this seventy two zero six penalty because they are signing, under penalties of perjury. So if they willfully, make or subscribe to any return statement or other documentation, which is verified with a... By a written declaration. So, basically, your... I swear under the penalties of perjury that, they... And that they do not believe or know... Believe to be correct or believe to be true. You've got that exposure. And even if malpractice would have sat down with Shifty, said, you know what? I'm not gonna do your return, but I agree with your positions. He could potentially be looked at for aiding or assisting in fraudulent acts because he's kind of perpetuating that falsehood that Shifty has. If you're dealing with other type cases with potentially resolution, if your taxpayers are trying to, conceal assets as well or conceal income sources or, you know, falsely destroying records during an audit, those are things that can be looked at criminally. And besides this being criminal, this is actually a felony. The previous one was something that they would look at at a misdemeanor level. The felony here is subject to up to 250,000 in three years in prison. So those are some pretty heavy implications, from preparing a return with known bad positions on them. So now let's take a look at the refund in this situation. So Shifty is a great guy. Right? He says, listen. Take half that child tax credit. And you know what? Just take it for a year... For your, you know, preparation fees. So malpractice then took that money and deposited it into the business account. So let's take a look at what sort of exposures they have from this action. So I mentioned ghost repairs earlier. This is one of the things that is on the IRS dirty dozen. Some of the warning signs include charging a fee based on the size of the refund. So now in this case, we've got the taxpayer saying, hey. You go do this. But if you have clients or if you hear from somebody that they... The prior preparer, like, charge based on the refund or they didn't sign or the return gets sent over and it says it's self prepared and they had paid somebody to prepare it. There's potential for a ghost preparer. And if you do run into cases where you think there... These are... You know, your clients have these, take a look and walk through it with them, see what is actually on there, because sometimes, like I said, they will include schedule c's. They're gonna include itemized deductions that are not legitimate or don't have any... Anything to do with your client or even false, you know, tax credits and things. So let... If you do run into this, let your client know what is there and let them know what exposures they have from it. So we're dealing with a couple of issues here. We've got a negotiation of check issue, which shows up in Circular two thirty under 10.31. We are put in the position where we cannot negotiate a taxpayer's refund check. So we can't direct deposit it. We can't cash it and put it in our accounts, anything like that. And to give Circular two thirty teeth on this issue, we have sixty six ninety five f, which is the negotiation of check, and tax preparers can be sub... Or preparers and representatives can be subject to a $665 fine per per time that this is done, and there are no limits to it. Now there are some changes being proposed to this one. So when it comes to this, the IRS has realized not everything is check, not everything is direct debit. So they are looking at, proposing to update the language to include more relevant and current types of payment, like prepaid debit cards, phones, mobile payments, other... And they left basically an open window for any technology changes in the future by saying other form of payment issued to a client. So they realized that, you know, technology has changed since 2014, and they are trying to change the language, with these proposed proposed, you know, updates to Circular 02/30 to better reflect the current times that we live in. So we also have, in this case, potentially, a contingent fee structure. And how contingency fees work is they are based on a percentage of refund or percentage of what comes back. So in order to keep the industry kind of on the level where people aren't claiming things that are wrong at their client's expense just to get higher fees, the Circular two thirty limits contingency fees. And what is currently is... In there is they can be used for audits of tax returns, amended returns, or claim for refund within a hundred and twenty days of when the taxpayer was notified by that there's an audit or change to their return, penalty abatements, and if there's judicial proceedings. And based off of what we have here, we had a contingency fee structure. He got a percentage of the child tax credit refunds. So what is being proposed with Circular two thirty is that they're taking away the ability to use contingency fees at all. They are automatically going to be built into one of the things that are considered disreputable conduct. So along with unconscionable fees, continued fees are gonna go in there. And the reason for this change is a court case called Ridgely versus Lieu. And this basically created a scenario where the IRS can't really control the fees for tax preparers, But then again, they wanna come back and look at, you know, people in the resolution industry. And because they're so... They're subject to Circular two thirty and they don't wanna see these contingency fees, they are putting on restrictions for practitioners who are representing clients. And as far as representing, it could be a scenario where, you know, you don't actively represent clients. However, you have a scenario where you prepare to return and then you're dealing with the audit of the return. That moves you into a scenario of being a representative, or the taxpayers got a collection issue and you're trying to deal with that. That's representing too. So it's where you're stepping into the client's shoes. So let's talk about the other thing here. We've got, that e file authorization form eighty eight seventy nine where malpractice had shift these sign for him and his wife, and wife didn't know anything about anything. We also don't have any knowledge of that there's tacit consents. And on top of it, we've got a situation where he had him sign the form, sent him on his way, and said come back tomorrow to pick up your tax return. So we didn't give them the return at the time of signing, and we're gonna look at how 6695 comes into play with those factors as well. But I mentioned tacit consent, and this is a concept where if people are married comes into play. So if a husband and wife generally file together... Usually file together and the, or the... You know, or a married couple at all, if they file together and one approves the other one to sign on their behalf, they can... One person can sign for both of them. That's what's considered tacit consent. But they also look at other factors that are involved if you got a situation where there might not be tacit consent. So they look at if a spouse would... Had a filing requirement. If they didn't and they say, you know, I didn't wanna sign this return. The other person signed for me. That might help disenroll the tacit consent concept. If they filed in the same manner in the past, it helps enforce that there might have been tax consent. Did the spouse give the information to prepare the returns? Did they get benefit tax, you know, tax, credit benefits? Have they done this in the past? Are there any other gains or losses? And is there anything that is requiring them to sign jointly, like a divorce decree or an immigration situation? So those are things that are looked at when it comes to task of consent. But just basically, the concept is married couple, one approves for, the other one to sign on their behalf. So what sort of issues do we got here? We have a sixty six ninety five a violation. And the reason being is we are required as preparers when we give a tax return to a client to sign, they should have a signed copy of the return to review and make sure it's okay. Right? In here, we've got a scenario where he had them sign the electronic filing forms but didn't give them the return. So there's a subject to up to a, $65 penalty per time this happens, and it counts out at $33,000 for the 2026, which is our 2025 filing work season. So let's take a look at our next poll. This is poll number five. Do you think malpractice should have allowed Shifty to sign for Blame Lesh? Alright. Getting in some answers here. Alright. Awesome. So let's take a look at... 6695 has come up a few times, and these are the most common practitioner pitfalls. So these are things where it can be just an oversight or a mistake, but we should be cognizant of these and make sure that we have protocols in place in our offices to make sure that we don't make these errors. So a deals with failing to provide a copy of a return to the taxpayer at the time of signature. Now when it comes to this, it can be a physical copy if they