Internal Revenue Service is requesting $7.2 billion for enforcement activities in its FY 2008 budget request. Money to pay for initiatives to close the tax gap sounds like a great idea, but how well will the initiatives accomplish this goal? IRS isn't exactly clear on this point in its budget request. From a GAO report released Wednesday: [T]he justifications for initiatives varied in the information they provided, with some lacking basic descriptive, cost, and expected performance information suitable for assessing them. For example, an initiative to determine the impact of taxpayer service on compliance lacked information such as a problem statement and an explanation of estimated costs. ... [T]he initiative for improving compliance estimates provided no explanation of how the 258 FTEs were determined or basic information on the work such as the number of examinations to be conducted. Without such information, at the end of the fiscal year, Congress would be unable to tell whether IRS spent the money as intended. Yesterday we mentioned that acting IRS Commissioner Kevin Brown doesn't know how cost effective private tax collection would be, and yet he he thinks its something IRS should do. Today, we find out IRS wants to spend big bucks on enforcement initiatives without having a good idea of how effective they will be. What's going on over there?