situation in afghanistan. that's it for us this sunday morning, enjoy the rest of your weekend. have a great week ahead. . .

>> today, on c-span, and look at the president's strategy in afghanistan. you'll hear remarks from peter bergen. >> the difference between the soviet occupation and the other 42 countries involved in the effort in afghanistan and the soviets is like night and day. it is important to remember that 1.5 million afghans were killed if. the largest refugee population in history of the time. it was low the most heavily mined countries in the world. to compare it to what is happening today is not very good

history. >> you can say that there is no vital interest in afghanistan itself except for domestic and national security interests. which leads to the next question -- where is the threat to the west? we have done a comprehensive survey of the successful and not successful al qaeda-like plots since the creation of al qaeda. well, there has been no al qaeda resurgence trumped by that of three years ago, even according to those on this panel. >> starting at 3:25 eastern even see that program here on c-span. >> joining us on "newsmakers" is douglas shulman, but the irs. steve, you have the first

question. >> how are you today? >> doing well. >> last week there was a report that came out from the national taxpayer advocate talking about the services offered by the irs and talking about your goals with people calling up and looking for help, people talking to real people. i understand that it is the goal of the irs to have only 71% speak to real people. why such a small number? >> let me talk about the service in general. first of all, with every irs program, my belief is that we can always do better. the report you are referencing talks about declining service levels over the last few years. to put it in broad context, i tried to make sure that we run

good service channels. what i say channels, i mean web service, service over the internet, walk-in service and paper that goes back and forth. levels of service have decrease over the past couple of years. to give you a sense why, the demand has relief loaded. on average we get about 65 million calls every year. two years ago when we sent out economic stimulus checks to everyone, we had 150 million. even though the level of service was decreasing, we were servicing more taxpayers than ever before. some of the things we are trying to do to bring the numbers back up this year, we are providing more service over the web. the last couple of years, instead of calling to find out

where your refund is, we have an application where you can search for it. this year we have an application -- and what is my adjusted gross income. we have 5 million calls from people asking what their clout -- gross income was from the year before. you need that information for a variety of forms. we are trying to route the calls better this year. we are also trying to make sure that when people call, they get more accurate service. while the internal level of service went down over the past couple of years, when you get through, the accuracy level is going up. i am focusing on all of the channels. i am not happy with where we were and i am aiming to get better. >> with all of the changes and

additional programs this year, what are you expecting? >> the one thing that we cannot control is the man. -- demand. we are hoping to move some of the service online. we are hoping to take a call levels down. but these are tough times, lots of calls coming in to the irs with a prediction for level of service to be going up over the next couple of years. >> do you have the staffing that you need to deal with customer service? >> like every government agency, we need to allocate our resources. this president has been clear that the fiscal situation is calling for an efficiently run government. i am confident that we have the staff to the liver. i want every call to be answered quickly and well. >> what number of calls are you

talking about? >> the peak is right now, and of the year, filing season. -- the end of the year, filing season. everyone is getting ready for that april 15 deadline. >> following up on that, you are saying that you are trying to push more to the web rather than reaching real people on the phone. they also talked about the increase of automation. one of the things that you'll do is have an automatic system for filing liens. a face-to-face audit might be difficult for taxpayers who want to get one. there seems to be a trend toward automation. sometimes a source of errors, is

that just a fact of life? is there anything that you can do about that? >> what i want to do is make sure that we meet taxpayers where they would like to be met. so, we still have centers across the country where people can resolve issues. we sent auditors and agents out to talk to people, but we also use paper for a lot of people. we also have options for people that have access to the internet, which is becoming the preferred service channel for more and more people. our job is to allocate resources appropriately, using resources wisely, making sure that we can answer phone calls over the web , using all of those channels effectively. i would not say that there is a real push one where the other, we are simply trying to make

channels available as we can so we are spending taxpayer money wisely. >> with regard to the season for 2010 that we are inside of now, there is a new strategy for overseeing tax return preparers. one of the things that you did was relieved -- released tips for customers, taxpayers, advising them to be cautious when a larger refund is promised by one company over another company, which is a fairly common strategy. h&r block will often guarantee a product against another competitor delivering a larger refund. i wonder, should the customers be wary of change that tax preparation firms going into

this tax filing season? >> you asked a couple of different questions there and brought up a couple of different issues. on monday we have sweeping changes in the way that we approach the tax preparer community. preparing someone's taxes and helping them with one of the largest transactions that they have every year, there is no minimal standard right now. we are going to make everyone that prepares a return register , pass a minimum competency test for a continuing database that allows taxpayers to make sure that they are dealing with someone who is competent and registered in the future. i talked about is taking a while to implement. we had been looking at a very broad public dialogue about it. while it was being implemented, there were things that taxpayers could do themselves to protect themselves.

