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Washington, D.C.—If the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is going to close the nation’s more than $300 billion tax gap, it needs more employees on the front-lines of both tax compliance and enforcement, the leader of the union representing IRS employees told a Senate subcommittee today.

“Rather than move forward with its plans to drastically cut customer service in order to expand its enforcement role, the IRS needs to strike a balance between offering adequate opportunities for taxpayers to voluntarily comply and enforcing the tax code,” said President Colleen M. Kelley of the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU).

President Kelley offered that assessment in testimony before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs subcommittee on Federal Financial Management, Government Information and International Security. The subcommittee is examining ways to close the continuing gap between revenue collected and taxes owed.

The NTEU leader was direct in her assessment of the role Congress has to play in addressing this problem. “If Congress is serious about closing the tax gap,” she said, “then more front-line employees are needed in order to achieve this goal.”

While NTEU agrees with the agency’s goal of enhancing its compliance and enforcement efforts, she added, “we don’t agree with the approach of eliminating front-line customer service employees in order to pay for additional compliance efforts.”

Effective customer service, the union head told the subcommittee “is one-half of the compliance equation.” The IRS “must not be allowed to slash customer service this year, or next year, for the sake of bolstering enforcement.”

Earlier this year, the IRS proposed closing nearly one-quarter of its Taxpayer Assistance Centers (TACs) across the country, even as it looked to shut several telephone assistance call sites and reduce by 15 hours a week the time available for taxpayers to get telephone help with their tax questions.

After a public outcry generated by NTEU members and chapters concerned with the impact of the IRS decision on taxpayers—and opposition in Congress—the agency pulled back from its plans to close the TACs.

Both the House and Senate have approved language in their respective versions of the 2006 Transportation-Treasury Appropriations bill that would prevent the IRS from moving ahead with the customer service cuts until the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) studies the impact on taxpayers. TIGTA was among the vocal critics of the plan when it was initially proposed by the IRS.

President Kelley also called on Congress to approve legislation, H.R. 1621, that would repeal recently-enacted authority for the IRS to hire private sector debt collectors to pursue tax debts in exchange for a bounty of up to 25 percent of the money they collect. The bipartisan bill, introduced by Reps. Rob Simmons (R-CT) and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), has 65 House co-sponsors and “would undo a serious mistake” that threatens the privacy and security of taxpayers’ personal information, Kelley said.

“Privatizing tax collection is the wrong approach for the IRS and is not the most efficient or effective way to decrease the tax gap or increase taxpayer satisfaction,” she said, adding that “it will cost the government more money than if the work were left in the capable hands of IRS employees.”

NTEU is the largest independent federal employee union, representing 150,000 federal employees in 30 federal agencies and departments, including some 94,000 IRS employees.