Tax experts broke down a bipartisan Senate bill aimed at overhauling IRS customer service and tightening standards for paid tax return preparers during a September 24 webinar, describing it as a wide-ranging, “common-sense” package but with an uncertain path to enactment.
Specialists from Frost Law walked through the Taxpayer Assistance and Service (TAS) Act,S. 3931, at the session hosted by the Accounting, Legal, and Finance Institute. Former longtime IRS official Terry Lemons moderated, joined by tax controversy attorneys Peter Haukebo and Rebecca Sheppard.
Background on the bill
Introduced February 26 by Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-ID) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), the TAS Act combines dozens of proposals from National Taxpayer Advocate Erin Collins with other tax administration bills. Spanning ten titles, it addresses digitization, expanded online accounts, judicial review, preparer penalties, and targeted relief for Americans abroad and former hostages.
The measure cleared the Finance Committee on a 26-1 vote and has been reported to the full Senate, while the House has advanced individual pieces separately.
Lemons called that level of agreement “highly unusual” in the current political climate, noting the bill’s support spans national tax associations, software companies, consumer groups, and nonprofits. The open question, he said, is whether the Senate takes up the full package in a post-election lame-duck session, because any unfinished legislation expires when a new Congress convenes in January.
If it does not pass, Lemons said, the bill “turns back into a pumpkin” at year’s end.
Modernizing IRS service
A central aim is reducing the IRS’ reliance on paper, which Collins has called the agency’s “kryptonite,” Lemons said. The bill would require the agency to use optical character recognition technology to transcribe paper returns and correspondence, and would establish a real-time dashboard on IRS.gov displaying call volumes, wait times, and processing backlogs.
Sheppard said 47 million filings still arrived on paper in 2025 and that manual data entry invites costly errors, recounting an Employee Retention Credit case in which the government failed to enter a decimal point and processed a $180,000 figure as “$18 million.” She framed the dashboard as a fairness issue, noting that third-party services already charge to hold callers’ place in line while the public cannot reach those tools.
“You shouldn’t have to pay for access to the government,” she said.
Drawing on 26 years in IRS communications, Lemons said officials had at times been reluctant to release service numbers during a rough filing season, and argued that writing the requirement into law sets the agency’s goals. “For me, it’s just basic good government. Get that information out and take some of the mystery away from it,” he said.
The bill would also require the IRS to give practitioners access to client accounts. Faster access to notices and transcripts would help diagnose problems, Haukebo said, “How many times do we have clients walk in the door and say, ‘I never got that letter’?”
Lemons noted, however, the security tradeoffs of putting more taxpayer data online.
Regulating preparers
The legislation would give the IRS explicit authority to set minimum standards for non-credentialed preparers, authority constrained since the D.C. Circuit’s 2014 decision in Loving v. IRS, 742 F.3d 1013. “It’s been a challenge over the years for the government to establish this regime,” Haukebo said.
Under the bill, non-credentialed preparers would have to pass background and tax-compliance checks and complete up to 18 hours of continuing education annually to obtain and maintain a PTIN, while attorneys, CPAs, and enrolled agents would be exempt. Willfully failing to furnish a valid PTIN would become a felony.
Sheppard said stronger oversight matters most for taxpayers least equipped to spot abuse, warning that preparer fraud disproportionately harms vulnerable, minority, and lower-income communities. Her rule of thumb for clients: “If somebody is not willing to sign your return, then don’t sign the return.” Haukebo praised a related provision ending the indefinite assessment window for victims of preparer fraud, saying “these victims can have some finality to their situation” rather than facing government assessments “forever.”
Relief for hostages and looking ahead
The bill would disregard, for tax purposes, the period during which a U.S. national is wrongfully detained or held hostage abroad, and would require the State and Justice Departments to send the IRS names so notices can be suppressed. It would also let those individuals recover interest and penalties that accrued during their detention.
Recalling “nightmare scenarios” in which IRS notices kept reaching detainees’ families, Lemons called the change a “common-sense issue” that would let the agency show compassion “for people and their families that are in just terrible situations.” Other provisions would simplify currency-exchange and foreign tax credit rules for Americans living abroad.
Asked to assess the bill’s chances, Lemons said anyone claiming to have “a good crystal ball in terms of predicting what Washington will do” warrants “a little bit of skepticism.” He added that members, freed from election pressure, could try to attach other tax proposals during the lame-duck session. Still, given the measure’s breadth of support, he said the coming session would be worth watching.
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