Gop Seeks Irs Questionnaire To Be Sent With ‘97 Tax Returns

Congressional Republicans want to spend nearly $60 million to find out what the public thinks about the IRS.

Taxpayers would receive questionnaires with their 1997 federal income tax returns, under a proposal Speaker Newt Gingrich said will come to a vote this month.

They would be asked such questions as how long they need to prepare their returns, whether their tax bill is fair and if they have ever been penalized by the IRS.

The cost would be 50 cents per survey, he said. Last year, the IRS received 119 million tax returns.

The customer satisfaction survey, as some Republicans have dubbed the questionnaire, is the latest wrinkle in the GOP’s effort to make the IRS the symbol of an unresponsive federal government and highlight tax reform as a prime issue leading up to the 1998 elections.

The topic has taken on increasing prominence in recent weeks, with modest reform legislation making its way through Congress. Gingrich and Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said they will support legislation to abolish the current income tax code by 2001 and replace it with some yet-to-be specified system.

The speaker also will hold a town hall meeting on the IRS Saturday in Kennesaw, Ga. Earlier Friday, he alled quarterly business tax payments “quarterly indentured servitude.”

But he said the questionnaires would not be part of a partisan effort. “I think it’s a very straightforward questionnaire,” he said.

The congressionally run General Accounting Office, not the IRS, would receive the anonymous, completed surveys.

Gingrich, Rep. Bob Barr, R-Ga., and other Republican House members gathered in a dimly lit, prop-filled room in the Capitol Friday to invite the public to log on to their new IRS “horror stories” web site.

The site asks users to write in their bad experiences with tax collectors. It recorded 30,000 visits in the past two days, said Republican Conference Chairman John Boehner, R-Ohio.

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