 The tax preparation industry is huge. Basically every American has to file taxes at some point. And so the biggest challenge right now is that the majority of groups that are filing taxes are not registered or licensed under any IRS guidelines. CPAs and enrolled agents currently are. They have guidance through the IRS. As well as even free tax volunteers through the VITA program are also licensed. Well, they're certified each year and they have to take a test. But that leaves the vast majority of both online software and preparers and the storefronts that we commonly see in urban and rural areas to be not regulated currently under any kind of sophisticated structure at the federal level. Some states and cities do this, but it's far and few between. Which means that the majority of tax preparers, specifically low and moderate income families, that leaves them to be getting their taxes done by and large by preparers who are not under any kind of regulatory structure. The costs of paid tax preparation have really gone up over the past few years. So when about five years ago people would ask, you know, what would the average family pay to get their taxes done? You know, we could answer around $200 to $250. But a lot of the returns that we're seeing are upwards of $5, $600 now, which is a pretty significant price jump, especially for people of modest means. So the costs have increased as well as the amount of options have increased. So with the option of doing taxes electronically now, computer software or even online, there are more options, which is generally a good thing. But at the same time, it makes it really hard for consumers to kind of decide, you know, where do I want to do my taxes? How do I want to do it? And what's the fair cost for that proposition? So the Earn Income Tax Credit is the largest poverty reduction program in the country at this point. And the EITC for short, it's really structured around rewarding and supporting work for low income workers. So, you know, the average credit's around $2,500. But it can be for a family that has three children, it can be worth upwards of over $5,000, which means it's a very significant income support. And the only way to get there in income tax credit is to file your tax return. So if paid preparers are charging, you know, upward of $500, $600 for access to that credit, that becomes a far less effective program. You know, it means the public dollars that are going back to support working families, all of those dollars are not getting there. And instead they're getting siphoned off by paid tax preparer. So the program's not living up to its fullest intent when people are paying high costs. The other challenge is that when somebody gets their taxes done and they're getting their income tax credit, it's unlikely that they know that that's what they're getting. They understand that they're getting a tax refund, but they don't understand why and they don't understand its amount and significance. They just know that somewhere in the tax code, somewhere in the system, you know, they're getting some dollars back because they're working a low-wage job and it's not enough to support their family. Congress has a real role to play here. The challenge, of course, is that over the past few years, both, and this is true at the state level, too, very few policymakers feel that regulation is the right way to go in these kind of places. So they want the market to really sort these kind of efforts out. The problem with that is that we've gone too far and the pendulum has swung in the other direction. You know, there's no real way for consumers to compare costs because tax preparation fees are generally disclosed at the end of the process, meaning that it's very hard for somebody to go to taxpayer A and say, I'm going to get this service. It's going to cost me, you know, $400, but if I go to taxpayer B, you know, I'm only going to pay $200 and I'll get my refund, you know, e-filed or I'll get my return e-filed and my refund direct deposited. You know, they can't make those kind of comparisons. The market is broken in that way. So, you know, the real emphasis is on Congress to act on this. The challenge is that obviously, you know, tax preparers are a huge part of the preparation industry. So there's a lot of lobbying power there, which will make it very challenging. And two, you know, the biggest part is that the IRS is going to need not just the authority to do this, but they're going to need an increase in their budget to be able to sort these things out. The IRS recently rolled out a tax preparer program only to lose in appellate court during a challenge argument that they didn't have the authority to actually put this into place. So Congress does need to give them sort of approval to do this. Another part of this, of course, is that states can step in and cities can step in. You know, I would argue that a federal framework at least provides a floor so that there's some kind of a baseline for regulation and testing. We'd want that to be pretty standardized. And then if states and cities want to go above and beyond, we think that would be an excellent idea. Yeah, if we could fix it all, we'd want to do, you know, we'd want to have sort of a regulatory program at the IRS at the federal level for all paid tax preparer storefronts. And the onus would really be on who does the client think that their preparer is, because what we don't want is for, like, a store manager to get certified and regulated, and then everybody else at the store is doing the taxes and that person's just then signing them. You know, we really want it to be something where there's, you know, continuing education involved, that there's a solid baseline test to get into this business, criminal background checks are obviously a good thing. There's a lot of fraud, especially as we were talking about the EITC. It's a big drawing point for direct deposits into other people's bank accounts. These are all things that really have to be part of a whole program. The biggest thing that we want to put into place relates to what's known as the Schumer box, which was developed actually for credit cards. So when you get your credit card statement now, you can see what the true cost of what the interest you're paying is, how long it would take you to pay it off, those kinds of real transparent disclosures that are important for financial transactions. What we've designed in this latest issue brief is a sort of a Schumer box for tax preparation, meaning that we've laid out sort of a template for once preparers are regulated, it would be fantastic to have this in place so that they could list a good faith estimate of the costs of what it's going to cost somebody to get their taxes done. So a standard 1040 basic form would cost you $100 and a schedule EITC form would be an additional $50 and laying out the different options so that people have an idea of what they're paying for. The biggest challenge with the tax refund is that many people view it as found money. So if you tell somebody they're going to get a $1,000 tax refund, they're elated, except for the fact that they probably don't realize that maybe it was a $1,500 tax refund. It's just $500 of that is actually going toward paid preparation. So the box helps outline the costs, it allows for comparison shopping, and then it also, you know, it's a teachable moment. It really helps people understand where they fit into the tax system. If you can do it free, do it free. So free tax sites are located in every state. We strongly encourage people. You can use the IRS website to help find a free tax site. You know, when you file for free, by definition, you get your entire refund. There are no e-filing fees, there are no direct deposit fees, and there's no preparation fees. So if you're making under $50,000 a year, you're by and large eligible for free tax preparation somewhere in your city. If you don't go that route, we would strongly advise people to look at the credentials of their preparers to have an understanding of what the costs are, what the training is that their preparer has gone through, who is it that's doing their return, is the person relying heavily on tax software rather than the knowledge of tax law. And then also, you know, there are really good tips on different websites. Even the IRS has a really good sort of what to look for in a paid preparer sort of tip sheet, which we think is a really important thing.