Chuck Rettig, commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), said the IRS has expedited “health testing” and programming work on information technology systems partly due to uncertainty over the passage of a comprehensive budget for fiscal year 2021 in Congress before a stopgap measure ends on Dec. 11th, Federal News Network reported Friday.
“The IRS response serves to illustrate how critical it is for the agency to receive consistent, timely and adequate multi-year funding such that we can succeed in providing the services that our country and our citizens so rightly deserve,” Rettig told the House Ways and Means Committee.
The IRS introduced a six-year IT modernization initiative in April 2020. Rettig said reduced funding and other setbacks would take the agency longer than six years to carry out that plan.
Rettig told the House panel the IRS would need $6 billion to $7 billion in multiyear funds to support the modernization effort, which includes internal agency works.
