IRS Slaps Down Tax Preparers' Anthrax Scare Story

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, New York

04 January 2002

After the IRS briefed officials of the National Association of Enrolled Agents (tax preparers, that is) about possible mail delays during the tax-filing period due to anthrax checks, the NAEA sent out this week a circular urging Americans to file their returns electronically this year ''as a patriotic gesture''. But the IRS said it didn't expect significant delays and said the NAEA had gone over the top.

''We're always getting strange things in the mail, and we've had screening processes in place for years,'' said IRS spokesman Don Roberts, "We get things such as clothing sent by taxpayers ("the shirt off their backs") and checks carved in wood or made with other unlikely materials". The IRS processes returns at 10 centers throughout the country and has no plans to use additional mail facilities, Roberts said.

Nonetheless, the IRS is encouraging people to file electronically, and Congress has mandated that 80% of returns should be filed that way by 2007. Last year, some 40 million of the 127 million taxpayers who filed returns did so electronically, and the IRS hopes 45 million will use e-filing this year. "We certainly like the idea of people encouraging electronic filing, but we don't exactly agree with the way [the NAEA] got there," Roberts said.

Sharon Cranford, the NAEA's director of public policy, said the news release, which was drafted and sent while she was on vacation, probably should not have predicted that there would be problems. "I would have crafted it more artfully," Cranford said.

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