CM Banks on Local Law 168 tax preparer fee disclosures
Banks asks about DCWP's steps to educate tax preparers and consumers about new itemized fee disclosure requirements under Local Law 168. Levine describes warning blitzes to all licensed tax preparers.
Thank you, Chairs.
And Commissioner, to your team, when it comes to Local Law 168, which went into effect on May 27, just recently,
which requires tax preparers to provide consumers with itemized fee and disclosures before and after services are rendered.
Want to know what steps has a DCWP taken to educate preparers and consumers about these new requirements to ensure compliance with the law?
Yeah, we take this incredibly seriously.
We see so much predation in the tax prep space.
It's one reason why we were so aggressive this year in promoting our free tax prep and doing a warning blitz.
I think the first in our history to every licensed tax prep provider in the city that we are looking out for violations.
Mike, do you want to share more on our implementation?
No, I think that's a very important topic and something that we always have our ear to the ground on.
You know, we had a case against rocket tax last year.
Right, okay.
That you know and we're always looking for compliance and that and for that settlement and we're always looking for new targets you know one of the great things we have a consumer services you a unit
that is our ear to the ground for all consumer complaints and we look at the trends and we look both in terms of or potential targets and this is in tax prep in all our categories like
Who are potential targets?
individual businesses that we see are repeat violators of the laws and rules we enforce?
And what are the new scams that we didn't even know about, but people on the street are telling us?
And this is in tax prep in all our categories.
So we always encourage people to go directly to our website and file complaints.
That's really the grist for how we determine
how we're going to direct our enforcement.
Thank you for that response.
Let me just get my questions out, and then you can chime in on the next one if you want.
Like, who are potential targets?
While tax season is technically over, many New Yorkers continue to file extensions, amendments on their returns, and they utilize the tax preparation services throughout the year.
Has DCWP already begun consumer outreach regarding local law 168?
And if so, what has the outreach look like and what lessons has the agency learned thus far?