Your Tax Dollars at Work (Again)

A watchdog report has been released showing that over a thousand employees of the IRS received bonuses even though they had disciplinary issues, including over $1 million paid to employees who didn't pay their federal taxes. And the bonuses weren't just monetary. Employees with tax problems received a total of 10,582 hours of paid time off — valued at about $250,000 — and 69 received permanent raises through a step increase. 

The report looked at bonuses just in 2011 and 2012, who knows about those other years? Employees' tax problems included "willful understatement of tax liabilities over multiple tax years, late payment of tax liabilities, and underreporting of income," the report said. "We take seriously our unique role as this nation's tax administrator, and we will strive to implement a policy that protects the integrity of the tax administration system and the reputation of the service," IRS chief Human Capital Officer David Krieg said in a written response to the audit. (Do people actually talk like that?) 

The IRS said it has instituted a policy to take conduct into account when handing out bonuses to senior executives. (They never thought of this before?) In fiscal year 2012, the agency awarded bonuses of $86.3 million in cash and almost 490,000 hours of time off. About 69% of the agency's 98,000 employees received some kind of bonus. Apparently non-payment of taxes by federal employees is a government-wide problem. The IRS says 311,536 federal employees were tax delinquents in 2011, owing a total of $3.5 billion. Huh? Bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to fire federal employees with seriously delinquent taxes. Better late than never, I suppose.