In December, 2022, Jeff Cohen acting in his capacity as the Chairperson of the Section of Taxation of the State Bar of Georgia, sent a letter to the Commissioner of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to share a recent member survey of service performance being experienced with tax cases. This communication comes in response to recent comments made by the IRS Chief, Charles P. Rettig.

Charles Rettig is the 49th commissioner of the IRS. He was appointed in 2018 after nearly four decades as an attorney specializing in tax law. In a recent opinion article in The Washington Post, Rettig expressed his concern that his department’s budget has been ‘decimated’.

To put things into perspective, the IRS workforce is the same size as it was in 1970, although the U.S. population has grown by 60 percent since then. The system was strained enough before the pandemic made matters even worse.

The letter and survey sent by the State Bar of Georgia give testimony to the current inability of the IRS to respond to taxpayers and their representative lawyers in any timely manner.

Rettig went on to add in his article that we should recognize this department budget shortfall as a ‘crisis’ and he is urging Congress to enact the administration’s proposal to provide over $80 billion in funding over the next decade. The U.S. Treasury reports show that these additional department budget funds would create additional tax revenues of upwards of $400 billion (net).

The members of the State Bar of Georgia agree with Commissioner Rettig – “The status quo is untenable” – and this letter from the State Bar along with survey results will hopefully provide more information that can be used to help make the case for more resources.

You can read the full letter sent on December 14, 2021 here (PDF format)