come in and pick up and sign. It can be a digital copy uploaded to them through a secure platform, but they have to have some sort of, you know, signed return from you when you are asking them to sign in in order to efile the return. When it comes to the return that we are giving them, it has to be signed by us. They're supposed to be getting a signed copy from us. And the signatures can be, they can be physical. They can be digital. They can be rubber stamped at this point. So there are more than one method to sign. But when those returns are submitted, they have to include our signature. If we forget to include our PTIN on there... So make sure you're checking your software if you're just getting started out or you're updating stuff that your PTIN is showing on, you know, your returns. So failure to include your PTIN can be, subject to a $65 fine per instance. And any of these ones that have the $65 fines, those are subject to that $33,000 cap for the year per type of penalty. Failure to retain copies of returns or a list is subject to a $65 penalty. So in order to, you know, maintain that, you can either keep digital copies of the actual returns that you're giving to the client or keeping a list with the taxpayer's name, social, what type, what year, what form was filed, and the date that it was filed and prepared. So we wanna keep that list or keep copies of those. If you fail to file correct information returns, so your ten ninety nine forms, your dividends, your ten ninety nine b's, your ten ninety nine nonemployee compensation, miscellaneous's, k ones, those all fall under those information returns. So if those are not properly being filed... And the thing with those... With some of these penalties that come into play, when... For example, with the incorrect information returns, If you do not file the copy or submit a copy to the taxpayer, you can be penalized. And then you can also be penalized if you don't submit a copy or file properly with the IRS. So you could ultimately end up with basically doubled penalties because of that. So you're gonna get two penalties on one action. And we looked at negotiation of a taxpayer's refund check. Those are $665 as well as not doing your due diligence to make sure that taxpayers, qualify for child tax credit, American Opportunity Credit, your head of household, and your earned income tax credit. And those are by instance. So if there is multiple instances on the return, like I said earlier, you could be looking at more than one $665 penalty. And with those penalties of the $665 ones, there's not a limit or a cap. So if you're preparing a thousand returns and you do not do your due diligence, you could be penalized on every child tax credit, every head of household, every American Opportunity Credit on each one of those returns. So that is very huge that you take the time, do your interviews, make sure you're, you know, getting any sort of documentation that you need and doing those reviews with the client. Alright. Got a memorable moment here. So just make sure you are following Circular two thirty to protect yourself and your clients. So now that we've looked at some of the pitfalls and the issues that malpractices kind of created, let's do a little bit more digging and see what else is in this taxpayers, preparer saga. So months later, after the returns for Shifty and miss Blamlesh were filed, Shifty comes stomping in the door with an IRS notice in hand. What did you do wrong? I gave you everything. Why are they charging me money? He explained. Malpractice read the letter from the IRS. It's a c p 2,000 filled with adjustments. The IRS moved the dependency of the niece and the nephew, added the wages, and removed a portion of the child tax credits relating to the niece and the nephew. Those of you who aren't familiar with the c p 2,000, this is basically like a... An audit notice from the IRS. So they will verify what they have on their records as far as income and expend... Or as far as income goes and say your taxpayer forgot that they got a ten ninety nine, ten ninety nine miscellaneous and the return was filed without it, what the IRS will do is they will go in, prepare a CPT thousand, show the adjustment, show the additional tax that is potentially due because of this missing item, and it gives the taxpayer a chance to respond. And if it's ignored, they get a notice deficiency from the IRS. And with the notice of deficiency, they have the right to petition tax court. So we're gonna work our story through there, but I just wanted to give you, like, a little bit of a walk through of how this process actually works. So Shifty watched intently as malpractice read the notice. As soon as malpractice looked up, Shifty started yelling, you better fix this. You tell the IRS that w two is garbage, and I'm not paying tax on that. And what right did they have to take away my credits? I prepared this letter to the IRS with what I think about that extra tax. It'll help you answer the IRS, but I think it's coming... It's better coming from my tax preparer. So here's this lovely letter. Dear IRS, as an American, I ain't paying no taxes. It don't say nothing in the constitution of this United States about paying taxes. My tax preparer malpractice said I was right too. I followed his advice. The w two for my cash wages shouldn't have been sent to me at all. I told my employer not to send me any of those, mister lion shifty. So let's take a look at how we handle this letter. So our buddy malpractice stuck out his hand, shake with Shifty. Fine. I guess you're right, and I'll have this all under control for you. He walked Shifty out the door, went back to his desk, and drafted a response to the IRS. He based it on Shifty's response. He's based on, on his... He based his letter on Shifty's response. He wrote his client has a firm belief that he does not have to pay taxes. After reading the rules on dependency, he realized maybe Shifty should not have claimed his sister's kids, but in business, the customer is always right. We are keeping digging a hole in here. Right? So with the CP 2,000 and proposed changes, we have a couple of issues here. The IRS is coming in and they're saying, look. We looked at your return. You don't have the right to claim these kids, and we have record of this w two income that was not properly reported on your return. So my question to you is, would you have submitted that gem, note that some sarcasm, of a letter that Shifty gave you as poll number six? And our answer... Oh, good. Good. Lots of people. Lots of people. That's awesome. Okay. I think we got that one. So what was going on now with the scenario? Because we've got malpractice just keeping in that theme of agreeing and being walked over by shift dates. So we've got a letter that is based on frivolous arguments again. Right? So we've filed a return based on frivolous arguments. We've got a letter based on frivolous arguments that taxes are illegal. It's not in the constitution. So we've got malpractice exposing himself to a $5,000 penalty under the sixty seven zero two, which we looked at earlier. And one thing to note with this... With those frivolous arguments, it's every time something is submitted. So if your client... If you've got a client that ropes you into that and they keep perpetuating the argument, and in this case, like, if malpractice keeps sending things in, every time a new document is sent in with those arguments, they're subject to another $5,000 fine. So those things, you know, build up very quickly. So let's see what the IRS did. So in response to the IRS letter, in response to the letter, IRS requested proof that the children reside with Shifty. Male practice called him. Do you have any records showing your sister's kids live with you? Shifty responded, just try telling them at the IRS they have no right to nothing dealing with those kids. But a buddy of mine works at the kids' school in the office. He can get me a letterhead so I can make a letter that they live with me. So malpractice followed Shifty's wishes and asserted that it is client privilege. So a little more than a month later, a livid Shifty called malpractice. You're my tax guy. You were supposed to deal with this, deal with the IRS. They sent a letter again with the same garbage, and they want money, Shifty explained. Malpractice sat back listening to Shifty continue to yell. After five minutes, Shifty calmed enough for malpractice to speak. He He recommended Shifty email over the notice so we could review it and respond. Malpractice opened the email. It included a c p 323219 n, which is the notice of deficiency. Malpractice reviewed the form. The IRS didn't make any changes from the c p 2,000 request. No wonder why Shifty is mad, malpractice thought to himself. I'm not sure what I can do with this, but I'll keep trying for him. So just so you understand the process, when they send out a c p 2,000 that does not create a tax, they will send out a notice of deficiency, and you have ninety days to petition the tax court if you disagree