Lawmaker: Get Criminal Investigators Out of a ‘Failed Bureaucracy’

The Internal Revenue Service would lose 2,500 special agents and another 1,000 of its employees worldwide under a bill introduced Thursday that would make the agency’s Criminal Investigation division a separate entity under the Treasury Department.

“These are the IRS agents that carry guns and badges, and they’re very skilled … but the IRS itself is a failed bureaucracy,” Rep. George Holding, R-N.C., told a McClatchy reporter after introducing H.R. 5296. The legislation would move the agency’s Criminal Investigation division -- the only organization allowed to investigate potential criminal violations of the Internal Revenue Code -- to a new Bureau of Criminal Investigation managed by Treasury, the IRS’s parent department.

CI employees investigate and enforce tax, money laundering and Bank Secrecy Act laws. In fiscal 2015, some four-fifths of the cases they investigated resulted in convictions, according to IRS data.

Holding has introduced several bills to rein in what he sees as a politicized IRS. His latest measure drew immediate backing from the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association.

“The CI is the sixth-largest federal law enforcement agency, and, while they act as the law enforcement arm of the IRS, their needs and responsibilities are infinitely different from the civil operating divisions and offices that make up the majority of the agency,” said FLEOA President Nathan Catura in a statement. “By realigning the CI within main Treasury, and no longer requiring they report through the IRS’s civil executive -- the deputy commissioner -- the division will be able to focus the Treasury Department’s law enforcement efforts on high-priority criminal violations involving identity theft, cyber crime, international tax fraud, terrorist financing, public corruption, offshore money laundering and other high-impact financial crimes.”

Due to CI’s unique mission, Catura added, it “cannot be treated as just another operating division within the large civil IRS bureaucracy.”

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