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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) today reacted sharply to the inclusion of a provision to allow the use of private collection agencies to collect individual tax debts in a corporate tax cut bill.

NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said inclusion in a major corporate tax bill of language permitting the use of private collection companies to pursue tax debts against individual taxpayers “is the latest, and probably most inappropriate, hiding place” for the controversial provision.

“Under this proposal, corporations will get huge tax rollbacks, while middle class taxpayers will just get rolled,” Kelley said.

The tax debt collection language is included in a massive $190 billion corporate tax cut bill, H.R. 2896, introduced by House Ways and Means Committee Chairman William Thomas last Friday.

The provision hidden inside this bill would affect primarily individual middle class U.S. taxpayers by turning private collection companies loose on them, President Kelley said.

NTEU has been part of a broad-based coalition opposing the proposal that would permit private collection agencies to pursue tax debts and be paid a commission of up to 25 percent of what they collect. It has generated considerable opposition, including all the major consumer groups.

“While taxpayers should clearly pay what they owe,” President Kelley said, “it is wrong for tax collectors to have a personal financial stake in how much they collect. Such a system will lead to abuses.”

President Kelley warned that a 1996 pilot project allowing private companies to collect tax debts was a dismal failure, netting zero collections, compromising the security of sensitive taxpayer information and violating the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act.

Moreover, the union leader said, Internal Revenue Service employees generate considerably more tax revenue at far lower cost than private sector collection agencies.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing over 150,000 employees in 29 agencies and departments.