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95–798 PDF 2004

WHAT IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S

ECONOMIC GROWTH PLAN COMPONENT FOR

PAPERWORK REDUCTION?

HEARING

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY POLICY, NATURAL

RESOURCES AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON

GOVERNMENT REFORM

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

ONE HUNDRED EIGHTH CONGRESS

SECOND SESSION

APRIL 20, 2004

Serial No. 108–197

Printed for the use of the Committee on Government Reform

(

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.gpo.gov/congress/house

http://www.house.gov/reform

(II)

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM

TOM DAVIS, Virginia, Chairman

DAN BURTON, Indiana

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

JOHN L. MICA, Florida

MARK E. SOUDER, Indiana

STEVEN C. LATOURETTE, Ohio

DOUG OSE, California

RON LEWIS, Kentucky

JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia

TODD RUSSELL PLATTS, Pennsylvania

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

ADAM H. PUTNAM, Florida

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

TIM MURPHY, Pennsylvania

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio

JOHN R. CARTER, Texas

MARSHA BLACKBURN, Tennessee

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida

HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

TOM LANTOS, California

MAJOR R. OWENS, New York

EDOLPHUS TOWNS, New York

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

DANNY K. DAVIS, Illinois

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri

DIANE E. WATSON, California

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

LINDA T. SANCHEZ, California

C.A. ‘‘DUTCH’’ RUPPERSBERGER, Maryland

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of

Columbia

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

——— ———

———

BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont

(Independent)

MELISSA WOJCIAK, Staff Director

DAVID MARIN, Deputy Staff Director/Communications Director

ROB BORDEN, Parliamentarian

TERESA AUSTIN, Chief Clerk

PHIL BARNETT, Minority Chief of Staff/Chief Counsel

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY POLICY, NATURAL RESOURCES AND REGULATORY

AFFAIRS

DOUG OSE, California, Chairman

EDWARD L. SCHROCK, Virginia

CHRISTOPHER SHAYS, Connecticut

JOHN M. MCHUGH, New York

CHRIS CANNON, Utah

NATHAN DEAL, Georgia

CANDICE S. MILLER, Michigan

PATRICK J. TIBERI, Ohio

JOHN F. TIERNEY, Massachusetts

TOM LANTOS, California

PAUL E. KANJORSKI, Pennsylvania

DENNIS J. KUCINICH, Ohio

CHRIS VAN HOLLEN, Maryland

JIM COOPER, Tennessee

EX OFFICIO

TOM DAVIS, Virginia HENRY A. WAXMAN, California

BARBARA F. KAHLOW, Staff Director

CARRIE-LEE EARLY, Professional Staff Member

LAUREN JACOBS, Clerk

KRISTA BOYD, Minority Counsel

(III)

C O N T E N T S

Page

Hearing held on April 20, 2004 .............................................................................. 1

Statement of:

Clifton, Daniel, Federal affairs manager, Americans for Tax Reform; Paul

Hense, president, Paul A. Hense, CPA, P.C., Grand Rapids, MI, on

behalf of the National Small Business Association; and Raymond J.

Keating, chief economist, Small Business Survival Committee ................ 107

Graham, John D., Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory

Affairs, Office of Management and Budget; Mark W. Everson, Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service and former Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget; and Patricia A. Dalton,

Director, Strategic Issues, General Accounting Office ............................... 21

Letters, statements, etc., submitted for the record by:

Clifton, Daniel, Federal affairs manager, Americans for Tax Reform, prepared statement of ........................................................................................ 110

Dalton, Patricia A., Director, Strategic Issues, General Accounting Office,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 64

Everson, Mark W., Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service and former

Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget,

prepared statement of ................................................................................... 43

Graham, John D., Administrator, Office of Information and Regulatory

Affairs, Office of Management and Budget, prepared statement of ......... 23

Hense, Paul, president, Paul A. Hense, CPA, P.C., Grand Rapids, MI,

on behalf of the National Small Business Association, prepared statement of ........................................................................................................... 118

Keating, Raymond J., chief economist, Small Business Survival Committee, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 128

Ose, Hon. Doug, a Representative in Congress from the State of California, prepared statement of ........................................................................... 4

Waxman, Hon. Henry A., a Representative in Congress from the State

of California, prepared statement of ........................................................... 16

(1)

WHAT IS THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION’S ECONOMIC GROWTH PLAN COMPONENT FOR

PAPERWORK REDUCTION?

TUESDAY, APRIL 20, 2004

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

SUBCOMMITTEE ON ENERGY POLICY, NATURAL

RESOURCES AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS,

COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT REFORM,

Washington, DC.

The subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 2 p.m., in room

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Doug Ose (chairman of

the subcommittee) presiding.

Present: Representatives Ose, Schrock, Cannon, Tierney, and

Waxman (ex officio).

Staff present: Barbara F. Kahlow, staff director; Carrie-Lee

Early, professional staff member; Lauren Jacobs, clerk; Phil

Barnett, minority staff director; Karen Lightfoot, minority communications director/senior policy advisor; Anna Laitin, minority communications & policy assistant; Krista Boyd and Alexandra Teitz,

minority counsels; Earley Green, minority chief clerk; and Jean

Gosa, minority assistant clerk.

Mr. OSE. Good afternoon. Welcome to this afternoon’s hearing in

the Subcommittee on Energy Policy, Natural Resources and Regulatory Affairs.

This is the subcommittee’s sixth annual April hearing to assess

progress in paperwork reduction. Last week, Americans who prepared and filed their tax returns experienced firsthand the kind of

burdensome paperwork that the government imposes. In February

of this year, the fiscal year 2005 budget of the U.S. Government

outlined the President’s six-point economic growth plan. Point No.

4 is, ‘‘streamlining regulations and reporting requirements.’’ The

IRS imposes over 80 percent of all paperwork burden levied on the

public. As a consequence, IRS compliance simplification should be

the administration’s paramount paperwork reduction priority.

Today, our subcommittee will examine the Bush administration’s

economic growth plan component for paperwork reduction, especially for IRS paperwork reduction.

The Office of Management and Budget estimates the Federal paperwork burden on the public at over 8 billion hours. In its June

1993 final first-year task force report for the Small Business Paperwork Relief Act, OMB estimated that the price tag for all paperwork imposed on the public is $320 billion a year. Let me just repeat that, $320 billion a year.

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In 1980, Congress passed the Paperwork Reduction Act and established an Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs within

OMB. By law, OIRA’s principal responsibility is paperwork reduction. In 1995, Congress passed amendments to the Paperwork Reduction Act and set governmentwide paperwork reduction goals of

10 percent or 5 percent per year during fiscal years 1996 to 2001.

After annual increases in paperwork, instead of decreases, Congress attached paperwork riders to the fiscal year 1999 and fiscal

year 2001 Treasury-Postal Appropriations Acts. In addition, the

House report for the fiscal year 2003 Treasury-Postal Appropriations Act included an instruction for OMB to focus on IRS paperwork.

In 1983, after issuance of President Reagan’s 1981 Executive

Order 12291, which initiated OMB review of agency regulatory proposals, OMB signed a memorandum of agreement with the Treasury Department relating to its regulatory reviews. Nothing therein

or subsequently has limited OMB’s statutory responsibility for review and approval of each IRS paperwork requirement.

As evidenced by its actions, paperwork reduction is of great concern to Congress, especially for tax and regulatory paperwork.

Nonetheless, the GAO will report today that paperwork burden has

increased, not decreased, in each of the last 8 years.

GAO differentiates between substantive program changes in paperwork, such as a reduction from quarterly to annual reporting,

and adjustments, such as a reestimate of the time it takes to complete a form. For adjustments, the public experiences no relief

whatsoever.

Last month, at OMB’s annual House appropriations subcommittee hearing, Members of Congress emphasized to OMB Director

Josh Bolten that mere reduction in the rate of growth of regulatory

burden is insufficient. They emphasized that OMB must instead do

more to examine and reduce the base of existing regulatory and paperwork burden. Under the Paperwork Reduction Act, OMB is the

watchdog for paperwork. However, the evidence points to OMB’s

continued failure to focus on paperwork reduction. OMB has not

pushed the IRS or other Federal agencies to cut existing paperwork.

IRS itself has had a dismal record in accomplishing paperwork

reduction. Last May, IRS promised to identify all paperwork

thresholds within the Commissioner’s discretion to adjust. I look

forward to discussing the results of IRS’s analysis.

Today, we will learn if the President’s six-point economic growth

plan can be realized by specific paperwork reduction efforts identified by OMB and the IRS.

I want to welcome our witnesses today. Our first panel includes

the Office of Management and Budget’s OIRA Administrator Dr.

John D. Graham; also the IRS Commissioner and former OMB

Deputy Director for Management Mr. Mark W. Everson; and the

Director for Strategic Issues at the General Accounting Office Ms.

Patricia Dalton. We welcome you all on the first panel.

Our second panel is comprised of Mr. Daniel Clifton, Federal Affairs Manager for Americans for Tax Reform; Mr. Paul Hense, the

President, Paul A. Hense CPA, on behalf of the National Small

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Business Association; and, Mr. Raymond J. Keating, the Chief

Economist for the Small Business Survival Committee.

Now, I see this hearing has generated substantial interest. I

want to welcome my friend from Massachusetts for the purpose of

an opening statement.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Doug Ose follows:]

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Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Dr. Graham, once again

for you, Mr. Everson, and to Ms. Dalton, thank you for your testimony today. I apologize in advance for the fact that I’ll be leaving

in a brief while because of a conflict, and normally I would defer

to Mr. Waxman as the chairman of the committee, but he’s been

kind enough to allow me to go first here today so I can make the

other appointment on time.

Today, the minority staff report prepared for Mr. Waxman and

for me by staff has been released, and it concerns the government

paperwork burdens. It reflects that, using General Accounting Office reports and Office of Management and Budget data, the burden

of government paperwork on American citizens has substantially

increased under the Bush administration.

Now, this is despite the fact that we had to listen to the President—and all of his rhetoric during the 2000 campaign and time

and time again since his election—telling us how bad paperwork is

a burden to the small business persons and on families and what

a reduction we could expect during his administration.

However, when we look at the administration, we see that, in fiscal year 2000 the annual paperwork burden imposed by the Federal Government measured at 7.4 billion hours, and that is how it

stood as this administration took office. By the end of fiscal year

2003, however, that burden had gone up to 8.1 billion hours, an increase of some 10 percent.

If we average that across the 109 million families in the United

States, households, it would be a 6 hour per household increase annually.

The IRS accounts for more than any other agency, as the chairman indicated, that being 81 percent of the burden. So, you can see

the increase in 2000, 7.4 billion hours; in 2001, 7.6 billion, an increase of 290 million hours; in 2002, an increase of 570 million

hours, up to 8.2 billion hours of burden. A significant cause of that

increase was the Economic Growth and Tax Relief Reconciliation

Act of 2001. The amount of paperwork required by the Internal

Revenue Service in fiscal year 2002 to implement that new law and

other IRS regulations increased by 330 million hours.

So, 7.4 when this administration took office, up to 7.6 the next

year, 8.2 the following year, to 8.1 billion in 2003, but even that

figure of 8.1 billion, which is 0.1 down from the previous year is

only as a matter of adjustments and not the result of direct Federal

Government action. Instead, the General Accounting Office tells us

that, even at a slight decrease, it was caused by other factors, such

as agency reestimates of burdens associated with the collection of

information.

The General Accounting Office concludes that, exclusive of those

adjustments, the burden would be again up in fiscal year 2003 by

some 72 million burden hours. Once again, that is probably attributable to changes in the tax laws in 2003. They generated an estimated 113.9 million additional hours of burden.

Now, I make those notes not because I think the IRS can’t do

anything about improving the burden of paperwork but because

they also have to be helped by legislation that this Congress passes

and the President proposes and fights to get passed by this body.

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Also, I’ll make note, Mr. Everson, that in my district there are

people working at the Andover IRS Service Center being told that

their jobs are in jeopardy because of a decrease in paperwork,

when, in fact, we see quite the opposite is true. And, I hope we can

take an evaluation of those changes in light of the information we

find out of increasing paperwork burdens.

Also, just because I won’t be here to ask questions, I want to

raise for you the issue of, in that Andover IRS Service Center,

they’re projected to stop processing paper returns in 2008 and

2009, but we’re told also that people working on the e-filing component may also lose their jobs as being transferred elsewhere, and

I’d like to think that you might at some time have your people respond to this—to my office and indicate—and the committee, and

indicate whether or not we can do something about that. Those

people involved with the e-filing of returns, hopefully they will be

able to continue their work at the Andover center, because they are

not connected with the paperwork processing end of that. So, I’d

appreciate it if you could respond to that either in writing or on

the record and we’ll take a look at that when I get back.

Mr. EVERSON. If I could just say something now since you’re

about to go. I was in Andover on—if that is OK?

Mr. OSE. It’s not.

Mr. TIERNEY. Sorry about that, but I will try to get that information. I would love to have a conversation with you about that, and

I appreciate your willingness to respond on that.

My last comment before I close here is that we are continually

told about the burden of taxes in this country, but I think it’s notable when we look at the information that the burden of taxes taken

up by the corporate, the powers that be in this country, is somewhat reduced from almost 20 percent in past years now down to

as low as—between 7 and 8 percent, and I would like to think that

we have the proper attention to auditing and given the resources

that the IRS needs in order to pursue those that might be shifting

burdens in tax transfer policies or taking other evasive action to

avoid their responsibilities. We can still look at people in the

Earned Income Tax Credit, and I discussed this with you, Mr.

Everson, at one of the other committee hearings that we had on the

joint committee. We can do both, but the fact that we are putting

so many efforts against those who are taking the EITC advantage

on their taxes is a small return compared to your information that

you gave us of the anticipated return if we give you the resources

to go after the people that are really avoiding their fair share of

the burden in a large way.

So, I appreciate your continued work in that regard. I’d like to

hear more about what you’re doing there and understand always

that we have not been reducing this paperwork and I certainly

hope that, as we move forward, our tax laws and other actions that

we take as a Congress and at the White House will certainly make

your job easier in that regard. I yield back.

Mr. OSE. For the gentleman from Massachusetts, the record will

be left open for you to compose those in writing for Mr. Everson

or any of the other witnesses.

Mr. TIERNEY. Thank you.

Mr. OSE. The gentleman from Virginia.

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Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you for calling this very timely hearing. Last week, many of us had the unfortunate responsibility of filing our Federal taxes, but thankfully the

financial burden on American taxpayers is lower because of the aggressive administration and Congress’ administration. Several tax

relief measures have lowered taxes for American families and small

business owners, and we have seen numerous positive impacts that

tax relief has made on our economy. Unfortunately, this relief has

not been extended in the form of meaningful relief from the paperwork burden that Americans must face in their personal and professional lives in dealing with their tax paperwork and other regulatory paperwork requirements. Hours upon hours and millions of

dollars are spent dealing with this burden, taking away valuable

time that could have been spent on more worthwhile activities.

There is a light at the end of the tunnel, though. The President

has made regulatory reform and paperwork relief a central part of

his economic growth plan. Congress and this committee have

shown on numerous occasions that we’re ready to be partners in

this effort, and we’ve passed a number of pieces of legislation to

combat the regulatory burden placed on American individuals and

small business.

This hearing is going to focus on the plans that the administration has for implementing its relief program. I welcome the input

from all of our folks testifying today, and I look forward to working

with them to continue the efforts of this committee in addressing

the regulatory and paperwork burden as a means of driving economic growth in America. Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. The gentleman from California.

Mr. WAXMAN. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. This topic

for today’s hearing is an important one. The time and effort that

Americans spend on filling out government paperwork, under the

Paperwork Reduction Act, paperwork burdens are supposed to be

getting smaller; but, in fact, just the opposite is happening. In

preparation for this hearing, as Mr. Tierney indicated, we asked

our staffs to examine what the President has said on this topic and

to compare it to what has actually happened under the Bush administration.

We’re releasing a report today. It shows that government paperwork burdens have increased substantially under the Bush administration. This report is based in large part on information that will

be presented at this hearing by the General Accounting Office and

the government witnesses.

