Undoctrination.org

At a time when the White House is projecting the largest deficit in the nation’s history, Uncle Sam is trying to recover billions of dollars in unpaid taxes - from its own employees.

Federal workers owe more than $3 billion in income taxes they failed to pay in 2008. According to Internal Revenue Service documents over a quarter-million federal employees and retirees – 276,300 to be exact – owe $3,042,200,000.

The IRS tracks the voluntary compliance rate of federal employees and retirees each year, and each year they come up short. After several years of a steady increase, the amount owed by feds is down from the previous year, so I’m pretty sure you can count on this appearing on a teleprompter somewhere in the very near future as the White House continues to tell us things are looking up.

Federal employees and retirees owed $3,586,784,725 in unpaid income taxes in 2007.

These are employees from nearly every federal agency with more than 25 employees. Based on percentages, the Department of The Treasury, which includes the IRS, has the best compliance rate. Fewer than 1 percent of Treasury employees didn’t pay their taxes in 2008.

But – The IRS is the only federal agency where employees can be fired for not paying their taxes. The non-compliance rate for IRS employees in 2008 was 0.76 percent — down from 0.89 percent in 2007.

The agency with the most tax delinquents is the U.S. Postal Service, with 28,913 employees who owe $297,933,756. But that is still a dramatic improvement from 2007 when more than 54,000 employees owed more than $407 million. Is it coincidence that the USPS is also constantly coming up short of funds, and we’ve seen the price of stamps rise every few months, while service plummets?

The Postal Service, the largest employer in the federal government aside from the military, has a non-compliance rate of 3.95 percent compared to the federal average of 2.8 percent.

Retired military personnel make up about 33 percent of the money owed with $1,343,538,055 in unpaid taxes for 2008.

The agency with the highest percentage of delinquent employees is the National Capital Planning Commission, where 10.42 percent of its 48 employees owe $26,947. Has anyone even ever heard of this little fount of bureaucracy?

Other notable agencies on the list:

• Executive Office of the President (includes the White House): 50 employees owe $812,917;
• U.S. Senate: 231 employees owe $2,469,026;
• U.S. House of Representatives: 447 employees owe $5,809,631;
• U.S. Tax Court: 3 employees owe $39,752;
• Active Duty Military: 27,111 employees $102,474,672.

While some taxpayers may scratch their heads and ask why the federal government doesn’t garnish the wages of these employees, the reality is they can’t. According to federal tax laws, employees are treated the same as any other taxpayer who doesn’t pay their taxes.

The IRS must go through the same procedures and court process with federal employees as it does with John Q. Public. Once a court awards the IRS a judgment or if the employees enter a voluntary payment plan, the IRS can garnish wages. However, federal employees do jeopardize any security clearance they may have if they don’t pay their income taxes.

As for the general public’s voluntary compliance rate, the IRS no longer tracks those numbers, so it is impossible to compare. An IRS report from 2009 showed the total tax gap to be about $345 billion. The tax gap is the difference between what is owed each year and what is paid, and includes income, corporate, employment, estate and excise taxes.

And, the IRS is not always following statutory requirements regarding the timely notification of taxpayers when liens are filed and does not always follow its own regulations for notifying taxpayers’ representatives of the filing of lien notices. …

A Federal tax lien is created on balance-due cases in which the taxpayer has received a notice demanding payment and has neglected or refused to pay. The IRS files a Notice of Federal Tax Lien (lien notice) to protect its claims against taxpayers who owe delinquent taxes. These lien notices establish the IRS’s priority among secured creditors for the taxpayers’ property. The IRS must notify the affected taxpayers in writing, at their last known address, within five business days of the lien filings. However, as noted in previous TIGTA audits, the IRS has not always complied with this statutory requirement and it does not always follow its own internal guidelines for timely notifying taxpayer representatives of the filing of lien notices.

“This is a serious matter,” said J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration in a recent statement. “Because of this problem, some taxpayers’ rights to appeal the lien filings may have been jeopardized, and others may have had their rights violated when the IRS did not notify their representatives of the lien filings,” he added. Nice rhetoric, Russ…

Soooo …. What would the Fed do if several hundred thousand – or even millions – of citizens just up and quit paying their taxes at the same time – say, beginning in 2011? Would the Fed start throwing everyone in jail? Would the Fed start filing tax liens on virtually everyone, forcing the economy into an even deadlier tailspin?

I think it would be interesting to find out, quite frankly. There’s always chatter that certain federal programs can be “de-funded,” effectively shutting them down for lack of funding. How fast could the Fed “de-fund” virtually ALL of the pork and fat programs due to the lack of funding, prioritizing what little money is left in the treasury to only those things the Fed is obligated to provide based on the US Constitution?

Remember – the US Constitution spends a LOT more time laying out all the things the Fed can NOT do than it does laying out all the things the Fed CAN do. We, the People have slowly and ignorantly allowed the Federal Government more and more control over our lives. That requires the Federal Government to take more and more of our money and spend it on all those entitlement programs that in reality, accomplish very little other than instilling generational welfare mindsets into entire families.

I seriously doubt there could be enough of a groundswell to motivate the vast majority of “We, the People” to stop paying taxes. After all, the IRS has done a remarkable job shoving fear down our throats at every opportunity.

But if you do happen to owe any back taxes, and have established communication with some “cube farm” IRS collection personnel who calls you periodically just to let you know they haven’t forgotten about you … ask that person how much THEY owe in back taxes, and if in fact they admit that they do have a delinquent tax debt, suggest that you’ll be more than happy to mirror their attempts to set things right, relatively speaking and all things being equal. If they indicate that they personally do NOT owe any back taxes, then suggest that you’ll be happy to follow  the repayment plans of those in the US Congress …

Next, make sure you cue the cricket chirps for ambient background noise as you await their response…