Nonpolitical, even-handed administration of the tax laws is crucial to the integrity of the tax system. Several recent developments raise increased concerns about the possibility of political interference in IRS operations:
- A representative of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) reportedly being stationed at IRS and seeking broad access to highly restricted databases containing sensitive and protected tax information, with President Trump’s encouragement;
- President Trump’s break with precedent by announcing his intention to fire and replace the IRS Commissioner before the end of his term;
- Vacancies created by the departure of senior career DOJ Tax officials after threatened reassignments; and
- The Trump Administration seeking to divert resources from the IRS’s Criminal Investigations unit to work on immigration cases.
But overwhelming bipartisan majorities in Congress have enacted specific provisions making various abuses related to IRS data, audits, and investigations a crime punishable by imprisonment and/or fines.
In the early 1950s, the IRS was restructured as its own agency within the Treasury, providing the officials working on tax administration with greater insulation from political pressures and a more defined mandate for their operations. The reorganization eliminated five positions requiring Presidential appointment and Senate confirmation, leaving only the Commissioner as a Presidential appointee (restructuring in the 1990s added the position of IRS Chief Counsel as a second Presidentially appointed position). It replaced these previously political positions with civil service personnel. As President Truman explained, this decision was made because “the technical nature of [the IRS’s] work today … calls for positions in the professional career service.” To help protect this insulation, Congress added section 7212 to the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. This provision made it a crime to interfere or attempt to interfere with administration of internal revenue laws.
This law was put in place to underscore the importance that the IRS remains an impartial and apolitical administrator of the US tax system. As the Senate Finance Committee put it in its explanation of the provision, “The perception that it is possible that high-level Executive Branch influence over taxpayer audits and collection activity could occur has a negative influence on taxpayers’ views of the tax system.”
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