Circular 230 and AI for Tax Professionals

Circular 230 is codified at 31 CFR Part 10. It governs attorneys, certified public accountants, enrolled agents and others who practice before the IRS. The Office of Professional Responsibility enforces it. It does not mention artificial intelligence, but several sections map directly onto AI use. Section 10.22 requires due diligence in preparing and filing returns and in determining the accuracy of representations to the IRS and to clients. It allows a practitioner to rely on others' work product only if they used reasonable care in engaging, supervising, training and evaluating that source. Section 10.35 requires competence: the knowledge, skill, thoroughness and preparation needed for the matter. A practitioner who can't evaluate what an AI tool produced does not meet that standard. Section 10.37 sets standards for written advice. It must rest on reasonable factual and legal assumptions, consider all relevant facts the practitioner knows or should know, relate the law to those facts, and not take into account the chance that a return won't be audited. An AI draft that assumes facts or cites nonexistent authority fails this test unless someone catches it. Section 10.34 sets standards for positions taken on returns. Confidentiality comes from outside Circular 230. Internal Revenue Code sections 7216 and 6713 penalize preparers for unauthorized disclosure or use of tax return information. The FTC Safeguards Rule requires many tax preparers to maintain a written information security plan. Sending client data to an AI vendor raises questions under all of these. There are two misconceptions. The first is that citing an AI tool shifts responsibility; it does not. The second is that Circular 230 covers every preparer. After the Supreme Court's Loving v. IRS decision in 2014, the IRS's authority over unenrolled return preparers' preparation work is limited, although other preparer penalties still apply.