The Internal Revenue Service has been rightly criticized for wasting millions of dollars on conferences, including a single California event that cost $4.1 million and featured a Star Trek parody video. The wasteful spending scandal is not the only recent public embarrassment for the IRS. Charges of political targeting of conservative groups raised questions about IRS operations and its use for partisan purposes.

Given these scandals, the IRS should be under tightened oversight from Congress. The agency should be purged of any hint of partisan politics and its spending priorities should focus on tax collection, not costly conferences for employees.

But the latest congressional action, proposals by Republicans in the House of Representatives to slash the IRS budget for next year by 24 percent, is misguided. It’s understandable that there is frustration, even anger, directed at the IRS. Charged with tax collection and enforcement of complex tax legislation passed by Congress, it’s never been a popular agency. Everybody loves to hate the IRS. But much of that anger is misplaced.

As the tax-collection agency, the IRS is responsible for bringing in the revenue required to operate the federal government, funding everything from homeland security and the military to national parks, food safety and medical research.

Even at current funding levels, the IRS cannot collect all the taxes owed. Due mostly to underreporting of income by small business people, but also because of sophisticated tax avoidance schemes by wealthy individuals and the use of offshore tax havens, the so-called tax gap has grown to about $450 billion a year.

Closing the tax gap, which is the difference between the total taxes owed and the money actually collected, with more enforcement efforts by the IRS would go a long way toward reducing the federal budget deficit.

Closing the tax gap is also an issue of fairness; for every dollar not collected by someone cheating on their federal income taxes, honest taxpayers have to pay more.

Therefore, proposals last week by Republicans on the House Appropriations subcommittee to slash IRS funding are wrongheaded and will only make the budget deficit worse. Even before the latest GOP effort to cut IRS funding to “send a message” to the agency over the recent scandals, the impact of budget sequestration was predicted to force the furlough of 89,000 employees at the agency. No doubt, many of those people cut from the IRS payroll work in enforcement. And fewer people working in enforcement means fewer dollars collected.

It’s been estimated that for every extra dollar applied to enforcement efforts, the IRS collects an additional $5. Increased funding for enforcement at the IRS produces a positive return on investment.

So, while criticism of the IRS for allegedly targeting conservative groups seeking 401(c)(4) tax-exempt status is appropriate as are demands that the IRS trim spending on conferences, the effort to slash funding to the agency as punishment is wrong.

There should be more and tighter oversight focused on IRS activities and spending — but enforcement efforts should see increased funding from Congress, not budget cuts.

Republicans might score political points with threats to cut IRS funding, but it’s counterproductive in terms of reducing the budget deficit and increasing tax compliance — and thus fairness.

House Republicans should resist playing politics with the IRS budget and instead focus on reducing the tax gap through increased enforcement efforts and tax reform to simplify the code.