An Enrolled Agent is licensed (enrolled) by the United States Department of the Treasury, through the Internal Revenue Service, to represent taxpayers as a taxpayer’s agent to defend the taxpayer’s rights and advocate the taxpayer’s lawful tax claims and remedies in tax disputes, tax filings, audits, collection enforcement and appeals before all administrative levels of the Internal Revenue Service. The license is earned in one of two ways. The first is by passing an extensive examination to demonstrate comprehensive competence in federal taxation and IRS operation directly to the Internal Revenue Service. The second is by having worked at the IRS for five years in a position which regularly interpreted and applied the tax code and its regulations. A rigorous personal background investigation is also conducted before the license is issued. The license is maintained by completing mandatory continuing professional education in federal taxation and IRS policies and satisfying updated background and tax compliance checks. It is a national license. By comparison, CPA’s and attorneys are licensed in accounting or law by states and the licenses are state specific. The CPA accountant exam is four parts, 14 hours long, with 3 hours allocated for a combination of tax and business law. The EA exam is three parts, 10.5 hours long, all of it covering tax and taxpayer representation. While tax return preparation is common for public accountants, CPA’s and attorneys can decide to practice in any of several diverse accounting or legal fields, and thus may or may not choose to concentrate their principal efforts and additional professional education on taxes or taxpayer representation. Every enrolled agent is licensed exclusively in federal taxation but not all enrolled agents choose to extensively engage in taxpayer representation. In fact comparatively few do.

Taxpayer representation is a particularly difficult and complicated tax practice specialty. All authorized taxpayer representatives are subject to the strict rules and regulations of representation practice specified in IRS Circular 230, Regulations Governing Practice Before the Internal Revenue Service. All enrolled agents, CPA’s and attorneys are authorized to represent taxpayers before the IRS. However, those tax practitioners like us who regularly focus on IRS taxpayer interaction procedures and on refining the advanced skills and tactics of effective taxpayer representation are generally more successful at getting the IRS to resolve tax problems favorably for the taxpayer in trouble. And because of this representation experience, our tax return preparation applies criteria to help protect taxpayers from adverse issues if a return is challenged by the IRS.