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IRS GETS OKAY TO MAKE NEW AGENTS STUDY MORE ACCOUNTING

July 24, 2006

A federal labor panel, overturning an arbitrator's decision, has ruled that the IRS can require agents to have 30 accounting course hours. The National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) had fought the requirement. Colleen Kelley, the union chief, said of the requirement:

...I can conclude only that the IRS imposed the additional requirements solely to serve as a bar to internal candidates, eliminating from consideration many highly qualified applicants for revenue agent positions and ignoring the significant value on-the-job experience offers. That in turn has had an inordinate impact on minorities and other protected classes

World Ends; Women, Minorities Hardest Hit, in other words.

As complicated as the tax law is, it's hard to fault the IRS for wanting agents to understand accounting. It's a requirement that would be challenged only in the strange world of public-employee unions. Given that the NTEU makes actually firing an incompetent agent close to impossible, minimum hiring requirements are one of the few tools the IRS has in trying to improve the competence of their agents.

Hat Tip: the TaxProf.

Links:

FLRA ruling
Washington Post coverage
Prior Tax Update coverage

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