What are the legal & ethical limits on a tax opinion? An analytical study of the tax practitioner’s responsibilities.

1. Introduction:

Considering the worldwide vast development, and economic expansion, in addition to great global business growth and complexities, the accountant profession has become one of the important players of financial decision-makers. That is due to its core role of providing valuable information to establish businesses on a solid basis, and a secure investment future. Nevertheless, ethics is considered an important element for a successful professional practitioner. The accounting profession has its internationally known standard principles, and norms. To gain society and client confidence, tax practitioners must have a high level of professional ethics. This paper aims at studying the ethics and regulations of the accountant profession, and their role in limiting the tax practitioner opinion. To achieve the objective of this paper, the descriptive-analytical method will be used because of its suitability for the study topic. The paper will be analyzed as follows.

2. The concept of professional ethics. {Do you intend to set up professional ethics as a concept distinct from professional conduct?}

Yes, I thought, that I should highlight the concept of ethics in general first, due to its core role in guiding the person’s conduct. After that, I will discuss the professional conduct aspect particularly.

2.1. Professional ethics definition.

2.2. Principles of professional conduct.

3. Sources of tax practitioner obligations.

3.1. Who is the tax practitioner?

1. Lawyers.
2. CPA & Others.

3.2.   Social sources of obligations.

1. Promise-Based Ethics Obligations.
2. Personal moral Principle as a basis of ethical obligation. {Do you intend to discuss what a practitioner ought to do when his personal morality calls him to act differently than the professional-conduct rules require?}

No, I believe, every individual has good ethics in his soul. Those good ethics, no matter where they originate or are acquired, would encourage him to act in good conduct and apply the professional- conduct rules. These values and qualities would help him avoid making any decision not alien with the professional-conduct rules. Further, the inner moral will empower the practitioner to stand against any external factors that may negatively affect his decisions.

3.3.   Legal sources of obligations.

1. IRC, regulations.
2. Circular 230.
3. Malpractice standards.
4. Tax opinion.

4.1. The concept of tax opinion.

4.2. Tax opinion practice.

4.3. Liability for tax opinion.

1. Liability to clients.
2. Liability to a Non-client
3. Responsibility to the governmental tax authority

 4.4. The Penalties.

5. Conclusion.

{Your outline so far is quite general, and it’s not clear what research question you intend.  I hope you’ll develop this more.}