I'll be surprised when there stop being people recommending such. Being a competitive industry, some folks are willing to do questionable things or take questionable positions to get clients and charge the fees they want to charge. Getting SE income down to $15,000 for what I imagine is primarily a labor business (income from doing something rather than from investments) with $50,000 net is a fantastic deal for the taxpayer. Yeah, if audited that's hard to justify but audit rates are low right now, due to IRS funding. So odds are you wouldn't have too many audited, and maybe you just figure losing a couple clients is an acceptable loss for the profits you're making. Reminds me of a quote I saw once from one of those no longer existing tax prep chains. Had to do with doing returns off the final pay-stub instead of waiting for a W-2 and the person said you had to do that in order to make money or compete. Ultimately the preparer penalties don't target the right folks or aren't high enough on those folks. Scares the honest preparer to the point some of us refuse to do EIC work but the ones doing refunds off paystubs just keep carrying on business as usual.
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