Saturday, April 10, 2010
Four years ago the IRS created a special kind of agent to handle complicated collections cases. But these senior revenue officers are often not given any work assignments, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IG’s report states that the IRS’s collection department isn’t identifying enough complex cases for GS-13 revenue officers to handle. The problem stems from a lack of uniform procedures within the IRS for managers to identify most complex cases, resulting in arbitrary decisions by those in charge.
The number of GS-13 officers increased from 34 in September 2006 to 148 in June 2009. Many of these officers end up working on less complicated cases that could have been handled by IRS officers with lower salaries. The report estimated that this has cost the government an extra $1.4 million in added salaries. In addition, “taxpayers may have been impacted” when cases incorrectly assigned to lower-salaried officials had to be reassigned to GS-13s.
-Noel Brinkerhoff, David Wallechinsky
Improvements Are Needed When Identifying Revenue Officer Casework (Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration) (pdf)
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