The latest Census Bureau numbers put certified-public-accountant revenues from tax preparation and representation at $21.5 billion. That means CPAs earn $158 on average for every tax return in the entire nation, as of 2012.

However, that is just tip of the compliance iceberg.

More than half of all taxpayers hire professional help, at a cost of approximately $300 for the most basic 1040 form. Further, 60 percent of paid tax preparers are not CPAs and not recorded by the Census Bureau, which means the revenue flowing to preparers could well be in excess of $40 billion.

No one really knows the total, since much of it is unreported. Regardless, such has become the need for help complying with the Internal Revenue Service that a lucrative cartel is taking shape, with ever tighter screws on the market.

In particular, two regulatory factors benefit professional, cartelized tax preparers: (1) ever-changing and rising complexity of the tax code, necessitating full-time and ongoing observance, and (2) rising barriers to entry that keep out non-member, part-time, or informal service providers.

The first goes without saying to anyone who has filed taxes in the United States, and don’t expect the Internal Revenue Service to explain it to you. The maze is never-ending and constantly changing, and the code now exceeds 70,000 pages, up from approximately 15,000 in 1970, as reported by the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.

Part of this growth stems from the nanny-state desire for taxation to be a “policy tool,” with legislators and regulators using the tax code to push and pull constituents in countless directions. Examples include sin taxes on alcohol and tobacco, mortgage deductions, marriage bonuses, and perhaps most notoriously, the penalty for non-participation in the Affordable Care Act medical-insurance mandate.

Whether such strategies have good intentions or not, they attract and reward lobbies with privileged positions and exemptions. The secondary or unseen effects are that these lobbies become dependent and grow entitled, and also that compliance and enforcement become more onerous and expensive. The medical-insurance mandate, for example, has left constituents and employers confused and falling out of compliance over extra paperwork, while the IRS hasn’t known how to verify and enforce said compliance.

Unfortunately, this complicated approach of unequal or discriminatory tax imposition has grown via “concentrated benefits and dispersed costs,” as described by political economists. Those receiving the privileges are relatively targeted and organized, while the rest of us are larger in number but facing a dispersed impact. That is why, even with the prevalent professional help, individuals still need an average of eight hours to file their tax returns with the IRS. That comes to a total of 1.35 billion hours in 2012, but constituents are at a loss as to what to do about it.

The second regulatory factor is a form of protectionism, which limits the supply of tax preparers and raises the prices they can command, and it has been creeping under the radar. Since the 1990s, all tax preparers have had the option to register with the IRS for a special identification number (PTIN), and from 2011, this has been mandatory.

At the same time, the IRS created a licensing program for “registered tax return preparers,” which included testing, an additional fee, and an annual education requirement. From 2014, only these individuals were to have authority to handle tax returns for other people, but CPAs were exempt from these requirements. However, in 2013, a federal court struck down the licensing program as lacking legislative approval, after a legal challenge from the nonprofit law firm Institute for Justice.

One might think that would be the end of the matter, and that the IRS would heed the call and drop at the very least the licensing element. Not quite, and states have plowed ahead with their own licensing requirements.

IRS officials have continued with the program but merely made it “voluntary,” just as the income tax itself is “voluntary” in the IRS’s twisted vernacular. On their website, they say that one need not be licensed, but one must still pay the fee and register for the PTIN. Further, without the license, you may oversee a return, but unless you are a CPA or an attorney you have zero authority to represent clients before the IRS.

Predictably, CPAs and large tax-preparation firms, such as H&R Block, support legislative backing for universal and enforced licensing, since it will further boost their economic standing. The familiar cry is that preparers make mistakes, as affirmed by the Government Accountability Office, but how can they not with 70,000 pages to follow? Who can even say what is a correct return when the options and deductions are endless?

A lack of licensing is not the problem; the complexity of the code is. On the other hand, so long as the complexity of the code grows, so too will the need for tax preparers, as well as their artificial value. Unless that is reversed, cartelized preparers will successfully lobby for more industry protectionism, and Americans will have to fork over more money to pay their taxes.