Members of Congress and the Internal Revenue Service are
questioning the effectiveness of Section 1203 of the IRS
Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 that defines 10 acts
for which an IRS employee can be fired–the so-called “10
Deadly Sins”–many involving the falsification of taxpayer
information, or certain forms of taxpayer-harassment, the
Government Accountability Office has said.
It said Congress and IRS officials are concerned that the
rules might dissuade enforcement employees from
appropriately responding to noncompliance — and that the
process used by IRS and the Treasury Inspector General to
review allegations against employees is overly time
consuming and inconsistent.
There is some question as to whether all the provisions of
the section should be retained, according to GAO-04-1039R.
The report said one change Congress is considering amending
the section by “deleting the requirement that IRS employees
be fired for failing to file a tax return on time when they
are owed a refund.”
IRS managers have said that a task force is studying the
employee tax compliance part of the process and will likely
recommend changes to it soon — and that the task force would
attempt to speed up the ETC process and help “educate
employees about their responsibilities to comply with federal
tax law,” said GAO.
