Political Quotes

“Madam President, the Inflation Reduction Act, IRA, contained a provision for the Internal Revenue Service, IRS, to spend $15 million to deliver a report to Congress on an IRS-run and maintained ``Direct eFile'' tax return system. This was not a bipartisan provision. In fact, not one Republican Senator or Representative supported the IRA, and none had an opportunity to vote on this specific provision. The report, released on May 16, 2023, was supposed to address the cost of such a system and the safeguards to protect taxpayers, surveys of taxpayer opinions and findings of an ``independent third party'' on the overall feasibility, approach, schedule, cost, organizational design and IRS capacity to deliver such a Direct eFile tax return system. It fell far short of these requirements and was conducted by third parties who had previously expressed a desire for the IRS to make such an undertaking. Beyond these flaws, the report simultaneously announced that the IRS had already built functioning multilingual, mobile friendly, tax preparation and filing software. However, the Inflation Reduction Act only authorized the IRS to spend funds on a report, not the building of the prototype system. The implementation of this provision by the Biden administration has clearly violated Congress's statutory direction.…”