Starving the Hand that Feeds Them

Radley Balko | September 15, 2008

Federal News Radio reports that more than a half million federal employees owe some $3.59 billion in federal income taxes.  The biggest scofflaws are the Post Office (in raw numbers) and the Government Printing Office (by percentage).  The list also includes the Executive Office of the President (where 58 employees owe $320,000), and 1,000 staffers on Capitol Hill.

I was surprised to learn that except for the IRS, the federal government does not consider failure to pay federal taxes a firing offense.  Surprised, that is, until I remembered that when you're a federal employee, virtually nothing is actually a firing offense.

In the past, the report has included data from the IRS the percentage of tax cheats in the general population, but the IRS apparently stopped making that information available a couple of years ago.