House panel to consider IRS bills

The House Ways and Means Committee is set to increase the spotlight on the IRS again on Wednesday, considering seven different bills about the tax agency.

{mosads}The bills include proposals to make it easier to fire IRS employees found to be making lives difficult for taxpayers for political purposes; to bar agency officials from conducting official business on personal email accounts; and to give groups seeking tax-exempt status more appeal powers.

Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and the committee will mark-up the measures more than 22 months after former IRS official Lois Lerner acknowledged that the agency improperly scrutinized Tea Party groups seeking tax-exempt status. Lerner, like former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, was also found to have used personal email for official work.

Congressional committees are still investigating the IRS, with the GOP saying their efforts have been slowed by attempts to recover emails to and from Lerner that couldn’t be found. Calling out the IRS also remains popular among conservatives – Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R-Texas) proposal to abolish the agency received among the biggest cheers when he announced he was running for president on Monday.

The Ways and Means panel is also scheduled to vote on repealing the estate tax on Wednesday. The other IRS bills include proposals to improve the process for obtaining tax-exempt status, provide certain deductions for the gift tax, allow the release of information on investigations into the improper disclosure of taxpayer information, and implement a taxpayer bill of rights.

The bill of rights, introduced by Rep. Peter Roskam, would put into law a set of principles the IRS put into place last year.

Several of the bills scheduled to be considered by Ways and Means sailed through the House during the last Congress, but did not become law.