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PUBLIC SERVANT, TAX DEADBEAT

May 01, 2007

Jim Maule ponders the high rate of tax noncompliance in some government agencies:

Which agency takes the prize for noncompliant employees? Rolling in at 9.4% is the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Perhaps it ought to be renamed the U.S. Commission on Civil Obligations and its employees sent to tax compliance classes. Not far behind is the Government Printing Office. Perhaps they ought to be reading the IRS instruction booklets that they print. The Treasury Department comes in near the bottom, at 1.3%. Yes, that's 1.3% too many, but at least the department responsible for tax law administration is near the top in terms of compliance. Even the Tax Court's noncompliance rate is disturbing because 4.9% is simply too high.

And he asks the obvious question:

If the IRS knows that these taxes have not been paid, why isn't it collecting those taxes? The IRS claims that it's no easier to collect taxes from federal employees than from other taxpayers. It ought to be easier, though, to slap liens on these delinquent taxpayers and jack up their withholding.

This hardly helps support the argument that private tax collection is a bad thing because only official unionized government employees can be trusted around the fisc.

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