H.R. 6956

[Congressional Bills 119th Congress]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
[H.R. 6956 Referred in Senate (RFS)]

<DOC>
119th CONGRESS
2d Session
H. R. 6956

_______________________________________________________________________

IN THE SENATE OF THE UNITED STATES

April 28, 2026

Received; read twice and referred to the Committee on Finance

_______________________________________________________________________

AN ACT

To require electronically prepared tax returns to include scannable 
code when submitted on paper, and to require the use of optical 
character recognition technology for paper documents received by the 
Internal Revenue Service.

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the 
United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the ``Barcode Automation for Revenue 
Collection to Organize Disbursement and Enhance Efficiency Act'' or the 
``BARCODE Efficiency Act''.

SEC. 2. SCANNING AND DIGITIZATION OF TAX RETURNS AND CORRESPONDENCE.

(a) Returns Prepared Electronically and Submitted on Paper.--With 
respect to any Federal tax return which is prepared electronically, but 
is printed and filed on paper--
(1) such return shall be formatted in a manner that is 
compatible with the scanning technology referred to in 
paragraph (2), and
(2) subject to subsection (b)(1)(B), the Internal Revenue 
Service shall use scanning technology to convert the data 
included in such return to electronic format.
(b) Optical Character Recognition Software.--With respect to--
(1) any Federal tax return which--
(A) is not prepared electronically and is printed 
and filed on paper, or
(B) is described in subsection (a)(1) but, for any 
reason, the data included in such return cannot be 
accurately converted into electronic format, or
(2) any correspondence which is received by the Internal 
Revenue Service in a paper form (with the exception of any such 
correspondence which has been received by the Internal Revenue 
Service in electronic format),
the Internal Revenue Service shall use optical character recognition 
technology (or any functionally similar technology) to transcribe such 
return or correspondence.
(c) Exception.--
(1) In general.--Subsection (a) or (b) shall not apply to 
the extent that the Secretary of the Treasury or the 
Secretary's delegate determines that the technology described 
in such subsection is slower or less reliable than--
(A) the process of manually transcribing returns or 
correspondence received in a paper form, or
(B) any other process that the Internal Revenue 
Service is using or would otherwise use.
(2) Report to congress.--Any exception to the application 
of subsection (a) or (b) pursuant to paragraph (1) shall not 
take effect unless the Secretary provides a report to the 
Committee on Ways and Means of the House of Representatives and 
the Committee on Finance of the Senate regarding the 
determination made under such paragraph within 30 days of such 
determination.
(d) Effective Date.--This section shall apply to--
(1) any individual income tax return (as defined in section 
6011(e)(3)(C) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986) received on 
or after January 1 of the first calendar year beginning more 
than 180 days after the date of enactment of this Act,
(2) any estate tax return (as described in section 6018 of 
such Code) or gift tax return (as described in section 6019 of 
such Code) received on or after January 1 of the first calendar 
year beginning more than 24 months after the date of enactment 
of this Act, and
(3) any other return or correspondence received on or after 
January 1 of the first calendar year be-

ginning more than 18 months after the date of enactment of this 
Act.

Passed the House of Representatives April 27, 2026.

Attest:

KEVIN F. MCCUMBER,

Clerk.