As he continues his push to clean up alleged corruption within the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS) introduced more legislation directed at improper IRS practices on Thursday.
The Federal Employee Tax Accountability Act, the second one from Roberts’ desk in a week related to the agency, would block federal employees who are delinquent on their taxes from receiving any performance-related incentive awards. It comes in response to the recent findings that many IRS employees who have outstanding personal tax debt were given inappropriate performance bonuses.
“Let me make it perfectly clear,” Roberts stated. “Employees who deliberately ignore the process and procedures for fulfilling their tax obligations must be held accountable. When these public employees serve at the IRS, their lack of willingness to pay their tax obligations calls into question the integrity of the agency. It’s really unconscionable that there are tax delinquents working as tax collectors.”
The United States Treasury Department Inspector General’s office reported that in 2014 bonuses were awarded to IRS personnel who personally violated tax laws or were documented to have violated employee policy.
According to the report, a total of nearly $3 million was awarded to various staff members at the IRS. Based on the documentation, that included about $1.5 million in awards to employees with violations on record.
Additionally, awards were given to nearly 70 percent of the entire IRS staff, including several members who had been cited for drug use, making violent threats, unemployment insurance fraud and misuse of government credit cards.
“We should apply this standard across the federal government,” Roberts added. “As of September 2013, federal employees were delinquent on $3.4 billion in taxes. This cannot be tolerated.”
Roberts proposed legislation would mandate that all federal employees must be paid up on their federal income taxes. It would also prohibit any federal personnel that are delinquent on their federal taxes from being offered any bonus or cash award.
Earlier last week, Roberts partnered with Sen. Jeff Flake (R-AZ), and Reps. Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Peter Roskam (R-IL) to introduce the Stop Targeting of Political Beliefs by the IRS Act.