President Joe Biden is committed to increasing taxes and strengthening tax enforcement. He also plans to spend $80 billion more to double the number IRS agents. Taxpayers deserve assurances that the current and future IRS agents will do the job they were hired for, not work for their union.Sens. Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.) and Mike Braun (R-Ind.) introduced the IRS Customer Service Improvement Act. This Act prohibits IRS employees from leaving their positions during tax-filing season, while taxpayers continue to pay their salaries. Braun and other lawmakers have many more proposals to improve the integrity, effectiveness, and efficiency of the IRS.Most Americans find it absurd that someone can't work for one entity and show up at their job, while also earning a paycheck for work they didn't do. It is simply time for public sector employees.Official time was originally created under the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act. It is when public sector employees are relieved from their official duties. This is equivalent to receiving paid leave so that they can work for their unions.They are responsible for negotiating collective bargaining arrangements, filing and litigating superfluous grievance claims, participating in labor-management talks, and lobbying Congress.These workers continue to receive their pay and benefits, so no one else can fill in.This means that, while the taxpayer pays these workers their salaries, Veterans Affairs nurses and doctors are not treating vets. However, employees at Social Security Administration aren't helping to process benefits applications for disabled individuals and retirees. And, IRS agents aren't processing tax returns promptly.While it is fine for private sector workers to freely choose to join unions and pay the fees that support them, this is not what is happening.President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned about the limitations of public sector unionization. He said that the employer was the entire population [of the United States].He would have been shocked to learn that, in addition to Americans not having an effective seat at the table during federal employee negotiations they are now forced to pay federal workers to bargain against them.These numbers are incredible. The total amount of union-funded taxpayer time in fiscal 2019 was 2.6 millions hours. This is equivalent to more than 1,250 full-time employees.Even though there is no accounting for the costs (e.g., unions have free access to federal office spaces and resources), the taxpayers pay almost $135million annually for federal employees who spend their time working on union activities. Trump-era executive orders restricting official time have resulted in a substantial decline in this number from $177 million for official time in 2016.The official hours spent by Treasury Department employees in 2019 was approximately 354,000 hours, or 170 full-time workers. This is a substantial decrease from the 481,000 hours spent in 2016.Before taxpayers have to pay another dime to hire IRS agents, they need to be sure that IRS agents are doing their job and not being paid by their unions.It is commonsense to ensure that IRS employees are doing their jobs and not working for their union during tax-filing season.Official time should be ended, and as long as there are public sector unions, they should only be funded by employees, not the taxpayers against which they negotiate.Do you have a comment about this article? Send us an email at [email protected] with your comments. We may publish them in our We Hear You section. Include the URL of the article or the headline, along with your name and the town/state.