This report calls into doubt the administration’s commitment to

reducing government paperwork. Over and over again, the President has promised that his administration will reduce the amount

of time that Americans spend filling out government paperwork,

but, what the report shows is that the President’s rhetoric is directly at odds with his actions. Americans are spending dramatically more time on government paperwork since President Bush

took office.

In the minds of many Members, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to rely on what the President and his administration say.

Over and over, President Bush and his top officials say one thing,

but then they do the opposite. President Bush’s promises on paperVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00018 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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work are another example of saying one thing and doing the opposite.

As a candidate, Governor Bush criticized Federal paperwork and

promised my administration will do things differently. In January

2001, President-elect Bush said, ‘‘On the Federal level, we require

about 60 percent of the paperwork, and that’s going to change.’’ In

May 2003, President Bush said, ‘‘this administration has launched

a task force to find ways to reduce paperwork for small business

owners in America.’’ In September 2003, President Bush said, ‘‘We

need to continue to work for regulatory relief on small and large

businesses so that instead of filing needless paperwork you’re

working to make your work force more productive.’’

And, then, in November 2003, President Bush said, ‘‘We need to

make sure our entrepreneurs are focused on job creation, not filling

out needless paperwork.’’ And, then, in February of this year,

President Bush said, ‘‘The Federal Government must do everything

we can to make the paperwork burden less on small businesses,

not more.’’

Well, it can’t be any more clear. The President has said the same

thing over and over and over again, but the reality is that according to the administration’s own reports, the amount of time Americans spend on government paperwork has soared under President

Bush.

Last year, Americans spent 700 million more hours filling out

government forms than they did during the last year of the Clinton

administration. For the average household, paperwork burdens

have increased more than 6 hours per year under the Bush administration.

This is a serious problem in its own right. Paperwork requirements represent a real cost to businesses and citizens. If reduction

is important to the President’s economic growth plan, well, maybe

that’s why the economic growth plan is not producing jobs, because

we’re spending more money on paperwork, and the requirements

represent a cost that is being passed on. It’s another one of those

unfunded mandates. The States are getting their unfunded mandates. Businesses are forced to do things. Individuals are being

forced to spend money on more and more paperwork. That’s a problem, but I would submit that there’s an even deeper problem here.

The most valuable asset a government can have is the trust of the

people. This trust is eroded when the commitments our President

makes—not once but over and over and over again—are not borne

out by his actions.

So, I’m pleased that we’re having this hearing to explore this

matter further. I would submit that this report we’ve done, which

tries to use as few pages as possible with the writing on both sides,

will give a very clear picture, not based on what we say but on

what this administration’s own people and what the GAO has to

tell us, of what is really going on in this area of increased paperwork demands.

Mr. OSE. Does the gentleman wish to submit that for the record?

Mr. WAXMAN. Yes, I do.

Mr. OSE. Without objection.

[The prepared statement of Hon. Henry A. Waxman follows:]

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Mr. OSE. OK. There being no other Members—before we proceed,

I do want to introduce the new vice chairman of this subcommittee.

That would be the gentleman from Virginia, Mr. Schrock. So congratulations, I think.

As is the custom in Government Reform, we swear in all of our

witnesses. It’s not that we’re singling you out or anything. We do

this to everybody; so, if you’d all please rise.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. OSE. Let the record show that the witnesses answered in the

affirmative.

All right. Our first witness today is the Administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs at the Office of Management and Budget, Dr. John Graham. Dr. Graham, you’re always

welcome here. It’s nice to see you again. You’re recognized for 5

minutes.

STATEMENTS OF JOHN D. GRAHAM, ADMINISTRATOR, OFFICE

OF INFORMATION AND REGULATORY AFFAIRS, OFFICE OF

MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; MARK W. EVERSON, COMMISSIONER, INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE AND FORMER DEPUTY DIRECTOR FOR MANAGEMENT, OFFICE OF MANAGEMENT AND BUDGET; AND PATRICIA A. DALTON, DIRECTOR,

STRATEGIC ISSUES, GENERAL ACCOUNTING OFFICE

Mr. GRAHAM. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, and I’m delighted to be here this afternoon, particularly since we do have

some good news to report in the area of paperwork and regulatory

burden.

The first point is that the overall magnitude of paperwork burden imposed by the Federal Government has declined in fiscal year

2003. This is the first recorded decline in paperwork burden since

1996. The percentage reduction, about 1.5 percent, will sound

small, but it translates into 100 million fewer hours of hassle for

citizens and small businesses. Indeed, if you look closely at the report that we have issued today, the specific actions of the executive

agencies—of the administration—account for 53 million hours in

reduction of paperwork burden.

Now, you have heard other members of the committee suggest

that, in fact, paperwork burden has been increasing. But one thing

that’s important to keep in mind is that the actions of Congress

also have a role to play in how much paperwork burden there is.

In fact, this reduction would have been 110 million hours larger in

the last year if Congress had not passed new laws that generate

paperwork burden.

For example, Mr. Chairman, you and I have discussed the country of origin labeling requirement, which is a concrete example of

Congress forcing the administration into additional recordkeeping

and reporting requirements. We are making progress, but, of

course, we need the help of Congress to accelerate that progress.

Point two: the frequency of paperwork violations has plummeted

in the Bush administration. A paperwork violation is when the

Federal Government, usually a regulatory agency, imposes a burden on citizens or businesses without authorization from Congress

or the Office of Management and Budget. This flip chart on the left

gives you the data, the most recent data we have on the frequency

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of these unresolved paperwork violations. You see that since the

beginning of the Bush administration there has been a 90 percent

reduction in the number of paperwork violations, from 200 to less

than 20 unlawful impositions of paperwork burden on citizens and

small businesses.

Why has this 90 percent reduction occurred? It has occurred because, early in the administration, we adopted a zero tolerance policy on violations, and I might add, Mr. Chairman, I had some considerable encouragement from you to move in this direction. Indeed, we appreciated that tailwind in our efforts to reduce the paperwork reduction.

Point No. 3: This administration has blocked the growth in costly

major regulations. You will notice that the fourth plank of the

President’s six-point plan is streamlined regulations and paperwork requirements, and let me give you a quantitative feel of the

progress this administration has made in the regulatory area. We

have insisted that new regulations be based upon science and engineering and economics, and the consequence of this stricter scrutiny is that we are slowing the growth of major costly regulations.

In the reports we have shared with you from 1987 to the year 2003, there were $103.6 billion in new costs of major regulations

imposed on the private sector and State and local governments.

This $103 billion are impositions on the private sector or on State

and local governments. It doesn’t account for any of the additional

costs that are in the Federal budget itself.

Now, if you compare that, over that 17-year period, it’s an aver- age increase of $6.1 billion per year. For the first 3 years of the

Bush administration, we have slashed that number by 80 percent,

to $1.6 billion per year. The Bush administration has reduced the

growth rate in costly regulations by 80 percent.

You might ask, Dr. Graham, why are you only talking about the

growth of Federal regulation? Why don’t you reduce the overall

amount of regulation? I think you know the answer to that question. We are going to need the help from the Congress to actually

make a reduction in the overall size of the regulatory burden. We

can’t have Congress forcing us to adopt new regulations at the

same time as we seek to reduce regulatory burden.

We do have a major challenge ahead of us on the sea of existing

regulations. 1,000 of these major rules have been adopted since

1980. We have a modest housekeeping effort underway: 100 of

them are being examined. With your help, we will try to do a better

job in this area, but the good news is the trend lines are in the

right direction, and the President’s economic plan is making a difference. Thank you very much.

[NOTE.—The information is available in subcommittee files and

at http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/infoeg/2004—icb—final.pdf.]

[The prepared statement of Mr. Graham follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Thank you, Dr. Graham.

Our next witness joins us, I think, for the first time, the Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service—joining us for his initial

foray here—Mr. Mark Everson. Sir, welcome to the witness table.

You’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. EVERSON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Vice Chairman, for

the opportunity to testify on the IRS’s efforts to reduce unnecessary

taxpayer burden. Our goal is to impose the least amount of burden

necessary for taxpayers to meet their tax responsibilities. Our

working equation at the IRS is simple: service plus enforcement

equals compliance. Service means helping taxpayers understand

their tax obligations and facilitating their participation in the system. Excessive paperwork costs taxpayers time and money and

causes uncertainty and anxiety. It hinders the ability of the taxpayer to comply with the tax laws and weakens our ability to enforce those laws.

As to compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, I want to

assure this subcommittee that this is a high priority. I would note,

that of the 223 violations of the act which GAO identified as occurring during fiscal year 2003, none, none were from the IRS, despite

the fact that just over 80 percent of the total paperwork burden is

generated by the Tax Code. I think that’s a laudable record.

As you know, the overall paperwork burden is significant. According to our estimates, in tax year 2002, the total burden of individual taxpayers was almost 26 hours per return filed, for a total

of 3.3 billion hours. Similarly, the out of pocket taxpayer cost was

estimated at $157 per return, or about $20 billion.

I would like to point out that these numbers reflect an initial

roll-up of data from a new, more accurate and comprehensive

method of measuring taxpayer burden, which we have been working with Treasury and OMB to implement. The new estimate of

burden is somewhat higher than that of the old model, especially

for self-employed individuals.

Our Office of Taxpayer Burden Reduction has aggressively pursued burden reduction initiatives. Since the Office was launched in

2002, we have reduced burden by over 100 million hours. Here are

some accomplishments. We are expanding the use of the standard

mileage rate for taxpayers with multiple vehicles used for business

purposes, reducing recordkeeping burden by an estimated 8 to 10

million hours.

Mr. Chairman, you’ve noted yourself that this reduction in tax

recordkeeping is a step in the right direction. We’ve redesigned

forms 1040 and 1040A, reducing burden by almost 12 million

hours, and most importantly, we’ve also helped more taxpayers go

online to file returns, pay taxes and to communicate with us electronically. E-filing requires less paper, is more accurate and the

computer program catches many mistakes that would have been

made on paper. It also makes it easier for the IRS to solve taxpayer

problems. Refunds come back in half the time.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Everson, hold on. Dr. Graham, is your mic on?

Please proceed.

Mr. EVERSON. Perhaps the clearest sign that e-filing is working

is that the number of e-filers is rising rapidly. It’s up 15 percent

so far this year compared to a year ago, and, for the first time, corVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00045 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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porations and tax-exempt organizations are now able to file annual

tax returns electronically.

By next year, even the largest corporations will be able to avoid

delivering literally box loads of paper documents to our doorstep.

That is true paperwork reduction.

We have more projects in store for next year. These include

annualization of quarterly employment tax returns, extension of

time to file returns to make all extensions uniform and automatic,

and redesigning the quarterly employment tax return and Schedules K–1. In my view, we also need to look at a broader effort to

simplify form 1040. We have made this progress despite the growing complexity of the Code. As you know, the total number of pages

in the Tax Code regulations and IRS rulings has grown from approximately 20,000 pages to 60,000 over the last 3 decades. Frequent changes to the Code and rising complexity are perhaps the

greatest obstacles to reducing paperwork burden. I am concerned

that tax law complexity may discourage taxpayers and adversely

impact voluntary self-assessment that is at the heart of our tax

system.

Over the long term, simplification of the Tax Code is the best

way to reduce burden.

Thank you for inviting me here today, and I’m happy to take

your questions.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Everson follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Everson.

Our third witness today I believe also is a new appearance here,

that being Ms. Patricia Dalton, who is the Director of Strategic

Issues at the General Accounting Office. Ma’am, welcome. You’re

recognized for 5 minutes.

Ms. DALTON. Thank you. Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, it is truly a pleasure to be here to discuss the implementation

of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995. This act established goals

to reduce the governmentwide paperwork burden approximately 35

percent to about $4.6 billion by September 30, 2001. Instead, burden has steadily climbed, reaching 8.2 million hours in fiscal year

2002. This year the story, while on the surface may appear encouraging, continues to show an increase in burden due to Federal actions. The data we obtained from OIRA indicates that governmentwide paperwork estimates, as of September 30, 2003, stood at 8.1

billion burden hours.

While it appears that there was a drop of approximately 116 million burden hours from the previous year, were it not for adjustments to the burden estimate, the Federal Government actually experienced an increase of about 72 million burden hours in paperwork burden.

Further, only a few agencies’ paperwork estimates changed substantially during fiscal year 2003. Three departments, Defense,

Labor and Treasury, exhibited substantial decreases.

It is important to understand how the agencies accomplish these

results. OIRA classifies modifications, either increases or decreases

in agencies’ burden hour estimates, as either program changes or

adjustments. Adjustments are not the result of direct Federal Government actions but are rather caused by factors such as changes

in the population responding to an existing requirement, or agency

reestimates of the burden associated with the collection of information.

In fact, the number of burden hours attributable to program

changes has increased in every fiscal year.

The IRS accounts for about 81 percent of the governmentwide

burden estimate. Because IRS constitutes such a significant portion

of the governmentwide estimate, it clearly has a significant and

even determinative effect on the governmentwide estimate. Treasury’s submission indicates that the decrease in the department’s

estimate during fiscal year 2003, about 162 million burden hours

out of an estimated 6.6 billion hours, was largely achieved through

adjustments. Decreases of only 70 million burden hours due to

agency actions and 190 million hours due to adjustments were reported, while there was an increase of 105 million burden hours

due to statutory requirements.

Of the 70 million burden hours due to agency actions, we identified only 11 agency actions that reduced burden at least 250,000

hours, with all of them over a 500,000-hour reduction. Five information collections resulted in a reduction of over 64 million burden

hours. There were three of these actions that were specifically directed at the small business community.

I’d now like to turn to another area in governmentwide paperwork burden. That is the PRA violations. The agencies indicated in

their ICB submissions that 223 violations occurred during fiscal

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year 2003. The 223 reported for fiscal year 2003—is slightly less

than the number of violations reported in the previous fiscal year

but still reflects significant progress from the 850 violations reported in fiscal year 1998.

OIRA, under Dr. Graham’s leadership, is to be commended for

the steps that they have taken to reduce violations. OIRA and the

agencies have clearly made progress in reducing the overall number of Paperwork Reduction Act violations in recent years. However, more clearly needs to be done. Agencies can and should

achieve OIRA’s goal of zero violations. OIRA certainly has taken

steps during the past year to address this problem. We believe

these actions resulted in improvements that occurred during the

fiscal year 2003 and will have positive benefits for years to come.

However, there are still actions that we previously recommended

to improve compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act that need

to be taken. For example, OIRA could notify the budget side of

OMB that an agency is collecting information in violation of the act

and encourage appropriate resource management officers to use

their influence to bring the agency into compliance.

OIRA could also encourage the use of best practices in agencies

with good records of compliance, such as the Department of Labor,

the Departments of Transportation and Treasury.

We also recognize that OIRA cannot eliminate violations by

itself. Federal agencies committing these violations needs to demonstrate a similar level of resolve. The President’s initiative to reduce regulatory reporting requirements can serve as a vehicle to

achieve zero violations. It also can serve as a vehicle to get to even

further reductions in paperwork burden itself.

Mr. Chairman, that completes my statement. I’d be pleased to

answer any questions.

[The prepared statement of Ms. Dalton follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Thank you. I want to thank the witnesses for not only

their written but also the oral testimony.

Before we get to questions, I want to make sure that you understand how I look at this universe here. It seems to me that there

are two groups of regulations we’re dealing with. One is those that

existed before the year 2000 and those that existed since I became

chairman or those that have come to the fore since I became chairman.

Now, within those two universes, as it relates to those that have

come into existence since I became chairman, Dr. Graham, you’ve

done a remarkable job in terms of looking at the content of those

proposed new regulations, using prompt letters to keep the agencies focused on what congressional intent is, and processing the appropriate rules and regulations for it, and that’s reflected in that

chart by the decline in the rate of growth accordingly.

Part and parcel of your consideration in those regulations that

have been considered since the year 2000 has been, you know, the

practical utility of the information being collected, the periodicity

of the reports, and the threshold requirements for actually submitting the reports.

One of the things that we’re concerned about in the context of

this entire universe, not only just the stuff since 2000 but previous

to 2000, is the periodicity of reports, the threshold requirements,

and the public utility of the information being collected.

The reason I put this out here is that I want you to frankly consider your answer in terms of how I’m looking at this thing. I think

Congressman Schrock shares much of my perspective. He’s probably got a more eloquent way of saying it, but that’s what I’m trying to get at is not only new versus old but as it relates to periodicity, threshold reporting, and the public utility of the information

being collected.

Having said that, Dr. Graham, our invitation asked for you to

address four specific subjects. One is the detailed plan within the

President’s six-point economic growth plan for streamlining regulations and reporting requirements.

On pages 7 and 8 of your statement, Dr. Graham, you briefly discussed this component, and you mention several changes made by

the administration in the regulatory process. For instance, data

quality and peer review. What I’m interested in is what specific

proposed paperwork reduction initiatives have you been able to

identify to meet the President’s economic growth plan component

for streamlining the reporting requirements, and then whether or

not you’ve been able to do a calculation as to the cumulative number of burden reduction hours associated with them?

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, the approach we’ve taken, as you

know, on these existing regulations and paperwork requirements is

a public nomination process where people, businesses or citizens

who are experiencing these burdens, have the opportunity to nominate specific rules and paperwork requirements that they feel need

to be reformed. We did that in 2001 and in 2002, and we had

roughly 300 nominations from around 1,700 commenters.

It’s interesting to notice that the vast majority of those nominations addressed regulations rather than paperwork burdens, and

the reason we believe that’s true at OMB is that many of the paVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00090 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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perwork burdens that we’re all concerned about are rooted in regulation.

While it is possible on occasion to reduce the paperwork burden

without touching the regulation, the more common scenario is you

have to change the regulation in order to reduce the paperwork

burden. Even more frustratingly, you may have to change the entire law or the underlying statute, and I’m sure we’ll talk about

that more in just a moment.

So, what we have found and heard from the regulated community is keep your eye on the ball as the executive branch on the

regulatory burdens themselves, and a lot of the paperwork burden

reduction will follow. You see in that chart on your left, for anybody who believes in numeric performance in terms of results, this

administration has dramatically reduced the growth rate of Federal

regulatory costs.

Now, as you say, the existing regulatory burden is a much, much

bigger challenge, and we’re humbled by it, quite frankly.

Mr. OSE. Even within the 300 nominees from the 1,700 comments, I’m not trying—and I don’t think Congressman Schrock is

trying—to second-guess whether or not this or that regulation is

properly constructed in terms of impact. What we are trying to find

out is whether or not, for instance, the reporting periods are the

proper length of time. I think Mr. Everson talked about the 941 reports, scheduled in year 2006 to go to an annual basis rather than

a quarterly basis. That’s the kind of thing that I’m focused on, because in effect, what you’re doing as it relates to that report is reducing the paperwork by a factor of 75 percent.

I’m trying to find out whether or not OMB has identified any

such opportunities.

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes. The classic work of the OIRA desk officer on

a paperwork request from an agency is to examine the issues

you’ve just described, and they do it with regard to all of the various agencies that produce and provide information collection requests to OIRA. In this report, we are actually giving you the concrete examples of where we have made progress in reducing that

paperwork burden. This year, for the first time, we introduced a

separate chapter on IRS that involves not only the progress they’ve

made but what their anticipated objectives are in the future.

Where they can, they’ve actually quantified the accomplished or

the anticipated burden reduction. I don’t have all those numbers

right off the top of my head, but they’re right in there in that separate chapter on IRS.

Mr. OSE. The IRS number is——

Mr. GRAHAM. We have all the agencies, but as you have persuaded us over the years, since IRS accounts for over 80 percent

of the overall burden, it would seem appropriate that we would

have a considerable emphasis on the Tax Code’s associated burdens

in this report, and we have done so.

Mr. OSE. And, again, we’re not talking about the substance of the

tax law or how it’s applied. We’re talking about the thresholds and

the periodicity reporting requirements within the—I mean, we’re

not talking about——

Mr. GRAHAM. I’m not going to agree to that premise quite so easily. It’s a lot more complicated. What we have found at OMB is

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that, when you get into a desk officer’s job of reviewing IRS information collection requests, and we have been more aggressive in

the last year working with my deputy director and our desk officer

working on these problems—we find that the distinction between

paperwork review and tax policy is not easy to make. Quite frankly, inevitably you get into questions about how much documentation should a taxpayer have to have in order to claim this particular deduction or credit or whatever. And, oftentimes, the recordkeeping requirements, for example, are motivated or are instigated

by these types of provisions. Once you start to ask questions about

that, which we do with our colleagues from IRS and Treasury, then

they come back to us and inevitably we find ourselves in a discussion of tax policy. And, when that goes up in the chain at OMB you

know the answer at that point.

Mr. OSE. And, that’s proper. I mean, I——

Mr. GRAHAM. So, I think paperwork review and tax policy are

losely intertwined.

Mr. OSE. Let’s go back to this desk officer. In terms of the paperwork reductions that the desk officer has either suggested or forced

upon the agencies, can you give us some sense of any that have

been accomplished?

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, I think in the testimony from IRS, Mr.

Everson can give you the details on it. IRS has made significant

progress, and we would argue that most of that activity was initiated by IRS. We would not be here today suggesting that OMB initiated that activity. However, we have collaborated with IRS in the

development of its improved model to actually measure burden,

which allows us to get at the question of how much progress are

we actually making.

Mr. OSE. If the gentleman from Virginia would just bear with me

here, have there been—separate and apart from the IRS, has the

desk officer charged with this responsibility at OMB been able to

identify any other paperwork reductions?

Mr. GRAHAM. You mean separate from IRS?

Mr. OSE. Separate from your accomplishments so far, collaboratively or otherwise, with the IRS?

Mr. GRAHAM. Right.

Mr. OSE. Has the desk office been able to identify paperwork reductions that have been able to be implemented?

Mr. GRAHAM. Certainly. And I can give you, if you’d like to put

that into writing, some examples.

Mr. OSE. We’ll do that. We would appreciate having some examples.

The gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you all for being

here.

Your comment about Tax Code reform is squarely right on, and

I think there are two Members of Congress, Senator Saxby

Chambliss and Congressman John Linder from Georgia, who are

beating that drum. Over the 2-week break we had, if I heard them

on the radio once, I heard them five or six times. It’s a daunting

task, and however we need to get our hands around it, it’s a mystery to me: but, at some point it has to be done.

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Commissioner, I want to ask you a few questions about your new

burden model for small businesses, and you said it will take into

account all out-of-pocket expenses. In your testimony that’s what it

said. Will this model include in your burden estimates of the costs

of paying someone else to fill out the tax returns for you or the cost

of purchasing software?

Mr. EVERSON. That number I referred to earlier for the individuals, 157, and we’re developing other pieces of the model as we go.

That does include the paid professional or the software does. My

understanding is that the old model was last updated back in the

1980’s. There was an assumption as to what a line on a return or

on a form cost in terms of burden. That clearly was an incomplete

picture.

As we look at this, I’m struck by how complex a subject this is

and how much work it needs. In terms of an ongoing review, we’re

doing that with OIRA, working with SBA, and the Department of

the Treasury. As I understand it, even now the new model won’t

capture things from electronic filing, such as post filing burden.

This is a huge change, where if things are simplified and the returns come in electronically and there are fewer errors in them,

then there are fewer notices generated back to the taxpayer. That’s

a reduction of burden, too, that we don’t yet contemplate. So there

are lots of ramifications on all of that that over time need to be

factored into our work.

Mr. SCHROCK. Will this burden model also be able to calculate

how many more people will pay someone else to prepare their taxes

as a result of the added complexity which seems to mount every

year?

Mr. EVERSON. We track that every year as it is. The percentage

of people that are actually paying someone else to prepare their return is now over 50 percent. It’s 56 percent. As I indicated in the

statement, 15 percent more people are filing electronically. That actually is good news, because what happens is it’s more reliable, it’s

faster in terms of getting the refund done. The returns don’t get

lost in the mail. That’s all good news, but I think it does reflect

the burden, the fact that people will buy this package, if you will,

or go down to their paid preparers because they’re a little bit frustrated by the complexity of the Code themselves.

Now, I use one of these packages myself for my own return, and

I think it was quite good, because it gives you a series of yes or

no or fill in the blank alternatives, because, if you’ve got to go

through these forms, my goodness, they are quite complex. I agree

that’s not a viable way to go.

Mr. SCHROCK. You do your own taxes?

Mr. EVERSON. I’ve done my own taxes a couple of years. It was

a little more complicated. I used to live overseas and that’s really

complicated. I had someone else do it in those days.

Mr. SCHROCK. I don’t dare. I don’t take the chance. Well, seriously, I just want to make sure they are done right.

As an aside here, my tax guy does it electronically now, and he’s

in San Diego and I’m in Virginia Beach, but I still sign paperwork.

What’s going to happen when it’s all electronic? How am I going

to be able to do that, because I intend to keep him for as long as

I——

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Mr. EVERSON. We’re working with the practitioners to speed and

increase the number of electronic options. Right now, we’ve just introduced a new set of options whereby a practitioner can file—for

instance, for an employer identification number online, we’ve had

a number of those applications. This is a dramatic change. I just

happened to have some testimony, if you’ll indulge me for just a

second, from the Ways and Means Committee from the National

Association of Enrolled Agents, and this was just a couple weeks

ago. He said that, in January of this year, the IRS reached a major

milestone in the development of new electronic capabilities that

will revolutionize the way we as tax practitioners will conduct future business with the IRS. He talks about these various services.

Then, he says the new set of e-services products which will allow

tax practitioners to represent their clients electronically and in a

highly secure environment has left me utterly speechless. I can assure you that I do not make this statement lightly. There’s a real

excitement out there because of these changes.

Mr. SCHROCK. I know it had nothing to do with the hearing, but

I had to understand that. Mr. Chairman, I know my time has run

out.

Well, can you share with us the calculations and assumptions

that go into the production of your model, and will it be transparent, or do you plan to keep that away from public view? And,

will taxpayers and small business groups have the opportunity to

comment on your model and make suggestions for improvements?

Mr. EVERSON. Yes, sir. We’ll do all those things.

Mr. SCHROCK. Every one of those? OK.

Will your new model be able to calculate the cumulative burden

on a small business of the new paperwork?

Mr. EVERSON. I missed a word in there, sir. Will it be able to calculate what?

Mr. SCHROCK. I probably skipped one. Will your new model be

able to calculate the cumulative burden on a small business of a

new paperwork requirement in comparison to the current imposed

burden so that regulatory decisions can be made about a new requirement’s impact in the context of the currently imposed burden?

Mr. EVERSON. I think that’s exactly what the intent is, that, as

we roll this out to the other piece of the overall burden beyond the

individuals, we will be able to do that, yes, sir.

Mr. OSE. I want to expand on that for just a minute. So, you’re

saying that the new model allows you to kind of go an either-or

analysis, a comparative basis? You’ve got people behind you going

like that.

Mr. EVERSON. Listen to them. Don’t listen to me.

Mr. OSE. So you’ll be able to game the system from an analytical

standpoint and say, OK, if we’re going this way, the burden is X,

and, if we go this way, it’s Y?

Mr. EVERSON. I think that’s right, that we’ll be able to check and

see what the various ramifications will be, and it will obviously

help us select the projects that we want to work on.

Mr. OSE. Could you be able to take it piece by piece so you can

kind of take your base model and then put a piece in, take it out,

and put it——

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Mr. EVERSON. That’s exactly right. If you only have a model that

deals with lines, that gives you a very incomplete picture. This is

a better model, but I’m not suggesting it is foolproof. Don’t get me

wrong here, but it’s a lot better than what we had.

Mr. OSE. I just wanted to expand on that. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. SCHROCK. Dr. Graham, the 2002 Small Business Paperwork

Relief Act required each agency to submit its initial agency enforcement report to Congress by the last day of last year, and, during

our joint hearing on January 28th of this year, we displayed a

chart showing 42 agencies—I don’t know if we have that up or

not—that had not yet submitted statutorily required reports. On

behalf of the Office of Management and Budget, you agreed to followup with the noncompliant agencies. When will those missing reports be submitted, especially for Justice and Treasury Departments, both of which levy fines on small businesses? Can you provide an expected submission date for each agency for today’s hearing record?

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir. We will do so.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. No doubt you can read this chart on this screen again?

Mr. EVERSON. It looks like one of my forms, I would say.

Mr. OSE. Dr. Graham, I want to go back to something and make

sure I understand it. When we were conversing earlier, we were

talking about paperwork reductions as opposed to regulatory reforms, and I want to make sure I’ve got it correct. You asked that

we submit that question in writing regarding specific paperwork

reductions that we’ve been able to accomplish. As it relates to regulatory reforms, your chart over here indicates significant success

dealing with the manner in which regulatory issues are being imposed upon the American public relative to previous administrations. What I’d like to do is make sure I understand. You talked

about 300 nominations from 1,700 submittals. Now, those 300

nominations were paperwork only, or they were regulatory—paperwork reduction or regulatory reform submittals?

Mr. GRAHAM. The public was provided the opportunity to nominate regulations, guidance documents or paperwork requirements

that they felt were overly burdensome or for some reason or another needed reform.

We received 316 nominations from 1,700 commenters, and I note

that most of the nominations dealt with regulation and guidance

documents. Relatively few of them dealt with paperwork burdens.

Mr. OSE. So, then, my earlier question——

Mr. GRAHAM. Which is not to say that paperwork isn’t important.

Mr. OSE. I understand.

Mr. GRAHAM. It’s to say, as I was trying to argue, that the commenters realize that the paperwork burden is inevitably or often

imbedded in the regulation or the guidance document.

Mr. OSE. All right. Our earlier conversation was about specific

proposed paperwork reduction initiatives, to which we are going to

send you a question in writing. My question right now is specific

proposed regulatory reform initiatives that you have been able to

identify within those 316.

Mr. GRAHAM. Right.

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Mr. OSE. Could you provide us with a detailed list of that for the

record?

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes, sir. Will do that.

Mr. OSE. All right.

Ms. Dalton, in your testimony there is a comment on page 10

that the paperwork reduction goals and means of achieving those

goals were not articulated within the President’s 2005 budget.

Now, have you—or, excuse me, has GAO been able to find evidence

of major new agency initiatives within the agency’s ICB submissions? In other words, are the agencies proposing a whole bunch of

stuff that you are seeing?

Ms. DALTON. Well, we have seen very few initiatives. When we

looked at the 2003 ICB submissions, other than IRS, what we were

able to identify were just 17 agency actions which reduced paperwork burdens 250,000 hours or more. For the entire government

that’s not a lot. We also haven’t seen any plans or strategies that

really would implement the President’s initiative related to paperwork burden, which I think is along the lines of the questioning

here.

Mr. OSE. Now, it may be that those initiatives are under development.

Dr. Graham, are we trying to count something that’s not yet

countable? Are we 9 months away from being able to count such

numbers?

Mr. GRAHAM. No. Let me step back and say that you can think

about the strategy of paperwork reduction as the plumber’s approach, which is you get at each information collection request and

you target it and you try to reduce frequency of reporting, etc. Or

you can do what I’ll call a systems approach, where you try to set

in motion certain standards or guidelines that agencies have to follow and then agencies generate the paperwork reduction. Or, you

use a public participation approach, where you ask the regulating

community predominantly to tell you which of the specific paperwork requirements or regulations are in need of reform.

Our experience in this administration is that the most successful

strategies for actually accomplishing reduction in burden due to

regulation and paperwork are through the systems approach and

through the public participation approach. We are not convinced

that the plumber’s approach at OMB in the final analysis, will get

you very far. I think this is for a straightforward reason: we don’t

have the resources at OMB to be at that level of review on every

single paperwork requirement.

Mr. OSE. Any of those paths is not mutually exclusive?

Mr. GRAHAM. Right. It’s a mix, the question of what mix of those

strategies to use.

Mr. OSE. Well, you can understand my confusion then. We talked

earlier about a desk officer looking at these things coming through

the pipeline. I presume that’s kind of like the plumber approach?

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s right.

Mr. OSE. OK.

Mr. GRAHAM. And, if that’s your primary approach, you are in

trouble.

Mr. OSE. Well, my point in asking whether they are mutually exclusive is to ascertain whether we vested all of our—we are laying

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down all our cards on one or the other path. Now it looks by this

chart as if we have invested quite a bit of our—or laid our cards

down rather significantly on the comprehensive approach that’s

paired between the two of the three that don’t fall under the

plumber’s thing.

Mr. GRAHAM. Systems approach, public participation.

Mr. OSE. Right. But, it would seem to me when you get to the

technical or more mundane issues of what within a specific agency’s form, whether it be Agriculture or Treasury or HHS or whomever, it seems to me when you have those forms that those agencies

use having to cross a desk officer’s desk and they are proposing a

threshold of X, is someone asking the question whether or not that

threshold is appropriate, or are they rubber-stamping them?

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s a good question.

The kinds of things that we train our desk officers to look at are,

No. 1, is this a new paperwork request or has this one already been

reviewed previously? Certainly, new paperwork requests would get

a more intensive review than would renewals of previously approved paperwork requests.

Mr. OSE. Logically. I understand that.

Mr. GRAHAM. The second thing that we would train a desk officer

to do is ask, on a renewal request, have there been any significant

changes in the nature of the approval request that might cause us

to think we had better take a look at this? And, that’s obviously

a significant factor.

And, I think in the third case we are always looking in some

sense at the overall magnitude of the collection. It is a new collection? It is an existing collection? What is the magnitude of it? And,

as you well know, the big ticket items, the big dogs in this game

are from the IRS.

Mr. OSE. Let’s dwell on one that we have talked about in the

past, whether or not we can incorporate into this or that agency’s

a line item that says no change from last year with a check box

by it for people who otherwise have to fill out this or that form?

Have the desk officers at OMB found any opportunity in any agency to suggest to an agency that they should add a line that says,

‘‘no change from last year,’’ with a box they can check and sign the

bottom and send back? Has any such activity occurred since we last

had the opportunity to discuss this?

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, to be candid with you, the last thing I recall

on this is you training me about the Bureau of Reclamation in the

need of one of its forms to have such a box. I’m happy to work with

my staff to find out whether we have made any additional progress.

But, quite candidly, that’s my memory of the quite sensible suggestion that maybe there should be a ‘‘no change’’ box.

Mr. OSE. Have you spoken with your staff or whomever that

would then implement that kind of a question within the library

of questions a desk officer would ask?

Mr. GRAHAM. Right. We are in the process now, in the systems

approach to paperwork reduction, of developing basically a guidance document to agency paperwork reducers.

Mr. OSE. Training——

Mr. GRAHAM. Training materials. And, one of the logical things

we should add, in fact, I’m going to go back and read our draft to

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see if it’s in there—is the question you just asked: Does this form

actually provide an opportunity of no change from last year? That

sounds like a sensible thing that should be in that guidance.

Mr. OSE. All right. Now, my time has expired. I’ve got to go back

to Mr. Schrock. The gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I’m really concerned about the IRS burdens on small businesses.

In particular, Commissioner, Drs. Mark Crain and Thomas Hopkins said in their testimony here, or in a report they had in August

2001, that was commissioned by the SBA, found that small businesses spend twice as much on compliance as large companies. I

think it’s $1,202 as opposed to $562. Small businesses face more

than 200 IRS forms, including more than 8,000 lines, boxes, and

data requirements.

In the subcommittee’s paperwork hearings in April 1999, 2000,

2001, and 2002, former IRS Commissioner Rossotti acknowledged

there is much duplication of IRS’s reporting requirements for small

businesses as opposed to big business. What specific paperwork reduction requirements did IRS pursue in 2004 to date and will IRS

pursue in the rest of 2004 to actually reduce the paperwork burden

on small businesses as opposed to re-estimating taxpayer burden

through a new model and notice redesigns and electronic filing and

others? And, what is IRS’s estimate for the burden reduction hours

associated with those initiatives?

Mr. EVERSON. That is an important subject for us. Small business is something where there has historically been—I would characterize it as probably difficult relationships between small businesses and the Service. I believe things have gotten an awful lot

better in the last several years largely through the reorganization

of the IRS around customer lines of business, so that one of our

four principal operating units deals with small businesses and selfemployed people. So, we have now a more focused relationship with

small businesses, a lot more education. I’ve met with people from

the NFIB and other organizations that are helping us to address

these issues, and we are much more sensitive to those challenges.

We have done a few things that I think you are familiar with.

We mentioned the cars and meal allowances for day care providers.

We have other things under way in terms of annualization of certain employment filings and redesigns of form 941 and others. All

of these are bits and pieces that will contribute in the tens of millions of hours of burden reduction.

I will give you a comprehensive list of those for the record, but

I don’t want you to be under any impression that represents anything other than a starting point as we continue to go forward.

Mr. SCHROCK. So we will continue that process?

Mr. EVERSON. Absolutely. As I indicated in my opening remarks,

our formula is: service plus enforcement equals compliance. Service

has its element of communication, understanding and simplification where possible. If you can’t understand the Code, and certainly

simplification of reporting requirements helps understand it, then

it’s very hard to comply. So it’s in our interest to make sure we

continue to work on this.

Mr. SCHROCK. You work with NFIB closely on this?

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Mr. EVERSON. Yes. We have an outreach organization within the

small business division, and I meet from time to time with the

leadership of these groups because they keep us pretty closely on

point if we have a proposal or something that’s going in the wrong

direction, they tend to let us know, and they let us know from time

to time from going to folks such as yourself.

Mr. SCHROCK. I think there are a lot of people sitting behind you

who are listening very carefully.

Mr. GRAHAM. Mr. Chairman, could I just add? There was a lot

of modesty in that answer that I would like to just cut through for

a moment. This is the first year since fiscal year 1996 that overall

paperwork burden in this country has declined. Why did it do so?

If you look at this report carefully, it is the initiatives of the Internal Revenue Service that are driving that number. It hasn’t happened very much. Only eight times in the last 24 years has overall

paperwork burden gone down, and it has gone down because the

Treasury Department and IRS have made some significant

progress. Let’s just cut through it and talk about what the specific

facts are in this situation.

Mr. EVERSON. I would never quibble with OMB.

Mr. GRAHAM. Boy, he was different when he was at OMB, I will

tell you that.

Mr. OSE. Will the gentleman yield?

Mr. SCHROCK. Yes, I yield.

Mr. OSE. Dr. Graham, are the totals due to adjustments in the

estimates or are they true reductions?

Mr. GRAHAM. Good question. GAO has already testified that

some substantial percentage of the overall reduction we experienced in the last year is simply due to adjustments without program effects. But, when you isolate the reductions due to program

changes, which are still substantial overall and in the order of 50

million hours, what’s driving those numbers predominantly is the

Treasury Department and, in particular, the efforts of a rather substantial office within the IRS that’s worried about the issues that

this hearing is about.

Mr. OSE. I just want to make it clear. I’m trying to get to a position where I can brag about what you are doing.

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s why I interjected, because this is a very different story this year than it’s been in a very long time.

Mr. OSE. You are not talking about adjustments to estimates?

Mr. GRAHAM. There are separate estimates in here for adjustments and for specific executive branch actions, administrative actions; and they quantify the reductions due to those actions. Now,

unfortunately—and I have to get one needle in—the reduction of 53

million was partly compensated, unfortunately, by a 100 million increase due to new laws passed by the Congress in that same year.

But we should not take away from the Treasury Department and

what they have done with regard to the 53 million hours.

Mr. OSE. I thank the gentleman.

Mr. SCHROCK. Ms. Dalton, I want to bring you on board with

this, too, as we talk about the reduction of small business. How

many significant program decreases of 250,000 hours or more did

GAO find that IRS has made since the last hearing for small businesses? Is that possible to determine?

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Ms. DALTON. There were three reductions that we could identify

specifically related to the IRS that had a direct impact on small

business, and I think it amounted to over 40 million burden hours

in reduction. There may have been others, but they weren’t specifically directed at small business but the more general business community.

Mr. SCHROCK. That’s a lot. That’s a lot of hours.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Everson, I was—my curiosity was piqued. You were

speaking earlier about employee reporting and employer reporting

and the burden that comes with the 941 and the like. One of the

things in the real estate business that I’ve learned to deal with is

whether someone is an employee or an independent contractor.

That’s a serious question. There is lots of case law on it, lots of exposure for developer, whether they are an employee or a contractor

kind of thing.

The National Taxpayer Advocate in the fiscal year 2003 annual

report to Congress identified nonfiling and underreporting by selfemployed taxpayers as the second most serious problem encountered by the IRS; and, as a result, the Advocate proposed a new

requirement for what I think the Advocate described as employers

to withhold payments in certain categories for nonwage workers or

independent contractors. I presume they are referring to Social Security or withheld income tax and the like.

What I’m trying to find out was whether the Service, your office,

has taken a position on the Advocate’s suggestion in this particular

area?

Mr. EVERSON. If you will indulge me for a minute to put this in

context. The Advocate doesn’t develop those numbers. We have a

research organization that works to look at the whole tax gap; and

the whole tax gap that the country confronts is over, by our estimate, a quarter of a trillion dollars a year. Now, again, this is a

lot like a burden reduction model. It’s based on an old model. It

goes back to the 1980’s. We are now, through new auditing, updating that model; and probably that quarter trillion dollars a year

will actually be larger.

The President is aggressively attacking that tax gap, and we

have a 10.7 percent budget increase requested for the IRS to go

after improvement of compliance. Two-thirds of those moneys are

directed at corporations and high-income individuals and to increasing criminal investigations. So that, to develop this sense of

fairness, where we are devoting the bulk of our effort is at the

higher end, because it is terribly important that individuals—and

80 percent of Americans feel this way—that the IRS enforce the

law particularly in those sectors.

When you turn to the smaller businesses, it is true, as the Advocate suggests, that there is a big compliance problem there. I do

not favor the recommendation that’s been made. What I believe we

need to do is to rebuild the enforcement resources of the IRS, which

were drawn down after 1996 by over 25 percent. That’s to say the

number of revenue agents, revenue officers, and criminal investigators went down rather dramatically while we were continuing to

improve our service side. If we do that and we do more on the comVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00100 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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pliance side, we need to do that first before we would consider anything of the nature that she’s suggested.

Mr. OSE. Well, I want to note for the record that the numbers

that are the Advocate’s recommendation are an estimate by the

IRS of the tax gap at $310.6 billion for the year 2001.

Mr. EVERSON. That’s correct.

Mr. OSE. So we’re talking about what’s estimated to be a lot of

money.

Mr. EVERSON. It’s over a quarter of a trillion dollars. That $300

is before about $55 billion that we get back in people who pay over

time or through our enforcement efforts. The floor on this—and it’s

something that each Member of Congress needs to be very aware

of as they review the President’s budget request, and I ask for your

support on that request—the floor of this problem is over a quarter

trillion dollars a year. And, again, like the conversation we are

having about the burden reduction model, it’s based on old models

that don’t take into account changes in behavior for these abusive

shelters, the internationalization, some of the things that have

been happening in corporations, all of these abuses that we are

very aggressively attacking. It’s a serious problem, and it needs

your help, if I could say so.

Mr. OSE. Well, the reason it caught my attention was that the

Advocate’s approach appears to be to require the 99.9 percent of

the people who are in compliance with reporting, whether they use

a 1099 or something else, to now have to undergo withholding and

the like in their relationships with the general contractor, whoever

it is they are working with; and that, to me, is a paperwork increase. So that’s what caught my attention in terms of the Advocate’s proposal.

I am pleased to hear you say that the better avenue for dealing

with this is to reallocate resources to focus on those who are not

complying, rather than to burden those who are.

Mr. EVERSON. That’s absolutely, sir, what I am trying to do. We

are improving our models for risk assessment so that we can devote resources to the proper challenges. We are redoing our enforcement processes to become more efficient. This gets into what

Congressman Tierney was talking about before. As we reap the

gains of improvement in processes on the service side, we are redeploying those to enforcement. We are very conscious of the need to

augment our efforts through more money, and we are doing that

where we need to.

Mr. OSE. I’ve learned to ask my question two or three different

ways. So, are you saying that at present the Service does not have

the intention of leveling on independent contractors a requirement

for withholding?

Mr. EVERSON. That’s correct.

Mr. OSE. My time has expired.

The gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

It just dawned on me. Commissioner, you said you have to use

software to do your taxes. You probably understand how to do it

better than anybody. Shouldn’t we get to the point where the IRS

is so user friendly and the forms are such that nobody has to use

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any software, so John Q. Public out there can do his taxes without

having to use software or anything else? Is that a fair question?

Mr. EVERSON. It’s a very interesting question. Congress some

years ago established——

Mr. SCHROCK. Not fair, but interesting.

Mr. EVERSON. Like anything approaching taxes, it’s a complicated question.

Mr. SCHROCK. It is.

Mr. EVERSON. Congress some years ago set an 80 percent requirement for electronic filing by the year 2007. We are progressing

toward that goal. I do not believe we will achieve it by 2007, nor

do I think that we want to force that to happen. There are segments of the tax-paying public that are neither wired nor necessarily participating in large numbers, such as immigrants coming

into our country. If we force people to go through a certain system,

we will not actually be as user friendly in terms of bringing them

into participation in our system. So, as we get closer to 80 percent,

we need to very carefully assess when we mandate things or don’t.

I do believe, on the other hand, that we will want to mandate

soon electronic filing for corporations. We would have to establish

a threshold for businesses before they would be required to do that.

But, certainly the big outfits, they are all doing everything electronically anyway, and doing things by paper doesn’t make any

sense.

Mr. SCHROCK. But, the software is making it simple. Why can’t

the forms for those who can’t use or don’t want to use software or

don’t have the capability of using the software, why can’t the forms

be made as simple as the software?

Mr. EVERSON. We are improving the access to the electronic filing. We have something you may have heard of, the Free File Alliance. That’s a group of over a dozen corporations, many of whom

have these preparation businesses where they have developed this

software. Now over 60 percent of Americans are eligible to actually

file for free. They can go on IRS.gov and then get directed to a page

which will help them pick out one of these corporations.

I did this with my son. We went to the Cherrydale library, and

he just got his check back for $112 from the IRS and he filed for

free. He was a bag boy at Safeway last year.

So that’s working. And, this year it’s over 3 million people so far

have taken advantage of that option. It’s up over 20 percent from

a year ago.

Mr. SCHROCK. It’s just breaking old habits and learning how to

do that, I guess.

Mr. EVERSON. That’s a piece of it. It’s interesting to me—if you

will indulge me 1 more minute. I was a little skeptical about just

how this would continue to grow, the e-filing; the fact that it’s up

this year about 15 percent is quite striking. I think it may have

reached a critical mass where more and more people are saying to

neighbors, hey, look, this is the way to go. It really is a lot easier,

and I got the refund in half the time. So, I have been pleased by

the growth of it.

Mr. SCHROCK. My accountant has changed his whole paperwork

procedures because of the electronic filing; and it was so easy for

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Judy and me this year, I couldn’t believe it. It took me about a

third of the time, and——

Mr. EVERSON. That’s right.

Mr. SCHROCK [continuing]. And I know my chances of going to

jail are a lot less by filling out those forms.

Mr. EVERSON. Well, you make mistakes and the software says

you didn’t fill in box 7 or something. And, it’s better.

Mr. SCHROCK. I think that’s all, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. I’ve got a couple others. Before we leave this issue of

tax preparation, from an electronics standpoint, are you able to

take the K–1s electronically as well as the returns themselves?

Mr. EVERSON. I believe we have just started with the K–1s. I’m

not entirely certain on that. But, what we just did was allow 95

percent of corporations to file electronically dozens of forms that

just a couple weeks ago were all put on line. The 5 percent of the

biggest corporations can’t yet do that. By the end of the year, they

will be able to do that.

I’m not sure about the K–1s. But the K–1s, what they are doing

there is—believe it or not, this gets back into our compliance problems. Until a couple years ago, the IRS wasn’t even entering K–

1 data into our data bases so we didn’t have any ability to match

all of these complicated figures that were coming from these partnerships and flow-through entities and to see whether the taxpayer

was reporting all the income or not.

Mr. OSE. Your testimony is that you are now able to cross-reference those?

Mr. EVERSON. Now, we are starting to do that. We are entering

the data, but I’m not sure whether it’s all coming electronically.

That’s the difference. We are entering the data, though; and, I believe it’s still manually.

