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For many years, my wife and I had our tax returns prepared by professionals. They just happened to be public accountants, not CPAs. And they did quite well for us. Unfortunately, the first died and after several more years, so did the next one and we ended up with a new preparer, our first CPA. And this was where we ran into our first serious issue with quality.

The problem? New Jersey issues a two-page W-2 to commuters and it appears my salary, which appeared on both pages, was added in twice. She called the firm whose partner responded with, "Good catch" an answer that didn't impress us.

This came to mind with the proposal by the Internal Revenue Service to exempt CPAs, Enrolled Agents and tax attorneys from new testing and certification requirements for professional tax preparers.

An executive at a well-known tax software company wasn't surpised by our story. He said the IRS finds more complaints CPA-prepared returns than about those from other preparer categories. However, his point was the many CPAs who don't do a lot of individual returns just don't have the practice and experience to be that good.

Even before I remembered our personal episode, I had thought that giving CPAs a free ride on this, while requiring it of other preparers who often have more experience, wasn't a good idea.

But the IRS exemptions for these groups doesn't address what to do about the bad apples. There are thousands of people in these categories. So a few are going to show up with some rot.

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