Several initiatives have been undertaken in recent years to better protect taxpayers--particularly the enactment of the Taxpayer Bill of Rights in 1988 and the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) continuing efforts to improve its operations and treat taxpayers as customers. IRS also has a wide range of procedures and oversight governing the behavior of its employees in the millions of contacts they have with taxpayers each year. However, because IRS has failed to define or track taxpayer abuse, it is hard to assess IRS efforts to protect taxpayers from abusive enforcement, unnecessarily long conflict resolution, or unauthorized "snooping" into taxpayers' files.

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