The Subcommittee on Oversight of the US House Ways and Means Committee just announced that it will be holding a “Hearing on Internal Revenue Service Operations and Fiscal Year 2010 Budget Proposals” on June 4.  From the advisory:

In 2008, the IRS collected $2.7 trillion in taxes and processed nearly 250 million tax returns, including 150 million individual income tax returns.  Through May 1, 2009, the IRS collected $1.5 trillion in taxes and processed nearly 155.4 million returns, including 126.4 million individual returns.  The Subcommittee will discuss the most recent tax return filing season with a focus on taxpayer service, the recovery rebate, and taxpayer privacy concerns.

The Subcommittee also will review IRS operations not related to the filing season.  Specifically, the Subcommittee will look at examination rates, collection activities, and the tax gap.  The Subcommittee will discuss the Making Work Pay credit and new withholding tables, and administration of other tax provisions in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Pub. L. 111-5).

As part of its consideration of IRS operations, the Subcommittee will discuss the Administration’s fiscal year 2010 proposed budget for the IRS of $12.1 billion, an increase of 5.2 percent over the fiscal year 2009 level (excluding funding under Pub. L. 111-5).  The Subcommittee will examine the Administration’s revenue proposals and budget proposals with respect to taxpayer service, enforcement, operations support, and information technology.

While the hearing seems to be focused more on the general operating budget of the IRS, President Obama’s plans to crackdown on offshore tax evasion are bound to come up.  Indeed, the plan was actually unveiled in the 2010 budget and boosts the IRS’s budget significantly.  It will be interesting to see what comes out of this.

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