Three credentials hold full practice rights before the IRS - attorneys, CPAs, and enrolled agents - and the IRS treats them identically on the power of attorney form. The differences that matter live elsewhere: privilege, litigation, and lane. Here is the comparison without the marketing.
The Privilege Difference
What you tell an attorney is protected by attorney-client privilege - in civil matters and criminal ones alike. Accountant-client communications enjoy a much narrower federal protection that evaporates exactly where it matters most: criminal investigations. If your facts include anything you would hesitate to say to a government agent - unfiled years, cash income, offshore accounts, amended stories - the conversation belongs with an attorney first, and the attorney can engage the accountant afterward under privilege. This single structural difference decides more professional-choice questions than everything else combined.
The Litigation Difference
Only attorneys litigate. The Tax Court petition that prices every settlement negotiation, the refund suit, the trust fund case in district court - attorney territory. Even when no case ever gets filed, the credible ability to file one changes how Appeals and Chief Counsel price your dispute, which is why serious controversies tilt toward counsel even when the work looks administrative.
The Lane Difference - and the Honest Matching Rule
CPAs are accounting professionals first: returns, books, complex financial reconstruction, business accounting - indispensable in their lane, and the best controversy teams pair them with counsel. Enrolled agents are IRS-credentialed representation practitioners, often economical and capable at the routine tiers: standard agreements, ordinary audits, garden-variety collection. The matching rule: sensitive facts or high stakes point to an attorney; complex accounting points to a CPA; straightforward representation can suit an EA. And one warning that outranks all credentials: the national relief firms advertising hardest often staff your case with none of the above until the contract is signed. How to check is its own page in this guide.