Congressman Peter Roskam (R-Ill.) has introduced a series of bills that would level the playing field between the IRS and ordinary taxpayers. Together, they would revolutionize the relationship that everyday citizens have with their government. ATR is supportive of each of these legislative initiatives, and would urge co-sponsorship of them.
The family of bills includes:
H. Res. 280, the "Taxpayer Bill of Rights Resolution of 2013." This resolution sets out basic principles that everyone of good will should be able to get behind: taxpayers have a right to be informed, to be assisted, to be heard, to appeal, to have certainty, to have a basic right to privacy, to confidentiality, to fair representation, to a fair and just tax system, and to pay no more than the correct amount of tax.
H.R. 2530, the "Taxpayer Transparency and Efficient Audit Act." This bill ensures that taxpayers are in timely and substantial contact with the IRS during an audit, and importantly ends any unresolved audit open for a full year.
H.R. 2531, the "Protecting Taxpayers from Intrusive IRS Requests Act." This gets to the heart of the "BOLO crisis," where the IRS targeted Tea Party groups and others on the Right for heightened non-profit application scrutiny. The IRS would no longer normally be able to ask non-profit applicants questions regarding their religious, political, or social beliefs.
H.R. 2532, the "Integrity Restoration Strategy (IRS) Act." Building on what H.R. 2531 does, this bill would give the IRS 30 days to investigate a non-profit application, otherwise the application is automatically approved. The IRS would have one year from passage of the bill to comply with inspector general audit recommendations, and would have to file quarterly reports to the Congress demonstrating that they've cleaned up their ways.
H.R. 2533, the "Stop Playing on Citizen's Cash (SPOCC) Act. The IRS would be prohibited from holding any more taxpayer funded conferences (including those featuring Star Trek reenactments) until their inspector general and Congress has determined that the IRS can be trusted again to do so.