House panel will hold hearing on IRS role in implementing healthcare law

A House panel will hold a hearing next week on the Internal Revenue Service’s role in implementing the healthcare reform law. 

Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. (R-La), chairman of House Ways Ways and Means subcommittee on Oversight, announced Tuesday that his panel will hold a Sept. 11 hearing to examine the IRS's new duties: how they affect taxpayers and its revenue-collection functions, its progress on putting the law's provisions in place and its coordination efforts with federal and state governments on the process. 

“Under President Obama’s healthcare law, the IRS is now charged with administering much of the healthcare law," Boustany said in a statement.  

"It is imperative that we take a close look at these new duties and consider the impact they will have on the agency and the taxpayers it serves.”

Boustany said the law includes 47 tax or tax-related provisions, many of which are already in effect and others that are expected to kick in over the next 18 months. 

In the past two years, congressional Republicans attacked the law from all sides, making 33 attempts to repeal or defund all or part of the law. 

The House has been able to pass bills, but the Democratically controlled Senate has refused to move forward. 

GOP presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has said he would nix the law as one of his first acts in the White House. 

The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the law on June 28.