“The bills before us today are not a serious exercise in oversight of the IRS. Republicans on the Committee are using Tax Day - April 18th - as an opportunity to make further cuts to an agency that has already had its budget cut by around $1 billion over the last five years.
“During that time, the IRS was forced to cut 12,000 full-time jobs, according to the GAO. It reduced employee training, and it delayed overdue upgrades to information technology. Audits last year reached the lowest level in a decade, with less than 1% of taxpayers being audited. Those cuts also resulted in terrible customer service and long wait times for hardworking taxpayers - as you see in this chart. That’s unacceptable.
“In a letter to Senators in November, seven former IRS commissioners wrote that, “Over the last fifty years, none of us has ever witnessed anything like what has happened to the IRS appropriations over the last five years and the impact these appropriations reductions are having on our tax system."
“This year, as the chart shows, customer service at the IRS is expected to improve slightly due to the additional $290 million in funding included in last year’s omnibus, specifically for improvements in customer service. But that is still not enough.
“Instead of increasing the IRS’s funding to levels needed to strengthen data security, enhance identity theft prevention, increase enforcement, and improve taxpayer services, the Republicans are introducing a bill that essentially cuts the IRS budget by $500 million.
“Another bill gives the IRS a power that it already has - to terminate employees who are delinquent on their taxes - even though employees of the Treasury Department have the lowest rates of tax delinquency in the entire federal government, lower than employees of the House, and significantly lower than the general public.
“If Republicans are really concerned about customer service and about the IRS doing its job effectively and efficiently, they should put forward a budget that restores the agency’s full funding."
