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Washington, D.C.—The two “absolutely essential” elements in assuring the fair and effective application of the nation’s tax laws are providing adequate resources for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), including staffing, and having that agency target those resources in the most effective and successful manner possible, the leader of the union representing tens of thousands of IRS employees said today.

“Anything less,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) “and the critical idea of tax fairness gets sharply skewed, as inadequate agency resources result in inadequate attention being directed toward high-income taxpayers and large corporations.”

The NTEU leader made that assessment in a wide-ranging media briefing on IRS issues, including its budget and staffing as well as its continuing program of hiring private debt collectors, in advance of the April 17 tax-filing deadline. She was joined by Robert McIntyre, director of the non-profit Citizens for Tax Justice, a tax policy research and advocacy group.

“Short-changing this agency leads to out-of-whack enforcement,” Kelley said. “When the IRS doesn’t even ask for enough resources, it fails to direct resources toward the most complex cases and high-income taxpayers. The result is that the most intricate returns and those of taxpayers who are able to hire tax attorneys and other professionals are not being examined adequately.”

Last year’s reorganization of the estate and gift tax program resulted in the loss of 81 estate and gift tax attorney positions at the IRS, she said, noting that this action flies in the face of several reports to Congress and IRS officials over the past several years indicating that tax evasion and cheating among higher-income Americans is both a serious and growing problem.

Inadequate IRS resources and staffing, she added, “result in real damage both to the concept of tax fairness and to taxpayer compliance”—which is “heavily dependent on educating taxpayers and providing them with the assistance they need.”

More than a year-ago, as part of an effort to reduce face-to-face customer service, the IRS sought to close some 68 Taxpayer Assistance Centers across the country. A nationwide uproar led by NTEU and joined in by bipartisan members of Congress resulted in the agency dropping the plan.

What’s more, Kelley said, having insufficient resources leads to bad public policy decisions like reducing cycle times and the scope of large corporate audits at the same time the IRS targets largely middle-income taxpayers while putting individual privacy at serious risk by hiring private debt collectors to pursue tax debts.

That it’s an expensive failure is clear, she said, noting that the IRS’s own National Taxpayer Advocate calculates that the gap between taxes owed and taxes paid results in a surcharge of $2,680 a year for every taxpayer who complies with his or tax obligation to make up for those who fail to pay. Known as the ‘tax gap,’ this figure is put at some $345 billion annually.

As she did in recent testimony before a House Appropriations Subcommittee, President Kelley expressed her disappointment in the administration’s proposed IRS budget for fiscal 2008—and the view of IRS Commissioner Mark Everson that the agency needs no additional resources

The White House proposal is for IRS funding of $11.095 billion in the coming fiscal year, an amount $546 million less than that recommended by the independent IRS Oversight Board, which has broad budgeting, strategic planning and other key responsibilities regarding the IRS.

Moreover, Kelley said, the administration’s fiscal 2008 request anticipates a “savings” equal to nearly 1,200 full-time IRS positions, including 1,147 positions in enforcement and taxpayer service programs, even as the number of individual tax returns filed every year continues to climb sharply in the face of a declining workforce.

“The IRS has shown it has the expertise to improve taxpayer compliance in all areas,” Kelley said, “but lacks the necessary personnel and resources. For the good of our nation, that has got to change, and the sooner the better.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal union, representing some 150,000 employees in 31 agencies and departments, including 94,000 in the IRS.