UNIDENTIFIED VOICE. But, it will be scannable so that they will

all be able to be matched.

Mr. EVERSON. It will be scannable, but right now it is still a data

entry process.

Mr. OSE. All right. I want to dwell on something that we have

had to work our way through here.

In my opening statement, I talked about President Reagan’s

1981 Executive Order 12291 which initiated OMB review of agency

regulatory proposals. In effect, what happened was that there was

a memorandum of agreement or understanding or whatever you

want to call it between Treasury and OMB relating to regulatory

reviews. I’ve got a copy of that agreement. I don’t see anything in

there and I’m not aware of anything subsequent to that that would

suggest that OMB’s review deals with anything other than form

rather than substance of the statute dealing with taxes; and—I

mean, we are all concerned about using the Tax Code for inappropriate purposes, but we are also—because you sit atop the regulatory behemoth, we are also interested in working with you to reduce the size of that regulatory requirement.

Does the memorandum of agreement, the memorandum of understanding, whichever it is, between Treasury and OMB allow OMB

sufficient ability to review Treasury’s paperwork without going to

the point of unduly influencing who pays what?

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Mr. EVERSON. I’m very comfortable with the situation as it exists

today, which I believe to be consistent with those practices and consistent with what’s been taking place really for the last 20 years.

As we said some time ago, we are in compliance with the Paperwork Reduction Act, and that’s because we go through a whole series of procedures even before we bring things to John’s people. We

take that effort very seriously. And, he says in his written testimony—and I agree with this entirely. He says, although the primary work and responsibility in this area resides in the IRS,

OMB’s review of recurrent submissions from IRS over a 20-year period has had a sentinel effect and contributed positively toward

curbing excess IRS paperwork.

I agree with that. But when you get back to what John said before—and I would not call it tax policy. I would call it tax administration. When you get into the regulatory arena, you start getting

into tax administration issues. I would not want to disturb where

we are right now because we are in election season right now. You

have already seen requests for IG investigations on some of the

analyses that Treasury has done. God forbid if we went down a

road where we would have more—even more back and forth on

some of the independent calls that our folks are taking. So, I’m OK

with where we are right now, and I think the relationship is just

right.

Mr. OSE. Your testimony is that for 20 years the system has

worked fine, that there hasn’t been gaming of the system, that the

reviews have been constrained not to policy but to form?

Mr. EVERSON. I do not believe that they have interfered with the

IRS’s ability to impartially and fairly administer the law. That’s

correct. But, I’m going to say—what I’ll say is a little bit like your

view of 2000. I’ve been on the job a year, and I can tell you in the

year I’ve been here for sure that I’ve been very comfortable with

everything.

Mr. OSE. All right. Dr. Graham, you are comfortable with the

MOU in terms of how it relates to your role at OIRA and Treasury’s reporting requirements?

Mr. GRAHAM. The way I would describe it is OMB has had an

influence on Treasury and paperwork through the system’s approach and through the public participation approach. The plumber’s approach, which we do use quite aggressively on a lot of other

agencies, is not used as aggressively on Treasury for the reasons

that you and I talked about for several years. I’m comfortable with

that approach, and clearly it’s going to require something very significant both within the Congress and the administration to change

that relationship. That’s my reading of the situation.

Mr. OSE. Well, let me dwell on this a little bit. You and I have

talked at length about whether or not OMB or OIRA, more specifically, has a person dedicated to Treasury paperwork and the like.

Does OMB or OIRA have some such person, a desk officer, if you

will you?

Mr. GRAHAM. Yes. In the last year we have had the IRS desk officer devoting closer to full time on this activity. And my deputy,

Don Arbuckle, due to your interest and the Congress’s interest, has

been devoting more energy in this area.

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The conclusion that we drew from that activity was that when

you get into the plumber approach, you very easily get into what

Mark has referred to as this tax administration or what I refer to

as tax policy. And, quite frankly, our desk officers don’t have an

ability, if they would disagree with Mr. Everson’s people to elevate

that issue and get results because of the current nature of the relationship between OMB and Treasury. Until you provide our desk

officers an ability to make an independent judgment and elevate

when necessary, you don’t really have the same relationship that

you have with the other agencies.

Mr. OSE. That begs the question. The desk officer is there for

some purpose. What is their job if—I mean, give us an example?

Mr. GRAHAM. It’s a question of the degree. It’s a question of the

intensity.

Mr. OSE. Give us an example of what the desk officer could or

could not do?

Mr. GRAHAM. I think that the examples of various terms that you

gave in your own statement about the kinds of changes that can

be made about the level of intensity of review we have on Treasury

and IRS is different than other agencies precisely for the reason

that you have said in that statement: the history of that relationship and the memorandum of understanding. So I don’t want to

represent to you that we are, in fact, doing the same thing on each

one of those IRS proposals.

I think I can live with that arrangement in the current situation.

I’m not suggesting that needs to be changed. But, you need to understand exactly the realities of what’s going on so you can make

your own assessment of that situation.

Mr. OSE. One of the things that I’m trying to get at is there are

certain things that are defined by statute, like rates. The marginal

income tax rate’s pretty well defined by statute. But, there are

other things dealing with periodicity of reports or reporting threshold requirements and the like which have been defined by regulatory decision, for instance. Are there any examples you can give

to us where the desk officer at OMB has suggested back to Treasury that either the periodicity is too long or too short or that the

threshold is too high or too low?

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s a good question. If you give it to me in writing, I will try to get an answer to you.

But, you used regulation in your question——

Mr. OSE. I understand.

Mr. GRAHAM [continuing]. And the IRS interpretive regulations,

which are the vast majority of the regulations that they issue, are

covered by the memorandum of understandings. I hope you are not

going to look for a long list of answers from me in response to that

question. It’s not just the Tax Code that is in a sense interpreted

within Treasury without rigorous OMB review; it is also the interpretive regulations which implement the statute. We don’t have the

level of review on Treasury that we do on other agencies; and, as

you know, it has a very long history and explanation for why that’s

the case.

Mr. OSE. But, just as I use the word ‘‘regulation’’ in my comment,

you use the word ‘‘interpretive’’ in yours.

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Mr. GRAHAM. Fine. Delete the word. Delete the word interpretive. Because most of the rules coming out of the IRS are—they

would describe them in that way on the issues we are talking about

here.

Mr. OSE. I’m not arguing the point about statutorily defined

things. That’s not my issue.

Mr. GRAHAM. I know. But the memorandum of understanding

covers regulations as well as what’s statutorily driven.

Mr. OSE. Well, the manner in which the regulation is interpreted

evolves; let me give you an example. In 1980, we didn’t have computers to speak of. Now, nobody competes without them. I mean,

things change. It would seem to me that, over time, that the

threshold of reporting as well as the periodicity within the report

would evolve also, and what I’m trying to find out is whether or

not we are, in fact, applying such a common sense standard to not

the substance of the report but the submittal of the report, and

what I’m unclear on is whether or not the MOU provides you with

that opportunity?

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, what my staff tells me on this, who in the

last year have had several meetings with IRS where they have

worked through these issues, is that, compared to other Federal

agencies, IRS, both in itself and at the Secretary’s office in the

Treasury, has a much more closer look at those set of issues, even

the reporting issues that you just described, than most other paperwork-producing Federal agencies. So, in that sense, the need for an

OMB plumber’s approach is less even though IRS accounts for such

a huge part of the overall burden.

Mr. EVERSON. If I could just add a point or two on this.

Mr. OSE. I was just coming to you.

Mr. EVERSON. We work very hard before we put a form out to

focus groups and others. Just as John is saying, because of the direct impact that is so dramatic, it’s subject to a lot of review and

there is—to use a word you used earlier, there is a lot of transparency on all of this. So, I think we are attentive to it.

As John indicated, over the last year we have done more in the

way of meetings that involve OMB, Treasury and the SBA, to try

and push these things along. I would be concerned if we go beyond

this because—I understand you are trying to limit this to the periodicity or threshold question, but you very quickly get into what you

need to enforce the law, and that is a question that must be reserved for the IRS with some appropriate participation from Treasury.

Once you start to make a judgment that you don’t really need

that and someone from OMB is saying that, you run the risk that

an administration could say: We don’t really want to vigorously enforce this portion of a law or this law. And, I am uncomfortable

with departing from really where we are because I think it is working.

I think, as OMB is indicating, we are making a legitimate effort

here. GAO hasn’t detected any violations of the Paperwork Reduction Act; so, at least mechanically, we are doing the right things.

Do we need to do more here? Yes, sir, of course we need to do more

here; and I will commit to you that we will continue to work to do

more.

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Mr. OSE. Well, let me examine then one aspect of this having to

do with the quarterly submittal of 941. At some point or another

you were able to determine that the periodicity four times a year

can be lengthened. In other words, you are going to an annual report come January 1, 2006. OK. What can’t that be 2005?

Mr. EVERSON. Why can’t it be 2005? The IRS is a large, complex

organization. One thing is for sure, we are neither speedy nor agile.

I’ve been giving a great deal of push to our people to improve our

processes, but when we do things we have to absolutely be 100 percent certain that we get it right.

We will look at that date again, but we have some changes that

are being made for 2004 calendar year or tax year with filing in

2005. But, we have complicated systems, changes we need to make

for processing all these forms. We can’t afford to have a problem

were things to go awry.

Right now, for instance, we are midway through our filing season

preparations for next year. We are finishing up. We are working

on all the returns right now, but we are looking at all the Code

changes that we need to make to our computer systems to be able

to file for next year. So, it does take a little bit of time.

Mr. OSE. So you have made the decision to go ahead and implement effective January 1, 2006 to go to the annual versus the quarterly?

Mr. EVERSON. Um-hmm.

Mr. OSE. Because I’ve seen some form up here in my papers. I

mean, it’s basically already printed out. Is that right? Well, that’s

not a form that’s been approved by OMB? So OMB has approved?

Mr. EVERSON. I’m not sure of the specifics. I’ll have to look at it

and get back to you on the specifics of the mechanics. But we have

identified this as an important thing to do that will help reduce the

burden. We are looking at some other things. And, you have my assurance we’re going to move as quickly as we can, but again we

don’t want to promise something we can’t deliver.

Mr. OSE. So, if I’m correct then and I need to correct my statement, the proposed form to convert from quarterly to annual report

on the 941, that has not gone to OMB—this is the question: Has

that gone to OMB for approval?

Mr. EVERSON. I don’t think it has.

Because, again, one of the issues you face here is when we make

a change it doesn’t usually only affect us. We have a lot of other

stakeholders, be they the Census Bureau, Social Security Administration. This is a complicated web. When we collect data, it’s used

in lots of places. So, we do have a more cumbersome process that

we need to go through on questions like this. So, we take the time

to do that.

Mr. OSE. The gentleman from Virginia.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Let me go one other avenue here. I want to talk for a minute

what steps the IRS is taking to improve the paperwork reduction

performance.

First, with SES or SES employees, does the IRS now include paperwork reduction in their annual performance appraisals under

their executive performance agreements, as the chairman had previously recommended? And, two, did the IRS make paperwork reVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00107 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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duction a GPRA goal and target in its annual performance plan, as

the chairman recommended? And, if not, are you going to do that

and when?

Mr. EVERSON. We are just now in the process of finishing our

strategic plan under GPRA, which will cover the years 2005

through 2009; and it has three overall goals: improving service,

modernization of the IRS, and enhancing enforcement. As I indicated before, service for us means helping people understand their

obligation and facilitating their participation in the system. So, this

document will drive all of our annual operating plans over the next

5 years. And, it does, yes, include a component of simplification and

cleaner notices. We want to go to our notices and make them be

understandable to individuals. This has an impact on the burden

reduction.

As we come into fiscal year 2005, which will be the first year

under that plan, we will for sure have all of the annual goals as

part of the President’s management agenda, to the funding request

we will follow these goals and also then the objectives for our business units and then the accountability of our officers to follow that.

So, yes, that will be a component.

Mr. SCHROCK. Thank you.

Thanks, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Everson, I have been beating this quarterly to the

annual thing.

Mr. EVERSON. Mr. Chairman, I’ve already told you more than I

know.

Mr. OSE. I’m through beating it. I think the horse is dead, but

let me kick the cow over here a little bit.

Relative to the issue of thresholds within the information collected by the IRS, you have—or testimony last year was that there

were a number of initiatives or analyses—there is a large analysis

under way in terms of thresholds that the IRS may wish to change

as it relates to reporting requirements, for instance, on Schedule B

or Schedule C or what have you. You talked about that a little bit

in your written statement in terms of this not-yet-completed analysis. What I’m trying to identify is whether or not you have a list

of the discretionary thresholds that you are looking at and what

the potential burden reduction may be from each of them?

Mr. EVERSON. We have a partial list. I’m aware of Acting Commissioner Wenzel’s testimony about a year ago, shortly before I

came into the job. What we initially did after that was go through

the Code on a pretty deliberate basis to see what thresholds there

were and whether or what could be revised through our own actions versus what would require statutory intervention, and I think

we concluded over a period of months that was not an all-encompassing effort.

And, now we’ve redirected the efforts a little bit, and we’re looking at areas where there aren’t thresholds, and maybe some

thresholds could be introduced to alleviate burden from folks who

perhaps wouldn’t need to file a particular form. We listed a few of

those threshold initiatives.

In the testimony, we indicate this is going to be an ongoing effort

that will take several years for us to do; and I think we will work

our way through the different areas with a view of again not only

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of looking at what’s in law, because a lot of the thresholds, as you

know, are actually in law, but also looking at this whole question

of interpretive decisions that we’ve taken.

Examples are, as I understand it, looking at 1040 EZ or 1040A.

Maybe we’d lift that threshold from—I guess it’s $50,000 now to a

higher level. Another example, as we have indicated, involves who

would need to file officially for a 501(c)(3) exemption.

But, we want to be careful here. We have established four enforcement priorities. One of them is to make sure we don’t have

abuses within tax exempt and government entities. So, we don’t

want to do something to alleviate burden, to the charitable area

that actually provides an avenue for terrorists or other people who

are being abusive. So, because of that factor and because of all

these linkages to other agencies and the Census Bureau and the

use of our data, we have to be pretty careful.

Mr. OSE. Presumably these issues might fall into different

groups: one, some that are pretty straightforward, some that are

highly complex, and some that fall somewhere in between?

Mr. EVERSON. Yes.

Mr. OSE. Do you have any that fall into the fairly straightforward category and do you have a date by which some of those

within this fairly straightforward category might be resolved?

Mr. EVERSON. I want to think about that and talk to our people

as to what would fall into which bucket scenario.

Mr. OSE. Why don’t I send you a question in writing?

Mr. EVERSON. That would be great.

Mr. OSE. OK.

Now, Dr. Graham, you and I have talked about this before, and

I don’t remember the answer. We talked about the initiatives within the respective agencies to improve their program performance by

basically enhancing the information collection and by reducing burden on small businesses. And, you have, in response to my requests, asked these agencies to provide at least one new initiative

in this regard. What I’m trying to inquire about is, why did we restrict it to—I’m kind of greedy. Why did we say only one? I mean,

was it at least one or was it only one? It’s my understanding that

it was, I mean, you kind of threw it down and said, give me one?

Mr. GRAHAM. Well, I think one of the answers is, is that these

burden reduction initiatives, in order to really make a meaningful

difference, extend over 1 year. So, if you actually start a burden reduction initiative at time period one, you don’t want that thing to

be shut down at the end of that year as they start a new one. If

you do a new one every year, over time you are actually carrying

several of those. So I think, as a practical matter, our staff are engaging—what can we get out of these agencies but not push them

so hard that they are basically not in a position to be responsive

to us? So, it is that kind of balance.

But, let me try to get you more details on the level of responsiveness we have had and what we’ve been able to accomplish with

that, and we will see if we can’t push a little harder. We are open

to that suggestion.

Mr. OSE. Well, I’m not quite——

Mr. GRAHAM. Not there yet?

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Mr. OSE. So, it’s not that I’m questioning that. It’s just I want

to make sure I understand. Are you asking agencies for one new

initiative each year?

Mr. GRAHAM. Um-hmm.

Mr. OSE. So like it could be initiative A in 2003, but then in 2004

it’s got to be initiative B?

