Overview
Administration Nominates Senate Finance Committee Staff Director for Treasury Position:The Trump Administration nominated Senate Finance Committee Majority Staff Director Chris Campbell to serve as assistant secretary of Treasury’s Office of Financial Institutions. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-UT) announced today that the committee’s chief health counsel and policy director, Jay Khosla, will succeed Campbell as majority staff director.
Taxpayer Advocate Releases Mid-Year Report:Today National Taxpayer Advocate Nina E. Olson released her mid-year report to Congress. The report, which presents a review of the 2017 filing season, identifies the priority issues the Taxpayer Advocate Service will address during the upcoming fiscal year, and contains the IRS’s responses to each of the 93 administrative recommendations the advocate made in her 2016 Annual Report to Congress. Among the priority issues identified in the report were private debt collection implementation, US passport revocations and denials for seriously delinquent tax debts, and transparency in the offshore voluntary disclosure programs.
House Appropriations Committee Bill Slashes IRS Budget: Today the House Appropriations Committee released the text of the 2018 Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill, which would cut the IRS’s funding by $149 million from the fiscal year 2017 enacted level. In a news release, the committee noted the bill provides $11.1 billion for the IRS for fiscal year 2018 – $111 million above President Trump’s budget request.