Fraud and Identity Theft. Congressman buchanan chairs the house ways and means subcommittee hearing. The Committee Meeting will come to order, the ways and means oversight subcommittee on irs reforms, Lessons Learned from National Taxpayer advocate. It has been nearly 20 years since Congress Seriously considered reforms to the irs. I am hopeful we embark on a new effort to improve the agency that can work hand in hand with members on both sides of the aisle working to find Common Ground and make progress. It is important to emphasize our effort to reform the irs should not be seen as a punishment or criticism of the average agency or employee. Instead they are recognized the irs mission is important, every Government Entity whether it is private companies, benefit from thorough review and thought for longterm planning and action. That is what we are here today for. I have a business background, i started my own business many years ago and my experience tells me we always need to look for ways to improve. Continuous improvement has been part of my philosophy in a lot of years and finding ways to get better and more efficient. When evaluating this i always ask myself the reason for improving. My big goal is to have Continuous Improvement as your organization has over the years to the task before us is to ask tough questions and look for solutions. This work is important because taxpayers need to be able to trust the entity administering tax code. 98 of tax revenues come voluntarily, only 2 is collected through the irs enforcement action. Trust is a key component in voluntary compliance. Taxpayer bill of rights contains the right to Quality Service, one of our biggest focus. Second on the list, irs publication, the right to explain prompt, courteous taxpayer dealings with the irs. We should keep this right as well, and the other 9. I look forward to working with the Ranking Member mister lewis and members of the committee to make the irs, i want to thank our witness, nina olson, for being here today. She is the champion of taxpayers and it will be valuable. I look forward to her testimony, i yield to the distinguished Ranking Member mister lewis for the purposes of an opening statement. Thank you very much for holding this hearing with National Taxpayer advocate. I want to thank nina olson for being here and her many years of service and also thank members being here. For some of us, it is a little early. I agree. Mister chairman, we have an important matter of reforming and improving the internet, with a great deal of care. We must remain focused on doing what is right and just for the interests of every american taxpayers, we stay on a bipartisan path together, help the irs be a model of successful constituent services. The irs is a large and complex organization suffering lack of resources for many years. Congress cut the agencys budget by almost 1 billion in 2010. These cuts harm Taxpayer Services and Tax Compliance and the irs needs technology, infrastructure and employees to provide secure Customer Service. For these reasons, responsible reform must include strong robust funding. We must also consider how much the world has changed as congress has acted on this matter. Over the last 20 years, Internet Access creates opportunities for some and embarrassed others. Taxpayers and those who serve them, it increased Identity Theft, fraud and scams. Unfortunately in any program like private Debt Collection, tried and repeatedly failed to spare more confusion. We agree on the importance of an agency that will provide taxpayer access to Customer Service online, over the phone and in person. We can help build a Tax Administration system that will take advantage of new technology, enhancing security of taxpayer data. We must do better and if we Work Together we can do better. I look forward to hearing from the national tax applicants today, learning more from her experience with taxpayers and the agency. Again, thank you for holding this hearing today and thank you for your service. Thank you, i look forward to working with you. Without objection, other members Opening Statements will remain part of the record. Todays Witness Panel includes one expert, nina olson, National Taxpayer advocate for National Taxpayer services at the irs. We met with cpas from florida and your organization was well thought of and last week, preparers in washington, i asked about your organization and they gave you high marks. I dont want to give you a big head but we believe in Continuous Improvement. We appreciate you being here today, the subcommittee will receive your witness statement which will be made part of the formal hearing record. We have 5 minutes to deliver oral remarks and begin when you are ready. Members of the subcommittee, thank you for inviting me to testify regarding operations of the Internal Revenue service and to offer some suggestions to improve the responsiveness of the agency to us taxpayers. It has been two decades since Congress Last reviewed and updated the laws regarding irs operations and much as changed during that time. Tax administration would benefit from a fresh review of those laws. In my written statement i make the following point. First, reforms to irs operations will be more successful if congress can agree on its proposal, engage irs employees and external stakeholders and provide the irs with Adequate Funding to