with it, or the tax will be assessed if you don't do anything. So in this case, malpractice decides he's gonna keep doing things. So after reading the notice and a few a few times, he decided, I have a great idea. I'll prepare and sign this tax court petition form. How hard could it be? After a lot of confusion on how the form gets filled out, he decided that he needed some help. Melpractice remembered he had an old family friend who was an attorney. He informed SHIPs he was planned to bring in help and called the attorney. The attorney misrep... Mis... Disreputable, informed malpractice, just so you know, I didn't retire from law. I got this card. Nobody wants to work with me anymore. He told her, it doesn't matter to me as long as we can get IRS to leave Shifty alone. So miss Disreputable studied the letters malpractice prepared. She said, I don't know taxes, but I approve your argument that cash wages shouldn't be taxed. Everyone earns cash under the table. Why does the government need to know? But I'll help you, but only if you pay me with cash. Male practice dug cash from his wallet, and she prepared the tax court petition. She signed his counsel and told malpractice to sign as the petitioner and send a copy of his POA with it. So he's sending his power of attorney. Disreputable contacted Shifty to bring in all his tax documents. She told him this this is just in case the IRS asks anything during tax court. She reviewed the evidence Shifty provided for the case. At her instruction, he gave her all of... Gave all her orig... Gave her all of his originals. She turned her documents over to malpractice as the two prepared for trial. So we have a situation where malpractice did a couple things right, but we've also got some more issues from this. So malpractice in this situation displayed competence. So competence is actually kind of a cool concept in Circular two thirty because the IRS recognizes that not everybody knows everything, which is kind of, you know, reality. So when it comes to not knowing things, the IRS gives us some abilities and some instructions through Circular two thirty of what we can do to get competent. So, like, looking at classes that that are specific to the to the concept that you don't understand, consulting with experts, educating yourself on the matter through reliable sources. Those things can help you gain confidence... Or competence. So in this scenario, malpractice didn't know what he was doing, so he brought in an expert. So he did act properly there. Now what the IRS is proposing to change competence to in the future is besides that aspect of, you know, getting the understanding relating to your returns and your cases, they also want to build in there about technology. And with things like, being able to use artificial intelligence for some of the things we do, also a lot more digital digital database programs for, you know, tax preparation, representation, and stuff. One of the things that they wanna build in is for us to understand that there are risks associated with certain technologies and the things that we are using. So we have to, you know, acknowledge that, be confident in our review of what sort of exposures and what sort of issues might arise. For example, with AI, we don't wanna put in our clients' names. We don't wanna put in their socials, their addresses, and stuff because in some cases, that will go into the learn database. So as practitioners, if we are trying to use AI to help us write a letter, use letters, like, fill in your client's name with a bunch of z's and then just do a find and replace. And so the big reason for those changes because of technology out there, especially, you know, with the burst of things coming from AI. We wanna make sure that we are doing what is right for our clients and keeping their data safe. The other thing malpractice did right is he didn't practice law. He didn't sign as the attorney or the counsel on the form. And under Circular two thirty, basically, as CPAs or EAs or attorneys that are subject to it, and the CPA or EA, we can't construe our rights under Circular two thirty as the ability to practice law unless we are a member of the Bar Association. Now let's talk about where we've got some issues with this case. We have him reaching out to somebody who he knows is disbarred, and getting assistance on the case. And she told him in their conversation that she was disbarred. So as practitioners, we can't accept help from disbarred or suspended practitioners or in some cases from former IRS employees. If they've previously worked on that case while they were at the IRS, or have some sort of knowledge with the case, or if they are working in a firm that's handling a client's case that they worked on in the past of the IRS, they're supposed to basically stay sequestered and isolated from that case. They're not allowed to be brought into it. So they need that isolation. So in our scenario here, we've got a disbarred attorney. And when it comes to hiring new people at your firm, there is a list out there on the IRS that includes the people who are suspended or or disbarred. So if you're hiring new people, double check, make sure they are not on that list. So the other issue we have here is under Circular two thirty under ten twenty three, there's a requirement for a prompt disposition of a pending manner. So these are gonna be situations where, the practitioner can't unreasonably delay the case. And you're probably like, well, how are they delaying? Right? In this case, do we really need to be filing a tax court petition? We've looked at the law. We've looked at the rules. He really... That position about the wages isn't correct based on the law. The position with the kids isn't really correct based on the law. So these are frivolous arguments and unreasonable positions. And, ultimately, what do we have here? The IRS is looking at assessing and saying, listen. You owe us this extra money because you've taken these bad positions. So we need to collect... This is what the tax... It should have been had you not taken these. And by petitioning the tax court, they're basically just trying to delay the inevitable of this tax being assessed. So now that you've gotten my spiel, do you think malpractice has delayed the case? This is our seventh polling question. Alright. So we've got that wrong stance again. We've got a frivolous argument that's being brought up from a tax return to correspondence with the audit... The correspondence audit unit, and now we're bringing this frivolous tax argument into tax court. So the court doesn't really wanna deal with these type issues. Their job is to deal with cases with actual viable problems. So in this situation, the court has a very low tolerance for frivolous tax arguments and things that are just meant to delay or impede the cases. And because their dockets are, like, so busy, they take these type cases very seriously, and they are subject to high fines. So rather than the $5,000 fine, the court can impose $25,000 on anybody that's associated with the frivolous tax argument. So it can be, you know, the practitioners, and it can be the taxpayers too. So things that are groundless or just meant to, you know, delay the process without any real foundations in law or foundations in fact and circumstances. Those things can be subject to this frivolous arguments. And so let's see how the court handled this situation. So malpractice got a letter addressed from the court, which he excitedly opened, hoping the judge approve the removal of the tax for Shifty. Instead, it was an unpleasant surprise. The judge sent a letter penalizing malpractice 25,000 for making frivolous arguments and using the court case to delay the IRS from assessing the tax. Malpractice called this reputable and read her the letter. She told him the penalty is real. So as we see here on the letter, we've got malpractice being notified that you owe a penalty in violation of sixty six seventy three a for utilizing this, proceeding to delay and for making frivolous and groundless arguments. So things are not looking too great for malpractice. Right? We've already got a $25,000 fine. We've got some other issues going on, and we've got an angry Shifty. So a few days later, Shifty calls, angry as ever. He received a response letter from IRS chief counsel. It stated that the petition's being used to delay assessment and is founded on frivolous argument that cash wages are not subject to tax. It also requested that the judge discharge the case. So, basically, in the situation, the judge is throwing the court... The case out of the court because they're not going to hear it or deal with it because it is founded on frivolous arguments. Besides the IRS response, the letter came from the judge penalizing Shifty and blame Lesh for the frivolous argument too. So now Shifty was irate on the phone. I'm gonna make you pay this fine and the money the IRS wants. If you don't, I'll report you to every government organization out there. In fear, malpractice tried to reason