Republican senators have been up in arms over reports issued over the past 18 months indicating the extent to which federal employees are not paying their federal taxes.
In a July letter, Republican Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa noted that a recent audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that 149,000 federal employees owe $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes.
It gets worse.
“Tens of thousands are repeat tax cheats, failing to file tax returns year after year, and the number is steadily increasing,” she wrote.
In the letter, she challenged Internal Revenue Service Commission Daniel Werfel to make “thousands of tax-evading tax collectors at the IRS.”
Ernst noted that an audit found more than 5,800 employees of the IRS and its contractors owe almost $50 million in overdue taxes.
Report claims 150,000 employees across various federal agencies owe $1.5 billion in overdue taxes. pic.twitter.com/lC3NkCutVE
— Paul Kikos 🌐 (@PKikos) November 15, 2024
“There is absolutely nothing fair about forcing hardworking Americans to pay the salaries of tax-evading tax collectors while the IRS targets lower-income5 and middle-class Americans with nearly two-thirds of the new audits,” she wrote.
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“Surely the irony and hypocrisy can’t be missed here: taxpayers are being forced to pay billions more to the IRS to audit America while the agency won’t even collect the tens of millions of dollars in unpaid taxes owed by its employees.”
“Taxpayers will never trust the IRS when the agency’s own auditors can’t even pass a tax audit,” she continued.
Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa wrote Werfel to express his outrage at the 17,000 federal employees who are repeat tax offenders.
“Federal employees have a heightened responsibility to be compliant in paying their tax obligations,” Grassley wrote, adding that “the IRS should prioritize cases where federal employees are in brazen noncompliance with tax laws by failing to file their tax returns and, in some cases, for several years.”
“The IRS’s apparent enforcement failures against federal employees is unacceptable. Taxpayers deserve to be assured that federal employees, whose salaries and benefits are funded through taxpayer dollars, are held to account by the IRS for failing to pay their taxes just like the rest of the American people are held to account.”
Amid these disclosures, Republican Sen. Mike Braun of Indiana offered a proposal that languished in the Democrat-controlled Senate but could have new life now that the GOP controls the House, Senate and White House.
In March 2023, Braun introduced the Federal Employees and Retirees with Delinquent Tax Debt Initiative (FERDI) Act
“This bill disqualifies individuals with delinquent tax debt from federal employment and requires the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to regularly publish a report on the tax liabilities of federal employees,” the bill summary said.
“Specifically, the bill disqualifies both applicants and current employees with seriously delinquent tax debt from federal employment.”
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