succeed. Second, sounds Tax Administration should be predicated on foundational principles, the most important principles, respect for taxpayer rights. Not only is respecting the rights of taxpayers pay our nations bills, it is the right thing to do, but there is significant Empirical Data that suggests Building Trust with taxpayers which requires respecting their rights, enhances voluntary compliance as well. In 2015 congress codified the provisions of the taxpayer bill of rights or keyboard as a Provision Requiring the commissioner to ensure irs employees receive training and act in accord with those rights. The challenge now is to ensure keyboard is not merely aspirational but is incorporated into the essence of the irs and into its business practices. I believe a clear statement the taxpayers actually have the 10 fundamental rights would provide a Stronger Foundation for effective Tax Administration and congress and act taxpayer bill of rights entry stranding provision in the Internal Revenue code. Third, to become an effective 21stcentury Tax Administration the irs must place greater emphasis on Taxpayer Services. In my view there is no conflict whatsoever between providing highquality Taxpayer Service and taking action to ensure Tax Compliance particularly on the part of persons actively seeking to evade tax which should not be an either war proposition is either or proposition. The irs must change its culture from one that is enforcement oriented to one that is serviceoriented. Of the current appropriated budget of 11. 2 billion, 43 is allocated to enforcement and only 4 is allocated to taxpayer outreach and education activity. According to irs data, it dedicates 98 employees to accept outreach and education to the roughly 62 million Small Business selfemployed taxpayers and only 376 employees to conduct outreach and education to the 125 million wage and investment taxpayers. The irs has 3000 revenue officers who collect Field Collection activity and 8800 revenue agents conducting field audits. Congress directed the irs to restate its mission to place greater emphasis on serving the public and meeting taxpayers needs. In response the irs adopted the following Mission Statement. Provide americas taxpayers topQuality Service by helping them understand and meet their tax responsibilities and by applying the law with integrity and fairness. From 2009, no public discussion or notice to congress or myself, the irs changed its Mission Statement to read and enforce the tax law with integrity and fairness. The shift in tone and emphasis from applying to enforcing the law to irs leadership disagree with congressional directive and decided to place greater emphasis on enforcement in the Mission Statement. Accordingly i recommend congress required the irs to revise its Mission Statement to reemphasize a noncoercive approach to Tax Administration and affirm the role of taxpayer rights as a guiding principle of Tax Administration. Congress passed three important taxpayer rights bills including are a 98. I highlight provisions that congress enacted that the irs has not implemented, defined a way through guidance or only done a partial job. Fifth, are a 98 joint oversight would give Congress Better insight into the irs strategic and operational plans to promote dialogue between congress, irs and interested stakeholders and help ensure the tax rate and Appropriations Committee coordinate their expectations and approach irs operations. Thank you for this opportunity and i look forward to answering questions. We will proceed to the question and answer session but we have to limit questioning to four minutes instead of five because we have a briefing at 10 00. As is my custom i will hold my question until the end and recognize the gentleman from arizona, Mister Schweikert for any questions. This is unique for a couple of us because we are used to predict if irs where we have a series of dodgy stories and things that are frustrating and we reached out to arizona. People say nice things about the organization. You win a prize for having a unique conversation with us today. Can i start with one thing that did come up, that was outreach to our office and your office of individuals in the gig economy, the uber drivers, the person who crowd sources their work to the internet and the discussion of how they access information. The rules to save for my retirement, my rules of what must be set aside. As the advocate do you believe you are doing enough to make it easy to access that information, the way you posted on your website, the way you deliver that information and the way the irs delivers that in that part of the economy . Im concerned, it is a fastgrowing part of it and i am concerned about selfemployment tax etc. One thing my office is working on right now that we have suggestions about from other sectors is to develop a wizard where people who are starting in the big economy can go to our taxpayer toolkit online and see all the steps they need to do to get to different places, get an employer identification number, understand about how deleting selfemployment tax, get to the place where they can calculate and learn about different forms of retirement saving and most importantly if they have problems how they can resolve them including getting Taxpayer Advocate service, something we are developing. Sometimes the advocate may be proactive because