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Washington, D.C.—A House of Representatives resolution, carrying the support of 82 original co-sponsors, has been introduced urging Congress to express its opposition to private sector companies being paid a commission of up to 25 percent of tax debts they collect.

“Paying private debt collectors on a commission basis will be costly, and will threaten the rights and privacy of American taxpayers,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), author of the resolution. “American taxpayers need to know that their government works for them, not against them.”

President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), who has been leading the fight against the tax collection privatization proposal, applauded the Van Hollen resolution, and urged Congress to adopt it.

“Privatizing tax collection is a proven bad idea,” President Kelley said. “A pilot program not only failed miserably in 1996, it resulted in private contractors neither observing the requirements of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act nor protecting the security of sensitive taxpayer information,” she said. “We should not repeat our mistakes—and we certainly should not expand on them.”

Only a week ago, NTEU joined with five major consumer groups in supporting the intent of Van Hollen to introduce such a resolution, and in calling for its passage.

The sense-of-Congress resolution notes that the administration’s efforts to privatize tax debt collection services flies in the face of the 1998 Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act (RRA). That law specifically prevents IRS employees and managers from being evaluated on the basis of the amount of money they collect.

It was intended to eliminate incentives to use overly aggressive collection techniques—a problem that almost certainly will arise if tax collections are in the hands of private companies.

The collection industry is widely-known for its aggressive tactics; in fact, it was the most complained-about industry in 2002, with consumers filing more than 25,000 complaints against it with the Federal Trade Commission.

With that kind of record, “it makes no sense” for this administration to want to pay private companies ten times as much as IRS employees to collect the same amount, President Kelley said.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments, including more than 97,000 in the IRS.