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IRS 'shroud of secrecy'
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February 24, 1997: 8:24 p.m. ET
Agency's former historian says no one cared about wrongdoing
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NEW YORK (CNNfn) - Shelley Davis, the first and so far the only Internal Revenue Service historian, says the agency is a sinking ship badly in need of a Congressional overhaul.
Davis came over to the IRS in 1988 from the Department of Defense where she had served as historian for 16 years.
After leaving the IRS in 1995, she authored a book titled "Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS." Davis said she wrote the book to make the public aware of how the IRS operates, in the hope that it will pressure elected officials to act.
While she loved her work, Davis said she had no other recourse than to resign when no one would listen to her allegations of mismanagement within the agency.
"When I came forward with allegations of wrongdoing by top officials, surprisingly enough I found myself under investigation rather than them investigating my complaint.
"I felt I had no choice. I was backed into a corner and forced to resign," she said.
She said the "shroud of secrecy" that surrounds the IRS makes it hard to put a definite figure on how much the IRS has wasted because of mismanagement. (254K WAV) or (254K AIFF)
However, Davis said she believes that the problem is widespread.
"The IRS' budget is more than $8 billion these days. They've mismanaged modernization programs and the handling of tax returns. Only one out of 26 calls to the IRS gets answered.
"I think an overhaul of the IRS is mandatory or the ship is going to sink. It's up to Congress to get their hands dirty with significant reform," Davis said.
According to an IRS spokesperson, "Much of the book concerns events of the fifties and sixties that have been investigated by Congress. There's nothing new there.
"Probably the stuff that may strike people as new doesn't seem to be based in reality," he added. "We take issue with the allegations of wholesale destruction of records and the misuse of confidentiality." As for Davis's account of her investigation by the agency during her employment, the IRS does not comment on "events that happened between the agency and an employee."
Davis said recent stories chronicling large, and sometimes wasteful, expenditures to modernize IRS computer systems have finally got watchdog groups and concerned citizens to look at how the agency operates.
Many told Davis she was naive and even stupid for challenging the IRS. Davis said she did it because she'd done nothing wrong and had nothing to lose.
"I was trying to get the IRS to obey federal laws. The IRS very much wants people to have this inbred fear of the tax collector. I think that's a bad way to run the tax system," she said.
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