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Washington, D.C.—The leader of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) has urged members of Congress to reverse proposed budget reductions to Internal Revenue Service (IRS) funding that would cost billions in lost revenue to the Treasury, undermine the ability to crack down on tax evaders, and negatively impact vital services that taxpayers depend on.

In letters to the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate committees on appropriations and the subcommittees on financial services and general government, NTEU President Colleen M. Kelley said with reduced funding “recent progress in addressing offshore tax evasion, information reporting and debt collection coverage would be undermined, resulting in the loss of more than $4 billion annually in foregone revenue.”

Additionally, Kelley wrote that the loss of 3,000 to 4,000 jobs would mean “IRS’s capacity to respond to taxpayer inquiries would be severely diminished, to the extent that only one of two taxpayers would be able to reach an IRS customer service representative.”

Fiscal 2012 appropriations bills approved by the House and Senate committees would drastically reduce IRS funding. The House measure would slash IRS funding by more than $600 million from current levels—and $1.8 billion less than the administration request. The Senate bill, meanwhile, calls for a cut of more than $450 million from fiscal 2011 levels, and that would be $1.6 billion less than the White House request. Also, President Kelley noted, these cuts would be in addition to the fiscal 2011 continuing resolution that funded the IRS at $500 million below the president’s request for that year, leading to an ongoing hiring freeze.

Moreover, the NTEU leader warned the committee leaders that the cuts would only worsen our nation’s deficit, as IRS collected approximately 93 percent of all federal receipts in fiscal 2010 or $2.345 trillion in gross revenue to fund the federal government.

“Reducing funding for the IRS would be counter-productive, and would actually serve to increase the federal deficit by undermining effective agency programs that generally bring in between $4 and $7 for every $1 invested,” Kelley wrote. “Therefore, NTEU believes that it is imperative that the committee ensure IRS has the resources necessary to carry out its enforcement and tax compliance mission.”

NTEU is the nation’s largest independent union of federal employees, representing 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments.