The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) fiscal year 1995 budget request
totals $7.6 billion, a 3.7 percent increase over the previous year's
appropriation that is due mainly to a growth in tax systems
modernization. At the same time, the budget could cut IRS' staffing
level by 5.2 percent, the brunt of which would fall on IRS' enforcement
programs. Apart from IRS' budget request, the President has proposed
giving IRS another $405 million for several compliance initiatives that
would boost IRS staffing by about 5,000 positions and reverse the
decline in enforcement staff. GAO's analysis of IRS' budget request and
the proposed initiatives raises questions about unfunded costs,
compliance initiatives and the use of telephone collections for
delinquent accounts, user fees for taxpayer photocopies and other
services, tax systems modernization, and trends in return filing.