Barcode Automation for Revenue Collection to Organize Disbursement and Enhance Efficiency Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SMITH of Missouri. Mr. Speaker, I move to suspend the rules and pass the bill (H.R. 6956) to require electronically prepared tax returns to include scannable code when submitted on paper, and to require the use of optical character recognition technology for paper documents received by the Internal Revenue Service, as amended.

The Clerk read the title of the bill.

The text of the bill is as follows: H.R. 6956

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ``Barcode Automation for Revenue Collection to Organize Disbursement and Enhance Efficiency Act'' or the ``BARCODE Efficiency Act''. SEC. 2. SCANNING AND DIGITIZATION OF TAX RETURNS AND CORRESPONDENCE.

(a) Returns Prepared Electronically and Submitted on Paper.--With respect to any Federal tax return which is prepared electronically, but is printed and filed on paper--

(1) such return shall be formatted in a manner that is compatible with the scanning technology referred to in paragraph (2), and

(2) subject to subsection (b)(1)(B), the Internal Revenue Service shall use scanning technology to convert the data included in such return to electronic format.

(b) Optical Character Recognition Software.--With respect to--

(1) any Federal tax return which--

(A) is not prepared electronically and is printed and filed on paper, or

(B) is described in subsection (a)(1) but, for any reason, the data included in such return cannot be accurately converted into electronic format, or

(2) any correspondence which is received by the Internal Revenue Service in a paper form (with the exception of any such correspondence which has been received by the Internal Revenue Service in electronic format), the Internal Revenue Service shall use optical character recognition technology (or any functionally similar technology) to transcribe such return or correspondence.

(c) Exception.--

(1) In general.--Subsection (a) or (b) shall not apply to the extent that the Secretary of the Treasury or the Secretary's delegate determines that the technology described in such subsection is slower or less reliable than--

(A) the process of manually transcribing returns or correspondence received in a paper form, or

(B) any other process that the Internal Revenue Service is using or would otherwise use.

(2) Report to congress.--Any exception to the application of subsection (a) or (b) pursuant to paragraph (1) shall not take effect unless the Secretary provides a report to the Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Finance of the Senate regarding the determination made under such paragraph within 30 days of such determination.

(d) Effective Date.--This section shall apply to--

(1) any individual income tax return (as defined in section 6011(e)(3)(C) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986) received on or after January 1 of the first calendar year beginning more than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act,

(2) any estate tax return (as described in section 6018 of such Code) or gift tax return (as described in section 6019 of such Code) received on or after January 1 of the first calendar year beginning more than 24 months after the date of enactment of this Act, and

(3) any other return or correspondence received on or after January 1 of the first calendar year beginning more than 18 months after the date of enactment of this Act.

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 6956, the Barcode Automation for Revenue Collection to Organize Disbursement and Enhance Efficiency Act, also known as the BARCODE Efficiency Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation introduced by Representatives Rudy Yakym and Brad Schneider.

Many government agencies have had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the 21st century. The IRS is no exception. However, in the case of the BARCODE Efficiency Act, all we are really asking the IRS to do is to adopt technology that has been around for decades.

By requiring the IRS to deploy scanning technology for certain returns and correspondence, this bill will streamline the tax filing process for millions of Americans and go a long way to improving accuracy over the previous method of manually entering data from paper tax returns.

This most recent tax filing season, where Americans saw a historic 11 percent increase in refunds, with the average refund of over $3,200, has just concluded. Had this legislation been in law already, Americans would have gotten back what they were owed even faster.

As a key leader on the Ways and Means Committee's oversight efforts, Representative Yakym has been a strong advocate for improving customer service at the IRS and battling to save taxpayers time and money.

Many Americans have had to endure frustration and anxiety at the hands of the IRS bureaucracy when it comes to filing or waiting on their tax returns to be processed. Anything we can do to make this process more efficient and user-friendly for the American taxpayer is well worth our time.

If we are reforming our tax code to provide more relief to working families, we should be modernizing our tax agency to get that relief to them as soon as possible.

I encourage my colleagues to support this legislation, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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