Last week the Commission of the Internal Revenue Service announced the agency is postponing collecting back taxes and sending out failure-to-file notices to victims of Hurricane Katrina. Nice idea, considering that the infrastructure and response systems these 1.2 million people paid for with their taxes utterly failed them. But before you regain to much faith in our fearless leaders, note that the commissioner, Mark Everson, said the decision was made to minimize negative perceptions about the agency around the midterm elections and the upcoming holidays, as reported by The New York Times.

PRpulp would like to offer Mr. Everson some much-needed media relations counsel:

1. First up, turn on your filter. Everyone doesn’t need to know every reason behind the decision. Just let us enjoy the warm, positive stuff! That would have been a good way to avoid negative perceptions about the IRS.
2. Focus on the positive. See #1 (warm, positive stuff).
3. Prepare and practice. Judging by the quotes in The New York Times Everson had not prepared any proactive messages for his media interviews. It’s tough to decipher what Everson’s objectives were for the announcement.
4. Stay on message (prepare them in step 3). Everson seemed to be very open about his motivations in an interview in The New York Times last week. But in an interview with the Associated Press reported today, Everson says the decision was not politically motivated. Yet, Everson shared the political motivations behind his directive with a tax enforcement team on a conference call held Oct. 10, which was later recapped in an e-mail memo by one of the executives.

In the interest of fairness, we’ll give you one more chance. Next time, strike three and you’re out!

See the original article at NYT.

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