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Washington, D.C. – Proposed cuts in fiscal 2012 funding of more than $458 million for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) seriously jeopardizes the agency’s ability to collect the nation’s revenue and assist taxpayers, said the leader of the union representing IRS employees.

The proposed cut of 3.7 percent from the fiscal 2011 level for the IRS is contained in legislation marked up today by the Senate Financial Services and General Government Appropriations Subcommittee.

“A cut of this magnitude would seriously impede the IRS’s ability to collect much-needed revenue, impacting both sides of the collection equation—enforcement and customer service,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

She added: “Any time you cut the budget of the agency that collects 93 percent of the government’s revenue, you have to expect a loss of collections running into the billions of dollars, and that, given our nation’s deficit, is something we simply cannot afford.”

Specifically, the Senate bill provides fiscal 2012 funding of $11.663 billion, with some $330 million of that amount to address completion in time for the 2012 tax-filing season of a state-of-the-art data system.

Subcommittee Chairman Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) took note of the potential impact of the IRS cut in remarks at the opening of the markup. “The situation we face for FY12 severely constrains the funding levels available for the three largest IRS components—taxpayer services, tax law enforcement and support of IRS operations,” he said. “The committee is aware that IRS’s capacity to be responsive to taxpayer inquiries and provide optimum level of service will suffer.”

Earlier this year, in her mid-year report to Congress, Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson made a similar point. “Spending cuts mean the IRS will not have the resources to ensure that all taxpayers pay their fair share, thereby effectively forcing compliant taxpayers to pay more to subsidize noncompliance by others,” Olson said, adding that “the IRS will not have the ability to meet the service needs of the taxpayers who are paying the nation’s bills.”

The Senate Appropriations Committee is scheduled to take up the Financial Services measure tomorrow.

A version of the funding bill, pending in the House, contains even deeper cuts for the IRS. At the time that measure was taken up in June, President Kelley warned it would result in the loss of more than 4,000 jobs at the IRS.

“These cuts are shortsighted and counterproductive and will add to the nation’s deficit,” said President Kelley.

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