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Washington, D.C.—There is great irony, said the leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), over the uproar in Congress about the loss of taxpayer privacy that would result from a provision in the omnibus funding bill to expand access to the tax returns of the nation’s taxpayers.

The fact is, said NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley, this is the same bill that dropped language, passed by the House, that would have prohibited the Internal Revenue Service from handing over the tax returns of 2.6 million Americans to private sector debt collectors, putting personal tax information at serious risk.

The omnibus bill has been held up while Congress works to repeal the provision before sending the funding measure to the president for his signature.

The apparently anonymous provision was inserted in the fiscal 2005 Omnibus Appropriations bill and would extend to the staffs of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees the right to examine tax returns. This right is currently available solely to congressional tax-writing committees.

“Congress is correct to question the expansion of the right to examine private tax returns,” said President Kelley. “It’s a shame that Congress and the administration didn’t ask similar questions

before dropping a provision in the omnibus bill that would have prevented turning over millions of tax returns containing sensitive and personal information to the private sector.”

NTEU led the fight against IRS and administration efforts to privatize tax debt collection by hiring private companies and paying them a bounty of up to 25 percent of the money they collect. The program was approved in an unrelated corporate tax bill.

NTEU warned—as did some members of Congress—of the dangers of putting sensitive and personal tax information in the hands of private sector debt collection companies.

Prior to the election recess, the full House approved an amendment to the Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill that would have prevented the agency from using any funds to contract out the collection of tax debts.

The amendment’s sponsor, Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV), warned the privacy issues and potential for harm inherent in such a program should be cause for alarm. In supporting efforts such as that by Rep. Capito and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who has actively opposed tax debt privatization, President Kelley has pointed to the IRS’s inability to manage effectively its contractors.

That was clearly shown when privatization of tax collection was tried by the IRS in 1996; a pilot program showed such poor results—including abuses of taxpayers by debt collectors—that a planned follow-up the next year was cancelled.

The NTEU leader also emphasized that the IRS itself has said that a modest increase in its enforcement resources would allow agency employees to collect nearly 10 times as much as private debt collectors.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 30 agencies and departments, including some 98,000 in the IRS.