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Overhauling the IRS
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March 7, 1997: 8:48 p.m. ET
The restructuring commission is searching for a way to fix the agency
From Correspondent Kelli Arena
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WASHINGTON (CNNfn) -- Imagine a company that's owed $216 billion, plus interest. A company with a 22-percent error rate. A company that spent $4 billion to update a computer system -- with little success.
It all describes the Internal Revenue Service.
"I think that the big problem with the IRS is that you have real rampant mismanagement of the agency," Stephen Moore of the CATO Institute, said. "You have financial malfeasance, and it runs as currents throughout the agency from the top all the way down."
Congress set up a commission to deal with the problems, and it's supposed to come up with answers by July 1.
One of the commission's top goals is to recommend looking outside the normal channels for someone to run the IRS. The current head, Margaret Richardson, will step down after this tax season.
"We ought to go out and find someone who has re-engineered, in my view, a major and complex organization from the private sector," Rep. Rob Portman, IRS Restructuring Committee, said. "I hope someone like that would be willing to step forward and take on this task."
The commission is also considering calling for an outside board of directors to make the IRS more accountable. The Treasury Department, which oversees the IRS, agrees the agency needs a lot of fixing, but opposes an outside board.
"In a whole set of ways, by diluting the commissioner's accountability, by diluting the administration's accountability, it could actually prove to be very counterproductive," Deputy Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said.
The administration and the commission do agree that compliance will improve if customer service improves. The more respect for the agency that taxpayers have, the less they'll try to get away with not paying taxes.
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