Penny wise and dollar foolish: OMB warns of risks of cutting IRS budget

From The Washington Post:

Under the funding provided for the IRS in a House spending bill, more money in owed taxes would go uncollected than would be spent to operate the agency, the Obama administration has said.

An appropriations bill for the budget year that starts in October also would increase the risk of successful cyber attacks on taxpayer information, and leave customer service at the current “unacceptable” levels by shortchanging those programs, Office of Management and Budget Director Shaun Donovan said in a letter to the House.

The $10.1 billion in the bill for the IRS is about 8 percent lower than current levels and 22 percent less than the White House requested.

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 “Additional funding cuts would come on top of the drastic cuts already enacted since 2010,” leaving the agency’s funding in inflation-adjusted amounts below its 1991 level “when there were 38 million fewer individual taxpayers and a far less complicated tax code,” the letter said.

The Appropriations Committee nevertheless approved the bill Wednesday afternoon along party lines, clearing it for a full House vote after working through a long list of amendments.