in the wake of that controversy john koskinen took the helm of the irs. it is a tough job but koskinen is no stranger to tough situations. he spent more than two decades running a business that specialized turning around failing companies before he was tapped for government service. he has taken on several high level challenges over the course of his public career. for instance, freddie mac was shaken to its core during the financial crisis after taking on risky loans that pushed it to the brink of insolvency. president bush tapped koskinen to rebuild freddie mac. earlier president clinton had called on him to oversee the nation's y2k efforts when it was widely believed computers inability to recognize the year 2000 would result in calamity. koskinen also served as deputy director of the office of management and budget, city administrator for the district of columbia, and president of the u.s. soccer foundation. he refers to it as his quote, checkered career of interesting challenges. now he embarks on perhaps his most interesting challenge yet. as irs co

please welcome the commissioner of the revenue service john koskinen.[applause] thank you all for that warm welcome is in order for me to be here today at the national press club for the first time as an irs commissioner. i was here a while back as noted during my tour of duty in the y2k which was also an interesting time. you may recall the chinese curse of may you live in interesting times. they didn't need that while. i am intrigued by the deserts that seemed to be to tie into the piggy bank that reminds you that it's a little too late for this year april 15 is almost here but it's not too late to start saving for next year. more interesting are the 10-dollar cookies. they are designed to be a currency to rival the big claims -- bit coins. there will cease to be currency if you eat them. [laughter] now that we've turned the calendar to april i know there are usually a couple other things that people's minds the first is spring which took a little while to get here after the snow and the second is taxes plus some of you maybe want to the final four th

first of all effects remind you of our upcoming speakers did on april 2 we have john koskinen the commissioner of the u.s. revenue service and louis baca comedian will discuss politics and social issues and on april april 23 general mark welsch chief of staff of the u.s. air force will be here. second i would like to present senator deeds with a traditional national press club coffee mug. [applause] and for the final question you told us a lot about gus but can you tell us one more untold story that you would like people to know about your son? >> he my son was just an ordinary kid except he had extraordinary abilities in many respects. when he was a little boy, this is probably 95, he was six years old. when he would travel with me his sisters and his mother -- he would travel with me on my legislative journeys. i chaired the blue ridge economic development provision. he sat for three hours one afternoon in a corner at the squire center in blacksburg while we conducted our meeting. i was the chair. he sat there playing with trucks, cars and trucks in the many garage. a couple of years before

and just visit tuesday i took the opportunity to question the new commissioner of the irs, john koskinen, and beyond any shadow of doubt that there be no shadow of doubt, the irs has been targeting conservative groups. during the process, and effective looks like it's doing it even as i speak. yesterday's action by the ways and means committee i think really confirms this. and kudos to the ways and means committee for the dedication to get to the bottom of this, of this mess. what is going on is a deliberate abuse of federal enforcement powers are purely political purposes. part of a larger pattern of this initiation using the irs to shut down its critics and its opponents, and to change the outcome of elections. now, when i go back home to the town hall meetings, or when people come to my office, invariably they will bring up the number one, two, three issues they're concerned about. there's always someone in the back who says wait a minute, what about my free speech rights? what about the first amendment? why can't congress get to the bottom of this? that takes a rather lengthy explana

the first witnesses the honorable john koskinen, commission of the intel revenue service. second what does this mean olsen, national taxpayer advocate of the irs. thank you both for coming. your prepared statement of going to automatically be made a part of the record. why did you start, commissioner? >> thank you. chairman wyden ranking member hatch, members of the committee, thank you to discuss iraq's regulation of paid returned prepares. the tax return preparer community is a key ally in the efforts to fulfill our dual mission of tax payer service and tax compliance. each year that prepares are called upon to complete about 89 returns as noted earlier but 56% of the individual income tax returns filed. prepares make the irs job easier by helping their clients proper report their taxes and pay what they owe. at the same time the level of oversight of paid returned prepares has traditionally been uneven at best. while attorneys and agents and cpas must meet mandated professional competency requirements they make up only about 40% of the universe of paid tax return prepar

commissioner john koskinen told the associated press quote we keep going after the people who look like the worst of the bad guys but there are going to be some people that we should catch either in terms of collecting the revenue from them or prosecuting them that we're not going to catch now the irises budget has declined from twelve point one billion in two thousand and ten to eleven point three billion today koskinen says that the i.r.s. could scrutinize more returns and collect billions more in revenue with more resources now last year only zero point nine percent of people making less than two hundred thousand dollars a year were audited that's that's pretty low and that is actually the lowest rate since the i.r.s. began publishing these statistics in two thousand and six by contrast to over ten point nine percent of people making one million dollars or more audited they were audited and only zero point six percent of business business returns were audit. that however that varies greatly depending on the size of your business now meanwhile about sixteen percent of corporations wit