National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act of 2025

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 997, the National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act. I am pleased to lead this bill with my colleague, Representative Feenstra from Iowa.

The National Taxpayer Advocate is the independent advocate working to assist taxpayers. I am deeply grateful to her and her team for their outstanding work to identify tax policy improvements, to help taxpayers at large, and for their work to help individual taxpayers when they need assistance with a specific problem.

The bill makes a small but important statutory clarification that the National Taxpayer Advocate may appoint and supervise her own legal counsel, rather than only using attorneys that report to the IRS chief counsel.

Being able to appoint independent counsel is an essential step to preserving the independence of the National Taxpayer Advocate Office, as required under section 7803(c) of the Internal Revenue Code.

Given her independent role, the National Taxpayer Advocate often takes positions contrary to the positions of the IRS and the Office of Chief Counsel. As a result, the National Taxpayer Advocate needs her own independent counsel to advise and adopt legal positions so that she can effectively advocate for taxpayers and to advise Congress.

Mr. Speaker, I am pleased that the committee is marking up the National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act today to protect the independence of the National Taxpayer Advocate, and I hope that this bipartisan effort will extend to dealing with the threat of data privacy that the Treasury and Internal Revenue Service currently are experiencing.

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Mr. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, H.R. 997 is a commonsense, bipartisan piece of legislation and is the product of a recommendation made by the Taxpayer Advocate. Therefore, Mr. Speaker, I urge its passage, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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