IRS Commissioner Mark Everson is moving forward with his plan to privatize debt collection despite Congressional opposition. BNA (sub. req'd) reports that Everson rejected a request from Rep. Steve Rothman (D-NJ) to cancel the privatization project that's slated to begin in late August or early September. See here for more information about the program. In his response to Rothman, Everson admitted that the program won't be cost-efficient, but contended that Congress and the President have left him no other options. IRS has been forced to turn to private collectors, then and now, because of a "100 percent failure to provide resources to the IRS," he said. President Bush has not asked for enough money and the Congress has failed to appropriate enough, he explained. Everson linked collecting the debt and "narrowing the tax gap" in his letter. He also noted that House-approved IRS funding for fiscal year 2007 falls $104.5 million short of the administration's request. "Using our resources would be cost effective," he said, but there are not enough resources to do it that way. There will be some accounting of how the private debt collectors have measured up, in the form of a cost-effectiveness study to be included in a biennial report to Congress, Everson said. It will compare IRS and private collection agency costs for collecting similar accounts. While it's probably wrong to say that the IRS has no choice but to privatize (they could always just wait until Congress resolves the issue, as Rep. Rothman requested), Everson does have a point. There's no good reason to not fully-fund the IRS, since any money allocated to it actually does pay for itself in much higher revenues. So what's Congress's excuse?