Capitol Hill Employees Owed 9.3 Million Dollars in Back Taxes!

Excerpts from an article by W.W. Farnam as it appeared in The Washington Post, September 9th, 2010


A link to Federal Staffers owing back taxes appears at the end of this post.


Nationwide, federal employees owed over a billion dollars in back taxes at the end of 2009. Capitol Hill employees made up 9.3 million of that amount. And 41 employees at the Executive Office of the President owed $831,000 altogether .


... The debt among Hill employees has risen at
a faster rate than the overall tax debt on the government's books, according to Internal Revenue Service data. It comes at a time when some Republican members are pushing for the firings of government workers who owe the IRS and President Obama has urged a crackdown on delinquent government contractors.


... The average unpaid tax bill is $12,787 among the Senate's delinquent taxpayers and $15,498 among those working in the House.


IRS debt among government workers has surfaced repeatedly as a political issue over the years, most recently when Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) introduced legislation this year to fire federal workers who owe back taxes unless they have entered into a payment plan. Eight Republicans co-sponsored the bill. No Democrats have signed on, and some have said firings would reduce the government's prospects of being paid.



Some tax experts and watchdog groups say that Capitol Hill employees have an added obligation to settle IRS debts.

"Congress and their staff - because they are the people who write the tax laws and because they work for the public - have to be held to a higher standard," Steve Ellis, vice president of the watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense, said when told of the IRS numbers.
"These are hard times, but they are on the government payroll," said Mortimer Caplin, an IRS commissioner for presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson and a founding partner of the Caplin & Drysdale law firm. "The idea of paying taxes is kind of fundamental to a sound democracy, and they certainly have a special obligation in that regard."

Aides to Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) declined to comment, and aides to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) did not respond to a request for comment.

The Staffers Who Owe the IRS: Interactive Table
An interactive table that shows federal workers who owed money to the Internal Revenue Service in 2009