with Shifty telling him, I owe the same penalty too. Let's not be hasty and start calling everyone. I'm not gonna pay it, but I'll try to deal with it so long as you don't report me. Shifty agreed reluctantly. Call Shifty with your fingers crossed. Let's see what you're gonna do next. Months later, Shifty received an IRS notice showing the additional taxes due. That malpractice is a big fat liar, he thought to himself. I'll show him. He paused and smiled an evil grin. He grabbed his phone, searched the IRS website, and discovered how he could report a bad preparer, and found out that he could fill out papers as a whistleblower, and the IRS might give him reward money too. Oh, look at you go, Shifty. But poor malpractice. What can happen because of Shifty's actions? Now when whistleblower cases or things come up, what'll happen is the office of professional responsibility will come in and kind of review them and analyze them. And we have a problem here because from what we've looked at earlier, malpractice has made multiple mistakes, which expose them to, prepare penalties. And OPR can do things like they will sanction. So, basically, sanctions can include censure, which is just like a public reprimand. They can suspend where you're not allowed to practice for a short time or disbar where you're not allowed to practice for a long time, which could be, I think it's generally, like, five to seven years with the disbarment. On top of this, they can impose monetary penalties, and they can refer the case. OPR doesn't work the criminal cases, but they can send a referral to bring in criminal investigators for the IRS or they... And then they'll build a case for the Department of Justice. And some of these criminal referrals can even result in incarceration. Like, we've looked at the, the issues with the fraudulent returns earlier. So let's see what else is going on now. Meanwhile, after getting the mail and finding an IRS later... Letter, Blaine Lesh asked Shifty what was going on. He instructed her, I have it under control. Hearing those words alarmed her. After digging in Shifty's office, she found a copy of the tax return. She decided to visit malpractice to ask what, what happened and why her name is on an IRS letter. So she explained to malpractice, I'm a stay at home mom. I don't work. Shifty controls all the family finances since he has the job. He gives me a credit card to charge the groceries and necessary things for the kids. Besides packing his lunch and watching him leave for work every... Each day, I have no idea what shift he does or earned at work. He keeps that to himself. In discussing the problems with malpractice, she remembered watching a TV commercial, which led her to read an IRS booklet on innocent spouse. Blameless asked meekly, hey. I have an idea. I'm not sure if it'll work. And if my husband ever found out, he would be so mad. She proceeded to ask about her eligibility for innocent spouse. After googling, malpractice did... Decided it may be a good option. It seemed to meet the requirements. He agreed to secretly prepare and submit her innocent spouse claim for her. So just so you know, how innocent spouse works is when people file jointly, an innocent spouse claim can be used if there is a party that there is an I r... You know, for example, if there's an IRS on it and the person wasn't privy to, like, the stuff that went on with the return, there's also aspects here of Shifty having financial control where Blaemless doesn't know about his income, doesn't know what he's earning, doesn't know what he does. So, basically, she's got that sort of isolation. So there is a solid innocent spouse case there. But let's see what issues come up with this, though. With this power of attorney, malpractice was notified the... By the IRS res... That they received and was processing Blamlesh's innocent spouse claim. He also got another letter which caused him concern. The IRS sent a letter to shifty to provide a response to the innocent spouse request. Later that afternoon, a shifting... A fuming shifty stomped into the office and started to scream. Just so you're aware, when there's an innocent spouse claim given, the responding spouse or the requesting spouse, will submit it, and the non requesting spouse will be notified. So that way, they can basically refute the claims that are on the innocent spouse. So that's what we have going on here. And Shifty is good and bad now. So why did you help my wife betray me by filling out papers against me? What gave you the right? You were my tax guy. We're through. Give me all my papers. I'm taking them to my lawyer. Realizing he might be in trouble if a lawyer got involved, malpractice gathered his courage and said, no way. Very proud of him. Right? I'm not giving you back a stitch of your paperwork. I'm holding it for good. All the letters, notices, and even your original w twos. Too bad. I am done being threatened. So kinda proud. Malpractice finally stood up for himself with Shifty and his issues, but let's see what goes on here. So was there a problem with representing blameless? And there is. Under Circular two thirty, we have a conflict of interest. So these are cases where if we do things to help one case, there's an adverse action to another party, or we aren't able to fully represent because there's limitations because we might hurt another party. And sometimes it's not even that there is a conflict that is apparent. It might be that there is a conflict that could arise. So when it comes to these type situations, if taxpayers are going through a divorce, sometimes we have to look at conflict of interest. Because if you're preparing the returns for them, and they are trying to file together, file apart, there... You might be helping one and it's impacting the other by, you know, determining who's got deductions, who's got taking the kids, those type things. So sometimes we have conflict of interest issues with divorced couples. Another place we see them is when we are working with partnerships or entities that have more than one owner. We might run into conflict of interest scenarios. If you're doing representation, if you are representing businesses with employment tax issues, we see conflict of interest issues because the IRS could come in. And if the business has not paid the payroll taxes for the employee withholding, they can turn around and look at individuals and say, listen. You know, we're gonna try and collect this money from you too. And so that opens up the window for conflict of interest because you might have, more than one owner who the IRS can look at as responsible for the taxes, but one of them really shouldn't have been where if you're representing both of them, you're gonna be throwing one under the bus to benefit the other. So if you do want into a conflict of interest, we can still represent or we can still work with the clients. However, there are procedures for us to do so. In order to do so, we have to make all the parties aware of of the potential conflict or the conflict, come up with a game plan that everybody agrees to, and have them sign a conflict of interest waiver within thirty days of finding out that there was this conflict. Now as far as the conflict of interest waiver, we have to keep it on file for three years from when the action's basically done. So we can handle some of these cases, but this is just something to be aware of and listen for. So we do have a conflict of interest situation with Shifty and Blameless because malpractice is getting blameless off the hook, basically, for the taxes through the innocent spouse program, and Shifty is going to be implicated with them. So when it comes to malpractice saying no, I'm not giving any of your information back to you, under Circular two thirty, we are required to return the records to our clients. Even if there is a fee dispute, we're required to return the stuff. The only thing that we can hold on to if there is a fee dispute is work product. So we don't necessarily... If we prepare a return and the taxpayer hasn't paid us for it, we can hold on to that. However, we have to give them back their tax documents and anything that they have. And when it comes to these, it's any, any documents for taxes, notices, anything that we've gotten from the IRS on their behalf. All that stuff is basically their records, which would be returned to them. So we've got some more bad news here. Alright. So months after malpractice in Shifty had a falling out over... The mail carrier brought in a certified letter for signature. It was addressed to malpractice from the IRS office of professional responsibility. He opened it stunned. Someone filed a complaint against him. He read the letter, and he started to shake and feel sick. I'm Rundi trudged through the office and began to cry. So malpractice reached out to disreputable again... For help again. She read the document and instructed him he needed to prepare a response. They went through the list item by item item denying the claims. While reviewing the letter, it