The IRS is no one's favorite agency, but a new book by the agency's first and last in-house historian has turned up the heat considerably.
Unbridled Power: Inside the Secret Culture of the IRS, by Shelley L. Davis (HarperBusiness), charges that the IRS hides controversial internal documents behind spurious "privacy" justifications, retaliates against non-comforming employees and has consistently bungled computer upgrades over almost three decades. She also alleges that the agency has failed to give the National Archives its records since the days of Prohibition and--though she lacks a smoking gun--suggests that the agency may have shredded many of them.
The IRS disagrees vehemently with Davis, who quit in 1995 while under investigation. "There's nothing really new in Shelley's book," says IRS spokesman Anthony Burke. "Much of it concerns itself with issues from the '50s and '60s that have been subjects of previous congressional reports and investigations. The notion that there's wholesale deestruction of records is pure bunk."
The National Archives declined to comment on the merits of Davis's charges.
In her book, Davis--a lifelong Democrat who says she's "drifting" because of the party's inattention to her concerns--takes a relatively non-partisan (though frequently mean-spirited) tack. Compared to her earlier stints as an internal historian for the Air Force and the Defense Mapping Agency, Davis found the IRS to be a breed apart.
"Their fear is that if there's too much criticism of the IRS, average Americans who hear these painful realities will be less inclined to file any 1040s," she said in an interview. "They consider me unpatriotic."
For the moment, Davis says, improving the IRS can be as simple complying with existing federal records-management laws and sensibly narrowing privacy statutes. In the longer term, she says, "the top tier of management has to go--the top 10 percent. I don't think they could make the cultural shift. The rest of the IRS employees are hard-working, dedicated civil servants. But the top-tier executives are like the Wicked Witch. We need to throw a bucket of water on them so they'll melt away."
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