Kevin Brady: “Over the past several years, the American people have come to learn just how reckless and untrustworthy the IRS can be…”

“Over the past several years, the American people have come to learn just how reckless and untrustworthy the IRS can be with their sensitive taxpayer information. Most concerning of all is that this Federal agency, which holds immense power to disrupt the lives of taxpayers, has directly exploited sensitive taxpayer information for political purposes. We have responsibility to taxpayers to make sure this is never allowed to happen again. That is why we fought hard to push forward a ban on IRS political targeting as part of the PATH Act. And last December, that ban was signed into law for the very first time. But we still have more work to do to clean up the IRS and hold it more accountable to the taxpayers it serves. The Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act continues this critical effort. This important bill, authored by Congressman Roskam, would prohibit the IRS from collecting the identity of people who donate to tax-exempt organizations. During our committee's IRS political targeting investigation, we learned that the IRS not only singled out certain organizations for heightened security, but in some cases, it even demanded they turn over a list of all their donors. These invasions of privacy are completely unacceptable. The bill before us today makes much needed steps to protect taxpayer identities and ease the compliance burden on tax-exempt organizations.…”