Friday, September 10, 2010

Thousands on U.S. payroll owe billions to IRS

Must be one of those perks for working for Uncle Sam.

The Washington Post's T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue.

As of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes.

Or how about the Office of Government Ethics? Three employees owe $75,304.

From the Los Angeles Times:
In the House of Representatives, 421 people owe a total $6,524,892. In the Senate, 217 owe $2,774,836. In the IRS' parent department, Treasury, 1,204 owe $7,670,814. At the Labor Department, where Secretary Hilda Solis' husband had some back-tax problems before her confirmation, 463 owe $7,481,463.
Over at the Justice Department, which is so busy enforcing other laws and suing Arizona, 1,971 employees still owe $14,350,152 in overdue taxes.
Then, we come to the Department of Homeland Security, which is run by Janet Napolitano, the former governor of Arizona who preferred to call terrorist acts "man-caused disasters." Homeland Security is keeping all of us safe by ensuring that a Dutch tourist is aboard every inbound international flight to thwart any would-be bomber with explosives in his underpants.
Within that department, there reside 4,856 people who owe the tax agency a whopping total of $37,012,174.
Employees of the Postal Service owe about $283 million. Or another: The Federal Reserve -- Board of Chairman where 81 employees owe just over $1 million. Then there's military retirees (I'm not one of these) who owe more than $1 billion (and I mean Billion, not million).

The government doesn't need to raise taxes. Its employees just need to pay them.

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