this is something we as Committee Members have to deal with, associated mother organization, you can pay for your retirement, may have set them off as not being independent contractor. We have to figure out what to do to help the population feel they have that future. On the irs side, do we see the agency itself doing enough, the public access, because you cant get it from the organization you are contracted with, where does the person go . The irs did create a webpage in response to a Small Business hearing last year to address the issues of the gig economy. As always we can all do more. This goes back to the fact there are only 98 employees conducting outreach and education, there are 12 states, 14 states that do not have those employees located. We are in our last 30 seconds. I have a fixation that the use of technology as a way to direct folks who are having difficulties with the irs, do you, as the advocate almost published things that this is a problem that comes to us quite often, heres how is it had how it has been resolved and the formula you need, what are you doing proactively . We identified the needs of the gig economy, a most serious problem in miami and made recommendations and created materials from my local taxpayer advocacy to conduct outreach proactively and that is one of their assignments, to identify stakeholders in their communities. I recognize the distinguished Ranking Member, mister lewis for any questions he might have. It is my understanding that you held a dozen Public Meetings around the country. What did you learn . We learned a number of things. One is how hard people are trying to communicate with the irs and how much they want to. We learned that people thought having Digital Online tools would be helpful but they were no replacement for talking to the irs and there was a strong desire for the irs to hear from them and listen to them. We learned from all sorts of different concerns about Identity Theft and the scams that are going on out there. A very strong issue. We learned about issues about Payroll Service providers ripping off taxpayers who were securing their services and experts about how to design Digital Services to make them usable by people but not replace the communication, persontoperson communication on the phone or in person and that was a very strong message. Is a Taxpayer Advocate you dont believe Quality Service is provided. Taxpayer service is to me the key way you build trust with taxpayers, to outdo outreach and education or within an audit or within collection activities. If you take that approach that you are trying to bring the taxpayer into voluntary compliance and understand why they have compliant difficulties in listening to the taxpayer, that is how you bring Taxpayer Service into the organization and there is no conflict with exercising the enforcement and compliance tools, providing Taxpayer Service doesnt eliminate a single one of the powers the irs has when they need to use them. Do you think the 1998 reform act was successful . I think the 1998 reform was very successful. We need to go back, that is why i gave you the list of provisions i saw that were not successfully implemented from the irs, what congress focused on was very key and we need to make sure the irs does what you directed them to do or learn why they couldnt do it and revise it so it fits in the 21st century Tax Administration. I think it achieved it made the irs focus on Taxpayer Service but with these budget cuts it moved away from that as a primary focus and is moving away from the persontoperson contact. I keep saying to people, people are giving up their money, we are taking their money for the greater good. Why would we not want to talk to them and hear from them and listen to their concerns even if we have to tell we cant solve the problem the way you want, this is the law. Listening to them we gain trust and that is what we need to do and we have gotten away from that. Thank you for being here in your years of service. I recognize the gentlelady from indiana. Many thanks to my constituents, you have helped, in the 5 years i have been here you have helped 90 and im grateful for what you have done. You have seen everything in 16 years. I want to pick up on what you said you learned from the hearings you have on issues of id theft and tax fraud and scams, that is what we get burdened by, people who are caught in these issues. On the return review program that started in 2009, this has turned out to be a boondoggle. I wanted to hear from you on its successor, the electronic fraud detection system which in 2010 the irs, too risky to maintain beyond 2015. Here we are in 2017, it is still the principal Fraud Protection because it is not ready for prime time. There is no estimated date, the program has incurred 86. 