House Passes IRS Reform

House GOP leaders Wednesday hailed passage of an IRS reform proposal with promises of even more ambitious tax reform in the future.

Speaker Newt Gingrich, R-Ga., indicated that next year yet another Taxpayers Bill of Rights could be added to the two dozen items included in the bill that passed 426-4 Wednesday afternoon, and reiterated his support for legislation to sunset the tax code at the end of 2001.

Ways and Means Chairman Bill Archer, R-Texas, pushed for today's floor vote despite the decision of Senate Finance Committee Chairman William Roth, R-Del., to delay action until next year.

The House-passed bill's provisions include:

• Creating an 11-member oversight board to review IRS management. The board would include the Treasury Secretary, private citizens and a representative of an employee union.
• Requiring Congress to develop a "tax complexity analysis" for all tax-related legislation, to determine the impact of the legislation on the tax code.
• Shifting the burden of proof in some Tax Court cases from taxpayers to the IRS.
• Employees would be required to report any requests from political appointees to conduct or cut off audits of individual taxpayers.
• IRS would be given freedom to experiment with human resources practices, and managers would be given more flexibility in performance management.