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The Senate badesses the choice of President Donald Trump as head of the IRS: Charles Rettig, a tax lawyer from Beverly Hills who would face the colossal challenge of overseeing the most radical redesign of the US tax code in three decades.
represented thousands of individuals and businesses in civil and criminal tax cases before the agency and against her in court. He also defended Trump's decision to break with tradition by refusing to disclose his personal tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign.
Rettig Thursday before the Senate Finance Committee for his confirmation of the position of commissioner of the taxman. Democrats on the panel should ask him, given his defense of Trump's fiscal stance, he will maintain the IRS's political independence and work for the benefit of the average taxpayer. by implementing the new tax law – a complex, The new law, Trump's legislative signature, provides for generous tax cuts for corporations and wealthier Americans, and more modest cuts for people and low and middle income families. From the beginning of the year, millions of active Americans saw their salaries increase with less tax withheld.
Rettig, 61, worked for his law firm Hochman, Salkin, Rettig, Toscher & Perez, in Beverly Hills, California.
His clients included affluent taxpayers seeking to enter into agreements with the IRS to return information on offshore bank accounts in exchange for reduced penalties. He sued the IRS on behalf of clients seeking to reduce their tax penalties, and chaired the IRS Advisory Board, which serves as a public forum to discuss tax issues with government officials. agency.
an agency that has been pounded for years by Republican lawmakers and has seen its funding reduced by 20 percent since 2010. Rettig's control comes as the independent IRS watchdog warned that cuts in funding have eroded the agency's ability to provide quality service to taxpayers. "Because of these cuts, the IRS does not have enough employees to provide basic taxpayer service," said Nina Olson, the national taxpayer advocate, in her mid-year report. -year in Congress released Wednesday. "The compliance and enforcement side has been further reduced."
At the same time, Olson says that she has "no doubt" that the IRS will manage to administer and enforce the new tax law.
season tax returns earlier this year for 2017, the last under the "old" tax system, has gone well, officials said.
But on April 17, the filing deadline, the bottom fell. The key elements of the IRS's computer system collapsed, which surprised taxpayers who had waited the last day to file online. The website to make payments and access to other key services was down because of what officials later described as "a high-volume technical problem". Even though a relatively recent incident caused the accident, "the incident illustrates the fragility of the IRS's aging technological infrastructure," says Olson's report. . Finance Committee Chair, Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), said that attention will be focused on the fact that the IRS has competent staff and has the necessary technology to serve. taxpayers and reduce fraud.
Tax Watchdog Message to Rettig: It should make improving customer service a top priority.
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