5 million in cost overruns. When it is run as a pilot it yielded a high false positive rate and missed 313 million in filing so lets set aside the numbers and talk about the people behind them. You documented what taxpayers go through in your annual report but can you walk us through what happened to a single mom, Small Business owner, person who gets flagged a false positive or fraudulent return, go through how to find out what they go through and what this means to people . Depending what system triggers them as a suspected fraudulent return, the refund is held up, they get a letter and told they have to verify themselves online or go into a walk inside and they cant walk in. They have to make an appointment and sometimes they are told it might take weeks to get an appointment and you wont get your refund before you do that, and if you go through that it may be that your return is stopped by another filter once it goes back into the processing venue and you have to go through it again. Identity theft and refund fraud, the 5 the top two cases for advocate services for the last 5 years and they are a significant part of the inventory. It is devastating to see. Does it not cost taxpayers money to seek professional services . Absolutely. It affects people who are low income, high income, it doesnt matter, people have to get their preparers to call and submit documentation multiple times. There is no one person assigned to their case. They have to tell her story to a different person every time they call. These are all recommendations we have made. The other thing on the filters is we recommended the irs create a dedicated team during Filing Season on the it side. If we have filters with high false positive rates you have a team that can adjust those filters, dont wait until later. What about commercially Available Technology . Is it your opinion from common sense perspective this would be where we move to with an unbelievable amount of errors and fraud and money being spent and full lack of accountability on the system, is that not someplace we could look at as quickly as we can on behalf of taxpayers . The Financial Sector has tried to figure out financial fraud and electronic fraud and the irs is meeting with those people to establish a Security Summit and that is a significant step. I yield back, thanks again. I recognize the gentlelady from washington. Thank you for being with us today and all your service. I want to talk about technology in particular because you talked so much about that in your testimony to the dire state it is in. Give us a brief overview of how the decisions are made at the irs and briefly whether you think the organizational chart is working in terms of helping make those decisions. There are lots of executive steering committees on the Technology Side that review the priorities how the irs will spend its money and the irs in addition to cybersecurity concerns which are very great, the major concern we have in addition to the rp system which is the return fraud detection system, enterprise Case Management system. We have 60 systems and they dont communicate with one another so employees have to get permission to get into things and often they cant. It slows things down. It is manual. Are case files are not virtual. It is astonishing and that is a heavy lift that the irs is far behind on but is finally beginning after spending millions of dollars to get up to speed and the fact that we have the two oldest Information Systems in the federal government, we are keeping our taxpayer information on and that is a significant concern, getting from those systems to something that will be a huge list. When we talk about cyber, old systems, that is very concerning and it is concerning because access to information is so cumbersome. It slows down the ability, the irss ability to do its job. Why do you think things have gotten so bad . My personal opinion from observing it when i tried to develop my own Case Management system from my own employees, partly, we dont have the talent inside the irs. We have not been able to recruit the people we need. Then, i there is not enough communication between the it function and the business operating divisions who use these systems so things get developed that are not what the operating divisions need but they dont have a chance to tell them and money gets wasted and i see that a lot. That is a common problem with Technology Implementation in government generally, something we need to focus on. We have current modernization plans in the irs that you think will help address these issues . Particularly for the ecm, we put out a request for information, to hear from across the shelf product that are doing a Case Management system to see what is out there and they will request a proposal. That is the appropriate approach to get a sense of the universe instead of focusing on one thing that turns out not to be good but we invested 80 million in it or Something Like that so finally on the right track in that regard but they need more funding to bring in the talent, but they need more oversight from you so that you all are understanding that funding is being spent appropriately. My time is expired. I yield back. I recognize the gentleman from pennsylvania. Thank you for your work. Miss olson, often times the irs has direct relationship with taxpayers because it relates to the taxpayer paying their taxes but they serve another role. Implicates a lot of people in which the information one puts into the irs tax return is relevant for another purpose and i speak to something touching families across america and that is College Applications including Financial Aid. Is colleges and universities interact with their students, they are reliant on the ability for the applicants to let people know what their financial status is which means they need to get into irs databases, outward facing tools have been used by the irs so i i found a cake that is authenticated who i am