dawned on malpractice. These problems all stemmed from Shifty's case. He finally found a piece of the puzzle that linked the allegation... Linked all the allegations in the report. So OPR responded to malpractice that he needed to provide documentation to support his position and the claims in, and the claims in the comp... And, his position that the claims in the complaint had no validity. With disreputable guidance, he prepared a letter telling OPR that he has the records, but didn't feel if in his best interest to comply with the request. The letter also stated, if you want documents IRS, you can send a summons. Malpractice thinks he's winning this time. I don't know. We'll see what's gonna go on now. So after all the trouble with the IRS, malpractice took it upon himself with... To do some marketing for his office. He put together a blog and got a Facebook ad linking potential clients to it. The blog's headline read, IRS unlawfully attacks all citizens. Will you be their next victim? Oh, that sounds that sounds great. Nope. Without permission, he included Shifty's story exposing his name and case information. He also ranted about the IRS and the courts having conspiracy against him and his clients around by, and his clients around by sending fines and OPR threats. Malpractice just keeps digging a bigger hole for himself. Right? So we've got some good news, though. After the problems with Shifty's returns and OPR, finally, the mail had some good news. The IRS approved the innocent spouse claim for blameless. She was no longer required to pay the debts incurred by Shifty's bad acts. So good for her. I'll give her a little clap. So now let's get into some of the Circular two thirty issues with this scenario. So malpractice was supposed to send in documentation to OPR. And under ten twenty two, he is supposed to respond to any proper or lawful request by the IRS unless it's believed to be privileged. And we're gonna talk about privilege in a minute because privilege doesn't really mean a lot when it comes to practitioners who are not attorneys. And so for for information, if it is in our possession as practitioners, we're supposed to forward it into the IRS unless it's deemed privileged, or we're supposed to give the name of the person who has that information to the IRS. We are not required to say if Shifty had the information to his possession. We're not required to go to Shifty, say, listen, Shifty. We we need this from you in order to respond. We can say, hey, IRS. We're not representing Shifty anymore. You get that information directly from him. I know he's got it. So we come back to that concept. We're supposed to, you know, send this send this unless it's privileged. And bottom line is we cannot interfere with lawful IRS requests. So anytime they're looking for information, if you are a CPA or an EA, we are pretty much in the boat unless it is deemed privileged. And privilege is is a concept that we have, but it is very, very limited. So when it comes to privilege, we think of, you know, the attorney client privilege where, you know, they can tell you the worst of the worst, and we don't have to respond. Right? That's absolutely wrong when it comes to us. Privilege for us CPAs and EAs is super limited, and we can't even decide what to assert privilege to. These are things that the taxpayer has the ability to say. For example, I had a case. I've had very few where privileges come into play, but I had a case where a client said, you know what? I've got this document. This is my document. This is an issue with my spouse, and this document is mine. So I do not want the IRS to have privy to this paperwork, and I'm going to, you know, consider this paperwork privilege. And it was something that had not really anything to do with his spouse's case, but it was something that the IRS was potentially asking for, but it really didn't have to. It wasn't something that she, you know, had access to or had the requirement or had required. So this is gonna be a scenario where the taxpayer can make privilege. It cannot be anything for a return purposes. So you can't say, listen. You know, I'm being audited. My w twos are privileged. That's out of the question. So anything that is used for tax preparation purposes, there's no privilege on that. If there's tax advice or tax guidance or tax planning, some of those things can be considered privileged unless it is a tax shelter issue. So any of those abusive tax shelter schemes, if it relates to any of those, it's not privileged. And the big thing here, privilege does not work if there are criminal matters. So if CPAs, EAs, privilege is out there under seventy five twenty five, but it really doesn't mean much. The other issue we have is a solicitation problem. So as a practitioner, we cannot go around making false claims or saying things that are misleading about the IRS or things that violate law. So in our scenario, we've got brochures being thrown out with blatant claims that are that are, you know, fraudulent and misleading about the IRS. Now some other things that we should know about, you know, solicitation, we are required to basically upkeep those fees, or those hourly rates that we are advertising for at least thirty days after the last time that ad is run or that TV commercial is run. So, you know, once we have our ads out there, we're supposed to, you know, stick with them and not change the stuff for at least thirty days. And as far as advertisements and, you know, print transmissions and things like that, we're supposed to keep copies of our advertisements for at least three years from the last time of transmission. And if anybody says, hey. You know what? I don't want your advertisements anymore. We can't continue to contact that person and solicit that person once we know that they... We they do not wish to have our solicitations. So what else was in that lovely flyer that he put together? Oh, man. Malpractice is a little bit of a mess. But in that flyer, he also told Shifty's story and Shifty's name, and we have an issue with disclosure. So anyone who discloses information, furnish them in connection with preparing a return, for any purpose outside of preparing the return is subject to a $250 penalty. However, if it is knowingly or recklessly disclosed, which turns this into going from a civil matter into a potentially criminal one, We have similar language here, but you can be subject to a thousand dollar fine or up to a one year term imprisonment. So this is, you know, this is something that Shifty, or sorry, that malpractice, you know, opened himself up to. Now there's also another one that was a misdemeanor. There's also a criminal aspect too when it comes to sending out information for tax return purposes, and disclosing it for purposes other than that. So if there are... This is the one that is very seldomly used. However, if there is situations where people are hacking databases to get taxpayers' names and Social Securities and inner... And in... Information and then selling that or sending that out, That's where this criminal disclosure comes in, which is a felony of five years or a felony which comes with potentially five years of imprisonment and a $5,000 fine. So this one isn't really used by the Office of Professional Responsibility. However, this is out there for those egregious cases. Now what's gonna come about from all this stuff that has gone on? We've got a situation where we've got exposure under ten fifty one because of incompetence and potentially disreputable conduct. So these are scenarios where there's potentially a conviction of a criminal offense, or they've violated federal tax law, or there's a dishonesty or breach of trust issue. So some of these things that, you know, cause disreputable conduct, they might not have anything to do with taxes. However, if the person has on their record or is public that there was a criminal issue, sometimes those things will have OPR come in and get rid of their ability or suspend or disbar them from practicing. So things like knowingly providing, you know, bad information or false statements, or false or misleading solicitations fall under this. So we've got a couple of those issues. So what they are proposing with ten fifty one, but they're gonna change it to ten fifty. And this going with that loving case kind of feel, they're looking at the aspect of practicing before the IRS. So they've also build... They're also building in there more about, you know, abusive language, false accusations and statements, or publishing libelous matter. So those are kinda similar to what was there. They're also building and willfully failing to file a tax return, assessments of penalties relating to, the willful attempts to understate tax liabilities. So if you're a practitioner and you get hit with some of these practitioner penalties, these... The changes that they're proposing with Circular two thirty would subject you to disreputable conduct. So if you've got that willful understatement of tax liabilities under sixty six ninety