‘It Depends On The Situation’: Michael Cloud & IRS Commissioner Werfel Discuss Telework Policies

4 months ago

During a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Tuesday, Rep. Michael Cloud (R-TX) questioned Internal Revenue Service Commissioner Danny Werfel about teleworking policies.

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Transcript

00:00 Thank You, Mr. Simpson. Mr. Cloud. Thank you once again and I have I think what is

00:05 a little more technical some questions. In January the IRS announced that the

00:10 total amount of recoveries from wealthy individuals as a result of the IRA

00:13 funding was 520 million and that's about 5% of the 10 billion increase of revenue

00:22 that CBO projected for FY 23 and 24. Now part of that I think has a huge part to

00:28 do with CBO's penchant to over over inflate the benefits and under inflate

00:34 the cost of anything we're evaluating. You would I would guess say you know if

00:39 we had more help more people and more time we could probably get that done but

00:44 going back to the issue on the teleworking that we touched on briefly

00:48 briefly I wanted to ask you very specifically earlier this year you set a

00:53 goal for employees to be in the office back to just 50% of the time in May.

00:58 How many days per pay period do you require your your DC based managers

01:05 employers covered by collective bargaining agreements to be physically

01:07 in the office? Well it's half so if there's 10 days in a pay period it

01:14 would be five days and so it's and let me also offer that what what we are

01:22 requiring is consistency with the government-wide standard issued by the

01:26 Office of Management and Budget. Part of what we have to evaluate with respect to

01:32 telework is a couple of things. Are we achieving our productivity goals? We had

01:36 a very strong filing season so in many ways a lot of our productivity goals

01:40 were achieved. We have to stay competitive in the labor market and we

01:44 want to make sure that we're providing good flexibility versus what other

01:48 employers might provide and we want to meet the government-wide standard so

01:52 there's a lot to balance here. Yeah well I mean we're talking with OMB about the

01:56 government-wide standard because of course these teleworking practices were

01:59 put in under COVID meant to be temporary and coming out of COVID they've been

02:03 made permanent. Now from a business perspective you know when you're making

02:08 this decision you're thinking okay I'm gonna take a probably a short hit

02:12 somewhat of a hit in productivity from working at home but hey we we don't have

02:17 the facility usage so there's savings there. Can you submit to us what savings

02:21 we've been able to gather? I mean are there offices you've been able to close

02:27 down? Believe it or not it's it's it's mixed in some locations we have

02:32 space issues because because people are shifting to smaller telework footprints

02:39 over time and and working on-site. In some cases we have excess real estate

02:46 and we're working to to offload that that real estate. It's not always the

02:52 case that you lose productivity when people are working off-site it just

02:56 depends on a lot of it depends on the individual right and the situation. Yeah

03:00 the IRS is committed a significant resource to ensuring taxpayers who

03:05 navigate the 7,000 page tax code pay the proper amount which they should as the

03:10 job but we were talking about the the FY 23 Treasury reported a staggering 33%

03:23 of improper payments for the earned income tax credit so we were just

03:28 talking about this. What are you doing to reduce those improper payments? Yeah this

03:33 is a really important point because it is that that high improper payment rate

03:39 that that I believe led to the the large number of audits in this program. We have

03:46 to balance there is a part of that error rate that is more concerning than

03:52 another part of that error rate. So part of that error rate is direct fraud or a

03:57 or a nefarious preparer who steals the EITC from the eligible applicant and

04:06 part of that error rate is the dependent child lived with the parent for four

04:12 months out of the year rather than six months out of the year and that's the

04:15 eligibility issue. In a constrained resource environment we have to make

04:18 choices. Can you break that down for us maybe like that 33% I mean 33%? Yeah what yes we

04:26 can get you more information on that I would say that a large part of the error

04:29 is kind of more of this technical error where it's the number of months you've

04:33 lived with your dependent child. Well my commitment is is on EITC improper

04:37 payments is to go after and correct the errors that are more nefarious that are

04:44 more likely to compromise trust in the tax system. I wish we could get all the

04:50 error but we have to prioritize. Just a couple seconds I don't have any reason

04:55 to think anything about these questions except you mentioned that the IRS does

05:01 not sell data was happy to hear that but that sparked a couple questions for me.

05:04 You purchase data. Do we purchase data? I don't believe we purchase data I mean

05:12 maybe we purchase benchmark information on real on individuals on people yeah on

05:18 citizens we do not. Do you share data with other agencies or do other agencies

05:23 have access to your data without a warrant or subpoena? Yes under section

05:27 6103 of the code there are statutorily established data sharing environments

05:36 where like for example we share data with HHS to help that with their child

05:42 support enforcement we share data with the Education Department is around

05:47 aligning with student aid eligibility so there are these buckets of areas but

05:52 otherwise beyond if it's not prescribed in statute in section 6103 we do not

05:58 share it. Thank you very much.

‘It Depends On The Situation’: Michael Cloud & IRS Commissioner Werfel Discuss Telework Policies

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