Review of the President's Fiscal Year 2017 Funding Request for the Internal Revenue Service

The IRS is the largest component of the Department of the Treasury and has primary responsibility for administering the Federal tax system. The IRS's Strategic Plan guides program and budget decisions. In addition, the IRS has established a new investment process and created six strategic themes to guide its investment strategy and resource allocation. The IRS believes these themes align with existing Strategic Goals and Objectives and clearly articulate the strategic outcomes which the IRS seeks to achieve. The IRS's role is unique within the Federal Government in that it collects the revenue that funds the Government and administers the Nation's tax laws. It also works to protect Federal revenue by detecting and preventing the growing risk of fraudulent tax refunds and other improper payments. To achieve these goals, the proposed FY 2017 IRS budget requests appropriated resources of approximately $12.3 billion. The total appropriations amount is an increase of slightly more than $1 billion, or approximately 9.3 percent more than the FY 2016 enacted level of approximately $11.2 billion. A comparison of next year's request with the current budget is shown in Table 1. The budget request includes a net staffing increase of 3,231 full-time equivalents (FTE) for a total of approximately 84,803 appropriated FTEs.