and you go back into my tax return before that information to my Financial Aid application as a parent has gone through this process and i know i am speaking for many. It is so incredibly frustrating to begin with but now we are seeing that the system which has been put in place, the outward facing tools have been compromised. Hundreds of thousands of americans trying to make this application have found that their identities have been stolen and as a result now we not only cant utilize the tool but you have people who are trying to make those applications who are frustrated feeling time deadlines for applying to their schools, dont know where to go to get the information and it is egregious because often times the very people making these applications may not it may be a student that doesnt know the information their parents have. Can you speak to me about the outward facing tools the irs is using, what you know about this situation and what the irs is doing to make that taxpayer relationship move more flow more appropriately . The information the irs has is such a valuable asset of the federal government and taxpayers of the united states, we have to make sure it is protected in every way possible and that means there has to be very highlevel screenings for people to authenticate who they are because identity thieves are very sophisticated. Last year the irs learned there were risks to the way people were getting access to irs data through this system and they tried to work with the department of education over time, they learned what the irs needed for the protection of that data is formative education couldnt put into their system and they gave several workarounds and those were not able to be implemented. Was the problem on the deferment of education . It was on the level of the types of systems doe has and we were setting very high standards for access to that information and the irs had to do is according to the risk analysis, they had to stand down and they just put it back up again, they worked through some issues but i think it is this is where you have difficulty, one agency and another agency, you need to get them together. Is the department of education cooperating . They are now. This is my personal opinion. It is a matter of technology but also that i think they didnt understand initially the level of concern we have about people getting access to this incredibly important data and misusing it. I would ask for your continuing oversight on that issue because as we speak, millions of americans are dealing with this very frustrating system. I now recognize the gentleman from connecticut, mister larson. Thank you, i yield, especially appreciate the opportunity to audit the committee. Thank you for this opportunity and i have nothing but respect and admiration for you and the job you have done. Representative courtney and myself have been dealing with an issue along with representative neil in new england the deals with foundation crumbling. Not dissimilar to a case that happened many years ago in the south, what they referred to as chinese drywall and in both cases the circumstances are through no fault of the individual they find themselves in a situation, in the case of connecticut where their foundations are crumbling, there is no Insurance Coverage that we are pursuing relief in this case from the irs to use this as a casualty loss. As i said, there is ample precedent in the china drywall situation and our initial discussions with the commissioner and Steve Mnuchin have been very positive, and we also know in connecticut Taxpayer Association has been incredibly supportive. Any advice or recommendations . Could we precede you for support of the National Taxpayer association . I have been aware of this problem and my staff attorneys to meet with chief counsel attorneys of the irs to look at the law pertaining to casualty loss deductions and how it could apply in this instance and just this week we submitted to the irs chief counsel request for priority guidance, they put this on their priority guidance plan to give that it wasnt just a request, we pointed out how they could do it to grant relief to these taxpayers and i will be happy to share that request with you. I would be delighted to receive that and we appreciate your continued advocacy. This impacts people and it is estimated more than 30,000 people in connecticut will be impacted by this but the strain runs from canada to the sound so we are trying to forewarn people as well with this but i cant thank you enough as well as the cooperation we have received from the irs and treasury. I do that in large part because of your involvement in the Taxpayer Association and with that, mister chairman, i would like to ask at some point, i would love to get your opinion on the japanese system of collecting and simplifying the tax code and what opinions you might have on that. That is not a question for here but i will follow up with you on that. I think the committee for indulging me and yield back my time. I now recognize the gentleman from north carolina. Thank you, mister chairman which i would like to ask about one of your appellate forms last year, the tax practitioner raised concerns about audits done for Research Purposes by the irs. You acknowledged the importance of these research audits but also recognize they can be painful for taxpayers and used the taxpayer