Tax Records Destroyed by Aide, IRS Says
A supervisor at a regional Internal Revenue Service center destroyed up to 6,000 documents filed by businesses contesting their tax assessments for previous years, officials said Friday.
Bob Branson, public affairs officer for the regional IRS center in Austin, said IRS officials are investigating the incident, which occurred late last year.
A statement issued by the center said that a supervisory employee instructed another employee to destroy certain taxpayer-related correspondence and that the supervisor resigned when confronted with the charges. The supervisor apparently was attempting to keep her division first in efficiency by reducing an overwhelming backlog, an official said.
The 5,000 to 6,000 destroyed documents included correspondence, some with up to 20 pages of attached receipts and other financial information, from businesses objecting to tax assessments for previous years.
The center, one of 10 in the nation, serves Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and Kansas. Tax returns for 1984 apparently were not involved, the IRS said.
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