Mr. GRAHAM. And, we don’t want the first one to shut down.

Mr. OSE. That’s my question. So they can run concurrently? They

are not mutually exclusive?

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s right.

Mr. OSE. All right. So in the 10th year, we will have at least

some of them done, and we may have six or seven pending? Am

I correct in my understanding?

Mr. GRAHAM. That’s right.

Mr. OSE. All right.

Ms. Dalton, we didn’t mean to ignore you. That was not our intention. I have to say, your written statement was comprehensive

and very informative.

Ms. DALTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. It’s interesting to find third-party corroboration as to

whether I’m right or wrong on some things. I have to compliment

you. You were right on button. So I thank you for coming.

Ms. DALTON. Thank you.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Everson, Dr. Graham, we thank you for your appearance. We will leave the record open; and, as we’d indicated,

there are a number of written questions we will be submitting to

each of you. We would appreciate a timely response.

Dr. Graham, I’m not sure we are going to have this fun next

year.

Mr. GRAHAM. I was about to say, we have let you have your last

hearing on good news: Paperwork burden is down, 90 percent reduction in violations under this President and we have 80 percent

reduction in the growth of the Federal regulatory state, part of the

President’s economic plan, thanks to tailwind. Thank you very

much.

Mr. OSE. Well, you are doing the heavy lifting. I will be watching

my remaining months, and I presume Mr. Schrock will be in behind me. So, again, we appreciate your effort.

Mr. Everson, we look forward to working with you in the days

ahead.

We are going to take a 5-minute recess here. If the second panel

could gather, we would appreciate it. Thank you all.

[Recess.]

Mr. OSE. All right. I want to welcome our second panel to our

hearing today.

As you saw in the first panel, it’s not a function of picking on

you, but we swear everybody in. So, if everybody would please rise,

raise your right hands.

[Witnesses sworn.]

Mr. OSE. Let the record show the witnesses answered in the affirmative.

Our second panel today to talk about the Bush administration’s

economic growth plan component for paperwork reduction is Mr.

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Daniel Clifton, who is the Federal affairs manager for the Americans for Tax Reform. Welcome, sir.

He is joined by Mr. Paul Hense, who is the president of Paul A.

Hense, CPA, from Grand Rapids, MI. He is testifying here on behalf of the National Small Business Association.

And, our third witness is the Chief Economist for the Small Business Survival Committee, Mr. Raymond Keating.

Gentlemen, welcome. We have received your written statements

for the record. As you saw in the earlier panel, we go for 5 minutes,

so you can summarize; and we appreciate your being here.

Mr. Clifton you are recognized for 5 minutes.

STATEMENTS OF DANIEL CLIFTON, FEDERAL AFFAIRS MANAGER, AMERICANS FOR TAX REFORM; PAUL HENSE, PRESIDENT, PAUL A. HENSE, CPA, P.C., GRAND RAPIDS, MI, ON BEHALF OF THE NATIONAL SMALL BUSINESS ASSOCIATION;

AND RAYMOND J. KEATING, CHIEF ECONOMIST, SMALL

BUSINESS SURVIVAL COMMITTEE

Mr. CLIFTON. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. It’s great to be here

today. Some of my testimony has been repeated earlier, so I will

kind of summarize my written remarks.

My name is Daniel Clifton. I’m Federal affairs manager for

Americans for Tax Reform. Our organization is a coalition of taxpayer and taxpayer groups from across the country that believe in

lower taxes, fewer regulations, and free markets.

The timing of this hearing is very timely, given that last week

was Tax Day. This is the most appropriate time for taxpayers to

see the burden imposed on them by the government, both from a

financial perspective and from a time perspective.

The good news is, from a financial perspective, taxes are lower

this year due to legislation passed by this Congress and signed into

law by President Bush. The average family is saving over $1,500

because of the tax cuts from 2001 and 2003. Just from last year’s

tax cut, a family of four making $40,000 had a 96 percent tax reduction, meaning they are virtually paying no taxes.

At the same time, the average refund this year will be over $2,000, and more than 14 million low-income Americans have been

removed from the tax rolls and are now paying no taxes since 2005.

At the same time, this worked to boost the economy. The average

gross domestic product has been over 6 percent since the tax cut

was put in place. The stock market has generated $2.5 trillion of

shareholder wealth.

Dividend issue is up 60 percent, and initial unemployment

claims are down 25 percent, and jobs—700,000 jobs since the Tax

Code has been put in place.

All in all, the tax cut is working. However, when we make these

tax changes, it has made the Tax Code much more complex. In fact,

as this hearing has found, 80 percent of the change in the entire

Federal Government paperwork burden is through the IRS and the

Tax Code. That’s about 6.7 billion hours.

So, how do we get to this point? Our tax system was supposed

to be a system where we raise revenue. Instead, it’s become a system of new deductions, special interest provisions, with limits and

qualifiers on existing rules, and that’s what’s adding to the paperVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00111 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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work. The results of these actions have been to move the paperwork burden in the wrong direction even in the wake of the Paperwork Reduction Act. The fact is, we are now at a point of near collapse, and the system needs to be fixed.

It is my belief that both the IRS and the Office of Management

and Budget have moved to make changes. However, this effort has

been akin to running up a downward-moving escalator, trying to

run up a downward-moving escalator. As minor changes are made

that they reported on today, more complexity has been added, leaving a net increase in the burden.

In fact, since the passage of the Paperwork Reduction Act in

1995, the number of lines on the 1040 form has increased from 66

to 73, while the 1040 instruction page booklet has increased from

84 pages to 131 pages. Without question, the number of rules, limits, terms of conditions, and other qualifiers are increasing the paperwork burden on taxpayers.

A recent study by the National Taxpayers Union places this in

context, ‘‘If the Treasury Department were to reduce its burden by

the average amount mandated by the 1995 Paperwork Reduction

Act, the burden would have declined to 3.702 billion hours in 2005.

Instead, the Treasury overshot that target by 2.429 hours.’’ The result has been a 15 percent increase from 1995 through 2000, instead of the mandated 31 percent reduction target set by the law.

This also has an economic cost. The Tax Foundation has reported

that the cost of just complying with the Tax Code is $203 billion.

To place that in context, that is larger than the revenues of America’s second largest company, Exxon Mobil.

With the accelerating tax compliance burden, taxpayers are now

spending 35 percent more time filling out their tax forms than

1995. Even the EZ file is significantly increasing. The tax complexity, as the IRS Commissioner testified earlier, also increases noncompliance. The best way to have compliance is to have a simple

form that taxpayers are comfortable filling out. The growing tax

compliance cost also places a negative drag on the economy by stifling productivity and allocating resources less efficiently.

Paid preparers are now up 60 percent since 1980 and 25 percent,

so the Code has become the full employment act for creative accountants. This is redirecting the accountants away from productive activities like auditing Enron and instead making them try

and find the deductions and loopholes that drive the cost up for all

taxpayers.

I can go on all day with statistics about the growing complexity

of the Tax Code, but I would like to use one example. There could

be many, such as the alternative minimum tax, the business expensing provisions, but I want to talk about the savings provisions

which are used by millions of Americans for retirement, education,

and health care.

The IRS publication explaining retirement accounts is now 104

pages long. In 1982, that publication was just 12 pages. As a result

of congressional action, there are now six different accounts, all

with special and clever acronyms which make little sense to the

mother who is worried about getting her children to band practice

and a soccer game.

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To participate, Americans have to know whether their income

qualifies, how much money they can put in. The rules have become

so complex you need a tax preparer to understand whether you can

just participate in the program. This program is completely frustrating.

But, we have evidence simplifying it, as Ronald Reagan did in

1981, will increase participation. From 1980 to 1986, contributions

rose after liberalization from $4 billion to $38 billion. When Congress restricted the deductibility of IRA contributions and added

greater complexity, the level of contributions fell sharply and never

recovered to $15 billion in 1987 and $8.4 billion in 1995. This affected families who weren’t even affected by the regulations, but

the complexity made it more difficult to figure out whether they

could be included in the participation of the program.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Clifton.

Mr. CLIFTON. Yes.

Mr. OSE. Are you about to wrap up?

Mr. CLIFTON. Thank you.

Mr. OSE. That’s a question.

Mr. CLIFTON. Just my recommendations are: Reform the Tax

Code. It’s the only way to do it. We can’t keep making these quirky

changes and then increasing the complexity. Thank you.

Mr. OSE. Thank you.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Clifton follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Our next witness is the president of Paul Hense CPA

from Grand Rapids, MI. That would be Mr. Paul Hense speaking

on behalf of the National Small Business Association. Sir, welcome.

Mr. HENSE. I thank you for having me here. It’s an honor for a

small, humble CPA from Grand Rapids, MI, to be here to explain

the role of the CPA in this end.

It’s a little bit—everyone knows that a plague is a horrible thing

unless you are an undertaker, and I hear all this conversation

about the complexity of the Tax Code. I’m going to buy a new fishing boat in a couple months, and I was going to name it the Hense

Fourth, because I’m the fourth of the Hense boys. I may change it

at this time to the name of the AMT just in honor of what has

made my business grow.

I’m a small business advocate, and I make fun of these things,

but the reality of it is that I’m from where the rubber meets the

road. I’m not a lobbyist. I’m not a politician. This is what I do, and

I do it all year around. And, during tax season, I do it all day

round.

It’s an interesting business; I actually prepare the forms, 300-

some tax returns. I do have a small office. I have three very good

employees who help me get through this stuff.

The problem that I see is, the problem isn’t with the Internal

Revenue Service. The problem is with the laws that are delivered

to them to put into some format that works.

It’s akin to giving somebody a couple of tin cans and some barbed

wire and say, make me a Mercedes out of this. You know they can’t

do it. You give the IRS incomprehensible tax laws and ask them

to put it into a simple format, it ain’t going to happen.

The worst area that this happens is in the area of 401(k)’s as an

example, where, for some reason, some decision was made in the

last 25 years that, if you’re in a large business, you should be able

to put lots and lots of money into your pension plan; but, if you’re

a small business, by the nature of your complexity, you’re not going

to get those same pension benefits.

Same way with the section 125 plan. The owner of the business

for some bizarre reason, in a small business, can’t have the same

benefits that the employees can have. So, I’m assuming this kind

of happened accidentally, but it makes no sense. The alternative

minimum tax—I spent an hour and a half with the business editor

of the Grand Rapids Business Journal on April 11th trying to explain the alternative minimum tax to her, and after an hour and

a half we gave up, because she did the best she could, but it’s incomprehensible. And, frankly, to me, that’s a profitmaker.

Depreciation, for a client, a small business client, you have to

have maker’s depreciation for the tax return. Then you have to remember if you’re going to take the bonus—if you’re not going to

take the bonus depreciation, you have to file a statement saying

you’re not taking it. Then, you have to have alternative minimum

tax depreciation, and then, for your financial statements for the

bank, you have to have book depreciation. I love it. But, the problem is, in the long run it’s a bad thing.

The effects are the small business owners often don’t have 401(k)

plans. They will have a simple plan which is very limited in what

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you can put into it. They won’t have a section 125 plan, because

why would they set up something they can’t contribute to?

The real proof in this to me—people come in here and they talk

about they have numbers. I don’t have exact numbers. All I can tell

you is ADP, H&R Block, and Paychecks are growing like crazy.

Their revenues are up by billions of dollars over the last 3 or 4

years, and they’re projected to go up by more billions of dollars. At

the same time, we’re losing our manufacturing base; why shouldn’t

that money be going for research and development and to build

new factories and buy new equipment and hire more people? It’s

coming to me, and I’m not sure that’s the best thing, and people

who do what I do.

There’s another thing. We’ll have somebody come into our office

who wants to start a business, and often they’re not—you know,

they’re not going to get a lot of sympathy for somebody driving a

Mercedes, making a lot of money, over the problems with the tax

issues. But, how about somebody who wants to get off welfare and

start a business or get out of a menial nothing job and get into

owning a business? And, by the time they get done talking to me,

they decide they don’t want to do it, because by the time they get

done with the paperwork requirements, the tax requirements—and

one of the things I want to tell you, I’m a small business consultant. Don’t hire people. The software for fundamental accounting is

about $125. Add payroll, you add another couple hundred dollars

to your software program, because payroll is a big complication.

Once you’ve got payroll, then you’ve got worker’s compensation.

Then you’ve got Federal unemployment or whatever State’s unemployment. You’ve got this organization, that organization. So, what

do you want to do? You want to subcontract it out, as had been discussed earlier relative to real estate development. So, then you can

run a file of the IRS doing that.

So, in the proposal I was delighted with the head of—the IRS’s

statement on the 1099s, the withholding. How would you ever figure out how much to withhold, from whom, who is going to pay it,

who is going to get it and how, what form are you going to fill out,

on and on and on? Made my heart just warm up knowing that

they’re not going to do that.

The summation is really kind of simple——

Mr. OSE. Mr. Hense, actually I think he said they had no current

plans to do that.

Mr. HENSE. Well, yes, but I’m sure it will stay that way. I mean,

what would influence them to change?

This tax system is broken beyond repair. This can’t be fixed. I

believe politically—and I’m a CPA, so I’m a CPA talking about politics, so take it for what it’s worth. But, I don’t think this can be

fixed, because it’s so broken that to fix it would be impossible. So,

I guess it has to be scrapped.

Five years from now, please—I’m 61, and if you’ll wait, I can get

Social Security in 5 years and 10 months. If you’re going to fix it,

fix it then, not now. But, it can’t be fixed, and so there are discussions about a national sales tax, value-added taxes, on and on and

on. There are pros and cons to everything. We could sit here and

argue forever, as the argument in the Middle Ages was how many

angles can sit on the point of a pin? Who knows? What is the right

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tax system? Smarter people than I will decide that, but this is not

the right tax system.

Mr. OSE. Thank you, Mr. Hense.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Hense follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Our next witness is the chief economist for the Small

Business Survival Committee, Mr. Keating. Welcome to our subcommittee. You’re recognized for 5 minutes.

Mr. KEATING. Thank you. I appreciate it. I never thought I’d

have to be concerned about following an accountant, but apparently

I do.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak here today. I serve as

chief economist for the Small Business Survival Committee, and

we’re a small business advocacy group with some 70,000 members

across the Nation. The idea that small businesses serve as the

backbone of the U.S. economy is not mere rhetoric, it’s economic reality. We’ve heard various statistics over the years. More than 99

percent of all employers are small businesses. They employ more

than half of the private sector work force. They create 60 to 80 percent of the new jobs each year, generate 51 percent of the private

sector output, and account for 96 percent of all U.S. exporters.

Nonetheless, the entrepreneurial sector of our economy must

overcome many obstacles, costly obstacles inflicted by government.

The costs of taxation generally fall within three major categories.

The first and most obvious is the amount of resources extracted

from the private sector for use by the government.

Second, taxes impose a significant cost in terms of lost or redirected economic opportunity and activity. And, third, what we’re

here to talk about today are the costs of regulation, compliance,

and collection.

Unfortunately, regulatory costs, including tax compliance, hit

small businesses hardest. That was illustrated by Mark Crain and

Thomas Hopkins in their 2001 report for the Office of Advocacy.

The per-employee cost of Federal regulations registered almost

$7,000 for firms with fewer than 20 employees, compared to $4,700

for all firms. Tax compliance per employee costs came in at $1,202

for firms with fewer than 20 employees compared to almost double

the $665 for all businesses.

One recent survey by the National Federation of Independent

Business noted that paperwork and recordkeeping cost small businesses $48.72 per hour, with tax-related costs as the most expensive at $74.24 cents per hour.

Another estimate, another study, noted that tax compliance costs

for the entire economy came in at a staggering $203 billion in 2003,

and that’s about 2 percent of U.S. GDP.

Again, the small business owner, the entrepreneur, gets hit hard.

A 2003 analysis of compliance costs on individual tax returns performed by the IRS—and it was with consultants from IBM—they

found that, while self-employed taxpayers represent only 25 percent of all individual taxpayers, they experience 60 percent of the

time and money burden in terms of compliance. And, it was also

determined that tax return complexity is markedly higher for selfemployed returns.

