The Internal Revenue Service is moving forward with
legislation approved last year to hire private tax debt
collectors, a move the National Treasury Employees Union
has said is less effective than beefing up collection
activities in-house, and one that could jeopardize taxpayer
privacy and rights.
The agency plans to give tax figures, SSNs and other
information to debt collectors lured by the prospect of
taking up to 25 percent of whatever they can recover.
The Government Accountability Office criticized the
management of a 1996-1997 pilot project for private debt
collection for which there was a dispute as to whether
the function was “inherently governmental,” before the
agency ended the program in the face of other legal and
technical failures.
However, GAO said last May that the IRS had developed
program controls and measures and then the American Jobs
Creation Act of 2004 was signed into law in October,
authorizing the agency to hire private collectors, though
the agency is not scheduled to identify vendors before
spring of 2006.
“There is a record of poor contractor management and
oversight by the IRS,” NTEU President Colleen Kelley said,
“and I have no expectations that this program, and
these contractors, will be better managed than any other
IRS contractor.”
