It’s time for complete overhaul of the IRS

In its last report to Congress, the office of the National Taxpayer Advocate found that IRS staffers answered about 38 percent of the phone calls they received in fiscal year 2015.

They received more than 100 million phone calls in that same time frame, which means 62 million phone calls went unanswered. Sixty-two million times, we called for assistance filling out a form, for help deciphering our byzantine tax code, to figure out how to file, or for answers to questions about missing refunds.

In the end, we only reached a ringing phone.

More numbers: The average American spends eight hours and over $100 filing taxes each year. These numbers more than triple for business owners, who spend an average of 24 hours and more than $400 to file. The term “business owners” doesn’t refer to huge corporations; it includes small local businesses, anyone with income from freelance work or a rental property.

Along with the hours spent doing taxes, estimates over the past several years have showed that tax filing costs our economy more than $300 billion annually. Our tax code in 2015 was 74,608 pages long – 187 times longer than it was a century ago.

All of these statistics point to one conclusion: Filing taxes is frustrating, inefficient and unnecessarily costly. Working with the IRS is something Americans often describe as a “nightmare.”

I’ve long said our tax code is badly in need of reform. It’s too long, too complicated and too inconsistent. In the past few months I’ve been proud to vote to make permanent some of the most crucial tax credits California families and businesses rely on, like the Research & Development tax credit, the Child Tax Credit and the state and local sales tax deduction.

Ultimately, what our system truly needs is a full overhaul so that our tax code is fairer, flatter and easy to decipher, without endless loopholes. Tax rates cannot simply go up forever, which is part of why I spend so much time fighting the culture of spending in Washington, D.C.

It wasn’t too long ago that we discovered terrible misuse of power by the IRS in their efforts to target political groups applying for tax-exempt status through additional agency scrutiny based on their ideological leanings. That’s an egregious misuse of taxpayer dollars, especially when we consider the persistent failure of the IRS to fulfill its most basic responsibility of assisting taxpayers. As the agency continues to make audacious demands for more funds, it’s hard to want to allocate it more money when its leaders spend it on fulfilling a political agenda.

This week, Congress voted on four bills focused on improving internal IRS operations, encouraging the IRS to take the necessary disciplinary actions against personnel found guilty of misconduct and requiring IRS staff members to eliminate seriously delinquent tax debts of their own.

I am also voting to ban bonus payments to IRS employees until the agency can actually implement a customer-service strategy that delivers what we, the taxpayers who fund their operation, need. Lastly, I’m voting to give more power to taxpayers in deciding how IRS user fees are spent by requiring Congressional approval for spending decisions.

These bills are common sense, and reforming our tax code should be, too. I will continue to fight for a fairer and simpler system that eliminates unequal carve-outs and streamlines the filing process. Less time and money spent on filing taxes means more time and money for Americans to reinvest back into our communities and economy.

This story was originally published April 21, 2016 at 9:28 AM with the headline "It’s time for complete overhaul of the IRS."