Fed workers owe $3.5 billion in back taxes

www.wnd.com1 hour ago

The Internal Revenue Service

The combined unpaid tax amount for federal workers and retirees for 2014 surpasses $3.5 billion, the Internal Revenue Service reported.

The figure is spread among 305,000 federal employees and retirees, the Associated Press reported. And as bad as that back tax amount sounds, it still beats the previous year’s amount.

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The current delinquency rate is 3.1 percent of 9.8 million federal workers; in 2013, the delinquency rate stood at 3.3 percent.

Department of Housing and Urban Development employees are the worst offenders, with a delinquence rate of 4.7 percent. By contrast, those at the Treasury Department touted the least number of delinquencies, with a rate of 1.2 percent, AP reported.

The report comes as the House Oversight Committee is preparing Wednesday to take up a bill that would label those with “seriously delinquent tax debt[s]” ineligible for employment with the federal government.

The IRS doesn’t have current delinquency figures for those outside the federal workforce. In past years, however, the unpaid tax rate for members of the general public stood between 8 percent and 9 percent.

And House and Senate members?

Roughly 5 percent in the House owe taxes; another 3.5 percent in the Senate face a similar situation, AP reported.