Union: Charges cloud IRS outsourcing

WASHINGTON, March 28 (UPI) -- The indictment of six former bank employees underscores the danger of outsourcing tax debt collection to private contractors, a federal union said Monday.

"As this case shows, there is no doubt that privatizing tax collections puts the personal and sensitive information of taxpayers at serious risk," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union.

The NTEU is the nation's largest independent federal employees union.

Kelley and the union have been fighting an Internal Revenue Service plan to hire private sector debt collectors to pursue tax debts in exchange for a bounty of up to 25 percent of the money they collect -- a program the union says has previously failed.

Last week's indictments against former employees of the Pittsburgh-based Mellon Bank allege five men and one woman hid and then destroyed about 80,000 federal tax returns with payments to the government of more than $1 billion.

Mellon, which was operating under a contract with the IRS, has since paid an $18.1 million fine.