PTIN ENROLLMENT BY THE NUMBERS:

At a recent meeting with Kimberly Rogers, Director of the Return Preparer Office (RPO), she released the following numbers from the 2023 PTIN renewals:

• The overall number of PTIN applications has increased by 3% for a total of 775,932 PTIN’s.
• Over the 10 years that the Annual Filing Season Program (AFSP) has been available the number of participants has increased 28% to a current total of 78,126. In the last year the number has jumped from 60,871 to 78,126.
• There are approximately 62,000 registered enrolled agents (EA’s), however, the current enrollment cycle is still open so more are still being submitted each week.

For the first time, the Return Preparer Office (RPO) has verified 100% of the continuing education credits for the 2024 EA renewals. In the past the RPO has only audited a sampling of the EA renewals. Of the EA renewals received to date, 24% did not have the CPE that the applicant attested. Some were from non-IRS providers, and others had not been submitted to the PTIN system by the provider. Those who could not produce the CPE certificates to support the number of claimed education credits, were referred to the Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) for further review.

Even though the CPE records are required to be submitted to the PTIN system, the practitioner is still required to maintain a file of the CPE certificates for each year to support the minimum of 16 hours of continuing education and 2 hours of ethics. The practitioner cannot rely on the PTIN system to track their CPE hours.

And finally, the RPO now has a dashboard showing the practitioner’s progress toward the AFSP eligibility when they log into their PTIN account. In order to be eligible for this program the practitioner must take the Annual Federal Tax Review (AFTR) course and pass the accompanying exam for 6 CPE’s, take 2 hours of ethics, and an additional 8 hours of tax law or tax update classes.

The AFTR course is offered live on the Monday preceding each IRS National Tax Forum. In addition, NSTP will also have available an on-demand webinar for the 6-hour course and online exam.

All NSTP education programs are available at the NSTP website