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Washington, D.C.—The head of the union representing Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees today welcomed legislation introduced by Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) that would help retain, either in the IRS or elsewhere in the federal government, a number of skilled, experienced and dedicated attorneys who otherwise likely would have to leave federal service.

“While we have made clear our disagreement with the IRS plan to cut by half its number of estate and gift tax attorneys,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), “the Kennedy bill would provide win-win circumstances for both the employees and the government.”

Under the proposed legislation, IRS estate and gift tax attorneys would be granted ‘competitive service’ status, thus allowing them to transfer to other open positions in the federal government for which they are qualified.

A grant of competitive status “would ensure a soft landing” for employees impacted by the proposed IRS cuts and would make available to both the IRS and other agencies “very talented individuals who bring a wealth of experience to the IRS and are real assets to the federal government,” President Kelley said.

IRS estate and gift tax attorneys presently are in the ‘excepted service,’ and thus not covered by regular civil service hiring procedures. That means they are not eligible to be transferred non-competitively to other competitive service jobs, even within the IRS. If their positions are eliminated, they would be treated as outside job seekers when trying for other federal positions, despite their extensive experience and value to the government.

In late July, the IRS said it planned to cut, by the Sept. 30 end of the fiscal year, the number of its estate and gift attorneys from 345 to 157. President Kelley was sharply critical of what she described as “this drastic course of action,” particularly in light of IRS data showing that estate and gift

tax lawyers are the most productive enforcement personnel at the IRS—collecting $2,200 in additional taxes for each hour of work.

In addition to focusing on the detrimental impact of such a cut on much-needed efforts to rein in the growing, $345 billion gap between taxes owed and taxes paid, President Kelley was angered by the proposed timetable. She said it is “unfair in the extreme” to ask these employees to make potential life-changing decisions regarding their jobs in such a short time frame.

Along with NTEU’s concerns, a number of members of Congress expressed serious reservations about the plan. These include Rep. John Olver (D-Mass.), who said in a letter to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson that “this sudden and substantial personnel reduction…will cripple the ability of the IRS to detect tax cheating among our wealthiest estates.”

In addition, two senior members of the House Ways and Means Committee—Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) and Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D-N.D.)—wrote a letter to the IRS head seeking data about the agency’s allocation of audit resources to various categories of estates by dollar amount, among other information. And Rep. Steven Rothman (D-N.J.) was the moving force behind a letter to Everson on this subject signed by 22 other members of the House.

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including 94,000 in the IRS.