Chris Van Hollen: “I want to talk about a provision tucked into this bill that has not gotten a lot of attention, but it should grab the…”

“I want to talk about a provision tucked into this bill that has not gotten a lot of attention, but it should grab the attention of anyone who cares about fair treatment of the American taxpayer. I just take you back to 1998 when, in response to concerns about overly aggressive IRS collection tactics against individual taxpayers, this Congress, the House and the Senate, passed the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act. That act specifically prevented IRS agents and their supervisors from being evaluated or rewarded based on the amount of tax revenues they collect. The reason for that was pretty simple and straightforward. We wanted to make sure that those agents treat taxpayers fairly and objectively. We wanted to make sure they did not have a personal stake, financial stake, in how much they collected and the outcome of disputes with taxpayers. We did not want to turn them into bounty hunters. Well, take a look at this bill. This bill has a provision that will authorize private contractors and private debt collectors to go out and collect the tax revenues of taxpayers and get a commission on it.”