The IRS's $287 Billion Man

When Donald Crichton Alexander was sworn in as Internal Revenue Commissioner in mid-1973, he inherited an agency that was rapidly dropping in public prestige. Watergate-related revelations of attempted political misuse of the IRS were eroding the awed deference that Americans have traditionally felt toward their revenue-collection agency, inspiring Government fears of a binge of cheating by suddenly cynical taxpayers. Alexander acknowledged that maintaining public confidence in the agency was his "No. 1" task.

That task has yet to be completed.

This year taxpayers rushing to beat the April 15 filing deadline and finish paying an estimated $287 billion to Alexander and his agents have been regaled with more than the usual seasonal number of IRS horror stories. ABC News recently aired on national TV an hour-long documentary accusing the IRS of being too willing to share confidential tax returns with other Government agencies and of occasionally using heavyhanded tactics to collect money. Newspapers have been filled with reports of Operation Leprechaun, a Nixon-era scandal involving alleged recruitment by IRS tax sleuths of a sex spy to collect information on prominent Floridians.

Alexander has responded to these attacks with enough aplomb to cast doubt on his own statement that "I'm not a p.r. man, and I'd finish last in a popularity contest." Last week he assured a House subcommittee that his agency is investigating Leprechaun and seeking to establish who was to blame. He guardedly compliments the ABC documentary for calling attention to a genuine need for closer congressional supervision of the IRS. His position is bolstered by the fact that for all the current bad publicity -- much of which concerns incidents that occurred before he took over -- he has made unmistakable progress toward keeping the 92,000-employee IRS out of politics and offering better service to small taxpayers.

Worst Scandal. Perhaps the worst scandal Alexander inherited was the agency's Special Services Group, which had amassed dossiers on 3,000 supposedly extremist organizations and 8,000 individuals. "I got rid of that damned thing two months after I got here," he says. Alexander has also passed the word that any political requests for tax returns be rebuffed -- and if they come from the White House, be personally relayed to him for refusal. "I want to be sure that there is no backdoor information going out of here," he says. Apparently there no longer is: there is no evidence that political abuse of tax returns has been a problem under the Ford Administration.

In dealing with individual taxpayers, Alexander is not exactly a softy. He complained last year that federal courts hand out too few prison sentences to the small number of taxpayers (1,253 in fiscal 1974) convicted of criminal tax evasion. But he has also urged the IRS's 1,100 taxpayer assistance offices to stay open evenings and Saturdays until April 15 and let troubled taxpayers know that the agency automatically grants a two-month extension of the filing deadline to anyone who asks for it (though the taxpayer must pay his estimated tax liability by April 15). Alexander has further simplified the language of this year's Form 1040, inserted in all notices of audit an announcement that the taxpayer has the right to appeal the auditor's judgment, and published a brochure informing taxpayers of arrangements that they can make to pay off back taxes gradually rather than cough up at once or have their property seized.

These efforts might be better known if the IRS chief had taken a publicity-oriented approach to his job. Instead, the 53-year-old Alexander -- a normally feisty James Cagney look-alike and former estate and gift-tax lawyer from Cincinnati -- has immersed himself in technical details of tax administration during twelve-hour working days. Says he: "No amount of soft soap by me or anyone else will persuade the people we are doing a good job. The payoff is what we do."

Modest Rating. Still, Alexander is winning the respect of critics who have long accused the IRS of dealing gently with wealthy taxpayers represented by expert attorneys but taking a harsh line toward obscure individuals who are unaware of their rights. Louise Brown, an official of Ralph Nader's Tax Reform Research Group, says that Alexander "has been more responsive to the problems of average taxpayers than any other commissioner" -- though she adds that the IRS "is just moving out of the ice age in perceiving the special problems facing millions of lower-and middle-income people." Alexander's rating of his own progress is similarly modest: he gives himself a B-plus. That seems a reasonable assessment.

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