Bob Kerrey: “the chairman is quite right. Last year, during the conference deliberations--we had seen, throughout the last couple of…”

“the chairman is quite right. Last year, during the conference deliberations--we had seen, throughout the last couple of years, a considerable accumulation of reports, specifically, the General Accounting Office evaluation of tax system modernization. While it has not all been a loss, there is no question that there has been significant disappointment and the evaluation of GAO is quite negative. I must point out that some of that difficulty is caused by us. Earlier today, we actually had the first meeting of the restructuring of the commission. Commissioner Richardson appeared before that commission, observing that the mission statement itself very often does not connect to many of the things that are identified as great successes. Very specifically, the mission statement of the IRS is to collect taxes in the most cost-effective way possible. One of the things that we often don't look at is what does it cost us to collect the taxes, and how can we do it in a more cost-effective way, not just measuring the money we spend but the money the taxpayers spend to comply with the laws. One of the examples is we have this alternative minimum tax. There are about 4 million taxpayers that are identified as possibly candidates for paying this AMT. What has happened is, of 4 million taxpayers, 90 percent--3.6 million of that 4 million--after they have gone through all the work and hired the accountants to do the calculation of taxes, they discover they owe no taxes at all.”