under audit is a guinea pig. I have significant concerns about these audits. You mentioned a couple potential solutions last year at a time that you said you had only been discussing these internally. Has your thinking evolved any . I represented taxpayers for 27 years. As a representative i had to sift through the predecessor to these audits, the Tax Compliance measurement program. Was expensive and painful for the taxpayer and the representative. I recognize the importance of these audits so we dont go out and willynilly audit people that shouldnt be audited. We need a statistical gathering thing. My thinking about taxpayers being guinea pigs is they are doing a service for the public. As a random audit there may be nothing wrong with their returns but the irs is using it for data gathering. If they are doing that they should be paid. Either that, maybe we dont assess the tax at the end of the audit. We found the error, but they did it for the public good so maybe we dont assess the tax we found or give them compensation for sitting through it and i suggest that be nontaxable so we dont let me ask you this. Yesterday there was a report on the National Research program on employment taxes and the irs doesnt have a single plan to timely analyze and use the data collected. Do you believe the irs should continue to subject taxpayers come in your words guinea pigs, to this burdens and random audit if there is no plan to use the information . Should the irs use the data . To pay folks for the data as you suggest, shouldnt they use it or should they shut down the program . If they dont plan to use it. That is doubly disturbing. I dont think they should shut down the program. They need to use the data and i will look carefully at the gao audit because i think that is a plan for how the irs could use it, the irs needs to be an organization that uses the data that it has, it doesnt develop strategies based on the data or takes a long time to get into operation and that is inexcusable. Listening to your answer to the question on technology and the irs, the irs has difficulty with technology in basic functions, this is right above the basic function, perhaps triply disturbing now that ms. Delbene asked the probing question. I think the irs is challenged in a lot of ways. The understatement of the day, i yield back. I recognize the gentleman from new york, mister crowley. Thank you for holding this hearing today, thank you for participating. My good friend and colleague john lewis introduced the bill, Taxpayer Protection act of 2017 which im a cosponsor of to repeal the private Debt Collection program. Do you think the irs should outsource federal tax collection and should a new irs have the authority to do this, hire private companies to pay taxes . It is my personal and professional opinion the collection of tax is an inherently governmental function because it requires the exercise of judgment and discretion to do it right and take into consideration facts and circumstances of taxpayers but congress has made the decision to create this outreach and my focus has been on how the irs is implementing this provision. I have a lot of concerns about how it is being implemented. For profit motive. That is part of the fundamental flaw with the program. Whatever you say about irs, irs collection employees understand the goal of collection is to bring taxpayers into voluntary compliance and that may mean you are focusing on the future, that they be able to pay Going Forward and deal with their debt later. Private debt collectors have incentive to collect tax, just the amount before them and get the commission, they have no incentive to think about voluntary compliance Going Forward. The consequence to the taxpayers as well. My mind, my concern about Justice Reform and privatizing prisons, they need to fill them. I know there has been a great deal of concern about fraud but lets get your thoughts in terms of how much is fraud and how much is mistakes made in terms of filing, filling up the proper papers. Hank paulson for instance when he took over, he filed the most brilliant to make mistakes. What do you have to make it a more efficient and more accessible more efficient as well . In my annual report to congress i made a list of recommendations designed around trying to minimize the errors and fraud and we have attached it to my testimony. I do think most of the errors are attributable to the complexity of the law but the complexity of the law creates opportunities for others to gain it. A lot of the pure fraud comes from unregulated preparers that are preying upon an unsophisticated population and selling them something too good to be true so you have a lot of things playing around there but there are things you can do administratively and legislatively to minimize the improper payments. Some goes to the design and some goes to the outreach and education and oversight that the irs needs to do on this issue. For the integrity of the program we need to be vigilant and mindful but the complexities in terms of the clientele to fill out those forms properly. Thank you for holding this hearing in a bipartisan spirit. We have been working together on issues in relation to taxpayers relationship with the irs. It is not always pleasant and you dont always get it right and that is why we need the Committee Like this to keep an eye on it, to help you do