by Michael Oliverio
As a financial planner, I help hardworking West Virginians save enough to enjoy their hard-earned retirements and protect themselves against financial loss.
My clients come to me because they want an expert who is on their side and can give them honest advice. Similarly, many West Virginians work with a trusted certified professional accountant to do their taxes, because they want an expert in their corner who will fight to ensure they can keep their hard-earned dollars and receive every deduction to which they are entitled.
That is why I’m very concerned about proposals being debated in Washington, D.C., that would expand the mandate and authority of the Internal Revenue Service to establish an IRS-run tax preparation system and even prepare tax returns on behalf of all taxpayers. Such proposals represent an inherent conflict of interest and would limit the financial freedom of Americans.
The IRS can’t be expected to look out for the interest of hard-working taxpayers while their mission exists to collect and maximize revenue for the federal government. This stands in direct conflict with the interests of taxpayers, who need someone who is on their side and who is incentivized to maximize deductions. As it stands, the private sector is already fulfilling this role through very capable CPAs or free online tools. Injecting the government into this role is unnecessary and could harm taxpayers.
These proposals are also extremely worrying from a privacy perspective. Taxpayers would be required to provide the IRS with additional personal and financial information for the agency to generate a tax return. The IRS has a checkered past when it comes to data protection. In 2016, hackers stole more than 700,000 social security numbers from the IRS. The next year, the IRS officially apologized for targeting certain groups and organizations for audits and additional scrutiny based on their political beliefs and affiliations.
A government run tax preparation system would also cause innumerable headaches for hard-working West Virginians. The IRS remains one of the most unpopular agencies when it comes to customer satisfaction. A recent survey found that the overall approval rating of the agency fell to just 37% in the last two years, while the Washington Post reported that only 1-in-50 help calls to the IRS reached an actual human representative. The IRS also recently reported a backlog of 29 million tax returns that they have yet to process. Taxpayers shouldn’t be asked to wait hours on the phone to correct mistakes when there are better private sector options already working.
During my time in the West Virginia Legislature, I fought for fiscally conservative policies, while many Washington lawmakers ran the other way. Today, barely a decade later, even liberal stalwarts in Washington are questioning the far left’s schemes. President Obama’s former Federal Chief Information Officer recently described proposals to enact a government-run tax preparation as, “operationally impractical, prohibitively expensive [and] legally questionable.”
The Build Back Better legislation may be on the ropes, but we need not jump at every opportunity to increase our debt, further saddling the next generation with the bill for an unnecessary expansion of IRS power.
West Virginians don’t want or need the IRS to become their accountant. I hope our federal delegation will agree.
