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Washington D.C. – Congress should provide increased funding for Internal Revenue Service operations in Fiscal Year 2018, according to a new budget request from Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.) that is supported by the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

Ellison, along with 47 members of the U.S. House, submitted the funding request to the House Appropriations Committee today.  In contrast to the Administration’s FY 2018 request which would further cut IRS funding levels by $239 million, Rep. Ellison’s request seeks $12.9 billion for the agency.      

“An increase in funding for the IRS will reverse the short-sighted and damaging budget cuts which have increased our national debt, left the IRS ill-equipped to combat refund errors and fraud, drastically reduced taxpayer services and dangerously reduced audits, and will limit the IRS’s ability to implement new laws passed by Congress,” their letter states.

NTEU, which represents IRS employees around the country, applauded Ellison’s efforts on behalf of the agency and will support the request on Capitol Hill during the upcoming appropriations debate.

“It is heartening to see that despite calls from the White House to gut agency budgets, there are those in Congress who understand the importance of providing the IRS the resources it needs to do the work on behalf of the American people,” NTEU National President Tony Reardon said.

“With tax season approaching, now is the perfect time to remind everyone that slashing the IRS budget further would make it harder for honest taxpayers to file and easier for cheats to get away.”

Ellison is a strong supporter of IRS employees, who are responsible for collecting about 93 percent of the revenue that keeps our nation running.

“The taxes the IRS collects are what our nation depends on to build our roads, protect our environment, and educate our kids,” Ellison said. “Unfortunately, Congressional Republicans continue to deny the IRS the resources it needs. IRS employees prevent refund fraud and identity theft, help businesses and nonprofits become established more quickly and answer taxpayers’ questions in a timely manner. That is the kind of public service the American people deserve, and I urge my colleagues to support a properly-funded IRS.”

As the letter points out, the IRS has lost 17,000 full-time employees in the last seven years due to almost $1 billion in budget cuts. The resulting delays in customer service affect lower- and middle-income taxpayers the most because they are least likely to be able to afford to hire a professional tax preparer and need the free IRS assistance.

“The decline in taxpayer service and enforcement and the instability of underlying IT systems that support them threaten to undercut the basic voluntary compliance fabric of our tax system,” the lawmakers say, noting that a 1 percent drop in the compliance rate translates into a revenue loss of about $30 billion per year, or $300 billion over the 10-year budget window.

There are other problems that an adequate funding level next year could start to alleviate. For example, too many of the IRS computer systems are outdated and there are fewer qualified staff to service the technology, which affects the agency’s ability to comply with new mandates and provide adequate cybersecurity.

“In FY 2016, the Service had more than one billion attempts to infiltrate their systems and the number of identity theft cases has grown from 188,000 in FY 2010 to 457,000 in FY 2016,” the letter states. “This aging IT infrastructure puts the American tax system at risk of failure.”

Reardon agreed.

“The IRS is at a tipping point,” Reardon said. “It is time to properly fund this agency so taxpayers get the services they need, identity theft and other tax fraud schemes can be thwarted, and Americans have confidence in the voluntary tax system.”

NTEU represents 150,000 front-line employees at the IRS and 30 other agencies and departments.