was passed will have implications for our agency. the first thing i would tell people is none of the individual tax provisions come into play this year. this is all down the way it -- most of it coming between 2013 and for 2014. the department of health and human services has the lead on all health-related provisions, but there are a number of tax provisions are agency is responsible for, and they range from things like immediately this year, small businesses are eligible for a tax credit to help them buy health care for individuals, which is your classic tax credit provision. there is a number of fees and taxes on different parts of the industry, and there is also a requirement that individuals either have health coverage or

make a payment on their tax return. our job is going to be to make sure people are educated about all the benefits available for them. second is to get things like the 400 -- get the bills of tax credit to individuals and others. what it comes to compliance, especially our around individuals, the provision that has done the most attention has been a requirement that people have health coverage or pay a fee on their tax return. the way this will work is the department of health and human services and the insurance companies will work together to determine what adequate health coverage is. when someone files a return, the insurance company will send us a little box that says do they have coverage or not. it also led to the individual and the individual attach it to

their return and they will send it to us. it's just like gave 1099, or you get information about the interest on a bank account. we will run matching programs around that, and if somebody does not have coverage, they will either pay the penalty they 0 or get a letter from us saying nato this about. there are a couple of important points i would make about our role in health reform. one is that these are not the kinds of things, check the box whether you are here or not, that we send agents out about. he will get a letter from us. congress was very careful to make sure there was nothing to punitive in this bill. we do not have authority -- there is no criminal sanctions

for not paying. there is no ability to levy a bank account or do seizures or some of the other tools. our goal is straight forward -- a minister in the tax provision and in many ways we are the major part of the payment system, harkening back to my predecessor and i talked about before because there is already a way to administer this through the tax system. that's why the provision was put there. >> this questioner says their 80-year-old mother was left on hold for an hour by the irs to answer a question. how will you provide better service when the irs will be to add thousands of staff to handle the new demands of monitoring health care reform rules? how workers lead to answer questions and and the levies for finance? >> i don't know whose mother was left on hold. it's highly unusual someone would be there for an hour. they shouldn't be. he should come talk to one of my

staff and make sure your mother 's issue was addressed. second, i have always told people starting in the '70s with the earned income tax credit, we crossed the rubicon that said the irs and the tax system is not just for collecting taxes, but also administering a variety of other programs, the earned income tax credit being the biggest. like any large institution, what we need to implement a fish in our program is flexibility are rounded ministration, plenty of lead time, which the health bill gives us plenty of lead time, and then we need the proper resources to get it done. regarding the number of personnel, a lot of this is quite that act. for instance, last year, we got 5 million calls for people

asking their adjusted gross income the year before because they did that in order to troop up the stimulus payment from two years ago. this year, we build a web application so we did not have to get those calls and but all those calls onto the internet or people can get it automatically. so we needed less staff because we innovated as we went forward. we are looking at all the implications for our resources for this bill and others as they come along. we will try to create as many options as we can switch to answer the phones, get people the tools they need, and information on line. obviously, have some people around, but it is way too early to say exactly what we're going to need three or four years from now. >> with the tax gap of uncollected funds at over $300 billion, can the irs be considered an efficient

distribution system for societal benefits? >> let's put the tax gap in context. we collect about $2.5 trillion of revenue every year. people make wages, the federal government withholds taxes, -- its circular using myself as an example, but to get the point. people get wages withheld, and there is 99% compliance. a lot of what we are doing to combat the tax gap and make sure there is compliance are the things i listed before -- information reporting being the biggest and most important -- credit card reporting, basis reporting, for an account tax compliance act or get reporting

by financial institutions, things that help to bring up compliance rates and that's the way we should be thinking in this century about compliance. we should not be thinking about sending more agents outgoing three more records. it's about information reported in matching documents. it's also things like our para initiative, where -- our preparer the initiative. 60 percent of americans use a pair. -- use a preparer. if they can push the envelope, that will help us around tax debt issues. this notion of a tax gap, which is really the compliance rate, this country is one country out of several that actually measures it. it's hard to measure because you don't know exactly what you did not get in. but we also have a pretty high

compliance rate. there is no country in the world as a field system where there is no non compliance. think about the cash economy. think about someone who comes to your house and does a service. we would know how to close some of that, but it would put a burden on people. i would go back to what i said before -- give us time, give us flexibility around implementation. give us the right resources. we are a big institution that does have to interface with businesses and nonprofit that we can do things well. >> how far along is the irs and processing the disclosures received as an amnesty program? what kinds of patterns have you observed so far? >> for the broader audience, the question is, we have been very focused on finding people who

hide assets offshore, having them pay the taxes that they ago and discouraging them from doing it in the future. president obama, when he was a senator, had a bill around this issue. immediately, when he became president, he asked us to focus on this. treasury secretary tim geithner has been focused on this and has been talking about this and is focused on information exchange. we have had a variety of enforcement programs around this. as we geared up enforcement programs, we created a program we call the voluntary disclosure program, which is not an amnesty because the way it works is if you come in voluntarily, you have to pay back taxes, you have to pay a hefty penalty, you have to pay interest, but you can avoid going to jail. we had an overwhelming response this fall when we close down the

program. 15,000 people came in and disclosed their foreign bank accounts and were in the process of moving them through the system. what i can say around trends is that there are taxpayers -- or bank accounts in over 70 countries. every continent except antarctica was represented. we are collecting the leads and processing groups people need to audit or get more information from. we are trying to close out cases, but we are looking for patterns of financial institutions, advisers, countries, money flows, which will be the next wave of our enforcement compliance activities as we go forward. >> following up on a question asked earlier -- if you cannot

use sanctions to collect healthcare fees, what will keep people from getting away with not signing up for health care coverage? >> somebody will either get health insurance or they will get it through the exchange get subsidized by the federal government so they can afford it, or when they file their taxes, there will be money that is due. my belief is while some people may play with the kind of question that was asked, the vast majority of americans have a healthy respect for law and what to be compliant. -- want to be compliant. people will get letters from us. we can do collection if need be. people can get offsets of their tax returns in future years.

there's a variety of ways for us to focus on things like fraud, abuse, and we will run a balanced program. there has done a lot of attention because there's a lot of political heat around health care. what's important for everyone to know is the irs tries to stay out of the political fray. we try to administer the laws on the books and run and credibly balanced programs where our first line of defense is education, service, answering questions, getting out to sea taxpayers, going to forms across the country. that's what we are focused on. if people are trying to commit fraud in the system or have abuses, we will have compliance programs. there has been a lot of attention around compliance programs which are only part of what we are trying to do both

with health-care implementation of the tax reform pieces, but with any tax bill that is passed. >> given the events in austin, do you think the risk of working for the irs has increased? if so, what would you say of that? >> my answer is no, the risk has not increased. there has been a lot of stuff in the press around increased threats which is actually an accurate. what i think of a threat, i think of somebody actually saying i'm going to do something to you. what there has been is increased chatter on the internet as an anti-government sentiment and sometimes the issue of taxes has got swept into it. there's a lot of difference between people not liking taxes, people not liking the tax

system, where people having issues with the government and people -- it being a safety issue for my employees. i take the safety of every we have always had, and even in austin was both a reminder and heightened awareness about making sure our physical security programs are as strong as they can be. we also need to make sure people are aware, and awareness training is out there. we need to know what the threats are, but there has not been any sort of scale of actual specific threat against irs employees. i think a lot of the reporting is general around anti- government rhetoric you hear out there. >> section 6103 allows tax

information to be disclosed to people with material interests, including owners of more than 1% of company stock. considering american taxpayers now hold large stocks in most companies, should their tax records now be open to public inspection? >> one of the incredibly important principles of the tax system and for us as the tax administrators is that we deal with sensitive financial information of the american public, so it is actually against the law for us to disclose taxpayer information. that is why mary, frank, center, and lanny are assumed names. you know nothing about everything you learned nothing about essential tax information, and we take that seriously. the broader question of should shareholders get tax information for companies has been bandied

for a while. i refer to congress. we have a major corporate tax initiatives under way. one of them i mentioned, which is for corporations to disclose on their tax return on certain tax positions so that if they have a reserve and think the tax position will not hold, but the of the return. we think that is an important initiative and make sense in this day and age. so we're focused on initiatives like that. i would leave whether or not a shareholder should get their tax information for the people to bandy about. >> i totally noted mary is and i think i have lenny figured out. in january, you announced companies would have to list and certain tax positions before tax sulfur transactions that may not pass muster with the irs. he delayed comment on that until jim. when you expect that to take

effect and what will the irs do with this information? >> that's the provision i was referring to before, where in accounting under a regulation, corporations take a reserve for an uncertain tax positions, but the details are not now made available to us. what we have proposed is getting a left, not all the work papers under that, but get a lift of where those of certain tax positions are. the reason for this is we have a voluntary tax system. people show was all their information and it either passes muster or if we have differences in either what the facts are or what the law is, we should talk about that. right now, we spend a lot of time with large corporate taxpayers trying to find issues, which we find eventually. but it is wasted time for

corporate taxpayers and wasted time for the irs. we're trying to streamline the process and create certainty so we can resolve issues quicker, create consistency, and be more efficient in our system. we initially had a comment time which was going to and and we're going to butt out draft forms for more detailed. what we basically did was wrapped up into one comment time. we delayed the first and committed to this month getting the draft forms and instructions out so people could do one round of comments by june 1st. implementation will depend on the comments we get and how we go forward. our goal is to not have this lag

and move forward. right now, we have put out skillful proposals, we will put out a more detailed proposal and move forward from there. >> should people with only independently reported it earned income like wages and pensions have to file a return? why can't the irs do it for them like california did in the pilot project? >> california has a program called ready return, that you are a very limited group of taxpayers, you can get it ready return where people look over and say whether it is accurate for a california state taxes. those are people who are single with only wages, no interest, and come, no other kind of been come, who take the standard deductions. it is the simple list. they have had a 5% pickup rate. it's a small program. we have been asked about this and there are a couple of things