your job, help us do our job and protect the interests of the constituents. Thank you, mister chairman. I recognize the gentlelady from tennessee. Thank you for allowing me to sit on the committee although i am not a member of the committee. Thank you for the work you do with your agency. As you said at the beginning of your comments most people want to pay their fair share and be left alone. They have a responsibility to pay their taxes come of the us has 98 voluntarily voluntary Tax Compliance rate, and perceived fair and impartial but the most recent years we have seen more of that impartiality and as part of what we are seeing in the general population, they lost trust in the irs so your agency is particularly important for helping us, one region to helping with that. One of the things i wanted to go to was the complexity of the tax code doesnt help. That is up for congress to reform the tax code so it can be simpler which we are working on. But the irs is a unique creature in that it doesnt have a regulatory process like other agencies so they issued these guidances. Any Public Comments in a federal agency where there would be a change and an opportunity for Public Comments. For the irs website, it has a section that says understand the irs guidance and it has 7 kinds of guidance taxpayers should be familiar with and the irony is the irs acknowledges in that statement, they say, quote, it may be puzzling and a mystery. I wanted to ask you to talk about those guidances and what we can do to keep that from happening and how that actually rolls out and takes place. The irs has many types of guidances, some go through the administrative procedural act, the regulations that we do. It believes getting out guidance is helpful to taxpayers and so rather than going through the cumbersome regulatory process which would require notice and comment it does stuff to get out guidance faster. The downside is as you say there is no vehicle they designed for Public Comment on that. Doesnt mean you cant do it that way but they dont and i am concerned about that. I am more concerned and i have written about this, a most serious problem, they are moving more toward faqs which are great in the sense you get things quickly but you cant tell when it changes been made unless you print out the faq every day and track it word for word and they are not reliable. If you say you rely on an faq and the irs says that is wrong, that is no defense. If that gets done more, you are leaving the taxpayer in a vulnerable situation. That is something i hear from my constituents, they call to get the guidance and they ask can you send me an email or something i can use to verify with the recommendations and the irs will refuse to send anything in writing and this to me is a really big problem, people are trying so hard to do it the right way and they get caught on it. I called in and asked a question and what they got was we cannot give you that in writing so i see this as a big area that has to be looked at. I appreciate you being here today. Happy to work with you on that. I recognize the gentleman from michigan. Thank you, mister chair for the hearing today. The irs is responsible for processing 150 million tax returns every year, issuing refunds to 70 of those 150 million tax returns. According to the irs estimates, the costs for a refund check is about a dollar and i am wondering what the cost would be for direct deposit instead of a check and how we might address that issue, the cost and the time using prepaid debit cards and whether or not the irs uses tax returns, debit express cards. This is something we identified in my annual report this year. It is so much less expensive to do direct deposit and we have a large part of the population that is an banked, so rather than going into checkcashing places, if there are already participants and direct express program run by treasury, why couldnt we put tax refunds on it . Frankly i am baffled why we dont do it. The treasury can negotiate very good rates and charges. They already have this product. It just makes sense. I dont have a good answer for you. That is why we made it a most serious problem. Why arent we using it . Is the supply open for fraud . If we dont utilize the system . The concern about the fraud is obviated by the fact that people have to go to a bank to prove their identity so you have the patriot act requirements that were put in about proving your identity to open a bank account and that is what they do for direct express. It is much more than what they have to do to get a card from some checkcashing. Assuming you could use the product for the refund. We now use prepaid debit cards that dont have to go through that so that is what i am talking about, exposing yourself to fraud whereas we utilize direct express debit card. Exactly. Any discussion about allowing taxpayers to use prepaid debit cards for tax payments . For payment . I think they can. If they dont the irs is working to accept that online. They are trying to work on different ways to make Electronic Payments online directly. Part of the problem is they have on their online account you can make those payments but they do have to sign on as a taxpayer and some of the security is very high for that. You would set that. You can get that with a check versus direct deposit and debit card. We can agree. Significantly less different. I