House tax writers set oversight, efficiency targets

GOP Promises IRS Oversight

Republicans on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee plan to collaborate with the new administration—and President-elect Donald Trump’s designated budget slashers Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy—to hold the IRS and other federal agencies “accountable” and make them more “efficient,” Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) said at his panel’s first hearing of the two-year Congress.

The hearing marked an organizational and political starting gun in Republicans’ unified control of the White House and Congress ahead of Trump’s inauguration next week.

Lawmakers primarily debated how best to extend the 2017 tax law known as the Tax Cuts and ...