Pressured to Seize Property--IRS Agents

Three Internal Revenue Service officers told a Senate panel today that they feel great pressure from managers to seize taxpayers’ property even though less drastic action might be more productive for the government.

Shirley Garcia of the Landover, Md., IRS office said revenue officers are given the message that “the more harassment they give the public, the more money they collect--it does look good on their daily report.”

“It’s now considered a quality error” if an officer does not seize the property of a delinquent taxpayer, said Robert Miller, a revenue officer stationed in Wheaton, Md.

Robert Brown, who works out of the Landover office and is preparing to retire after 26 years with the IRS, said he was once downgraded by superiors for trying to impress on new trainees that they should be courteous to taxpayers.

The three revenue officers testified before the Senate Finance subcommittee that oversees the IRS. The panel has uncovered evidence that some IRS managers routinely judge employees on the basis of how much tax money they collect and how much property they seize, in direct violation of written IRS directives.

‘Like Mob-Employed Enforcers’

Sen. John Heinz (R-Pa.), a member of the subcommittee, said some of the IRS methods are tantamount to telling employees to “go out and act like mob-employed enforcers.”

The subcommittee made public a memorandum that the chief of one of the agency’s collections branches had sent to his group managers. The memo complained about poor performance by the revenue officers who collect overdue taxes.

“It appears the fewer cases that the revenue officers have assigned to them, the less work they do,” wrote branch chief Wilbur E. McKean of the IRS Baltimore district office. “Where are you as managers? . . . The revenue officers that are performing above a satisfactory level will be rewarded, and the ones that are not will be documented with corrective action taken.

“Your mid-year evaluations will be prepared in approximately 1 1/2 months,” the memo noted. “You will be evaluated on your accomplishments or lack of accomplishments. Need I say more?”

IRS spokeswoman Johnelle Hunter said in response to the memo: “The IRS forbids use of enforcement statistics to rate the performance of its managers or employees. It is clear that the memo that is being used today is in violation of this. We feel the branch chief misunderstood the guidelines.”