|
Federal News Radio
Don't blame the
IRS for reduced services this year, says NTEU president
Friday - 1/9/2015
By Jory Heckman
The Internal Revenue Service is in a position few would envy. As it
prepares for a new tax filing season that begins on Jan. 20, it must do
so with a budget reduced by 10 percent since fiscal year 2010 and a
slashed workforce, while also shouldering new responsibilities under
the Affordable Care Act.
Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union,
says with fewer employees to answer phones at the IRS, she understands
taxpayers' frustrations about filing questions going unanswered, but
adds that the agency isn't any happier with its marching orders from
Congress and the White House.
"If you were on hold for half an hour, you can imagine the kind of
reception some taxpayers might be delivering to those IRS employees,
and they deal with that everyday. And they understand, they say, 'We're
really sorry it took so long, we're doing the best we can do to help
you today.' But a lot of them are speaking in very high pitches, the
taxpayers, and they're very angry," Kelley said on Your Turn with Mike
Causey.
Congress in December approved a $10.9 billion budget for the IRS in
fiscal year 2015 — $1.2 billion short of what it was in 2010 — leaving
a $346 million cut that the agency must absorb during the remaining
nine months of the year. In addition, the agency has 13,000 fewer
employees than it did in fiscal 2010.
In an interview on In Depth with Francis Rose, IRS commissioner John
Koskinen said the agency has no choice but to reduce its level of
service to 50 percent for the remainer of FY 2015 — meaning one in
every two callers to the IRS will not get through to a live operator to
answer their tax questions, what Koskinen called "a miserable level of
service."
"This is not just money that's about the IRS," Kelley said. "The IRS
collects 93 percent of the revenue that funds the entire federal
government. So when Congress does not fund the IRS to bring in the
revenue, then every other agency who is dependent on appropriated funds
from Congress suffers from that because the revenue is not there for
them."
Limiting the IRS' budget, Kelley said, limits its ability to collect
revenue from taxpayers. Cutting budgets may save money in the
short-term, she said, but the government will lose more money doing so
in the long-term.
"The enforcement at the IRS is documented to bring in $7 for every $1
invested in them — and that's a number that comes from the IRS, comes
from Department of Treasury, has been documented by GAO. I mean, this
is not just a number that someone has come up with," Kelley said. "So
it's really a loss not just for the IRS but for the country to not
invest in the IRS and give them the revenue to hire those enforcement
personnel so they can keep that money coming in...
Read the rest of the article at Federal News Radio
|
|
|
|
