Who’s Guarding the Henhouse: Government Employees Owe IRS Billions

 

700 IRS contract employees among the scofflaws

If you owe money to the IRS, you are in good company.  It turns out that 318,000 of your employees in the federal government are behind in paying taxes owed. The sum total of debt owed is 3.3 billion and climbing. They must be taking a cue from the methods used by their bosses; debt is a good thing, therefore more must be better.

To make the story even more intriguing, the Inspector General has reported that:

Nearly700 employees of Internal Revenue Service contractors owe $5.4 million in backtaxes,.

According to Breitbart.com:

More than half of those workers are supposed to be ineligible to do work for the IRS because they are not enrolled in installment plans to pay the taxes they owe.

Unlike other federal agencies, the IRS requires employees and those who work on agency contracts to comply with federal tax laws. That means they have to file returns on time and either pay all the taxes they owe or enroll in a payment plan.

What about the ultimate overseers of the government, Congress? Seems they have caught the bug as well.  Reuters Reports:

About 700 congressional employees, which could include senators and representatives, owed $8.6 million in unpaid taxes last year, down from $10.9 million in 2012, the IRS said.

The House of Representatives had a tax delinquency rate of 4.9 percent, while the Senate's rate was 3.2 percent.

The lowest rate was Treasury employees, which includes the IRS at 1.2%. This is not surprising, given that IRS employees, according to Breitbart:

IRS "employees are held to a very strict standard, even in cases of personal hardship. If they fail to file on time or pay their tax debts, they face disciplinary action, including removal," said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, which represents IRS employees. "The IRS has the same requirement for contractors, but they are monitored with much less frequency."

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