Washington, D.C. - Mr. Chairman, I am pleased to join with my colleague from Connecticut in offering this amendment to ensure the fair treatment of the American taxpayer.
Mr. Chairman, it was just back in 1998 that, in response to overly aggressive IRS collection tactics, the Congress passed the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. That act specifically prevented IRS agents and their supervisors from being evaluated based on how much taxes they collected. They couldn't get a bonus based on how much tax they collected. The reason was pretty simple. We wanted to make sure that the IRS agents had an objective approach, that they weren't harassing taxpayers for their own personal benefit.
That brings us to why we are offering this amendment here today. The provision that was included last year in the FSC corporate tax bill reversed that policy. In fact, even worse, it said that private collection agencies could go out and collect these taxes and that they would get a 25 percent bonus if they collected those taxes. In other words, they were on a commission, based on how much they collected, which creates exactly the wrong incentive, an incentive that we tried to address back in 1998 when we passed that earlier legislation.
Furthermore, it hurts the American taxpayer in another way. Right now, when the IRS agent goes out and collects taxes, 100 percent of those taxes go to the public Treasury to be spent on education and health care and other things that this Congress may decide to invest in for the American people. Under the existing special interest provision that got stuck into the law last year, 25 percent of those moneys are now going to go, not to the Federal Treasury for public purposes, but they are going to be pocketed by these private bounty hunters, essentially, debt collectors who are out there, who have an incentive to be overly aggressive with the taxpayer, have an incentive not to look at the issue fairly; and at the end of the day, they pocket 25 percent instead of those funds going to the benefit of the American taxpayer.
Mr. Chairman, I commend my colleague for offering this amendment and I urge its adoption.