I spoke to a few business owners last week in preparation for

these hearings, and I asked them about government paperwork and

taxes in particular, and I got a lot of anger and resignation, frustration, all of those things, but they noted that the costs were paid

one way or another. They either had to have outside accountants

or lawyers—or hire staff internally to deal with the paperwork the

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government inflicts. And, the question here from an economic

standpoint is what would those resources be used for if not lost on

paperwork? The same question goes for making tax compliance

somewhat easier with tax software. I do that myself, but the question is, what would all those software writers be doing if they

didn’t have to deal with the messy Tax Code?

So, what can be done? First, it’s got to be acknowledged that

complexity starts with the Code itself. In its 2000 report to Congress, the National Taxpayer Advocate noted that the top two problems facing taxpayers were complexity for individuals and complexity for businesses. That complexity arguably has increased since

then. Consider the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts passed by Congress.

These had enormous positive benefits for the economy, particularly

through reductions in personal income, capital gains, dividend tax

rates, and the eventual elimination of the death tax. At the same

time, though, the phase-ins and phase-outs of these tax measures

have added to the system’s complexity and costs, as well as creating economic uncertainty.

An obviouis answer is to make these tax cuts permanent, but

over the long haul we need to look at a fairer, simpler, less costly,

and more pro-growth tax system. Also, Congress needs to zero in

on current major sources of complexity.

My colleague mentioned the AMT. I have various statistics in my

written testimony about the cost of the alternative minimum tax

for individuals. We agree with the National Taxpayer Advocate in

recommending the repeal of the individual AMT, and quite frankly,

we’d like to see the corporate AMT go as well.

Third, we don’t want to make things worse. We don’t want to see

the current system get worse. One area that was mentioned earlier

where we strongly disagree with the National Taxpayer Advocate

in the latest report to Congress was the recommendation for Congress to implement a mechanism to withhold on certain categories

of nonwage workers. There are costs involved for those having to

deal with withholding. It complicates taxes on both ends, and it

really doesn’t, in my view—I don’t see how it accomplishes much

in terms of conforming to the Tax Code.

In addition, it’s important to understand withholding comes with

economic costs. Business owners, perhaps better than anyone else,

understand the true costs of government because they have to

quarterly write out that check to the Federal Government and to

their State governments. So, they understand the costs of government. I think that’s important for voters and taxpayers to understand that. When you have withholding, that’s lost on a lot of people. They look at what the take-home pay is and forget what the

total pay is in terms of what they should be receiving.

There are other suggestions that we have. I see my time is up.

We obviously would like to see the Tax Code—the IRS make it—

their instructions easier, clearer, use plain English, correspondence. Please use plain English. Perhaps we mentioned in the written testimony, enhance visual aids, you know, give somebody the

opportunity to see something in a different way, an easier way

than perhaps just jam-packed with text and pages and pages of

material.

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We also think the Taxpayer Advocate Service needs to better get

the word out in terms of its duties in representing taxpayer interests and formulation of policies and procedures and identifying and

developing proposals for simplifying the Tax Code and reducing

taxpayer burden.

Thank you for this opportunity. I look forward to any questions

you might have.

Mr. OSE. I thank the gentleman.

[The prepared statement of Mr. Keating follows:]

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Mr. OSE. Mr. Schrock, why don’t you proceed first?

Mr. SCHROCK. I’ve got a million questions. Daniel Clifton, you

said it best. We’ve got to reform the Tax Code. If we reform it, you

won’t have SS AMT. But how do we do it? How do we do it?

Saxby Chambliss—you heard me say Saxby Chambliss and John

Linder out there, I think it’s the flat tax they’re talking about. Will

that work? What’s the answer to this? It’s incredibly complicated

and gets no better. Every time we pass a law, it just makes it more

and more burdensome on everybody. What’s the answer?

Mr. CLIFTON. That’s a great question, Congressman. We see the

way to do this is to remove the double taxes on savings and investment, and, in the 1990’s, we had a debate about tax reform, and

people thought whether it was going to be the fair national sales

tax, what Congressman Linder is doing now.

Mr. SCHROCK. Fair tax.

Mr. CLIFTON. Or Dick Armey’s flat tax, and Congressman Tauzin

and Congressman Armey went around the countryside and had a

debate about it. They said they were going to rip up the IRS and

we were going to start all over.

Mr. SCHROCK. And, it didn’t happen.

Mr. CLIFTON. It didn’t happen. This President has moved in a

different path of tax reform, and he said let me do this piece by

piece. And, there’s essentially five steps that unite the fair-taxers

and the flat-taxers. One, lowering marginal rates, we’ve done that.

We’ve moved the top rate from 39 to 35 in each step, accordingly.

Two, remove double taxation, such as the death tax, which we

have permanently repealed for 1 year. The capital gains and dividend reductions made the Tax Code much more complex. If we had

eliminated that, then you would have had much more simplicity,

and that’s what we really need to do. I mean, Schedule D takes

hours to fill out now, and what is a qualified dividend now under

the new rate versus a nonqualified? It just gets crazy.

The third is international tax reform, which Chairman Thomas

tried to do in his FSC-ETI repeal legislation that is moving both

through the House and the Senate to come into compliance with

WTO tariffs.

The fourth is moving to full business expensing. Everybody here

spoke about depreciation schedules and the impact that has on

businesses. We’ve moved in that direction and gone to a 50 percent

system, but we really needed to make 100 so that we have full

business expensing. I think politically the only way to do it is incrementally, but I think that, if we remove all double tax on savings

and investment and follow the path, we will get to simplicity much

easier than trying to do it all at once.

Mr. SCHROCK. When will we get there? In your lifetime? I doubt

it.

Mr. CLIFTON. Every time we take a step forward, we take two

steps back, so it is a real challenge. There are people who have a

vested interest in this Tax Code, and every time we go to make a

change, they come roaring at us, and it’s very hard to do.

Mr. SCHROCK. Who?

Mr. CLIFTON. I want to give you one example. I spoke about savings accounts. The President’s budget has a proposal for lifetime

savings accounts and retirement savings accounts. That is the closVerDate 11-MAY-2000 16:33 Oct 18, 2004 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00139 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 D:\DOCS\95798.TXT HGOVREF1 PsN: HGOVREF1
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est incremental step we can have toward fundamental tax reform.

Congressman Johnson just introduced legislation, and the people in

the retirement business, when—in the retirement savings business

went crazy at this proposal, thinking that $1 of immediate savings

for me, a young guy saving for a home, is going to supplement $1

of my retirement security. It’s not a fixed pie, and we really got a

big hit back on that, and that legislation is moving nowhere. That

would simplify the Tax Code more than anything we could do on

an incremental step without doing fundamental tax reform.

Mr. SCHROCK. Mr. Hense.

Mr. HENSE. In everything that happens, there are winners and

losers, and the whole tax law is built around making winners and

losers. There’s an example. On the flat tax, I was able to participate in a panel discussion with Alvin Rabushka and Dick Armey,

and they weren’t going to tax interest and dividend income. I understand the philosophical context behind that. But, sell that idea

to a production line worker in Flint, MI, that the rich East coast

people who inherited a fortune are not going to pay any income tax

on what they get, and a guy working in the line is going to pay

taxes on his income. That ain’t going to fly. In each one of these—

in the fair tax, there’s winners and losers. In the income tax,

there’s winners and losers.

I want to address—I have seen some interesting things. As an

example, this is going to happen. There are good things and bad

things that are going to happen, hopefully more good than bad.

There’s a simple way to fix the pension problem. Everybody gets

to put aside 15 percent of their income, up to $30,000 a year, period. Doesn’t make any difference where you work, doesn’t make

any difference what you do, doesn’t make any difference whether

you’re a C corporation, an S corporation. Whatever you do, you get

to put aside that amount of money every year, tax deductible, and

that’s it. There’s no regulations. It’s just everybody gets to put

aside a share of their income——

Mr. SCHROCK. Tax deductible or deferred?

Mr. HENSE. Or deferred. That’s correct, deferred. We’re actually

already doing that in a sense with Social Security. It’s a forced savings plan. It doesn’t really work out that way in the end, it doesn’t

look like, but that’s what the plan was.

But, anyway, in the simplification of the income tax, they’re trying to help the people at the bottom, and they’ve made the Earned

Income Tax Credit—all these child—it’s so complicated that without the software, I couldn’t do it. And that’s for somebody making

under $20,000 a year with a couple of kids. Anybody who owns a

business who does not use a CPA is a fool, because it is so complicated with this depreciation, that depreciation, you can—if you

buy a vehicle over 6,000 pounds, you get to take that write-off; if

it’s under 6,000 pounds, you get this write-off. It’s all various pressure groups getting what they want. I don’t really foresee the day

it will really go away. I think it would be a little bit here, a little

bit there, and then—just as this gentleman said, then we’ll turn

around in the next couple of years, it will come back with a whole

bunch of—the best example being the tax on capital gains and dividends, if it was after May 5th or whatever, if it was before May

5th.

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We have a client who sold an apartment building on May 4th.

He wanted to go back and change the paperwork, and I explained

to him you can’t do that. So, it’s political pressure. This goes on

and on.

Actually, what happens, people like us have to keep up the battle

or we will go backward. If we don’t come here and make our case

and continue to come back and make our case—a radio newsman

asked me yesterday morning when I was talking, after we got done

with the interview, he said, you don’t really think you’re going to

make a difference, do you? I said, I don’t know, but I know I won’t

if I don’t do anything.

Mr. SCHROCK. If the chairman will indulge me for just a minute,

one of the things that used to gall me, when our son was born, my

wife was a teacher. She didn’t teach until Randy was 4. He went

to school, she started teaching, and the agreement was 50 percent

of her pay would go into a Uniform Gift to Minors Act account for

his college education, but the doggone government kept taking a lot

of it. Now, what nonsense is that? We’re trying to provide for our

kid’s education, doing what we think is right, and we’re being penalized. That’s just one example.

Fortunately—in fact, he was born 28 years ago tomorrow, so,

that’s when the markets went up and he made a ton of money; still

has it. But, I mean, why should the government take that when

we’re trying to fund his education? That’s just one small example.

Mr. HENSE. But, you spent some money getting that done.

Mr. SCHROCK. We spent a lot of money getting that done.

Mr. HENSE. You spend money for attorneys, you spend money for

accountants, which isn’t all bad, but a lot of money is spent——

Mr. SCHROCK. Wait a minute. Say that again.

Mr. HENSE. I said there’s a lot of money spent on accountants.

That’s not all bad.

Mr. SCHROCK. But, it was with lawyers.

Mr. HENSE. It all depends on whose ox is getting gored, something like that. Tort reform I’m for. Tax reform I’m ambivalent

about. But, that’s exactly the problem. That is exactly the problem.

When you talk about a national sales tax, I’m to the point in life

where, you know, I’ve kind of bought everything. I might want to

buy a few more things, but the national sales tax, I could quit

mine, because my kids are grown, I’ve got my house, I don’t know;

but the national sales tax for young people, they’re still buying

houses, buying cars, clothes, food, raising kids. So, for all of these,

there are positives and negatives, and what I’m hoping will happen

is that the organizations that we represent, the National Small

Business Association, all of these organizations that we represent

will continue the battle in the hopes that we can correct some of

these things. But, if we give up, it will get a lot worse real fast.

Mr. SCHROCK. There needs to be two tax codes, one for those

raising kids, paying mortgages and——

Mr. HENSE. You know what, that could almost happen. Look at

what’s already happened. You can almost see something like that

happen.

Mr. SCHROCK. I don’t mean to ignore you, Mr. Keating. I want

to hear from you.

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Mr. KEATING. No, that’s OK. I agree with the fact that we have

to, as representatives of our groups, continue this fight. Obviously

on the other side, though, there’s got to be political leadership. I

think—call me crazy. I mean, I’ll take whatever tax cut I can get

along the way, but I think the tax simplification debate is a positive political issue that can be worked to elected officials’ advantage.

You mentioned the flat tax and the national sales tax, and I

went back and I had somebody from our staff—I couldn’t remember

when I wrote it. It was way back in May 1995. And, I love these.

Remember the Armey-Shelby plan? This was for individuals, and

this was for businesses. I mean, wow, where has that debate gone?

I mean, maybe it’s been fumbled on our end, as well, as groups, but

that’s something that we have to keep hammering away and advancing. Obviously along the way we take what we can get, but I

don’t think that tax simplification should just be tossed aside as

something that’s a dream way down the road.

Mr. SCHROCK. So, I think what I hear you all saying is political

pressure on Members of Congress by special interest groups are

preventing this from happening, period?

Mr. HENSE. But, we’re part of that. But, the understanding has

to be that we’re here today saying that—take an example of 100

percent expensing. I can see that from both sides. I can see where

I like it. If I can buy—right now I can go up to $100,000 of computers and deduct it in 1 year. There are some negatives of that, one

of them being that you then don’t have any deductions for the next

5 years once you expense it all in the first year. But, I can understand where somebody who was not in business would say, whoa,

wait a minute. So, he can go out and buy these computers and pay

no tax that year, and the way this happens, then somebody says,

well, let’s do this. Let’s have something in there so, if he buys

$100,000 worth of computers and he has no tax, we add a tax that

taxes part of what he wrote off. That’s where the alternative minimum tax came from.

So, basically there are some simple things. This is kind of what

you asked for. There are some simple things. Like with the pension

plans, 15 percent for everybody up to $30,000. That’s it. You don’t

get any—that’s the whole pension plan for the country. On the alternative minimum tax, it has to be done away with. It’s just an

insanity.

But, if we can’t reform the whole thing, which I think realistically I’d like to see it happen in 5 years, but it’s not going to happen now, that we will have to nick away at this, you know, take

it away layer by layer. But, we have to remember there are people

who aren’t going to like that, who will argue from the other side.

Mr. KEATING. Can I respond to one point there? I think most people actually would understand—I own a business, I went out and

bought $100,000 worth of equipment and I write that off in the

year that I bought it. I think people would better understand that

concept than, you know, a depreciation table which is basically designed by politicians. I think people would better understand something like expensing. Now, there’s an example that we can make

that point in terms of the people that we’re representing. Members

of Congress hopefully do the same thing. So, I think, you know, you

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take one at a time, but I think these issues are very much answerable from a general fairness perspective from the public’s perspective.

Mr. SCHROCK. And, I think, if you’re starting a new business and you’re brand new and you have $100,000 in equipment expenses,

the first year more than ever you want that write-off so you can

survive to the second and third and fourth and fifth year.

Mr. Chairman, I’ve taken up too much time.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Hense, you just said you had, like, 300 clients?

Mr. HENSE. About 325, 330. I haven’t finished the count yet.

Mr. OSE. I think your testimony was you prepare about 300 returns?

Mr. HENSE. Yes.

Mr. OSE. In those returns, do you have different reporting requirements that are, in your judgment, pointless?

Mr. HENSE. Almost all of it. The whole thing becomes pointless,

because you spend so much time—I’ve heard several people comment on the amount of time that accountants spend on this. It

could probably be spent on something more worthwhile. Maybe

you’d have an engineer instead of an accountant. I think we need

more engineers than we need accountants. In order to try to make

this tax law meet these political needs, it has become so convoluted. And, to give you an example, probably the form—the worst

form is the alternative minimum tax. That’s the worst.

But, let me give you another—I was asked one time what the

form is that accountants charge the most for, which is probably the

most worthless. And, I would say it’s probably the office in a home

expense. It takes a lot of figuring to come up with an office in the

home expense. If somebody owns a business, it has some validity

to it. If they’re employed and they’re taking it as an unreimbursed

employee expense, you’ve got to get an awful large office in the

home deduction before it has any meaningful impact.

There’s just a lot of—the depreciation schedules, doing the tax

depreciation schedule, then doing the AMT depreciation schedule,

then doing the book depreciation schedule. There’s just so much to

it, I’d have a hard time figuring out individually——

Mr. OSE. Well, let me phrase the question a different way. On

equipment used in a business, we raised the annual deduction from

$25,000 to $100,000 in effect. For many businesses that’s a paperwork reduction. You just said whatever it is you bought under

$100,000, that’s the way it is. You don’t have to do depreciation

schedule. It’s all done.

Mr. HENSE. You still have to keep track of it, because when you

sell it you have to recapture it. So, you still have to keep track of

it. And, there’s another thing. Everything in taxes isn’t that simple.