-- first, our technology has been woefully under invested in in the last 20 years. we're going through major program to get all of our taxpayer count data consolidated into a database. assuming congressional funding, that should be done in time for the 2012 tax year, were you can start thinking about this kind of program. the second issue is we already have a 1040 ez and it's a symbol for people to do that. we need to think about this as opposed to all the other things on our plate. we of to get the technology and make sure the cost-benefit is there. the business community would be to change significantly.

right now, it's not till the end of february that there is a requirement that we get tax returns. a lot of people filed in january. people don't need to get their w2 until the end of january to individuals. so there has to be a bunch of system changes. we are not sitting on the information at the right time. that does not mean everybody isn't willing to change if this makes sense. the last i known -- the last unknown is the culture of texas and the american experience we have a voluntary tax system. it is the law that people paid the government does not calculate for you. you calculate yourself, bring in your deductions of the rain come, you put it forward to less. one of the question says, if we did it, there's a lot of the information we may not have, although that gap is narrowing. people still go through all the

expenses of running it separately themselves, getting an accountant or tax preparer. after 2012, when we get the database done, that's an issue that should be up for debate. >> we're almost out of time, before asking the last question, a couple of important matters -- first, to remind our guests of special speakers. tomorrow, will have the secretary of the department of health and human services discussing that in health care reform legislation. on april 12th, dennis quaid will discuss the prevention of potentially deadly medical errors. then get an up all taino will discuss the state of the world and the nation's aviation security system. we would like to present our guest with the traditional -- it's down here -- national press club mud. -- national press club of mug. [applause]

everybody has to do some sort of taxes. everett was then who does your taxes. if you can't do it yourself, too -- what's the hope of anyone doing it themselves? >> i have a parent i have had for 15 years to does my taxes with my health -- i have a preparer i had for 15 years who does might taxes with my help. i just got a good service from him for the last 15 years. i will not give you a name. >> thank you for coming today. >> thank you. [applause] >> we would like to thank the national press club staff, including its library and broadcast operations center for of today's event. for more information about joining the national press club and how to acquire a copy of today's program, go to our web site. thank you very much for

attendance and thank you to our speaker. this meeting is adjourned. [applause] [captioning performed by national captioning institute] [captions copyright national cable satellite corp. 2010] g,1 >> tonight, a discussion on u.s. race relations. after that, several experts on nuclear security talk about president obama's upcoming trip

to prague. another chance to watch irs commissioner doug shulman. tuesday, a discussion of federal oversight of car safety standards with the former commissioner of the highway safety commission. also, the ceo of alliance of automobile manufacturers. viewers can call in or tweet their questions. wednesday, live from the white house, first lady michelle obama, who has made fighting childhood obesity one of her priorities will sit down with one of our c-span student cameron winners. his documentary was one of many

submitted on the topic of childhood obesity. joining in the conversation will be other film makers from around the country. that is live wednesday at 11:00 a.m. eastern here on c-span. now a discussion on u.s. race relations with martin luther king iii. when i fall and michael lomax region -- gwen eiffel and michael lomax. this is an hour and 40 minutes. >> before we get started, i want to thank the knight foundation for generously underwriting then-senator barack obama stood

on this very stage and delivered one of the most important speeches of that campaign election, and some people would argue, one of the most important speeches ever said it in america. in that speech, the original that he used is now an hour core exhibition, signed by barack obama. he challenged the american people to face the complexity of race in this country. to make knowledge, as you heard, the racial stalemate we have been stuck with for years. for many citizens, his message resonated powerfully, the message that by working together, we could move past racial wounds and continue on a path toward a more perfect union. after president obama's election, at the notion of the post-racial election seemed to move inevitably toward the forefront of the national

constant justness -- consciousness. people last, it isn't america post-racial? and there was a flurry of editorializing. these conversations have continued. the idea of the post-racial america have been proclaimed in many ways, a fallacy, a goal, an open question -- but one thing is clear. this historic election of our nation's first african-american president has not taken us, as he said, beyond racial divisions in a single election cycle. tonight we commemorate the two- year anniversary of president obama's historic speech by asking some of these questions and assessing where we stand on these issues today. and in this effort we are very

honored to be joined by some as distinguished speakers. when eiffel -- gwen ifill, martin luther king the third, michael lomax following dr. lomax's remarks, cecil williams will introduce in more detail are additional panel members, and he will also moderate the discussion. dr. williams is the former co- host of the show on pbs radio and, and he is currently an assistant clinical professor and director of the assistance for school age regioviolence. it is my pleasure to introduce