If you’ve spent time recently with your federal income tax return, you might appreciate Steve Forbes‘ recent editorial comment in the latest issue of Forbes:

Last year—on no authority from Congress—the IRS decreed that all tax preparers must register with it. Unless you are a certified public accountant, lawyer or “enrolled agent” you are going to be required to take an exam and undergo a minimum of 15 hours of continuing education each year.

Our tax collectors say this is to ­protect consumers from shoddily prepared tax returns. That’s a bit of a hoot, given that the IRS itself routinely gives taxpayers incorrect or incomplete information when they call the service’s hotline. There has indeed been a leap in the fraudulent filing of false claims for the earned-income tax credit, whereby low-income workers are receiving refunds that exceed their tax liabilities. Tax fraud is already ­illegal. Licensing won’t cure this wrongdoing; vigorous enforcement of existing law will.

Besides, the problem is not so much shoddy work as it is that the federal ­income tax code is utterly incomprehensible.