You are joking right? CPA's already have to hold themselves to standards of the respective State licensing Boards, already have to maintain substantial hours of continuing education, often in subjects that have no relevance to their practice focus, are subject to revocation of their license if they fail to maintain those standards. That "IRS statistics show more problems with CPA-prepared returns than those from other sources".... do you think this might have to do with the fact that most taxpayers with complex returns are going to have a CPA prepare the return and that due to inherent nature of the complexity there are going to be errors or differences in interpretations. Even a cursory review of the thousands of pages of IRC and Regs will cause the most experienced CPA to realize how much they don't know. And you think some baloney little competency test is going to make a difference or not forcing another level of administrative harrassment is going to give CPA's an advantage. I don't mean to to be rude, but you have no idea what you are talking about.