The Internal Revenue Service is offering up to $15 million for some professional public relations help.

The Internal Revenue Service building is shown in Washington, D.C, on July 21, 2007. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

Racy Super Bowl commercials this is not. The IRS is currently evaluating pitches made last week from communications agencies to help publicize programs like the earned-income tax credit and small business retirement plans.

The nation’s tax collector wants a “full service communications and marketing company” to help convey its “corporate vision and goals,” according to a 49-page solicitation sent to 12 agencies. The winner’s duties could include market research, educating the public about new tax provisions, and designing national information campaigns.

The one-year contract could be extended for four more years, with a total value of as much as $15 million, the IRS solicitation says. PR firm Porter Novelli has had the contract for four years, but it reached the $17.5 million limit, IRS spokesman Terry Lemons said.

The most surprising element of IRS’s search for a new marketing contract is it isn’t the first, said anti-tax activist Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform. “The idea that they used to have a PR firm really leads to the question of ‘what did they do?'”…