Home
Media Center
News Releases
Washington, D.C.--The president of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said today that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) now is "sharply?focused on the issue of customer service," and he urged the Senate "not to get sidetracked" by continuing to criticize the agency.
NTEU's Robert M. Tobias said that significantly improved customer service within the IRS will lead to the result "that best serves the nation." It's a result that virtually everyone who has looked at the agency wants??increased voluntary compliance with the tax laws.
The Senate Finance Committee already has unanimously approved IRS reform legislation that is pending in the full Senate; yet today it began four days of hearings on the agency. Last fall, the House passed by an overwhelming 426 to 4 margin an IRS reform bill of its own.
"Rather than stir up passions against the agency that administers the tax code as written by Congress," Tobias said, "the Finance Committee has a responsibility to the American people to help see that the restructuring legislation becomes law."
The NTEU president, whose union represents some 97,000 IRS employees, said there is "a direct correlation" between a combination of high?quality customer service and agency efforts at taxpayer education and voluntary taxpayer compliance with the tax code.
"Improving customer service, providing taxpayers with the help they need and deserve, will encourage people, in increasing numbers, to comply voluntarily with their obligations under the law," Tobias said, noting that 83 percent of taxpayers already voluntarily comply with tax law.
He added: "It is up to the Congress to make sure that the agency has the structure and processes in place, and that the dedicated professionals who work for it have the tools, training and resources they need, to accomplish their vital mission."
That, he said, should be occupying the time of the Finance Committee, and not a series of hearings that will result in "unnecessary delay" in the passage of important reform legislation.