IRS cleared to employ private bill collectors:

When Reps. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., and Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., teamed up in September to get the House to pass an amendment blocking the use of private companies to collect back taxes from delinquent taxpayers, it seemed the Bush administration plan might be doomed for at least a year.

But in the final hours of drafting a 3,300-page spending bill last month, House and Senate negotiators eliminated Capito and Van Hollen’s handiwork, clearing the way for the Internal Revenue Service to hire commercial debt collectors. These private agents could keep as much as 25 percent of the amounts they recovered.

I have no doubt that private debt collectors will be more efficient than civil servants but that’s kind of the problem. This seems to open the door for abuse, particularly if compensation for the private collectors is excessively based on money collected. I tend to think a private company may be less inclined to follow appropriate laws of restraint that a government entity would follow.

Posted in uncategorized on December 13th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |