Internal Revenue Service

Status of IRS' Efforts to Deal With Integrity and Ethics Issues Gao ID: GGD-92-16 December 31, 1991

In testimony before Congress in July 1991 (see GAO/T-GGD-91-58), GAO discussed the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) efforts to address integrity and ethics issues. This report provides information on IRS' responses to the recommendations in GAO's testimony, including the need to (1) improve employee communication and ethics awareness, (2) maintain the same level of national office oversight while processing all Inspector General findings, (3) publicize summary information about misconduct cases, and (4) periodically review IRS' disciplinary actions.

GAO found that: (1) since GAO made its recommendations, all IRS executive managers and executives have received at least 8 hours of ethics awareness training; (2) IRS is developing a job-specific ethics training course for all IRS employees; (3) IRS has developed a comprehensive plan to evaluate implementation and review of its Ethics Program; (4) IRS transferred 21 staff years and $1.9 million to the Treasury Inspector General to provide resources for overseeing IRS operations and investigations of wrongdoing to boister public and employee confidence that misconduct will be independently investigated; (5) IRS is investigating procedures to monitor disciplinary actions involving senior IRS officials and IRS inspection service employees; (6) IRS has consolidated database information on cases involving senior IRS officials and other employees, but has not resolved the privacy issues associated with publishing summary information; and (7) IRS expressed concern that periodic reviews of adjudicative actions would put pressure on it to adjudicate on the basis of office to office consistency without taking into account the facts of a case and the reasonableness of the penalty relative to federal personnel case law.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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