four, the aiding and abending understatement that we looked at as sixty seven zero one, or intentional disregard of rules or regulations or promoting abuse of tax shelters. Those things are going to basically put you in a position of being exposed to this disreputable conduct, but it also, does not mean you have to be charged with those penalties. It could be that you are... Have a violation. So even if you don't get hit with those penalties, you might still be subject to disreputable conduct and sanctions and things. And they've also changed... Ten fifty one is now fee focused, and we looked at that earlier, that proposing to get rid of, contingency fees and also, you know, making that a a, a disreputable action. So what is incompetence and disreputable conduct as things sit? So, failing to make a tax return or making one in violation of laws or that is meant to evade. So we've got that issue with our case. Right? We've got a tax return that was prepared basically in the intent to evade taxes. Assisting, counseling, or encouraging a client to violate or suggesting to violate federal law or suggesting an illegal plan. So he assisted in violating federal tax law, in essence. He didn't... So one thing that is on here is failing to remit funds by a client that are meant to pay the government. So if your client gives you the check, client gives you the information for the direct withdrawal, make sure that was done. Attempting to influence through threat, false accusations, duress, or bribery, disbarment or suspension by any federal court or board. So if, the bar association disbars or, federal court says you can no longer practice because there's an injunction or something like that, that also automatically counts against here. Working with someone under suspension, disbarment, or ineligibility. We had him working with disreputable who was under suspension or actually disbarred. Using abusive language, making false accusations, or publishing and circulating malicious or libelous information about the IRS. I think his, the IRS is out to get everybody kind of counts under that one. Right, guys? Knowingly, recklessly, or incompetently giving false opinions or engaging in a pattern of incompetence. We have potential exposure for that one in this scenario too because besides preparing a bad return, we've continued to perpetuate those frivolous arguments and continued to perpetuate, issues up the line. Willfully failing to sign returns. So, basically, that one kind of implies more for ghost preparers. Disclosure of tax... Of taxpayer information or using a return in the manner not approved by the code. We've got disclosure problems because he told Shifty stories. Willful failure to file information returns, preparing and signing returns without a PTIN, or representing a taxpayer without authorization. So we've got some disreputable conduct issues here. So what options does the Office of Professional Responsibility have here? They can look at doing a censure, which you see these sometimes come through from the IRS. These are just a public reprimand. And when it comes to censures, the taxpayer or the, the practitioner can keep, you know, preparing returns and doing things. However, if they've had a censure or they've been looked at by OPR in the past, OPR will look more tightly at them. They will potentially continue to monitor them. Another action they might take is they might suspend the practitioner. And suspensions are normally short term. They're anywhere between months to a few years, and the practitioner cannot prepare returns, cannot represent during this period of suspension. The other thing that can happen is they can become disbarred. And disbarred is generally five years or more that they're not eligible to practice. And in order to be able to practice again, they have to get approval through, OPR down the road after their disbarment period's over. So these are some pretty crippling things if you think about, if you have your, you know, tax practice shut down because of, you know, suspension or disbarment. And remember, you can't work with anybody, and people aren't allowed to work with you if you're suspended or disbarred. So big thing, just follow Circular two thirty, follow the rules, keep your nose clean, and you'll be good. But on top of these potential things that OPR can do, they can also impose monetary penalties and fines. So those are, like, the preparer penalty amounts we were looking at. And if they do look at potentially a criminal case, like I said, they will refer the case to criminal investigations. Criminal investigations will put together everything, and, ultimately, they will they will build a case. The case will go to the Department of Justice. And in some scenarios, they will look at injunctions where they close down a down a business. There were a... There have been a few major, you know, cases with injunctions for ghost preparers or, preparers who were, you know, basically, taking, you know, bad positions and abusing the tax law, to benefit themselves and benefit their clients in the past. So those type situations, they will, you know, look deeper into. So now let's talk about what happens. So we've gotten through, Shifty, you know, coming up with these bad returns, dragging Blameless in, get... Dragging malpractice into their mess. But the good thing is malpractice went through, helps Blameless out even though there was a conflict of interest, but she is at least been exonerated through that innocent spouse program. So after years of issues with Shifty, Blameless decided that she had enough. She moved out and started her own career. After seeing the IRS in action, she decided to get her EA and help people with tax issues, but not Shifty. She runs a successful practice and has plenty of free time to spend with her growing children. Now disreputable, after helping malpractice, realized she loved the law. Determined to do things right, she stopped dabbling and went back to studying. In her spare time, she wrote the self help book about mending your ways and becoming a better professional under the pen name of Miss Reputable. It earned a position on Oprah's Book Club. After a decade of waiting, she was approved for reinstatement aft... As an attorney. So she went through the process, was disbarred, got back to it, and was approved. So got a couple happy endings, but let's see what, you know, the moral of the story is here. After a year of litigation, malpractice was found guilty of criminal fraud relating to the return he prepared for Shifty. Due to having so much blatant disregard for the federal law, he was sentenced to the maximum of three years in prison along with hundreds of thousands in restitution. He is serving his term in hopes to get out on bad, or on good behavior. But things aren't all bad. He made friends with Jack Fisher who is serving time over a syndicated conservation easement scam. They trade real estate investment tips. So the important thing I want you to pick up from this, even though this story is, like, ridiculous and we're just kind of using it to help highlight some of the things that we should be aware of as practitioners and what our responsibilities are when it comes to ethics. Practitioners are held at a higher standard. We are subject to higher penalties, higher fines than the taxpayer is. So we have more exposure out there. So make sure that we are... You know, you're doing the right thing and you're acting properly. And with piles of IRS debt... Or piles of debt from his IRS issues, Shifty traded in his fedora for a more appropriate hat, a clown one. In an effort to make extra money, he works at a local circus show. He's still looking for another representative to help him with his tax issues after getting malpractice in a heap of trouble. Practitioners beware. If you hear a honking nose on the phone or someone tries to pay their fees and balloon animals, it might be shifty. So the moral of the story we have here is follow the rules and don't let a clown of a client push you into doing something unethical. When it comes to these cases, don't do what malpractice did. If it doesn't seem right, trust your gut. You are better off, you know, sending a client... A potential client down the road explaining, listen. I cannot do this because, rather than exposing yourself by trying to keep your client happy. So the key takeaways here are, as practitioners, we have to follow circular two thirty rules. We've covered almost all of them that apply to us today, in here. And what I want you to know going forward is keep an eye out because back in December of last year, the IRS, there was proposals of new circular two thirty rules that are coming down with the changes in regime, the, in in the presidency, and then also, you know, some of the cutbacks and Doge. And, some of the things that have gone on this year, they haven't, you know, really dug in and pushed to implement the stuff. But once things calm down, it might be something that we are seeing, you know, pushed forward through Congress, and