LEVELING THE FIELD FOR TAXPAYERS WHO BATTLE THE IRS

Help may be on the way for beleaguered taxpayers in their travails with the Internal Revenue Service.

This month should see consideration by the full House of a tax measure that contains a major Taxpayer Bill of Rights. Approved last month by the House Ways and Means Committee and tucked into massive tax-and-spending legislation, the rights measure has more than 40 provisions. Among them are those:

-- Raising the current $100,000 ceiling on civil suits against the IRS for reckless collection actions to $1 million.

-- Making it easier to recover attorney fees when IRS actions are unjustified and raising the limit on fees from $75 an hour to $110 an hour.

-- Waiving interest charged taxpayers when a delay in resolving a dispute is the IRS' fault. That is allowed currently, but the rules are written so tightly that few delays are deemed the agency's fault.

-- Reimbursing taxpayers up to $3,000 for expenses if they're randomly selected for one of the exhaustive research audits the IRS conducts to fine-tune its enforcement system.

-- Making the IRS, not the taxpayer, responsible for verifying information returns such as the W-2 and 1099 forms submitted by employers, mortgage lenders and interest and dividend payers. Filers of information returns would be required to provide a telephone number for taxpayer questions.

None of this changes the fact that the onus is still on taxpayers. In the eyes of the IRS, they still have to prove their tax return is correct. But the IRS is the worst bureaucratic monster most individuals ever confront. In this mismatch, it is good to see this bipartisan measure move us toward evening the score.