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Washington, D.C.—An independent report from a major university showing a sharp decline in tax enforcement actions by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) “clearly underscores the pressing need” for additional resources for this critical agency, the leader of the union representing some 98,000 IRS employees said today.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said data from the Syracuse University report showing that enforcement actions have fallen by at least half through the latter half of the 1990s “should alarm not just every member of Congress, but every American taxpayer who complies with his or her tax obligation.”

Kelley said the findings in the report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) at Syracuse establish a direct link between staffing shortages and inadequate resources and a decline in the ability of IRS employees to adequately administer and enforce the nation’s tax laws.

In recent testimony before the nine-member public-private IRS Oversight Board, Kelley said that “without a commitment to adequate funding, the IRS will be forced to shuffle resources from one account to another, with the end result being a less responsive IRS.”

The Oversight Board was created by the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act [RRA], and is charged with overseeing critical aspects of the IRS, including long-term planning.

Just last week, IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti told Congress the agency is in need of additional funding for critical personnel needs, including hiring and additional training on increasingly complex tax laws.

“We cannot talk about a modernized, efficient IRS without sufficient resources, both immediately and over the long-term,” Kelley said. “Failure to provide this agency with adequate funding fuels a self-defeating cycle for the nation, not only reducing the ability of the IRS to collect the proper amount of revenue, but discouraging full compliance with our tax laws,” she added.

The NTEU president also reemphasized the importance of repeal, or substantial modification, of Section 1203[b] of RRA, which mandates termination of IRS employment for violation of 10 specified offenses. This section of the law, she said, “not only unfairly holds IRS employees to a different standard than any other taxpayer, it is having a negative effect on collections and morale” at the agency.

TRAC is a Syracuse University-based clearinghouse that gathers data on the operations of a variety of federal agencies. Its finding were reported in today’s New York Times and other media outlets.

As the nation’s largest independent federal union, NTEU represents some 150,000 federal employees in 25 agencies and departments.