No privilege for CPA and Taxpayers
There is been a long-standing rule that attorneys and clients have a privilege for their communications under most circumstances. This is not true for tax return preparers, accountants and CPAs under many circumstances, particularly where it matters most-when the IRS is attacking a taxpayer for criminal sanctions or fraud. That is why it is crucial to have a tax attorney involved for giving documents to an accountant or tax preparer if there may be any issues. This is especially true during audit IRS collection matters. Unfortunately, another cases come down from the Tax Court defeating any claim of a client and CPA privilege. This was reported by Parker tax publishing in their latest newsletter: Taxpayer Had No Legitimate Expectation of Privacy in Records Held by CPA A district court denied a motion to suppress all evidence relating to tax records the IRS obtained from a taxpayer's CPA. The court rejected the taxpayer's argument that Code Sec. 7609 and the Code of Pro...
