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Washington, D.C—The leader of the union representing thousands of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employees today welcomed a bipartisan congressional letter calling on the agency to halt its plans to move forward with an ill-advised and costly tax privatization program.

“This letter is further evidence that a growing number of members of Congress have serious concerns about this poorly-conceived plan to turn over taxpayers’ personal and sensitive information to private sector debt collectors,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

The letter to IRS Commissioner Mark Everson, signed by 27 House members and generated by Rep. Rob Simmons (R-Conn.) and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.)—both of whom have consistently opposed the IRS plan—notes pointedly that the House included a provision in the fiscal 2007 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill to prevent the program from going ahead.

In light of that step, the signers of the letter said they were “disappointed to learn” that the IRS is still planning on turning over to three private debt collection companies information on as many as 40,000 taxpayers next month.

“Considering that these activities may be forced to cease in October when the next fiscal year begins,” they wrote, “we strongly encourage you to halt this program before any sensitive taxpayer information is handed over to the private sector.”

Reinforcing the arguments raised by NTEU from the time the agency advanced the plan, the members of Congress raised their concerns about the lack of appropriate safeguards to protect such information from identity theft.

They said they also are worried about taxpayers facing the harassing and intimidating tactics so often used by private debt collectors; and they underscored their opposition to the costs of the program by criticizing the IRS plan to pay up to 24 percent of the collected debts to these companies in the form of a bounty.

“It is clear,” they said, “that this type of system would be ripe for abuse and harassment, and is a bad deal for all taxpayers.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 federal workers in 30 agencies and departments, including more than 90,000 in the IRS.