Today (April 13, 2021) the Senate Finance Committee held a hearing on The 2021 Filing Season and 21st Century IRS. The sole witness was IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
There are three takeaways I want to share:
1. The IRS is Overburdened! I encourage you to at least skim Commissioner Rettig's written testimony. He lays out numerous challenges that that IRS has faced for years and even more due to COVID-19 tax law changes. Consider the three rounds of Economic Impact Payments they had to issue while sheltering in place (each round went to about 160 million individuals), new tax forms for employers to get new refundable payroll tax credits, the need to issue guidance quickly because most changes were almost immediately effective, and the American Rescue Plan enacted March 11 included two changes to 2020 forms millions of which had already been filed!
The IRS is overburdened with a declining workforce due to lots of retirements and problems of funding cuts and dealing with decades old technology. And the reality is that we all need more from them. We need more audits and we need more guidance.
Congress needs to increase funding for the IRS - this will be significant revenue raiser (more on that in my #3 below).
2. The IRS and Some Lawmakers Want to Regulate Return Preparers - This is not new as the IRS implemented a system in 2010 that was then found beyond statutory authority. President Trump's budgets included the need to regulate return preparers. This topic seems to have bipartisan support. In response to a question from SFC member Senator Cardin, Commissioner Rettig said "we absolutely need the ability to regulate paid tax preparers" particularly those serving underserved taxpayers. He noted that paid preparers tend to make more mistakes with the EITC than occurs on self-prepared returns! He also noted that most preparers are "amazing" but there are some that the IRS needs to after in a more efficient manner that could occur with regulation. I assume he means through testing and annual continuing education in order to be allowed to obtain a PTIN.
3. Commissioner Rettig Estimates that Annual Tax Gap is About $1 Trillion Per Year! IRS data on its tax gap website is based on 2011 and way out of date. It estimates the net annual tax gap at about $381 billion. That is a lot of money (more than we brought in even from the pre-TCJA corporate income tax). When SFC Chairman Senator Wyden asked Comm'r Rettig what his personal opinion was on the actual size of the tax gap, the reply "it would not be outlandish that the annual tax gap could approach or possibly exceed $1 trillion per year". WOW!!!
I say "wow" (and we all should) because our annual tax revenues collected are about $3.1 trillion. President Biden's American Jobs Plan is estimated to cost $2.7 trillion over 8 years (see Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimate). And many question how we'll pay for that plan. Let's collect even half of what is owed as represented by the tax gap and we can also pay down the federal debt! [hear Comm'r Rettig's tax gap estimate at about 43 minutes into the hearing video]
There are many things that can be done to reduce the tax gap. Here are a few of them:
- Hire more revenue agents at the IRS.
- Provide adequate training to those hired (like it was back in the 1980s when I worked there - months of training in the classroom and in the field provided by a well-prepared education office).
- Expand information reporting and lower the filing thresholds. And, make it easy to file these forms using online portals. Also, provide an incentive for non-business payors (such as households) to file these forms.
- Allow voluntary withholding on non-employee compensation and mandate it for non-filers.
- Work with states to include tax education in high school so more people understand their taxes and the obligation to pay them.
- Let's get 21st century technology and practices into the IRS! Too many aspects of the entire compliance process are still using 20th century technologies and thinking. This is something we all need to focus on, not just the IRS. I said this at a 2013 hearing of the Senate Small Business Committee - Filing should be as simple as ordering from Amazon!
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