The National Commission on Restructuring the Internal Revenue Service is due to present its report to Congress on June 25, 1997

This coincides with a new National Taxpayers Union poll which reveals that 90 percent of those surveyed said "improving the IRS" should be a top national priority. The only question is, what on earth could the remaining ten percent have been thinking of, given the agency's recent history:

• The IRS recently spent $8 billion on new computer systems that even a top official admitted "do not work in the real world."

• Half of the ten million correction notices the IRS issues every year are "incorrect, unresponsive, unclear or incomplete," according to the General Accounting Office.

• Some 1,500 IRS agents were investigated in 1994 and 1995 for suspected snooping on returns.

The commission is recommending that supervision of the IRS be taken away from the Treasury Department and placed in the hands of an independent governing board made up of seven members -- five of whom would be from the private sector.

Critics say the agency has developed an inbred culture in which only six of the top 200 employees have been with it for less than 15 years.

Noting that Congress has changed more than 2,000 sections of the tax code and created more than 100 new forms in the past decade, the commission identifies 60 separate areas where the code could be simplified -- as well as areas where taxpayer rights during audits need to be expanded.

Source: Editorial, "Tax and Repent," Wall Street Journal, June 25, 1997.