What's changed at the IRS - and what hasn't....

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Scant evidence of fixes at IRS after scandal
By James Pilcher, November 24, 2013

More than six months after a top Internal Revenue Service official acknowledged the agency inappropriately scrutinized the applications for tax exemption by tea party and other conservative groups, the scandal has faded from the headlines and moved to Congress' back burner.

But it's unclear how much has changed inside the IRS to fix the underlying problems that led to the targeting.

Some argue the agency has taken significant steps to revamp a flawed review process that left certain groups waiting years for approval and subjected others to intrusive, burdensome questioning.

"A great deal has changed at the IRS to prevent this from happening again," said Rep. Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, one of three congressional panels to investigate the matter. Cummings cited leadership changes, better training for managers and screeners, and a streamlined application processes, among other things.

But where some see progress, others see superficial tweaks and a still-festering problem.

"I'm quite sure they're not going to go after tea party groups again," said Paul Streckfus, editor of a trade journal focused on tax-exempt issues. "The larger question is, is the system working better than it did? And the answer, as far as I can tell, is it's not." He said IRS screeners are still overloaded and the tax-exempt unit has been paralyzed by the scandal.

Here's a rundown of what's changed - and what hasn't:

• The IRS' top ranks have been purged

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• A ban on BOLOs

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• New review process with more neutral instructions for front-line workers

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• Murky decades-old rule still in place

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• Wait times for applicants still long

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• Cincinnati office still facing big workload without adequate resources

The IRS' exempt organizations unit receives more than 60,000 applications per year, most of which are handled by 300 employees in the Cincinnati field office.

With so many cases coming in and no new resources to handle them, "they're falling farther and farther behind," said Streckfus, the editor of the trade journal. "This is a problem of inventory management."

He said it would take additional funding - or maybe even shifting the tax-exempt workload to a new agency - to really root out the problems that caused the targeting scandal. But he said lawmakers in Congress seem more interested in pointing fingers over who is to blame for the problem than in fixing it.
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