This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Monday, April 14, 2014.

I'm Caleb Brown.

The IRS is at war with the little guy, not just taxpayers ill-equipped to handle the complexities of the system,

but the mom and pop tax preparers

who help you navigate the tax code.

Dan Albin is an attorney at the Institute for Justice.

He's representing tax preparers who would be shut

down completely if a new and costly IRS-created licensing regulation is allowed to continue.

We spoke today. So our case challenged an IRS licensing scheme

that would have required all tax return preparers nationwide to get an IRS

license in order to prepare people's tax returns.

The basis for the challenge was that the IRS actually did not have the legal authority

to impose the licensing

licensing regulations, because Congress had never passed a statute authorizing licensing.

We challenged that in the United States District Court in DC.

That court ruled in our favor in January,

and then the IRS appealed and the DC Circuit

Court of Appeals ruled in our favor in our favor just this past February.

Okay so the IRS essentially decided we have the power to do this, notwithstanding no congressional

authorization to do it.

Now this is a licensing regime that would, in your your view achieve what?

Well, I think what it really would have achieved is put a number of independent tax return

...