Written Tax Advice Standards

Categories: Ethics, IRS CE
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About Course

This self-study ethics program provides an in-depth examination of the written tax advice standard set forth in Treasury Department Circular 230, Section 10.37, and its application throughout tax practice. The course addresses what constitutes written advice subject to the standard, the prohibition against basing advice on unreasonable factual or legal assumptions, the prohibition against considering the likelihood that a return will be audited, the reasonable-reliance standard governing taxpayer representations, the treatment of multiple related transactions, the standards for relying on the written advice of another person, and the practical systems a tax practice should maintain to produce compliant written advice consistently.

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What Will You Learn?

  • Identify the scope of Circular 230 §10.37 and what constitutes written advice subject to the standard
  • Apply the prohibition against basing written advice on unreasonable factual or legal assumptions
  • Recognize the prohibition against taking into account the likelihood that a return will be audited
  • Apply the reasonable-reliance standard governing a practitioner's use of taxpayer representations, statements, findings, and agreements
  • Apply the reasonable-efforts standard for identifying and ascertaining relevant facts
  • Evaluate multiple related transactions under an integrated-transaction analysis
  • Apply the standards governing a practitioner's reliance on written advice from another person
  • Design and apply a practical written-advice compliance process consistent with §§10.35–10.37

Course Content

Module 1 – Understanding the Written Advice Standard Under Circular 230 §10.37

  • Understanding the Written Advice Standard Under Circular 230 §10.37

Module 2 – Factual and Legal Assumptions, Reliance, and the Audit-Lottery Prohibition

Module 3 – Reasonable Efforts, Reliance on Other Persons, and Practice Scenarios
Modules 1 and 2 established what §10.37 prohibits and what it affirmatively requires of a practitioner's assumptions and reliance. This module turns to two further elements of the same overall standard: the duty to actively seek out relevant facts before giving advice, and the specific standard governing reliance on advice already given by another person. It closes with a practical look at how these standards apply across the range of documents a tax practice actually produces.

Module 4 – Compliance Systems, Related Duties, and Disciplinary Exposure
The first three modules of this course examined the individual elements of the §10.37 written advice standard: what counts as written advice, the prohibited bases for it, the reasonable-efforts and reliance standards, and reliance on another person's advice. This module turns to how a practice puts those elements into a working system, how §10.37 relates to the neighboring duties of competence and firm-wide compliance procedures, and what exposure actually follows from a violation.

Final Assessment – Written Tax Advice Standards
This final assessment consists of 10 multiple-choice questions covering all four modules of this course. A passing score of 70% or better is required.

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