do not go to someone who says that they can get to a much bigger return. what you want tax preparers to do is not to pay more or less, but the right amount. i am not talking about somebody cheating the taxpayer or not getting them what they deserve, i am talking about unscrupulous preparers out there that will say that they can get you a lot more money, then take a cut of the money. the taxpayer is often left holding the bag with a liability a year or two down the road. >> there is an acknowledgment of widespread problems with, as you said, incompetence and lack of scruples in some cases. do you see that as a problem that is inherent with chains or independent preparers? or both? >> the reason that we did this

study is that as with any large business, which the irs is, we needed to look at trends in the marketplace. as the tax system became more complex, more and more americans were turning to a tax preparing community. 60% are using preparers. 20% are using software. what we need to do, as that evolution happens, is that make sure that part of our overall strategy for the american taxpayer is to make sure that they get good service and also to make sure that they are compliant. we're not trying to target any specific part of the industry, but we are trying to make sure that there is a minimal level of competence and a method to track preparers, so there -- so

that if there are trends with one preparer we can talk to that business, making sure it increase the overall integrity. >> can i ask, do you file your own taxes? >> i use a preparer. >> why? >> i find it convenient and i find the tax code complex. >> how would you make it easier? >> i do not write the tax laws, congress writes them. an entirely different discussion. >> about one year ago you talked about a new work, friendlier irs that was going to recognize the economic problems of this country, and dealing with people that could not afford to pay their taxes. you said that this was not for people trying to evade taxes or cheat the government in any way, but if you had made a good-

faith effort to pay your taxes and were having difficulty and you came to the irs yourself, you were going to create steps to help people along the way. first of all, where does that stand these days? are you still doing a program like that this year? >> you mentioned the economy last year, when we had a chance to sit down with the president and timothy geithner, through some of the actions taken by secretary timothy geithner error and the economic team -- timothy geithner and the economic team, there are new practices and we want to do our part. part of what we did to help the american taxpayer, we played a big part in executing the recovery act last year. we tried to do that swiftly and

efficiently. we also took some steps ourselves. basically raising the threshold, giving the topline people, collection people, more discretion in working with taxpayers. remember, the reason that i did that, first, it was the right thing to do. second, if someone misses a payment and we can keep them in the system, that will keep them in the system long term. frankly, a lot of that flexibility was always there. as commissioner i had the opportunity to emphasize that it was hard for us to measure who was using them. the real things that we measure our if they are making payments, etc. but those are still in place and frankly those are things we need

to be doing. i want to make sure that our people are not simply running a nameless, faceless procuracy, but that each person is treated as an individual and respectfully. >> i am curious about how that squares with this report that talked about taxpayer advocacy and liens on property. they wrote in the report that they were up 475% last year over the previous decade. something close to 1 million property tax liens last year. how does that square with a nicer, friendlier, kinder irs? >> first of all, those are your words. i want an irs that meets people based on their individual circumstance, that is fair and evenhanded with the american public.

collections is one of the most difficult areas that we have. we have a job to do. in general the american people expect people to have a tax debt in that they are not paying and that we make sure that they do. not so that money comes into the government, but so that these people that are paying on time do not have to pay more. when it comes to collection, we need to make sure that we do our job and that we also do it in a way that respects taxpayer rights, treating each person fairly. tax liens are retooled given us by the congress, a tool that congress expects us to use. this report just came out a couple of days ago. we do not have monopolies on great ideas or how to run our

programs, and i will take a hard look at that and if there are legitimate ideas we will make changes. but by their nature i think that they are an important tool for the government to use. especially if they are not paying their tax debts. >> i would like to turn to your efforts on overseas accounts. over the past year you had an initiative where almost 15,000 people that had secret, overseas accounts, turned themselves in. can you discuss on where you are in working through those and what you are doing to go after the ones that did not? >> let me give the audience a broad view and come back to that. pursuing offshore tax evasion is a priority of the u.s. government right now. the president has spoken about it. the g 20 gave us more money this

year for offshore tax evasion legislation. timothy geithner is working on making sure that there's more of an exchange treaty, focusing on this issue of the g 20 congress. max baucus and charlie rangel have introduced legislation to give us more tools to pursue what sort -- offshore tax evasion. we have had a very focused program involving offshore tax evasion. >> how much has been evaded? >> it is hard to put a dollar figure on overseas tax evasion. we do randomized audits. finding out who paid and who did not pay. very hard to go do that ov is in the billions of dollars and we find that out through voluntary programs that i will

