Project 2025 Tracker / What’s done, what’s next

22. Department of the Treasury · Minor · Needs Congress

Let the National Taxpayer Advocate make its own personnel decisions

Attempted

700 22. Department of the Treasury

“The office should also be strengthened by, among other things: … Ensuring that the National Taxpayer Advocate can make his or her own personnel decisions to protect its independence;”

What has happened

  1. Attempted

    The Senate passed H.R. 997 "without amendment by Unanimous Consent" (CR S5123). Both chambers have now passed the same text, so the bill goes to the President. It is not law yet, and the ladder has no rung between one chamber's passage and enactment, so the Status stays `attempted`. Enactment would move it. The triage found this from the Corpus. The review confirmed it on 2026-10-01 from the congress.gov API's action list for the bill. The congress.gov page itself answers 403 to scripted requests.

  2. Attempted

    The House passed H.R. 997, the National Taxpayer Advocate Enhancement Act of 2025, on March 31, 2025. Its section 2 amends section 7803(c)(2)(D)(i) to let the National Taxpayer Advocate "appoint counsel in the Office of the Taxpayer Advocate to report directly to the National Taxpayer Advocate", and conforms the following subclause so that the Advocate's appointment authority runs to any employee of the Office rather than only to local taxpayer advocate offices. That is the personnel independence this ask names. The bill was received in the Senate on 2025-04-01 and referred to Finance, where it and its companion S. 1704 remain.

Research log

What was searched, and what didn’t count as evidence

Research notes

Passage by one chamber is attempted under playbook §3b; enactment would be partial or done depending on scope. The bill’s own long title says it conforms the Code “to the intent of the Internal Revenue Service Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 … that the National Taxpayer Advocate be able to hire and consult counsel as appropriate”.

Open (scan triage, 2026-10-01, tenth run). The 2025-03-31 note says the bill “remain[s]” in Senate Finance. That was true then. The Senate passed it on 2026-09-28 by unanimous consent, which the new event records. Watch public-laws.ndjson and congress.gov for signature. When it becomes a Public Law, check that the enrolled text matches the House-passed text. If it does, section 2 is the personnel independence this ask names, so the item is done, or partial if the review reads counsel-and-staff appointment authority as only part of “his or her own personnel decisions”. Cite the Public Law on govinfo. A pocket veto or a veto would be recorded as such.

Still open (scan triage, 2026-10-15, sixteenth run). The bill’s latest action is now “Message on Senate action sent to the House” (2026-10-14). That is the clerk’s notice of the 09-28 Senate vote. It is not enrollment or presentment, and nothing moves. public-laws.ndjson (through 2026-10-09) has no law for it.

The other three National Taxpayer Advocate asks on this printed page (#1957 access to files, #1958 comments in final rules, #1959 amicus authority) are not in this bill and remain not started.

Action
expand
Object
National Taxpayer Advocate personnel authority
ID
1956