Editorial: IRS scandal highlights need for tax reform

The IRS is the agency that everybody loves to hate, and it has recently given taxpayers plenty of reason for that antipathy.

The lavish training junkets on the taxpayers' dime that the Treasury Department's inspector general detailed Tuesday are just the latest, but they're jaw-dropping.

The IRS spent $49 million on 220 conferences from 2010 to 2012. That's a lot of tax dollars, and the spending was irresponsibly extravagant. One example: A 2010 conference for 2,609 executives and managers in Anaheim, Calif., cost at least $4.1 million, including $64,000 in gifts and promotional items for participants and $50,000 to produce videos, including ones parodying "Gilligan's Island" and "Star Trek," complete with a mock starship set built for the purpose.

With news of such waste coming so close on the heels of the revelation that the IRS gave heightened scrutiny to conservative groups seeking tax-exempt status, it's clear the nation's tax collector has some serious management failings, not to mention an image problem.

Daniel Werfel, the new acting IRS commissioner, said in testimony in Congress Monday that he gets it. In two weeks on the job he has put the head of the tax-exempt division on leave, appointed two senior staffers to review the agency's operations, and pledged new controls on trips and training. That's a start, but now he has to deliver reform.

Werfel also said he understands that recent failures have undermined the public's trust in the IRS to administer the tax laws fairly and impartially. He has to rebuild that confidence.

There would be less need for such a vast and intrusive bureaucracy if the tax code were simplier. There are sound economic reasons to limit deductions, end industry subsidies and close loopholes. And making it easier to comply with tax laws would go a long way toward raising the tax collector's standing with the public.