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Washington, D.C. — As it did a year ago, an independent federal advisory body closely attuned to the views of the nation’s taxpayers has called—in unambiguous and forceful language—for an end to an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) program of using private sector debt collectors to pursue tax payments.

“The IRS should abandon all plans to outsource any tax collection work and restrict collection activities to properly-trained and proficient IRS personnel,” the Taxpayer Advocacy Panel (TAP) said in its 2006 annual report.

TAP, which has some 100 volunteer members across the country appointed by the Treasury Secretary, was established under federal law in 2002 as a way of providing direct taxpayer input to the IRS in hopes of improving agency responsiveness to taxpayer concerns on a variety of subjects. Its report contains 58 recommendations.

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), who has been leading the fight against the IRS’s use of private tax debt collectors, applauded TAP’s call for an end to the program.

“Multiple knowledgeable voices, including those from bipartisan members of Congress and from both within and outside the IRS, have reached the same conclusion as TAP,” the NTEU leader said.

In particular, she pointed to the warning in the TAP report that the IRS privatization program is being undertaken “at a time when taxpayers are greatly concerned about identity theft, loss of jobs to outsourcing (especially to foreign countries), and the performance irregularities and ethics of government contractors.”

“Any of these is a sufficient reason to end the program,” President Kelley said. “Taken together, these issues and others that have been raised—including the fact that using IRS employees for this work is more cost-effective for taxpayers—simply overwhelm any argument against continuing this program, much less expanding it as the IRS has proposed.”

NTEU, she said, will continue its legislative efforts to halt the program. Recently, the House Ways and Means Committee approved the Tax Collection Responsibility Act of 2007, which would repeal the IRS’s authority to hire private collectors. Additionally, the Senate Appropriations Committee has passed legislation limiting IRS funding for the initiative.

The TAP report called debt collection “a core function” of the IRS, and urged that “appropriate staffing should be assigned to this function to achieve collection activities.” Kelley has been sharply critical of the IRS’s consistent failure to seek sufficient resources.

Separately, a lengthy analysis in Tax Notes, a specialized publication devoted to tax matters, concluded that the IRS program is fundamentally flawed—including the likelihood that taxpayers will face abusive tactics from private collectors. The analysis also called for sufficient IRS funding so that the agency can collect taxes directly without the use of private tax debt collectors.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.