The Internal Revenue Service requires that all volunteer tax return preparers be certified to prepare and perform quality reviews of tax returns. Students must pass the applicable course test - Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Military, or International in order to perform these duties. All volunteers must be certified in Basic and Intermediate before proceeding to the other tests.
In a 2002 statement to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate recommended that the IRS ensure Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) tax preparers meet a minimum level of competency for return preparation by registering, testing, and certifying. Tiered tests would need to be designed to meet different levels of competency, and registration of tax preparation volunteers must occur yearly.
At that time, to certify volunteers, the IRS was administering paper tests and manually tracking certified volunteers. In addition, an online test was available but, due to restrictions on the irs.gov public portal, certification results could not be validated.
In response, the IRS required that volunteers receive a certificate of completion for the type of tax return they may prepare and began tracking results on the Internet.
IRS Volunteer Tax Return Preparers Certification
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Beginning in 2006, to comply with new volunteer certification requirements, LPS offered a learning assessment engine to track and certify volunteers. The learning assessment engine launches the certification exam within a learning management system (LMS) using certification testing software. The application is hosted on an external secure website.
The assessment engine includes a wide range of features, including:
- Customized interface with client logo
- Secure login
- Self-registration
- Bookmarking
- Menus for course exams display based on successful certification of each course
- Automatic recording and scoring of exams once an exam’s final question is answered and a completion certificate is issued
- Custom reports
Over the last 3 years, there have been over 658,000 visits to the certification website, over 13,800,000 pages viewed, and over 180,000 certifications issued. This year the number of certifications increased almost 45% from last year.
