George Holding: “The Internal Revenue Service, the people who work there, most of them, like most Americans, pay their taxes. The…”

“The Internal Revenue Service, the people who work there, most of them, like most Americans, pay their taxes. The Internal Revenue Service is charged, obviously, with administering the Tax Code, they are charged with collecting taxes. I served a long time in the U.S. Attorney's Office, and I can tell you that the Internal Revenue Service is probably the most intimidating Federal agency of the whole panoply of Federal agencies. The American people have a right to expect IRS employees, these IRS employees who are auditing taxpayers, collecting taxes, to abide by Federal tax laws. Mr. Speaker, that is why there is a law on the books that says the IRS can fire an employee who is delinquent on their taxes. That is why I found it so amazing that when the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration went and did an investigation, they found that the IRS, the bureaucrats that run the IRS, in 61 percent of the cases where you had an IRS employee that was delinquent on their taxes, that they were not fired. Further, it was shocking to find that there were cases when these employees who were delinquent on their taxes were not only not fired, but they received a bonus. This is unacceptable and the American people deserve better. Allowing IRS employees to continue administering our tax laws when they themselves are in violation of that law undermines the trust of the American taxpayer.…”