talk about in a second. it is a dollar figure end of the -- it is also about fairness. americans paying their taxes and expecting others to pay their taxes as well. unprecedented response, as the u.s. government steps up its focus on offshore tax evasion, we will give people a chance to come in, payback taxes, avoid penalties and avoid going to jail. we had 16,000 people take us up on that offer. what is happening now, that offer expired in october. now we are sifting through all of those accounts. some people just gave us their social security number and we made sure that they qualified and they are now in the process of sending us their bank account

information. there are others where there were detailed bank accounts and information that we needed that we are now processing. we have gotten some of the checks in. some of the people that came in, others we sent out for more of it spent more information. those 15,000 people are giving us incredibly valuable information for the next steps. we are finding out what countries they were hiding assets in. what financial institutions and facilities were being dictated. the tax advisers that were promoting the schemes, we are going to take that information and have another wave of focus on finding more people that have been hiding money overseas. all that i can say is that through all of these efforts, two things have happened. one, we have cleaned it up. two, we have changed the risk

calculator for people that wanted to do this in the future. what we have done here is protect the revenue stream for the next 20 years to 30 years, people will think twice about evading taxes this way. >> a swiss court will on friday that the initial names that ubs sent to you all should not have happened, according to swiss law. the swiss government still has a batch of 4000 names or so that they are supposed to turn over. do you see this swiss court decision hindering that in any way? >> if i understand the reference you are making, i think that is in reference to the several hundred names that were turned over to the u.s. government as part of a deferred prosecution agreement. >> correct. >> with the justice department and the ubs almost one year ago.

4500 names that ubs was to turn over to the swiss government's, which they work to turn over to us, part of a settlement be reached with switzerland. a separate issue running through a separate administrative process. . >> can you give us an idea as to where we are in that process? >> just so that the viewers out there know, back in august we made an agreement with the swiss government that was a watershed agreement. for the first time ever, 4500 accounts are going to be turned over to the irs by the u.s. taxpayers that had been hiding assets in switzerland. it has sent a ripple across the

world, calling into question bank secrecy. that process is all very public. the agreement is public. there is a procedure where they are notifying it tell holders the the opportunity to appeal comes to us and the mall -- milestones are on track. the real target is by next august those will be in the u.s. government again. >> when you are doing this, when people get those names, are you planning to do another process similar to what you have done with the people that came forward voluntarily? working with them to find others and see if there are other accounts elsewhere? shaking the tree to find this money hiding overseas? >> clearly, the irs has finite resources.

i mentioned that before with the tax repair strategy. preparing the case, working with a community that has 1 million people to help us do our job, that makes sense. in this case if we can find financial institutions, that is an efficient use of resources. as the data comes over, we will be looking at that. if people have voluntarily, we will see what other countries they have accounts with. we will target our resources in the future. >> what other countries are you looking at? the cayman islands? what other targets are there? >> one important thing for me to communicate is my interests and the interests of the irs are for u.s. taxpayers to pay the right amount of taxes. not the right amount in

switzerland or another country. the disclosure process, we had people coming in from every continent except antarctica and 60 different countries. generally the places that are attractive for hiding money are places that have bankruptcy laws and next to no taxes. we have heard this anecdotally, as we focus on switzerland and other places, much of the money is moving into asia and latin america. we have received a lot of cooperation with law- enforcement agencies across the globe, as well that -- as well as other tax administrators. we are getting better at following the money. >> i still get a lot of readers e-mail about this. this past year, you put out a

proposal to employers for how to allocate employer provided cell phones as a fringe benefit. he later called on congress to pass legislation to move cellular telephones as a fringe benefit, wondering how to tax them. here we are in 2010 and congress did not act on that last year. what are your plans? are you going to go forward with your initial proposal or give congress more time? >> this is an example of tax laws affecting everyone. as technology changes, they need to adapt over time. in the past, having a cell phone was a special, fringe benefit. now they are ubiquitous.

everyone has a cell phone. we ask congress to clarify this and treat cell phones in a uniform way so that we do not have to come up with a set of rules. there has been a lot of discussion. congress had a very busy year. in the meantime we are hoping -- we are not doing anything special or moving forward with other initiatives. >> i want to go back to the earlier point, you filing your own taxes. what does that tell you about the complexity of the tax code and, as you indicated, what would you tell congress to make it simpler? >> first of all, i would not read into what i do with my taxes personally. i have had a preparer that i like and trust. they had been accurate for 10 years, so i just use them.

regarding simplification of the tax laws, for a long time i have been a big fan of simplification. the easier it is for people to understand the tax code, the more compliant they will be. anything that can be done to simplify tax laws is good for the irs in the country. simplifying the tax laws, it can be difficult to do so. but we will see where things go over the next couple of years. >> douglas shulman, thank you for joining us here on "newsmakers" this sunday. >> thank you. >> we are continuing the conversation with steve and martin. the tax code, something that the commissioner alluded to, what did you learn?