If you take a—say you make $50,000 a year. The accountant has

to figure out what the optimum use of that $100,000 deduction is,

because you can take too much. And, then, if the business is looking profitable, you have a situation where in a graduated tax, you

will actually—it can actually end up costing you money to use the

section 179. Then you get into the issue with the 50 percent bonus

depreciation. Do you take that and carry the loss back to previous

years to get a refund of previous years’ taxes, and will you get

more out of doing that than you would out of carrying it forward?

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And, so this is what I meant when I said a small business owner

in starting a business, it’s really foolhardy not to have a CPA, because just by the nature of the thing, it is so complicated, and

many of these decisions, once made, are set in stone.

Mr. OSE. What I’m looking for is some specific example from your

experience, either in terms of raising the threshold or eliminating

a requirement—I’m looking for some specific example from your experience—and, Mr. Clifton, Mr. Keating, we’ll get to you on your

recommendations for this—that we could use as an example of increasing the threshold and reducing paperwork burden. In other

words, we raise—well, we go from $25,000 to $50,000 in terms of—

we go to $30,000 what you can contribute to your retirement program. All you have to do is check a box and that’s that.

Mr. HENSE. That would be one. That would be wonderful. A CPA

praising the IRS is a little like a minister praising the devil. You

don’t hear this very often, but the IRS and the Congress have

changed some things that have had a positive impact, and I’m having to get used to a new relationship with the Internal Revenue

Service. There has been some significant improvement there. And,

some of the things that have been done, as an example, is on small

business corporations raising the threshold for the AMT. I sometimes come up with ATM which really confuses people, but it’s

AMT. Raising the threshold for the AMT for small corporations and

then having an average that they work with before the actual hit.

We have some clients who buy very significant amounts of equipment every year. If they had to pay AMT, it would severely limit

their growth. There’s an example of something that has been actually done where the AMT was removed. I believe it’s at $7 million,

you don’t pay alternative minimum tax in a corporation.

One of the things—another thing that’s being done is changing

the filing requirement to 1 year. You kept hitting on that for the

941. That will have significant savings for a business owner. The

one thing that concerns me about that is that they will have to be

aware that they owe this money. I mean, the quarterly filing lets

the IRS know if they’re following behind.

Mr. OSE. Also, they’re going to end up setting a threshold, something other than annual——

Mr. HENSE. They’re going to need to. But, some of this has been

done. I’m trying to think of some other areas. The one big thing,

if they did away with the alternative minimum tax, it would do

away with the multiple depreciation schedules, and it would also

do away with a lot of computations we have to do to see whether

or not the person—even if they don’t have to——

Mr. OSE. What the impact is.

Mr. HENSE. Yeah. We have to check to see—and then also clients

call me. As an example, a client was buying a house in Florida for

future retirement, and thank God he called me——

Mr. OSE. A low-tax State.

Mr. HENSE. Yeah, a wonderful low-tax State, and it has some

real advantages, but a high property tax.

Mr. OSE. I understand.

Mr. HENSE. OK. So, this is a high-income individual. People

shouldn’t inadvertently stumble into a tax problem, and he very

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thing else and this came up. And, I said, oh my God, we’ve got to

do a computation to see what this does to your AMT, and the property taxes on that home put him into the alternative minimum tax.

It affects mainly upper-income people now, but it’s working its way

down to everybody.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Clifton, do you have any suggestions as to specific

examples? Mr. Hense has AMT.

Mr. CLIFTON. I would say in the meantime as well you need to

index the AMT right away. I mean, that’s something that’s doable

in the short term. The reason why we’re in this mess and more

people are being hit with it is because it wasn’t indexed in the

early 1990’s.

Mr. OSE. It’s my understanding that requires a statutory fix that

cannot be done regulatorily?

Mr. CLIFTON. Right, that’s correct. On top of that, I would go

back again one more time to the savings programs which could be

done by regulatory change, even some by legislation. The rules that

are implemented by the IRS of who can pull in—you know, when

you have to do a minimum distribution, that’s not legislation, that’s

regulatory powers. And, I can go back in and do a full review for

you and get back to you on what is done through regulation

versus——

Mr. OSE. We’ll send you the specific written question.

Mr. CLIFTON. Great. I would love that.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Keating, anything specific?

Mr. KEATING. Well, he stole my thunder. I would agree with everything that Paul said on the AMT, and I would also agree with

indexing. I think those are key issues. You know, we’ve got—in so

many different areas the phasing out of tax benefits at various income levels up—to the extent that they can be raised, great; but

to the extent they can be phased out and eliminated, so much the

better. It not only would help in terms of reducing tax complexity,

but most of those things have to do with savings and investment

incentives, and anytime you can enhance those, those are obviously

benefits for the economy overall.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Clifton, you mentioned the savings and dividends.

I’ve often wondered why we tax interest. I don’t quite understand

why that is. But, what level, if any, would you set—what threshold

would you set for interest income below which you don’t have to report it?

Mr. CLIFTON. There was a change made last year——

Mr. OSE. The amount has been rising.

Mr. CLIFTON. Right. I can’t honestly answer that question, because I haven’t looked at it enough. Personally, we’d like to abolish

all forms of double taxation, including dividend income. I mean, we

pushed to pass the President’s plan last year, and, in the end, we

got something that made it much more complex. But, let me tell

you why. We are worried about the paperwork burden. This proposal, when it passed, actually created more of a paperwork burden. However, I would say to continue to do it. The results have

been extremely successful from an economic perspective where

there’s more cash in shareholders’ hands, but also at the same time

it improved corporate governance, as companies are now returning

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that cash back to their shareholders rather than hoarding it, which

led to a lot of the corporate scandals.

So, we think, on net, that it was an overall benefit, and that’s

one of our recommendations, is going back into the 1998 IRS Restructuring Act and saying let’s do a full cost-benefit analysis of the

economic benefits and the regulatory benefits and weighing that

with the costs; because, on that one, while the regulatory burden

went up, the economic benefits were so much greater. On some of

these other changes, that may not be the case.

Mr. OSE. Mr. Keating, there’s——

Mr. KEATING. Can I say one thing?

Mr. OSE. Certainly.

Mr. KEATING. Just the economics of taxing capital gains, dividends, and interest I think has to be understood. You know, you

earn a dollar when you’re working. What can you do with that dollar? You can either use it for consumption, or you can save it, invest it. And, so often when you use it for consumption, the Federal

Government doesn’t tax you that much. When you turn around and

invest it, your returns are socked again with taxes. So, I just want

to reiterate the double taxation that is in effect now. We’ve benefited tremendously from bringing the dividend tax rate down; especially, I would argue, the capital gains tax rate for investment in

entrepreneurship. Those are all great, but I just want to make sure

that we understand that it is still a double-taxation scenario.

Mr. HENSE. And for small business—and I’m glad we took a few

more minutes, because a big one hit me. Sub S corporations, C corporations, LLCs, a multitude of entities, sole proprietorships, all

taxed different. A C corporation, a small business might want to

be a C corporation so they can get deductibility of its health care

as an expense, and they may want to be a C corporation to be at

the lower tax rate to build inventory to build the business. But, if

they sell the business while they’re a C corporation, or within 10

years of converting to an S corporation, they have a double—there

used to be a general utilities rule. You only paid taxes once. I believe it was 1986 they did away with that. It’s one thing when

somebody gets a dividend from IBM and IBM pays the taxes on it,

and then the individual pays the taxes on it, but then a manufacturer gets an offer he can’t refuse on his business and he has to

pay taxes on the profit in the business, and then he has to pay the

taxes on the proceeds when it comes out of the business. The double taxation issue is huge.

You had asked me what single thing, and I was thinking of individuals. We just got done with 1040 season. For businesses, for

small businesses that are C corporations, there should never be a

double taxation. That’s obscene. For S corporations, the 2 percent

rule—I’ll give you an example. One of my employees, a 41-year-old

woman, she and I were discussing her becoming a partner in my

business, and one way or another that’s going to happen because

she’s a wonderful employee. She’s the classic person you want as

an owner.

Mr. OSE. So, we have that on the record?

Mr. HENSE. You have that on the record.

Mr. OSE. I’m her agent and I’m——

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Mr. HENSE. You’re her agent, and this is going to cost me. Then

we went into what she loses if she gets 2 percent of the business.

She loses her section 125 plan, she becomes limited on her pension

plan. And, she actually said this to me: ‘‘Well, Paul, why would I

want to be a part owner in this business?’’ Very pragmatic woman.

‘‘I have kids to raise, I have issues, and once I’m 2 percent owner

of this business, I come under all the stupid rules that you come

under.’’ So, it’s a disincentive for this young lady to become an equity owner in my business, because she loses benefits. Why, I can’t

imagine.

Mr. OSE. Beyond the tax issues—in particular Mr. Keating, I’d

direct this at you, but beyond the tax issue, we have reporting requirements for, like, the toxic release inventory and a variety of

other things. Beyond the tax issues, are there suggestions you’d

make in terms of reporting requirements, paperwork and the like?

Mr. KEATING. We surveyed small business owners going back a

few years, and the IRS was No. 1 in terms of the paperwork burden. EPA, OSHA, Labor were all in there. When I spoke to some

folks last week, some business owners, I was kind of surprised. I

don’t know if it was just by chance, but there were two manufacturers that told me about Commerce Department surveys they had

to fill out on a quarterly basis, you know, for capacity levels and

so on and so on, and it was a nightmare for them.

Now, I’ll go back and find out exactly what—I don’t know particularly what surveys they were talking about in terms of our conversation, but I would be glad to go back and find out, because

they’re pretty darn animated about these surveys.

But, I’ll go back and try to get some specific recommendations,

but what I heard was Department of Labor was a tremendous burden, and, which came as a bit of a surprise, the Department of

Commerce, after the IRS in terms of the folks I spoke to last week.

But, I gladly would track down some more specifics and get them

to the committee.

Mr. OSE. We’ll give you a question in writing to which you can

respond.

Mr. Schrock.

Mr. SCHROCK. I can’t imagine what else I would have. I think our

questions pale in comparison to the discussion we’ve had. You

three have been magnificent, really. It’s all political will on our

part to get it done, but there’s so many of us who have so many

people on them, special interest groups, quite frankly, that’s what

causes a lot of this. And, you know, we complain that the paperwork reduction hasn’t been as fast as we want, yet we sit up here

every year creating more legislation, creating more paperwork on

what they try to knock down.

Somebody said you take one step forward and two back, and

that’s about the truth. We just have to have the political will to do

it. I think I do. I just need 434 others on this side of the—you

know, in the House to do the same thing. And, I think it’s going

to be very hard to do.

You know, we talked about the Linder-Chambliss—do you agree

with that? Do you think that’s the way to go, the fair tax? Is Dick

Armey’s flat tax the way to go?

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Mr. CLIFTON. Americans for Tax Reform supports the flat tax,

the Dick Armey concept. We support what Congressman Linder

and Saxby Chambliss are trying to do. However, there’s something

called the 16th amendment that allows the income tax to be there,

and we don’t believe that we’re going to be able to repeal the 16th

amendment and do this gigantic tax reform all at once.

With that said, all it takes is somebody like Howard Dean to become President, and we have an income and a sales tax at the

same time. And, we want to avoid that. Again, there’s so much that

we can do together that unite the fair-taxers and the flat-taxers.

I would also point out that Congressman Burgess is the one who

reintroduced the Armey flat tax. His is a bit of a variation which

has an opt-in/opt-out system with safeguards. What that means is

that people who have already invested in depreciation schedules

can stay under the existing code, individuals and businesses, and

it addresses some of the concerns that were spoken about today.

Or, you can just write off into a flat tax. There are protections for

that. Americans for Tax Reform fully supports that legislation

and——

Mr. SCHROCK. You were saying it would be a hard sell to repeal

the 16th amendment? I’ll bet you if you put that before the voters

of America, you’d get 100 percent support.

Mr. CLIFTON. You’re absolutely right. I absolutely agree with

you.

Mr. SCHROCK. People are absolutely fed up with it. I have to

have an accountant, because I don’t understand that stuff at all,

and it’s better than going to jail. I know your business depends on

it, and we’ll hold off for another 3 years for you to retire, but I

don’t know where we go. I really don’t.

Mr. HENSE. One of the things, see, with the flat tax, if you exempt dividend and interest—and it’s been a long time since I

looked at the flat tax, but there are some deductions that aren’t allowed. And, in every one of these tax ideas, there are unintended

consequences. As an example, the real estate business has been

mentioned. I do not know what would happen if we took away the

interest and tax deduction, whatever tax system we did, I don’t

know what would happen to the real estate market. I don’t think

anybody really knows.

Mr. OSE. Those of us who have no debt would prosper.

Mr. HENSE. This may be true. In the fair tax—in the national

sales tax, the one thing in that is that it lends itself to simplicity.

It’s simply—it is just simple. And, then I start hearing the variations people want to put on it, and it starts not being so simple.

But, every form of refuge has its price, and whatever we turn to

will have its upside and its downside to it, and we need to keep

this debate going, because it’s critical to the country.

Mr. SCHROCK. The tax deduction debate on houses is amazing.

My tax guy—we have a rather large house that we’ve had for a

long time, and our mortgage was—he said, you can’t do that anymore. So, I refinanced the thing and we’re going to tear part of it

down and rebuild it. But, I have a huge write-off now, and, if they

did a flat tax, would that go away? And, that’s a real consideration.

But, the chairman said that real estate would boom.

Mr. OSE. No. I said people with no debt would prosper.

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Mr. SCHROCK. Oh, I see.

Mr. HENSE. Absolutely. It would take away a lot of the debt that

Americans go into that’s probably unhealthy just to get the tax

break.

Mr. KEATING. I’ll tell you, I live in New York.

Mr. OSE. I’m sorry.

Mr. KEATING. I accept your sympathy, believe me, and I live on

Long Island, so I have some of the highest property taxes in all of

the land, and I have a good solid mortgage. I can only speak for

myself. You bring the rate down low enough, I’ll take the lower

rate, but that has to be figured out. We can’t go at this and just

stab at a rate. We have to bring all those things into the calculation.

And, on the national sales tax, you know, as an economist, I

think the national sales tax makes the most sense because you’re

taxing at the end of the economic process you’re taxing at the end.

You’re taxing when consumption is happening. But, we have questions. You know, the biggest one, as Dan mentioned, is you don’t

want to have a national sales tax and then have an income tax

come back because the 16th amendment is still around. There are

other questions about, again, where’s the rate set at, does a 20 percent something national sales tax rate—what does that do in terms

of incentives for tax avoidance, everything else? All those things

are big questions that have to be wrestled with, but I think we

should be wresting with them.

Mr. SCHROCK. Maybe when Mr. Hense retires in 3 or 4 years,

you can come to Washington and take on that matter with Grover

and a few others. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. OSE. I want to thank our witnesses here, the second panel,

for joining us. It’s been very elucidating. It kind of makes me pine

for the private sector. We’ve heard today a vast horizon, if you will,

a vast spectrum of where we’re going. Our first panel talked about

the difficulties in reducing paperwork burden for what I will describe as administrative reasons, whether it be periodicity, thresholds, utility and the like.

One of the things I find interesting is that, in the context of our

opening statements, all four of us up here all argued that we aren’t

doing enough, we aren’t doing enough to reduce the paperwork burden, we aren’t doing enough to reduce regulatory burden. I think

our friend—my friends on the other side in particular registered

certain criticisms of the administration’s record. I think that gives

us, Congressman Schrock, the opportunity to reach out to them and

facilitate the passage of a renewal of this particular legislation as

the opportunity presents itself. It’s a unique set of circumstances

that finds both parties in agreement about the efficacy of existing

legislation and the need to, frankly, prepare it.

So, in the context that you were able to bring, at least the four

of us together, and force a discussion of that, you have been successful.

Mr. Hense, I don’t know what 5 years and 10 months from now

holds for you, but we’ll do our best to make your life, you know,

a disappointment at that point.

Again, I do want to thank you, all three of you for joining us

today. With that—oh, the record is going to be open for 10 days.

146

We may send you some questions to which we’d appreciate timely

responses, as well as the minority may do that, too. With that, we

appreciate your participation.

[Whereupon, at 4:54 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.]

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