brought up to be passed into place or passed into law, put in place. So keep an eye out. That's why when I did this, I covered both what the current rules are and some of the stuff that is changing. If you are preparing, you're not gonna be as implemented or as impacted by Circular two thirty because of the limitations from the loving case. But if you're handling audits or you're setting up payment plans for your clients or doing... Or asking for penalty abatements. Those type of things are dealing with resolution. So you are... If you're... If you are representing, you are getting into that realm of having to be subject to Circular two thirty in the future. And when there are violations or issues with Circular two thirty, a lot of these have preparer penalties or ways that they can be backed through the law. And when we violate Circular two thirty, we have exposure to these type penalties. And like we've talked about and looked at earlier, when it comes to punishments for for actions, practitioners are held at a higher standard. So they're stricter for us than the taxpayer. That's why, like, if there's a frivolous argument, the the taxpayer can be subject to 5,000. We can be subject as the practitioner too, with the preparer penalties. When we looked at the stuff with, you know, fraud, it was only, like, the stuff where where the penalty of perjury came into play or signing under, penalties of perjury came into play where it seemed like it went in line with a taxpayer. However, there was exposure to a bunch of different preparer type penalties, whether they are civil or criminal. But bottom line, when it comes to your returns and it comes to your cases, trust your instincts and don't let clients put you in a bad position. You... Your gut will tell you, you know, this doesn't seem right, that doesn't seem right. And, you know what, if you need that pause to do the research and figure out whether you're taking the right position or not, make sure you're doing that as well. So if you're looking for more free training and resources, we have some available through the education resource center, from helpful product information through leadership training and industry news. Browse our full list of of training and education resources in one convenient location, such as live and recorded webinars, virtual conferences, self paced modules, and important articles. And you can find this through accountants.intuit.com backslash training. And the Tax Pro Center has articles, so you can read on what's reporting and trending in the tax accounting and accounting industries. Those you can find in accountants.intuit.com backslash tax pro center. We also have a support and community aspect through Intuit accountant support. You can get info, get answers on your tax or product questions from Intuit accountants. You can access the... In research or access and search directly through program guides and resources through accountants.intuit.com backslash support backslash e n hyphen u s. And we can explore the community through posting our product and workflow recommendations, connecting with other experts and tax professionals like you to find answers, talk shop, and get inspired through in... Accountants.intuit.com backslash community. And we've got a bonus poll here. Our key takeaways from the training are, as practitioners, we need to adhere to the Circular two thirty rules As Circular two thirty violations can lead to practitioner penalties or reprimand, the punishment for practitioners are stricter than for the taxpayers. Follow your instincts instincts, and don't let your clients put you in a bad position or all of the above. Good. Everybody is getting that one right. And I just want to thank you for your time today. I hope you enjoyed the presentation. I try to keep, try to keep things light, and, hopefully, you'll never have a shifty walk into your office. And if you do, like I said, trust your gut, make the right ethical ethical choices. And thank you so much for your time. Hi. I'm Kevin Reinhard, a solution specialist here at Intuit, and I wanted to do a quick overview of Intuit ProConnect. Intuit ProConnect delivers all the tools that forward thinking firms need to drive productivity and profitability with a direct connection to QuickBooks online data that syncs right right to a tax return, tax advisory, document collection, electronic signatures, tax transcripts, and more, everything's in one place. So with ProConnect, you can eliminate five to six different apps that you might be using today that don't work together all under one platform. So I'm gonna bring up the program and share it with you. And let me go to the next slide. This is where we actually are gonna go ahead and share out the program, and I'm just gonna take about ten minutes to show you around the platform that we call ProConnect. So I'm gonna go ahead and stop sharing. I'll go ahead and share my screen and we'll start with the actual platform ProConnect is... Which is what you're seeing on your screen. So as I mentioned, there are many tools all built into one application. If you look on the left hand side of our program screen, you see all the different components of ProConnect. When we open it, we put you directly in tax returns. So this area here is where you'll do all of your tax returns, get electronic signature. There's all those things you do around returns. We also have our e file dashboard on the left. That's where you track all the progress of your e file returns. Intuit link is our portal. That's what our clients use to send requests to their clients so that clients can upload documents, answer questions, and even sign an engagement letter. Tax advisory also built into the left hand side, that's where you can run an AI generated tax plan for a client. And then we also have a link out to the QuickBooks accountant suite. You may know that today as QuickBooks online accountant. We are renaming that to Intuit accountant suite, and I will show you how to get data out of, a QuickBooks account and have it seamlessly flow to someone's return. So that's kind of the, the overall navigation of the main screen. The tax return section is fairly straightforward. We show you all the clients that you have in the current year. You'll notice it says 2025. If I wanna do a prior year return, all I do is click 2024 and the 2024 app comes up with my prior year client. So it's real easy to switch. The other capability that people like is that you can open as many returns as you want in ProConnect simultaneously. You could have a 2025 individual open, a partnership, corporate, even the prior year open all at the same time, so there's no limit on that at all. Now the other thing that's really helpful across the top of the tax return screen is our ability to filter your client list depending on what you wanna see. So if I wanna see my client's e file progress, you notice how the boxes change? It'll tell me whether or not I have any rejected returns, who's been sent, who's been accepted. So if you happen to have a rejection, just click the box and down here, out of all the returns you do, you will only see those returns that may have been rejected. We also do that for electronic signatures to let you know if someone has declined, if they failed to authenticate, how many are done. We also do it via feature called return status. You're able to mark statuses of returns down here, and then we'll tell you how many clients you have in each one of those custom statuses. So that's kind of the main screen around tax. Let me open up a return real quick and I'll show you the tax workflow. John Taxpayer is our client. This is where we click to open a return. We've tried to keep the the tax part of this really, really simple for you. There are three buttons at the top. We have an input return button. That's where all the data is entered. We have a check return button. That's where you'll see their tax forms and that's where you can check out the diagnostics. And then the final button is file return, and that's where you can efile it, get a signature, print it. That's where that functions... Those functions are located. Input is based on a category system. So if you look on the left hand side, we happen to be in a ten forty return. So these are all of the categories of a ten forty return. So, you know, if you wanna enter income, you just go over the income section, expand it, and you see the wages, the interest, the dividends down here, schedule c's and rental properties. If you wanna add a dependent, that would be under a section called general where we have the client information screen, dependents, if you wanna put banking information in. So just think in terms of category. You have deductions, you wanna enter assets, adjustments to income, which would be like an IRA or a SEP, things like that. So that's how simple it is to navigate. Now once we're done with that, we go to check return, and this is where I said, you see a two year federal comparison. On the left are your tax forms for the federal and