Our system, all of it was customized and developed in the 50s and 60s. Weve replaced that system with those expenditures. But we still have over 50 applications that need to be replaced. But to show what weve been able to do that, that refund app got 200 million hits last year. 150 million returns across just 85 are processed electronically. That was not only not possible, it was inconceivable 15 years ago. We have made substantial strides. But the 300 million on the Affordable Care act are all challenges for us. Fortunately, the Filing Season this year has been implemented. We have 145,000 foreign Financial Institutions about to provide us data under the foreign account Tax Compliance act. All of those systems had to be built and rebuilt to obama sosh that data. If we could continue with the refund the resources we needed, wed get rid of a lot of these systems. Taxpayers would be able to go on line, as they do with bank of america, wells fargo or fidelity and deal with us without pape
Theres much that we can learn from this 13year experience in how to take a more comprehensive approach, and to recognize while kinetic actions have a value all of their own certainly and thats blatantly obvious, nonkinetic actions do as well. We can do much better at that than what we have done. Thank you. General matt is my time is up, but do you have any you want to add . Very quickly senator i would point out we have to improve the process assuming there is a process. Ive been unable to identify one recently. I think it starts with the assumption we must develop a sound strategy or were going to waste lives and our treasury and our countrys future. I think, too, we need to move thor back to the senate, and not concentrated in a small but mushrooming it at the same time natural security staff that does not have the Foreign Service officers and the trained military officers who can actually develop what you are looking for here. I dont think we can adopt one preclusive form of war far
Thank you, mr. Chairman. Commissioner, welcome. I joined with other members of this Committee Last year on a letter to you after it was reported by the Inspector General for Tax Administration that more than 1100 employees had been awarded over a Million Dollars in cash rewards and more than 10,000 in timeoff awards. You made no commitments nor did you set any deadlines. And i know that youve talked a little bit about this already this morning. I just wanted, for the record to get you to speak clearly on this issue. It seems to me that its awfully hard to go to the hardworking american taxpayers and ask them to come ply with the tax laws when you have employee ins your own organization that dont comply. Can you commit to me that you are going to fix this problem and ensure that thats not going to happen again in the future . We have already adopted policies to address the problem. Not engaged in installment agreements, who are becoming compliant. But we still count those as compliant.
Finish. [inaudible] by the courts when we went too far in their minds. Were currently working in the e. U. On such a legal framework, trying to broaden that somewhat and making it somewhat similar to what you have you have in the United States. Secondly, in europe we have 28 member countries, so we have to come to unanimous decisions over anything that we plan to do. And the impact that sanctions have also repercussions on Different Countries are very different. If you talk, for example, about possible financial sanctions, germany is not particularly affected. If you talk about energy sanctions, germany is more effective. In europe we ought to have an interest if, actually, matters come to such a path that we need to go further that we have a mix of sanctions where each and every country suffers a little bit. Not you have one country suffering 100 and another country not suffering at all. In europe we have possibilities to do things, for example, were working with russia, we give them