"If you are happy with Blackwater in Iraq, then I expect you are perfectly fine with contracting the debt collection of IRS debt to private collectors

Posted on Thu, Oct. 11, 2007


House votes to end IRS debt deals
By Ryan J. Donmoyer

Bloomberg News

WASHINGTON - The House of Representatives voted yesterday to repeal a federal program that lets private collectors pursue delinquent federal tax debt, sending the measure to a likely death in the Senate.
Even if it were to pass that chamber, President Bush's advisers will recommend a veto, a White House statement said.

Democrats compared private bill collectors working for the Internal Revenue Service to private contractors under scrutiny in Iraq and said they were more likely to harass and abuse taxpayers. Employees of one contractor in Iraq, Blackwater USA, are said to be responsible for the deaths of 17 civilians last month.

"If you are happy with Blackwater in Iraq, then I expect you are perfectly fine with contracting the debt collection of IRS debt to private bill collectors," said Rep. Earl Pomeroy (D., N.D.).

Republicans said private collectors were efficient and have conducted themselves professionally. They pointed to estimates by the nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation that repealing the program would cost the government $1 billion in revenue.

"It's rather disappointing that the majority would actually find it necessary to raise taxes elsewhere to terminate a program that is helping to close the tax gap," said Rep. Jim McCrery of Louisiana, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.

"This bill is dead on arrival in the Senate, as far as I'm concerned," said Iowa Sen. Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee and a longtime champion of the program. "It attempts to stop a program that's brand-new, yet already working."

The use of private debt-collection agencies has been criticized by consumer advocates, the National Treasury Employees Union, and the Government Accountability Office, which object to allowing for-profit companies to carry out the government's function of tax collection.


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