all the states. So if you click federal, here are all the forms and schedules as well as all the tax forms for this client. One nice feature in this area is when you open a form, you'll see that all the fields are shaded in blue. It means as to preparer, you can click on any field like qualified dividends and see where exactly that data was entered. So if I click 7,000, it opens up a box and says, here's all my dividends, here are all my k ones, and here are the amounts that are flowing to that line from those various inputs. So it really helps review returns very, very quickly. Next is the diagnostic section. You have critical diagnostics and you have suggestions. The critical diagnostics are the ones that need to be fixed because those will stop the return from any file. Identification number is missing on the first w two. We just bring you the EIN field and you just fill it out, and that will eliminate that critical diagnostic. And then the suggestions are not problems. They're just things we want you to know that are happening in the return in in terms of tax calculation. So one here says the American Opportunity Credit was disallowed because their AGI exceeded 180,000. So that's what you do there. And finally, the last piece is the file return section. This is where all the returns are set are set up to e file. You can go ahead and e file it here or you can add it to batch e file and put it in a list. So later on, whoever does all of your e filing, once they get signatures, they'll know these are the returns that can be sent. Electronic signatures are found on the left hand side under esignature, client authorization esignature. So that is a super high level look at the tax. Now let's talk about the portal section. Intuit link on the left hand side. The way that you send requests is all built in. You go to the button and say create new request. I'm gonna send a request to a client named Brad Hall. Click continue. Now the program will ask you to pick a template. Because Brad is a ten forty client, we have one called the ten forty default personal tax organizer. Engagement letters, questions, and documents are gonna be sent to the client right away. The document checklist is personalized based on what the client had in their prior year return. So it's not just gonna say upload all your documents, it's gonna give them a list and they can go ahead and either take photos of things, they can scan documents, they can even link out to their bank or brokerage account to pull documents directly from those. That's how we send a request. Now let's take you back into the return one more time because I wanna show you where all of this information from the portal comes back into ProConnect. When you're in a return, go to the right hand side. There's a tax organizer button. Select that. And here's everything John did on the portal. He signed his engagement letter. Here are all the answers to his personal questionnaire, and here are all the documents uploaded based on the prior year requests, e trade, mortgage interest, and so on. You notice how these, these documents have an import button next to them? That's really the advantage of your clients using the portal. You can click import. Using AI, we can read the data on the document. You can say, hey. I wanna add a new one or apply it to two preexisting w twos. Hit continue. We show you what we are about to extract so you're able to review the numbers against the original then hit import. So we have this AI based extraction tool that will automatically create a brand new w two right next to the Intuit w two or Intel w two that I had earlier. So one of the advantages of of using the portal is the AI based extraction tool and placing that data directly into the return. Next thing I wanna talk about is tax advisory. So let me go ahead and share this. Now this feature, I'm already in a tax advisory tax plan. I imported the data from the return for this client. There are four buttons that you use at the top. The second button is where you build your strategies or where you where you build your tax plan. See the button on the left that says insights 20? We're telling you using AI that we found 20 tax planning opportunities in this return to eliminate you from having to do that investigation. So first section called entity selection, you could do s corp choice of entity. Second section is called income shifting. You could hire your kids, capital gain timing. We're telling you all of the items that are available. If you'd like to add something to your plan, hit the add button. What that does, it shifts it into the middle section where I've already added bunching itemized deductions, four zero one k's, and health care flexible spending accounts. Now where do you make the adjustment for the following year? Right in the middle column, 2026 strategy change. I put in $20,750 of four zero one k and using this client's marginal federal and state tax rates, we show the savings of exactly $6,495. So you add the items, you make their adjustment, we tell you what the total savings is here and what the net out of pocket is for the client. Lastly, you can also go to the top and create two client reports. The first one is a proposal. This is for the client who's undecided whether or not they wanna pay you for a tax plan. K? It will not say Intuit on your reports. I went up to the top right, hit report settings, and I uploaded an Intuit logo. You can change all the color themes. But the proposal will tell your client that if they do nothing, these are what they're gonna anticipate for balances next year. If they implement all your strategies, these are the new balances and this is how much they'll save. Then you can go over to the tax plan and it has many of the similar documents, but it starts with a really professional cover page, the table of contents. It breaks down the no action with strategies. Down here, it shows all the strategies on a single page. This one shows strategy change, net out of pocket, and tax savings. And I have three strategies in my plan, So we create another section for your client called more about your strategies where they can see... They can read up on the different strategies. You may have explained it, but maybe they forgot what you said so you can... They can kinda read up on that. So that's again built into ProConnect. No additional cost. You have the strategies. Finally, I wanna open up the next next and last section, and that is right now, I am in QuickBooks online, and I am within a company file for Velocity Innovations. So if you'd like to take this data and sync it to a return, you go to the left to the all apps button and select business tax and the features called prep for taxes. What we're gonna do is put you in a section called tax mapping. All of the accounts in QuickBooks are listed here. All of the tax lines are listed here. We map many of these things automatically. That's the benefit. But there will be some things that you will need to map in the initial year. Once mapping is complete, you go to the top. You say tax options, update existing return. We already know it's being linked to Velocity Innovations s corp return, hit update, the data flows directly into their ProConnect tax return. Alright? So, again, super fast. I'm gonna go ahead and go back to, give me one sec here. And I'm gonna go back to another slide here real quick. In this slide, I just wanted to cover really quickly how do we price this product. We have all these great components. How does it price? The basic idea is you buy returns from us. And the more returns that you purchase, the lower the per return cost. K? So that includes the following. So ten forty in business returns are are... All of the states are included, federal and unlimited states, the tax adviser, IntuitSign, which is our document system, the portal, IRS transcripts, document import, and the prep for taxes. So it is very streamlined. Once you know your per return cost, you know what your fees are going to be in that year. So next, I'm gonna ask one polling question and based on my speedy and rapid, presentation of ProConnect, would you like a personalized sales demo or consultation about what you've learned in today's training event? So yes, please contact me or no, not at this time. And I'll give it about a minute and let everybody click. Alright. So give it about another thirty seconds or so. And then once we get down to ten seconds, I'll do a little countdown so you'll know that I'm completing the poll. And I'll do that now from five, four, three, two, and one. Final slide in this quick demo is a big thank you for watching. If you would like to do... Have a free trial or use this program, we make a a free trial available to you. If you'd like to get a trial or get pricing, I've also given you a number to to speak to one of our consultants, which is (833) 393-9447, or you could just go to Google and type in ProConnect tax free trial, and the link will come up to try it out. Thanks very much for your time, everyone. I hope you enjoy it.