yelled back. I want to thank you for your leadership and service over a lot of years. Some things i want to touch on. Identity theft. Huge in florida, the cpa had his identity stolen. It is big. To be candid this is two or three years ago, two years ago, seems like it is a little better today. I would like to get your take on where we are in Identity Theft. It is going better than it has been. The irs has improved its processes somewhat the three things that have made a difference, one is the legislation you all past getting us the w 2 information by january 31st. If we can get the employer w 2s we can see which is the legitimate w 2 versus the altered fake w 2. The other thing is the irs is requiring Software Companies to ask for drivers licenses when they are filing electronically. That helps us identify whether this is a legitimate taxpayer or an identity thief. The third thing is there is a program we are trying to get more employers to use where there is a code that is unique to that taxpayers w 2 from that employer and when they file electronically, if that code is put in, we can tell this is the correct w 2 at not Identity Theft. Let me ask for the sake of time, how much criminals and syndicates outside the us, any sense of that . I dont know, the Investigation Division is looking at so many enforcement agencies to monitor that. It is so hard to track this down. Outside the country india and elsewhere. Eastern bloc countries. Mister crowley brought up an income tax cut. I know there are complications in filing but 24 fraud, tends of billions of dollars a year. What is your take . We cant seem to improve, lack of resources to educate people . I am sure that is part of it. I was curious just from your standpoint, where are we on that . I dont think theres anyone thing we can do. There are multiple things, education, doing specific audits on it, doing other kinds of compliance activities and doing a redesign of the provisions, knowing what we know about where the errors and fraud are, we can change the design a little bit legislatively. It makes sense to have Higher Standards for preparers. People doing this work, education training. There has to be minimum competency standards because that is where we see we know the unregulated, unaffiliated preparer is not what the large preparation firms, the greatest source of errors in the preparer base. You were here 20 years ago when they did the irs reforms. I was a witness before this committee as representative of the taxpayer clinic. Your thoughts, seems that made a big difference, i heard you say that in your testimony. In terms of where we are today it seems like 20 years we could Work Together on a bipartisan basis to make real reforms and a big difference to the country. Do you agree with that . Yes, and the way it was done in 98 when you heard from a Diverse Group of experts in government, experts in business, made an incredible record. When you read the hearings again they are very impressive. We want to work with you and get the stakeholders, multiple hearings, rolling down the road to see if we can make a difference. One other thing that has come up his Small Business disputes, seems like usually sometimes not a lot of money but if it is a dispute they could spend more in professional fees than paying the check itself. Where are we on that . That raises the issue not just of the audit side where there are these disputes but the appeals function and that is one of my concerns, that the irs has moved to a more centralized, remote, impersonal appeals function which was the safety valve for Small Business. There are 12 states that dont have an appeals officer so they dont understand the conditions of that state and we should take a look at that appeals function and see how we make it work as the safety valve it was intended to be. Last question protecting taxpayers rights is the key foundation. What additional tools could you use to make it more effective on behalf of taxpayers . I have written about this in my annual report and made recommendations about codifying, strengthening the taxpayer authority and codifying something called Taxpayer Advocate directive where i can order the irs to change processes that would affect groups of taxpayers and those are very important tools that right now the Taxpayer Advocate directive is just administrative. Thank you, please be advised to answer later in writing, those questions and your answers are part of the formal hearing record. With that the subcommittee stands adjourned. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations] hes interviewed by elizabeth hinton, author of are from the war on poverty to the war on crime. Also former secretary of state cobbed please saw rice looks at democratic movements around the world in her book, democracy stories from the long road to freedom. And John Mcwhorter examines black english and the controversies around and perceptions of sounding black. And on monday, memorial day, former president george w. Bush talks about his portraits of american veterans. Astrophysicist Neil Degrasse tyson discusses his many books on the cosmos. New york times book review editor pamela paul reflects on the books shes read over the past 28 years. Michael whitmore offers his thoughts on shakespeares legacy and much more. For a full schedule, visit booktv. Org. Booktv on cspan2, television for serious readers