26 U.S.C. § 7803 — Commissioner of Internal Revenue; other officials

(a) Commissioner of Internal Revenue. (1) Appointment. The President appoints the IRS Commissioner, with Senate confirmation, from people with demonstrated management ability. The Commissioner serves a 5-year term, with the first term starting November 13, 1997, and each later term starting the day after the previous one ends. Someone appointed mid-term only fills out the rest of that term. The Commissioner can be removed at will by the President, and may serve more than one term. (2) Duties. The Secretary decides the Commissioner's specific duties and powers, including the power to run and supervise the tax laws and related treaties, and to recommend to the President who should be appointed or removed as Chief Counsel. If the Secretary decides not to hand over either of these two powers, that decision can't take effect until 30 days after the Secretary tells the relevant House and Senate committees. (3) Execution of duties in accord with taxpayer rights. The Commissioner must make sure IRS employees know and follow these taxpayer rights: the right to be informed; the right to quality service; the right to pay no more than the correct tax; the right to challenge the IRS and be heard; the right to appeal an IRS decision in an independent forum; the right to finality; the right to privacy; the right to confidentiality; the right to retain representation; and the right to a fair and just tax system. (4) Consultation with Board. The Commissioner must consult with the Oversight Board on the duties described in (2) and (3), except for the right to be informed under (3)(A). (b) Chief Counsel for the Internal Revenue Service. (1) Appointment. The President appoints the Chief Counsel, with Senate confirmation. (2) Duties. The Chief Counsel is the IRS's top lawyer and does whatever the Secretary assigns, including: advising the Commissioner and IRS staff; giving legal opinions on rulings and technical advice; helping prepare proposed laws, treaties, regulations, and executive orders that affect the IRS; representing the Commissioner in Tax Court; and deciding which civil cases should be litigated, and recommending them to the Justice Department. If the Secretary decides not to hand over any of these duties, that decision can't take effect until 30 days after telling the same House and Senate committees named in (a)(2). (3) Persons to whom Chief Counsel reports. Normally the Chief Counsel reports to the Commissioner. But on legal advice or interpretation of tax law not purely about tax policy, and on tax litigation, the Chief Counsel reports to both the Commissioner and Treasury's General Counsel. On legal advice or interpretation purely about tax policy, the Chief Counsel reports only to the General Counsel. If the Commissioner and General Counsel disagree on a matter referred to both of them, the Secretary or Deputy Secretary settles it. (4) Chief Counsel personnel. Everyone in the Office of Chief Counsel reports to the Chief Counsel. (c) Office of the Taxpayer Advocate. (1) Establishment. This office is created inside the IRS, led by the National Taxpayer Advocate, who reports directly to the Commissioner and is paid at the top Senior Executive Service rate. The Secretary appoints the Advocate after consulting the Commissioner and the Oversight Board, skipping the usual competitive-service and Senior Executive Service appointment rules. The Advocate must have a background in both customer service and tax law, plus experience representing individual taxpayers. Someone can only be appointed if they were not an IRS employee during the prior 2 years, and they must agree not to take an IRS job for at least 5 years after leaving the role; time spent working inside the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate itself doesn't count against this rule. (2) Functions of office. The office must help taxpayers resolve problems with the IRS, find patterns in taxpayer problems, propose changes to IRS practices to fix those patterns, and identify possible legislative fixes. Each year by June 30, the Advocate reports to the House Ways and Means and Senate Finance Committees on the office's goals for the coming fiscal year. Each year by December 31, the Advocate reports to those same committees on the office's activities, and that report must cover: improvement initiatives; recommendations received from people who can issue Taxpayer Assistance Orders; a summary of the 10 most serious taxpayer problems; which of those items have been acted on and the results; which remain open and for how long; which got no action, for how long, why, and who's responsible; any Taxpayer Assistance Order the IRS didn't honor on time; any Taxpayer Advocate Directive the IRS didn't honor on time; recommendations for administrative or legislative fixes; tax-law areas that create heavy compliance burdens, with fix recommendations; the 10 most litigated issues per taxpayer category, with recommendations; whether any statistics in the report were reviewed by the Secretary and found valid; and any other information the Advocate thinks is useful. These reports go straight to Congress without review or comment from the Commissioner, Treasury Secretary, Oversight Board, or anyone else at Treasury or OMB — except that statistics reviewed under section 6108(d) can involve the Secretary. Anything already required to be reported by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration doesn't need to be repeated in this report. Beyond the reports, the Advocate must: track how well local taxpayer advocate offices are spread across the country; give IRS staff guidance on when to refer taxpayers to a local advocate; make sure each local office's phone number is published; and, with the Commissioner, build career paths for local advocates. (D) Personnel actions. The Advocate may appoint local taxpayer advocates — at least one per state — and evaluate or discipline (including fire) their employees, while consulting IRS supervisors as needed. (E) Coordination. Before starting any research, the Advocate must check with the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration to avoid duplicating work. (3) Responsibilities of Commissioner. The Commissioner must set up a process requiring a formal response, within 3 months, to every recommendation the Advocate submits. (4) Operation of local offices. Each local taxpayer advocate reports to the National Taxpayer Advocate, may consult IRS supervisors about daily operations, must tell each taxpayer