Committee Hearing

Today I attended a hearing before the the House Committee on Ways and Means' Subcommittee on Select Revenue Measures. The hearing was in regards to banking secrecy practices. The witness list was composed of the IRS Commissioner, a Tax attorney from Boston, a Law professor from the University of Michigan, and a lawyer from New York.

Over the course of my internship, I have done a lot of research on all things relating to international taxation, including reading transcripts of hearings such as the one I actually went to today. The IRS Commissioner, Douglas Shulman, said the exact same thing at today's hearing that he did at a Senate hearing on UBS two months ago. While he made very good points and was able to lay out the IRS's plan to combat such secrecy practices, I found myself wishing he had been able to say more. It has been months since the UBS case and still there seem to have been no real progress made in the plan to circumvent banking secrecy laws. The financial crisis has showed that now more than ever government agencies need to be working quickly and effectively to actually make progress in solving the problems instead of just giving the same speech over and over.

Another aspect of the hearing that I found frustrating is the fact that these hearings seem to serve no real purpose. Many members of the committee were not even present and those who participated did not ask enough follow-up questions when their initial inquiries were side-stepped. Holding hearing after hearing on the same issues won't fix the economy; maybe instead of listening to the same issues be discussed over and over again members of Congress should start taking action.