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Washington, D.C.—The head of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) reiterated today that allowing private collection agencies (PCAs) to collect unpaid tax debts will waste taxpayer dollars and spark widespread taxpayer abuse.

NTEU National President Tony Reardon urged Congress to recognize that turning to PCAs will not generate revenue to pay for highway programs over the long haul.

“As we learned from the last two times this was tried and scrapped, using PCAs will not raise revenue and will unleash an unpopular industry on low-income taxpayers who owe the IRS because they can’t afford to pay their taxes,” the NTEU leader said. “The third time will not be the charm. Congress should learn from the failed experiments of the 1990s and 2000s and give up this terrible idea.”

In a Nov. 12 letter to House and Senate members who are writing the final version of a highway bill, Reardon urged them to drop the PCA provision from their list of “offsets,” to pay for road, bridge and transit programs.

Talk of reviving PCAs comes as the Federal Trade Commission launches a nationwide crackdown on debt collectors. The effort involves 30 law enforcement actions by federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities, including a major effort by the New York attorney general, to go after collectors who use illegal tactics such as harassing phone calls and false threats of litigation, arrest and wage garnishment.

Congress should focus on giving the IRS the resources it needs to beef up its debt-collection program, President Reardon said.

“IRS employees have a variety of tools at their disposal with which they can help delinquent taxpayers meet their tax obligations,” he wrote in the letter.

IRS employees have the legal authority to do things PCAs can’t, such as postponing or suspending debt collection for some time, setting up flexible payment arrangements and waiving late-payment penalties, Reardon noted.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson told the Senate Finance Committee last year that nearly 80 percent of the cases PCAs handle will involve low-income taxpayers who lack the resources to settle their tax debts. Civil-rights groups such as the NAACP and the National Council of La Raza and consumer-advocacy organizations including the National Consumer Law Center also oppose the PCA provision.

The potential revival of the PCA program coincides with an explosion in telephone tax scams in which taxpayers are falsely threatened with arrest, deportation or suspension of business or driver’s licenses if they don’t pay up. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has testified before Congress that IRS-impersonation telephone scams are a growing and serious problem. With debt collectors calling taxpayers, there is an increasing likelihood that such scams will proliferate.

NTEU, the nation’s largest independent federal-employee union, represents 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.