In The News

http://www.yourconroenews.com/opinion/article/Brady-briefing-Reining-in-the-IRS-10362911.php

Nearly one year ago, on November 5, 2015, I was selected by my colleagues to chair the first and oldest committee in Congress, the House Ways & Means Committee.

Under my leadership the committee has passed 48 bills and twelve Ways and Means bills are now the law of the land. The first to become law was the PATH Act which cut taxes by over $600 billion, including making permanent the states and local sales tax deduction so important to Texans – and the research and development tax credit that incentivizes companies to do their research here in America rather than overseas.

Other highlights include stopping President Obama's $10 a barrel oil tax, helping lift the federal ban on exporting American oil and investigating the Obama administration's illegal funneling of billions of taxpayer dollars to prop up insurers in the failing Affordable Care Act.

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Over the last year, the Ways and Means Committee has led the "IRS Accountability Agenda" where House Republicans have approved a series of aggressive, Constitution-restoring legislation to reform the IRS and hold it accountable to the American taxpayer.

Our actions include:

Passing into law the first ban against the IRS targeting taxpayers or organizations based on their political beliefs. In June 2016, the House passed the Preventing IRS Abuse and Protecting Free Speech Act, which protects the identities of those who donate to tax-exempt organizations. This was in response to more IRS targeting of Americans.

Passing into law the Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Prevention Act which directs the IRS to take aggressive action to combat the growing problem of identity theft of confidential taxpayer information.

In April the U.S. House passed the Ensuring Integrity in the IRS Workforce Act, which prohibits the IRS from rehiring employees for misconduct, and the No Hires for the Delinquent IRS Act, which suspends the hiring of new IRS employees unless the Treasury Secretary certifies that no IRS employees have serious delinquencies with respect to their own tax obligations.

The same month the U.S. House passed legislation that prohibits the IRS from paying bonuses to employees until the Secretary of the Treasury implements a comprehensive customer service strategy that puts hardworking taxpayers first. And the House approved a bill that repeals the IRS's authority to spend the user fees it collects – restoring to Congress the full authority over how the IRS spends those resources.

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One of the most offensive actions by the IRS is its continued unlawful seizures of money and assets of innocent Americans, called civil asset forfeiture. After two years of aggressive oversight by the Ways and Means Committee in which IRS Commissioner John Koskinen apologized for the agency's actions, the U.S. House approved the Clyde-Hirsch-Sowers RESPECT Act, which puts in place important measures to prevent the IRS from wrongfully seizing the assets of law-abiding taxpayers.

Since then, under bi-partisan pressure the IRS has agreed to review its seizures of assets against hundreds of American taxpayers, and has begun to return the money stolen from these innocent Americans, many of them small business people and farmers merely depositing their daily and weekly receipts.

Finally, some justice for those who have been harmed. And perhaps fewer Americans hurt in the future by unlawful seizures.

U.S. Congressman Kevin Brady chairs the House Ways and Means Committee.