Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Mark Everson, speaking to the Greater Washington Society of CPAs, recently announced that in 2006 the IRS will increase its enforcement efforts for exempt organizations, building on a trend of the past few years. Among the agency's top priorities, according to Everson, will be enforcement of the ban on political intervention by charities and religious organizations. The announcement comes as the IRS continues to draw criticism for its Political Intervention Program (PIP) of 2004, which included audits of organizations based on statements critical of administration policies. The IRS, whose budget for investigating nonprofits rose 23 percent last year alone, has increased its compliance contacts with nonprofits from 14,000 in 2003 to more than 20,000 in 2005. While no such budget increase will take place this year, the agency plans, according to Everson, to "catch [its] breath and train the few hundred employees that came on last year..." Some of the agency's unfinished work includes audits of 130 charities, specifically "501(c)(3) organizations" the IRS suspects of conducting prohibited partisan political activities. Everson said almost half these organizations are churches, and that most problems stemmed from one-time events that were easily resolved. He anticipated the IRS will continue to receive questions from the public and Congress about its examination of religious organizations. The 2004 PIP program came under fire for audits under the program of the NAACP and other groups that criticized Bush administration policies. Although a report by the Treasury Inspector General found no partisan retaliation, the problem of interpreting criticism of public officials as partisan intervention remains unresolved in 2006.