at their first meeting that the advocate offices work independently and report to Congress through the National Advocate, and may choose not to tell the IRS about a taxpayer's contact or information. Each local office must have its own separate phone, fax, other electronic contact methods, and mailing address. (5) Taxpayer Advocate Directives. When the National Advocate issues a directive under delegated authority from the Commissioner, the Commissioner or a Deputy Commissioner must change it, cancel it, or comply with it within 90 days. If a Deputy Commissioner changes or cancels a directive, the Advocate can appeal to the Commissioner within 90 days, and the Commissioner must, within 90 days of that appeal, either comply with the original directive or explain in writing why it was changed or canceled. (d) Additional duties of the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. (1) Annual reporting. In one of its twice-yearly reports, the Inspector General must cover: how well the IRS follows rules limiting the use of enforcement statistics to judge employees; rules limiting direct taxpayer contact when a taxpayer prefers their representative be contacted instead; required procedures for filing a lien notice; required procedures for seizing property to collect taxes, including levy procedures; rules on how the IRS designates taxpayers; whether the Secretary is properly disclosing joint-return collection information to the other spouse; information on extending the statute of limitations for assessing and collecting tax, and notice given to taxpayers about that; how secure and adequate IRS technology is; any discipline given or reduced under a specific 1998 reform-law provision; information on wrongly denied information requests; and information on debt-collection-law violations, including a summary of actions taken and any judgments or awards. (2) Semiannual reports. Each twice-yearly report must include the number of taxpayer complaints; the number of employee-misconduct and taxpayer-abuse allegations received; a status summary of those complaints; and a summary of how they were resolved, including any Justice Department action or settlement payments — though this last part only applies to serious misconduct complaints. (3) Other responsibilities. The Inspector General must: periodically audit a valid statistical sample of IRS decisions denying taxpayer information requests; set up and keep a toll-free number for taxpayers to confidentially report IRS employee misconduct, and publish that number in a required IRS taxpayer-rights document; and, by December 31, 2010, report to Congress on implementing a specific confidentiality provision. (e) Independent Office of Appeals. (1) Establishment. This office is created inside the IRS. (2) Chief of Appeals. It's led by the Chief of Appeals, who reports directly to the Commissioner and is paid at the top Senior Executive Service rate. The Commissioner appoints the Chief of Appeals, skipping normal competitive-service and Senior Executive Service rules. That person must have experience in federal tax-law compliance, a broad range of compliance cases, and managing large service organizations. (3) Purposes and duties of office. This office resolves federal tax disputes without going to court, in a way that is fair to both the government and the taxpayer, encourages consistent application of tax law and voluntary compliance, and builds public confidence in the IRS. (4) Right of appeal. This dispute-resolution process is generally open to all taxpayers. (5) Limitation on designation of cases as not eligible for referral. If a taxpayer who received a deficiency notice asks for a referral to this office and is refused, the Commissioner must give the taxpayer a written notice explaining the facts, the reason for the refusal, and how to protest that refusal. The Commissioner must report yearly to Congress on how many such requests were denied and why. The Commissioner must set up a process for protesting a denial. None of this applies if the request was denied because the taxpayer's position was frivolous. (6) Staff. Everyone in this office reports to the Chief of Appeals. The Chief of Appeals can get legal help from the Office of Chief Counsel, and the Chief Counsel must try to use lawyers who weren't involved in that case and aren't preparing it for litigation. (7) Access to case files. When a taxpayer has a conference scheduled with this office, the Chief of Appeals must give a "specified taxpayer" access to the non-privileged parts of the case file (other than documents the taxpayer already gave the IRS) at least 10 days before the conference — or, if the taxpayer asks to speed things up, by the day of the conference itself. A "specified taxpayer" is an individual whose adjusted gross income is $400,000 or less, or any other taxpayer whose gross receipts are $5 million or less, for the relevant tax year; a related-business aggregation rule applies to that $5 million test. (f) Internal Revenue Service Chief Information Officer. (1) In general. The IRS has a Chief Information Officer ("IRS CIO"), appointed by the Commissioner. (2) Centralized responsibility. The Commissioner and Secretary must act through the IRS CIO for all IRS information-technology development, use, and upkeep; any duty this subsection gives the CIO is really a duty of the Commissioner acting through the CIO. (3) General duties and responsibilities. The CIO must: develop, implement, and maintain IRS information technology; keep it secure and integrated; keep operational control over all of it; be the main advocate for the IRS's technology needs; and work with the IRS's Chief Procurement Officer to make sure technology purchases fit these goals and the strategic plan described in (4). (4) Strategic plan. The CIO must create and carry out a multi-year technology strategic plan that includes performance measures, a plan for an integrated technology architecture, the resources needed, planned major technology purchases, and alignment with the IRS's own needs and strategic plan. The CIO must review and update this plan at least once a year. (5) Scope of authority. "Information technology" has the meaning given in a specific federal procurement law. References to "the Internal Revenue Service" in this subsection include all its parts — the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate, the Criminal Investigation Division, and (except where the Secretary says otherwise for technology tied to certain Chief Counsel matters) the Office of the Chief Counsel.