Taxpayer Experience Improvement Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHWEIKERT. Mr. Speaker, I ask the chairman whether it is tireless or annoying. It is one or the other.

Look, I have an absolute fixation, and I have got to thank my Democratic colleague and a number of the team here for tolerating my fixation on the fact that one of the ways you work within the IRS budget to make things more efficient is the adoption of technology.

Imagine a world--because it is the one we live in--where some of the number one calls we get to my district office are IRS questions: Where is my refund? Do I owe money? I can't get someone to pick up the phone. How do I get information?

This piece of legislation is a great start. It will provide wonderful visibility. The concept that on this thing we all walk around with, this supercomputer we have in our pocket, I can go on and actually see the dashboard. I can see: Hey, I owe money. I have money coming back. Here is where it is in process. Here are my different years. The ability to actually have a system that calls you back.

In many ways, these are technologies the private sector has had for a decade. In many ways, these are actually technologies that we have been talking about in the Ways and Means Committee for almost a decade, but now we finally have a fairly simple piece of legislation here that means that taxpayers in the next couple of years will be able to log on an absolutely private login system, so we protect their identity, protect their privacy, but they will be able to see the information. By the ability to see that dashboard, that dashboard means they don't have to be picking up the phone and calling the IRS. They don't have to be sitting there on hold for hours. They don't have to be--I would argue, if you want taxpayer participation in a voluntary tax system as we are, make it easy to understand where you are at, what you owe, and what is owed to you.

Mr. Speaker, I also thank the Ways and Means staff. I would like to go further, but this is a terrific start.

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