WASHINGTON – Sam Johnson is a brave man. Not the part about surviving seven years as a POW in Vietnam. No, the Plano congressman's courage has been on display more recently – such as when he took aim at an arcane tax rule involving cellphones and called IRS agents a bunch of weenies.

Sticks and stones won't break their bones. But they have files on everyone, and they're not amused.

"I'm very disappointed that a member of Congress would make such a disparaging comment about IRS employees," said Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents all 88,000 employees at the agency.

Some context:

Mr. Johnson is a top Republican on the tax-writing Ways and Means committee. Early this year, complaints started to come his way. The IRS had stepped up enforcement of a 1989 rule that treated cellphones like company cars. To allow a deduction for a phone provided to an employee, the agency wanted proof. Workers were supposed to log every call made or received and document if it was personal or not.

Over the course of a couple of weeks, Mr. Johnson heard from the city of Rowlett, where IRS agents were making noise about cellphones issued to social workers; from a friend who is a college administrator; and from a Dallas accounting firm.

In February, Mr. Johnson confronted Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson at a House hearing. He argued that the rule had become anachronistic. Cellphones aren't the bulky, extravagant executive perks that they were in the late 1980s. They're everywhere, and monthly plans come with huge airtime bundles that make it ridiculous for workers to have to log each call.

On tax day, April 15, the House overwhelmingly voted to delete cellphones from the list of fringe benefits for which the IRS requires proof of business use. Mr. Johnson authored the bill with Rep. Earl Pomeroy, D-N.D. The Senate version, still pending, was drafted by Sen. John Kerry, the Democrats' 2004 presidential nominee, and Sen. John Ensign of Nevada, who leads the GOP's Senate campaign arm – a pairing that reflects the broad disdain for the rule.

Recently, the Los Angeles Times caught wind that after IRS audits, the University of California system and other major employers had been "hit with bills for hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes" related to cellphone claims. The IRS demanded $239,196 this year from UCLA alone – even though last spring, an IRS advisory committee called for an end to enforcement of the cellphone rule, which CPAs consider ridiculous.

Few employers comply. Many have no idea it exists.

Enter Mr. Johnson.

"If you don't log all your telephone calls, you're going to have some IRS weenie after you," he told the Times. "That's why we're trying to get the law changed – because it just doesn't make any sense anymore."

Nobody loves the taxman, and IRS-bashing was once all the rage among House Republicans. But Ms. Kelley considered the slap gratuitous. Her initial thoughts can't be printed in a family newspaper.

"I don't know where his head was or why he would say something like this," she said. "... These IRS employees are enforcing the laws that are passed by Congress, and they deserve to be treated with dignity and respect by all taxpayers, including members of Congress."

Mr. Johnson wasn't exactly ready to issue a retraction. He wishes the agency had listened to its advisory committee. But through an aide, he did say this much: "Most of the IRS employees are highly responsible, dedicated individuals."