Former Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Commissioner Larry Gibbs commented on the IRS's budget and staffing challenges and how those challenges could impact the execution of any tax reform initiatives passed by Congress. "Any time you start changing the provisions of the tax law, what are its rates, or any other provision, you are going to find that the change affects taxpayers that no one anticipated. It's different now; the resources are very different. It will be a total challenge," said Gibbs, now senior counsel at Miller & Chevalier. The agency faced similar challenges when Gibbs took over as commissioner in 1986 following the disastrous 1985 filing season, during which glitches in a new computer system led to major delays in refunds for millions of taxpayers. "As I came aboard, the 1986 act was not the focal point. The focal point was doing whatever needed to be done so that the 1985 filing season didn't ever happen again" said Gibbs, adding that he used the computer crash as a way to rally IRS employees—from the chief counsel's office to rank-and-file workers—to tackle tax reform, particularly since lawmakers didn't provide any additional money to the agency that year. "We had to use the resources that we had, to use the fact that the IRS embarrassed itself in 1985, to encourage the IRS folks that we're going to be involved in carrying out the act," he said. The agency today is up to the challenge of tax reform, but it should not expect the same level of cooperation from the current legislative branch. “Things are very, very different today," Gibbs said. "We face a partisan, not a bipartisan, Congress. I don't know if Congress will appropriate resources to the IRS to implement a tax-reform act. I'm not sure that can be counted on."