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Washington, D.C.—A new report by Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA), which demonstrates a significant difference between actual and projected staffing levels at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), underscores the need for the IRS to adopt a much more aggressive strategy in requesting and securing funding to replace its decimated workforce and keep pace with the pending retirement wave, the leader of the union representing IRS employees said today.

“The TIGTA report shows the critical importance of accurately projecting attrition and other losses, and requesting sufficient resources in the budget process to ensure adequate staffing,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU). The IRS’s five-year strategic plan covering workforce needs in the period ending with fiscal 2009 has proven woefully inaccurate, according to the TIGTA report.

The NTEU leader pointed to TIGTA figures that sharply underscore the problem: the agency’s five-year staffing forecast projected a fiscal 2006 workforce of 97,284; the actual total for that year was 90,115. At the same time, the forecast projected a fiscal 2007 total of 97,647—but the total was far short of that, with a workforce of only 86,638.

“Not being able to adequately project the size of your own workforce limits the ability of the IRS to accurately meet the goals set for the agency by Congress and the American public. A smaller-than-expected workforce coupled with an impending retirement wave could spell trouble for the IRS and indicates the importance of proper workforce planning,” President Kelley said.

With a workload that is growing in both absolute terms and complexity it is essential for the IRS to ask Congress for adequate resources to restore its depleted workforce, Kelley said.

Staffing at the IRS has declined dramatically over the last 15 years while the workload has increased exponentially. Between 1995 and 2007, total numbers of employees shrunk from 114,064 to 86,638. Even more alarming is that during that period, revenue officers and revenue agents – two groups critical to reducing the tax gap–shrunk by 33 and 20 percent respectively.

NTEU has been addressing this issue for some time, calling for a gradual increase in the IRS workforce to its pre-1996 level; that, Kelley said, could be accomplished by a 3 percent annual net increase in staffing—providing roughly 2,600 positions per year—over a five-year period.

For this small financial commitment, the IRS and the nation would reap a large benefit, President Kelley said, in terms of increasing revenues, enhancing taxpayer compliance and shrinking the multi-billion-dollar gap between taxes owed and those paid.

“It takes time and careful management to hire, train and deploy qualified professional staff,” she said, “making consistent, but modest annual increases necessary if the IRS is to be able to meet its growing responsibilities in the years ahead.”

The current and projected impact of this multi-faceted issue is the subject of discussion between NTEU and the agency. “I am working with the new commissioner on workforce planning issues,” Kelley said, adding that “we share a common concern about the impact of the workforce on the agency, its employees and the taxpayers.”

The NTEU leader noted that one of the most direct ways to address the issue is by increasing retention of current employees. “Just because an employee becomes eligible to retire,” she said, “does not have to mean he or she must leave the IRS. It is important for a number of reasons, not the least of which is improving retention rates and taking advantage of years of experience, that employees be treated fairly in matters such as pay, promotions, scheduling and the like.”