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Washington, D.C.—Slashing the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) budget once again would devastate the struggling agency and make it even harder for front-line employees to help Americans with their tax problems, collect enough federal revenue and fulfill other aspects of their critically-important mission, the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) said.

In a letter to the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, NTEU National President Tony Reardon said it’s time for Congress to stop cutting the IRS budget and start giving the agency the resources it needs to function effectively.

“Further reducing the IRS budget will continue to degrade its already impaired ability to provide taxpayers with the assistance they need and fairly enforce the tax laws enacted by Congress,” Reardon said in the letter, which NTEU sent as the subcommittee gets ready to consider a fiscal year (FY) IRS funding bill on Wednesday. 

Reardon, who supports the White House’s proposal to increase IRS funding by $1 billion in fiscal year (FY) 2017, wrote that the agency desperately needs more money to “begin rebuilding the depleted workforce and carry out its important taxpayer service and enforcement missions.”

The letter went on to describe the damage caused by nearly $1 billion in cuts that Congress imposed on the IRS in recent years. Taxpayer services, enforcement operations and fraud prevention programs have suffered as the agency lost 15,000 full-time employees since FY 2010.

Front-line employees, who are struggling under mountainous workloads and shrinking resources, cannot absorb additional cuts “without further impairing IRS’ ability to provide critical taxpayer services and enforce the nation’s tax laws,” the NTEU leader warned. 

NTEU represents 150,000 federal employees at the IRS and 30 other agencies.