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Washington, D.C.—President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today expressed both her disappointment and her anger at prospective action by the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee that “actually would make worse” an unfair law targeting employees of the Internal Revenue Service. NTEU represents some 97,000 IRS employees.

Kelley said the Ways and Means Committee appears set to act on legislation entitled the “Taxpayer Protection and IRS Accountability Act of2002” that would not only retain the mandatory employment termination provisions of Section 1203(b) of the 1998 IRS Restructuring Act, known as the ‘10 Deadly Sins,’ but would, in effect, “add an 11th Deadly Sin.”

Since passage of the restructuring act, NTEU has been aggressively pursuing repeal or modification of Section 1203(b), providing extensive evidence that the unduly harsh penalty provisions are having a detrimental impact not only on employee morale, but on revenue collections as well. There are no similar provisions affecting any other federal, judicial or congressional employees.

In its proposed 2003 budget, the administration included a request to Congress to modify the law to allow for penalties other than termination of employment in appropriate cases.

The administration also said it supports a request from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) to remove from the list of Section 1203(b) violations allegations of wrongful conduct by an IRS employee against another IRS employees. It said these types of allegations can be addressed by existing statutory and administrative procedures.

President Kelley said it appears the Republican majority on the Ways and Means Committee intends to drop the refund return and employee vs. employee provisions from the list of 1203(b) violations, but add to the list the unauthorized browsing of tax returns while at the same time keeping the mandatory termination provision without change.

“Instead of improving this section,” the NTEU leader said, this

action “would essentially just add an 11th ‘Deadly Sin.’”

She said that President Bush, Treasury Secretary O’Neill, IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti, the members of the public-private IRS Oversight Board and NTEU all “have agreed on what changes would make Section 1203(b) fairer, and those changes were incorporated” into the administration’s budget proposal.

“Fundamental fairness dictates that we modify Section 1203(b) in ways that make sense for IRS employees, for the agency and for taxpayers,” President Kelley said. “The proposed action by the House Ways and Means Committee takes all of us in the wrong direction on this issue.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 25 agencies and departments.