By Nelson Yates (April 11, 2018, 5:36 PM EDT) -- Just short of four years after the U.S. Treasury Department issued Temp. Treas. Reg. § 301.7602-1T — a regulation that some considered an impermissible attempt by the Internal Revenue Service to outsource its audit function — members of the House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee and the U.S. Treasury have released separate proposals to nullify or restrict, respectively, that effort. The House Ways and Means Oversight Subcommittee Chairperson Lynn Jenkins, R-Kan., and ranking member John Lewis, D-Ga., released a draft of proposed bipartisan legislation —The Taxpayer First Act, or TFA — that, in part, invalidates final regulation Treas. Reg. § 301.7602-1(b)(3) on a going forward basis and also invalidates any such outsourcing arrangements previously put in place either under the temporary regulation or the final regulation. Simultaneously, the U.S. Treasury has issued a notice of proposed rulemaking to amend the regulations under § 7602(a), that while basically leaving the scope of Treas. Reg. § 301.7602-1(b)(3) unchanged, severely restricts applicability of the regulation to only third parties that have areas of specialties other than U.S. federal tax law or civil litigation.[1]...