21st Century Irs Act

Floor Speech

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Ms. DelBENE. Mr. Speaker, first, I would like to thank our Oversight Subcommittee leaders, Mr. Lewis and Ms. Jenkins, for all of their efforts on the important bills that we have been considering this week.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to visit with constituents of mine who are serving low-income taxpayers in our community through the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program. I am so pleased to see that this important partnership will be made permanent by legislation that we passed yesterday.

I am grateful to my colleague, Mr. Bishop, for his hard work and for working with me on this bill, the 21st Century IRS Act. It is an important bill that enhances needed reforms to enhance cybersecurity and online access for taxpayers, including small-business owners. It is long past time for the IRS to enter the digital age and to give taxpayers a safe, secure, user-friendly online portal to serve their needs.

As a former State Department of Revenue director and a tech industry veteran, I know firsthand that coordination between private sector technology experts and tax administrators at the State and Federal level can produce real results for taxpayers and a better user experience for all stakeholders. We should strive to harness technology to create a more seamless and dependable experience for American families who are becoming increasingly accustomed to conducting their financial business safely online.

Something we saw yesterday is an ongoing challenge for the IRS. By codifying things like the Security Summit and the role of the IRS CIO, this bill should create some continuity in terms of prioritizing technology improvements and improving the taxpayer experience.

I am also glad that we are addressing improvements for small-business owners, like the development of an online portal for 1099 filings. I know small-business owners in my district and across the country are tired of waiting for more user-friendly, web-based systems, and this is a good first step for them. We should be streamlining the filing process so that they can spend less time and money on tax compliance and more on growing their businesses.

While this bill is clearly an incredibly important step forward, I would like to share the comments of a CPA who weighed in on the discussion draft of the legislation as a reminder that this is not the end of our work. He noted that cutting the IRS budget has been steadily cutting the effectiveness of the IRS for many years, and he said: ``We are at a perilous point where honest taxpayers are extremely frustrated. Fix it quick, or it will become too broken to fix.''

After hearing from IRS administrators, taxpayers, and technology experts over the past couple of years, I think we may be in or approaching the red zone of becoming too broken to fix. Just like a pothole that would cost $1,000 to fix today or $10,000 to fix tomorrow, we need to make some smart investments in IRS technology today before they become insurmountably expensive tomorrow.

Around 64 percent of IRS hardware is aged and out of warranty, and 32 percent of software is two or more versions out of date. Systems that the IRS relies on to store taxpayer data are failing, and they have serious concerns that they could break down or fail to withstand a cyber attack.

These are not issues we can let fester any longer. Let's build on the progress we are making here today to get those systems modernized and really get the job done for American taxpayers.

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