Summary: Both the law and Internal Revenue Service (IRS) policy prohibit IRS managers from using records of tax enforcement results, such as dollars collected and taxes assessed, to evaluate employee performance or set production goals. The idea is to avoid having employees trying to achieve statistical benchmarks through inappropriate or unreasonable tax assessments. IRS directors reported few violations through the quarterly certification process in fiscal years 1996 and 1997, and GAO found an estimated nine percent of workers received evaluations that violated IRS' revised guidance. Nonetheless, GAO's survey of IRS employees indicated a widespread perception that managers consider tax enforcement results when preparing performance evaluations. Most employees indicated that violations occurred during talks with their supervisors, including staff meetings and performance feedback sessions, rather than in their written performance evaluations. Moreover, the use of overage and cycle-time data in evaluations may reinforce employee perceptions that tax enforcement results affect their evaluations, because they may be misconstrued as an enforcement statistic, such as hours per case. Although IRS is taking steps to strengthen its reporting of violations, weaknesses remain.
