Bills
| 3.23.22

Does the IRS Need to Stop All New Hiring Until it Has No Employees With Serious Tax Debt? (H.R. 1206)

Do you support or oppose this bill?

What is H.R. 1206?

(Updated March 4, 2019)

This bill would prohibit the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) from offering any person a job until the agency certifies that it doesn’t have any employees with seriously delinquent tax debt.

A seriously delinquent tax debt would be defined as a tax debt for which the IRS has filed a notice of lien in public records. Excluded from that definition would be any tax debt:

  • That is being being in a timely manner under an approved installment payment agreement or an offer-in-compromise;

  • For which a collection process hearing has been requested or is pending;

  • For which a tax levy has been issued;

  • Where relief has been granted due to economic hardship.

Argument in favor

If average people in the U.S. are expected to file and pay their taxes on time, then IRS employees who get paid by those taxpayers need to be free of tax debt of their own.

Argument opposed

The tax compliance rate of IRS employees is over 99 percent — far above other federal agencies and the general public. A hiring freeze because of a few rogue employees is short-sighted.

Impact

Prospective IRS employees; IRS employees with seriously delinquent tax debt; and the IRS as a whole.

Cost of H.R. 1206

The CBO estimates that enacting this bill would cost less than $500,000 per year.

Additional Info

Of Note: It was revealed in 2015 that almost 1,600 IRS workers had evaded taxes over a 10-year period, most of whom weren’t fired despite a 1998 law that specifically requires the termination of IRS employees that don’t willfully pay their taxes.

The IRS has countered that the agency boasts the highest tax compliance rate among employees of all federal agencies at over 99 percent of its workforce. The voluntary tax compliance rate for the U.S. as a whole was estimated to be 83 percent in 2006, which led to a net shortfall of $385 billion after enforcement and late payments were collected.


In-Depth: Sponsoring Rep. David Rouzer (R-NC) introduced this bill to encourage the IRS to improve the tax compliance record of its current employees before hiring new workers:

“If the IRS expects us to file our tax returns correctly and in a timely manner, then we should expect the bureaucrats running this bloated agency to do the same. This is a commonsense bill that will encourage the IRS to clean up its act.”

This legislation was passed by the House Ways and Means Committee on a voice vote, and it has the support of 25 House Republican cosponsors.


Media:

Summary by Eric Revell
(Photo Credit: Pixlr adaptation of Flickr user Allen Reichert's image)