Government Employees Owe Billions in Delinquent Taxes

[The Northerner]

Need a quick three billion dollars, Uncle Sam? How about looking in your own pockets?

Deficit cutters struggling to make ends meet in Washington are eyeballing an unusual pot of potential revenue: back taxes owed to the government by federal employees themselves.

According to an IRS study last year, those employees and federal retirees owed a staggering $3.3 billion dollars in delinquent tax payments to the government.

The federal agency with the largest back-tax bill? The US Postal Service, where hundreds of thousands of employees owed a total of more than $283 million, said the report.

Also high on the list is the Department of Veterans Affairs, where employees had more than $156 million in back taxes.

The biggest group, though, is retired military personnel. That group owed more than $1.5 billion dollars.

And even the White House folks are behind in their taxes. Employees in the executive office of the president, which includes nearly 2,000 employees, owed more than $831,000 to Uncle Sam, the IRS found.

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/id/40215318


Is it possible to sue these propaganda mongers and expose them for their blatant lies, lack of evidence, and distortions?

[BrklynLiberal]

1. and how many of them are passing judgement on Charlie Rangel at this very moment?

[struggle4progress]

2. So about 2/3 of what is allegedly owed, is owed by about 3.5K retirees

and about 1/2 of what is allegedly owed, is owed by about 2.5K military retirees

The IRS handles about six million new delinquent taxpayer accounts every year and files nearly a million tax liens annually; only about 52K accounts offered to settle in 2009;
see: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=207457,00.html

IIRC, the Republicans after 1994 rather tied the IRS's hands on collection. It's fine with me if Congress wants to restore IRS's collection authority and to fund it better

[Brickbat]

3. Why focus on just government employees? Why not all taxpayers.

As if I didn't know.

[Vincardog]

4. Gawd forbid that the CORPORATIONS should be asked to have an AMT