Summary: Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed various management improvements that would help the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) handle its growing compliance and law enforcement responsibilities.
GAO found that: (1) BATF law enforcement activities significantly increased with its assumption of several new compliance duties from other federal agencies, including collecting special occupation, firearm, and excise taxes, and testing alcoholic beverages in response to consumer complaints; (2) those additional duties caused BATF to make trade-offs in deciding how to most effectively utilize its staff; (3) such trade-offs resulted in a reduced number of tax compliance inspections of alcohol producers and investigations into financial aspects of arson-for-profit cases; (4) BATF could increase the amount of accounting expertise within its inspector work force that would help minimize the detrimental effects of such trade-offs on its tax compliance mission; and (5) other actions that BATF could take to efficiently utilize its resources included developing standardized work plans, analyzing more comprehensive data regarding its alcohol testing program, and developing better performance data.
