7216 Consent Forms

[Gretel]

I get a little bit disturbed by accountants who diss software they don't use.

Taxmandan, I am sorry if I offended you. I just repeated what several accountants who use Drake since ages said. By no means did I want to apply anything bad against Drake.
P.S. was does "diss" mean?

[taxxcpa]

Drake

Drake's form indicates that we offer RALs in their consent form. However there is another word document on Drakes CD that can be modified and made more appropriate for someone who is asking you to send a copy to a mortgage company or some other place for any reason.
As mentioned above, you can avoid all this by sending it to the client and let him take it to the third party. But if he has no e-mail or no fax and wants you to send it, then you would need to have him come to your office to sign the form--so he might as well just pick up the documents and mail them to the mortgage company himself.

I will not ask 100's of people to sign the form just in case one may need a new mortgage or bank loan, So I guess I'll stick to plan B and have him pick up the documents.

[Corduroy Frog]

Where are they going?

I refuse to intimidate my clients up front with this ridiculous new requirement.

If they later want a copy of their return sent to a bank, mortgage company, or other party, I will make sure that I have their request in writing, thus still remain in compliance.

I guess my question is where the govt is headed with this. DTLee, with all respect to you as a learned professional, I can't imagine that the govt really cares about whether the appointment or a later event defines the longevity of the engagement or any such.

I see something more sinister in place, and I'll admit that I can't predict exactly what. I just don't know why they would go to the trouble to write this into the regulations, as they have no overt reason to do so. Often there are subtle reasons behind the scenes -- I have found this to be true of government at every level when they do things that don't make sense.

Any ideas? Mr. Lee, thank you for yours.

[dtlee]

I see something more sinister in place, and I'll admit that I can't predict exactly what. I just don't know why they would go to the trouble to write this into the regulations, as they have no overt reason to do so. Often there are subtle reasons behind the scenes -- I have found this to be true of government at every level when they do things that don't make sense.

Any ideas?

I think you are correct that there is something more sinister at work. I think we saw it first rear its ugly head with the privacy notices we had to provide to our clients and that we encounter (and if you are like me, discard) at least once a week from some doctor or lawyer or bank or utility or insurance company.

Elsewhere, when we call a company, they may ask odd things like, "Do I have permission to access your account" to which we mindlessly answer "yes" with a quizzical tone of "why else would I be calling you?"

When I spoke with the IRS, they indicated that in many ways, these rules mirror other consumer protection statutes, and they indicated that this similarity was not accidental.

Where will it go? Others have pondered that there may be spot checks to make sure our offices are secure and that client folders are not left in areas where they can be spotted by another client or perhaps audits of our computer to ensure that they are secure from infiltration or tampering. I really don't know.

Modern society seems more litigious. Are these new rules in response to the change in society or is the change in society causing us to be shackled by the new rules?

[Black Bart]

No harm, no foul

Black Bart,

With all due respect, I am going to disagree with you...

Thanks dt; that's the nicest thing anybody's said to me in months . Don't worry about me; I don't really have an opinion about it other than like you and C-Frog said: Why is IRS interested? I don't know if it's something sinister, but It sure makes you wonder just how much more meaningless trivia they can dream up to burden us with (whatever happened to that "Paperwork Reduction Act"?). Other than giving malicious/disloyal clients a weapon to threaten us with, it's just another useless piece of junk paper that nobody's really interested in (like the privacy notices) and that we'll have to waste time with from now on while it fades into oblivion for everybody else. I called IRS just for curiosity's sake and asked about it -- nobody in the office had the slightest idea what in the hell I was talking about (one suggested "you probably need to fill out an 8879 for that"). [/QUOTE]

Bees was saying...

Sorry to disagree with you, but Bees is usually proven right about such things, so I''ll string along with him.

Best regards, BB