NTU President Pete Sepp has been called by the Senate Finance Committee to testify on Tuesday, May 16 on the subject of IRS funding, enforcement and oversight. He’ll be joined by Yale’s Natasha Sarin, ex-IRS employee John Fort of Kostelanetz LLP, and the Cato Institute’s Chris Edwards. Sepp will outline NTU’s long history of being an IRS watchdog and advocating for reforms that will protect taxpayer interests.
As NTU President Pete Sepp wrote in a letter to the Senate Finance Committee last year, there’s an urgency for increased funding for taxpayer services and technological modernization as well as a need to protect taxpayer rights so that they can be assured their private data won’t be compromised and they will not be held liable for mistakes made by the IRS.
The IRS faces “significant long-term challenges related to the agency’s structural flaws and outdated infrastructure. A pot of cash for tax law enforcement will not improve customer service and data security at the agency, nor are we convinced that the agency’s FY 2023 budget request meets all of the above challenges… Congress should carefully consider requests from the agency to increase budgets in various accounts, but should also insist that any budget increases are fully offset and come with robust reforms aimed at solving the agency’s long-term struggles.”
From IRS reforms in the 1980s to the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act to the newest IRS budget plus-up, NTU has been a leader on IRS oversight and analysis, and is engaged more now than ever as the IRS faces the largest budget increase in the Service’s history.
For more information on NTU President Pete Sepp’s testimony to the Senate Finance Committee and NTU’s IRS work, please contact Kevin Glass, NTU Vice President of Communications, at 703-299-8670 or at kglass@ntu.org.