Taxpayer Transparency and Efficient Audit Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

I am pleased to join my colleague from Illinois in the discussion and debate of H.R. 2530, the Taxpayer Transparency and Efficient Audit Act.

Since 2010, the Internal Revenue Service's total budget has declined by 8 percent. This may not sound like much except that the number of individual tax returns has gone up by 11 percent, and the number of business tax returns has gone up by 23 percent. What happens when you combine a larger workload with fewer employees? You get more unanswered mail, more unreturned phone calls, and the closing of taxpayer assistance centers around the country.

I recently had the pleasure of welcoming the new Internal Revenue Service Commissioner, John Koskinen, to the Ways and Means Committee. He painted a very bleak picture of the challenges the agency is facing.

Over the same 4-year period that the Internal Revenue Service's budget has been slashed, the number of phone calls the agency receives has gone up by 40 percent. Over 100 million calls were placed by taxpayers to the Internal Revenue Service last year, and nearly 20 million of those calls went unanswered because the IRS did not have enough employees to answer them.

The Internal Revenue Service's ability to process taxpayer correspondence has taken a similar hit. The IRS tries to respond to taxpayer correspondence within 45 days. During the final week of fiscal year 2013, the IRS was unable to process 53 percent of its letters within the 45-day timeframe, and the open inventory of unanswered letters stood at 1.1 million.

Mr. Speaker, the bill before us requires the Internal Revenue Service to provide written responses to taxpayers within 30 days. That is simply an impossibility given the current funding levels. The Republicans can't have it both ways.

You can't both complain about the IRS' not answering its mail within 30 days and then demand that its budget be cut at the same time.

Of course, the Internal Revenue Service would have more resources to spend on taxpayers if they were not wasting time and money responding to the Republicans' infinite document request. According to the latest letter from the Internal Revenue Service, dated February 7, 2014, over 150 IRS personnel have worked for a total of more than 79,000 hours to respond to ongoing congressional investigations. They have produced more than a half a million pages of documents, have had more than 60 transcribed interviews taken of IRS employees, and have answered questions at 14 congressional hearings.

Enough is enough. It is time for the Internal Revenue Service to get back to its primary mission of administering taxpayer services.

Mr. Speaker, I am also concerned about the provision in the bill that calls for audits to be completed within 1 year. This will create an incentive for criminals to try and delay any audit or investigation by the Internal Revenue Service to try and ``run out the clock'' so that they can avoid their taxes. We would not say that if you can avoid a criminal investigation for 1 year that your crime will be forgiven. So why would we say that for cheating on your taxes? Our constituents expect us to provide a level playing field when it comes to the Tax Code, and the Republicans should not tilt that playing field towards tax cheats in the pursuit of their November preelection strategy.

Finally, Mr. Speaker, I am concerned that all of this legislation designed to hurt the Internal Revenue Service instead places the burden most directly on the elderly, the poor, and the disabled. They are the ones who are most likely to need the services from the Internal Revenue Service that they can no longer find. This is not just a problem for the Internal Revenue Service or for taxpayers but also for this Congress. When our constituents cannot get the help they need and deserve from a Federal agency, they turn to us. It is not just the Commissioner who has called for more resources but also the IRS Oversight Board, the Taxpayer Advocate, and the Treasury inspector general.

I am hopeful that this Congress will listen. These are our constituents who need us.

Mr. Speaker, I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. DANNY K. DAVIS of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I have no further requests for time and am prepared to close. I will end with just two things.

I certainly appreciate the instructions as well as the passion from my colleague from Illinois, and I want every agency of our government to be as efficient as it possibly can and should be.

One of the things that we have learned is that you can't get blood out of a turnip.

You can squeeze it; you can tease it; you can do everything to it that you want to, but it will still end up being blood.

The other thing that I will end with is this month we celebrate African American History Month. I am reminded of something that Frederick Douglass said:

In this world, we may not get everything that we pay for, but we most certainly must pay for everything that we get.

I maintain that we must have the adequate resources that are needed for employees to do their jobs in a timely and efficient manner. And so I appreciate the comments of my colleague. I appreciate his passion.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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