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Friday, February 24, 2012

Federal employees owe $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes

(Daniel Acker - BLOOMBERG) Congressional staffers owed about $10.6 million in unpaid taxes in 2010, a slight increase from the previous year and a growing slice of the roughly $1 billion owed by federal and postal workers nationwide.

The figures come as Republican efforts to pass legislation allowing federal agencies to fire tax delinquent federal employees have slowed and as the White House continues to crack down on improper payments made by agencies to delinquent government contractors and federal beneficiaries.

About 98,000 federal, postal and congressional employees owed $1.03 billion in unpaid taxes at the end of fiscal 2010, according to records provided by the Internal Revenue Service. The total number of delinquent employees dipped slightly from 2009, but the amount owed jumped by $32 million.

The figures are “totally unacceptable and disrespectful to hardworking American taxpayers,” said Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). “If you’re on the federal payroll, the very least you can do is pay your taxes.”

Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah). (Image via CBS News) Chaffetz and Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) have authored bills that would force federal agencies, the U.S. Postal Service and congressional offices to fire employees who purposely avoid paying taxes. Exceptions would be made for employees suffering from family turmoil or working to correct significant financial hardship. Chaffetz’s bill was approved by a committee last spring, but Coburn’s still awaits consideration by a Senate panel.

“Nobody’s going to take any joy in firing someone,” Chaffetz said in an interview. “But there’s enough people there that are simply thumbing their nose at American taxpayers that it’s not acceptable.”

(RELATED: Which federal workers owed taxes in 2010?)

But on Capitol Hill, 684 employees, or almost 4 percent, of the 18,000 congressional staffers owed taxes in 2010 – a jump of 46 workers from 2009. Four percent of House staffers owed $8.5 million and 3 percent of Senate employees owed $2.1 million, the IRS said.

At the Executive Office of the President – encompassing 1,800 employees of the West Wing, the Office of Management and Budget, the National Security Council and the Office of U.S. Trade Representative, among others – 36 staffers, or 2 percent, owed a $833,970. The amount owed increased by almost $3,000 from the previous year.

Civilian employees of the Defense Department — the federal government’s largest employer — fared the worst. More than 25,600 workers at the departments of the Army, Air Force and Navy owed a combined $225.7 million, while another 4,600 civilian Pentagon employees owed $39.4 million.

Among uniformed military personnel, 2 percent of active-duty troops and 2 percent of reservists owed a combined $339 million. Three percent of the nation’s 2.1 million retired military personnel owed $1.6 billion, according to IRS records.

Delinquency rates topped 3.8 percent at the Department of Education, where 176 workers owed $4.2 million, and at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, where 391 staffers owed $5 million.

At the U.S. Postal Service, 25,640 employees, or 4 percent of the 667,000-strong workforce, owed $269.6 million. Figures for USPS dipped from 2009, likely due in part to ongoing staff reductions.

More than 2,000 employees, or 3 percent, of the Social Security Administration owe $20.1 million in unpaid taxes. Five staffers at the U.S. Tax Court owed a combined $62,508 and another five at the Office of Government Ethics owed $22,160. Fewer than 1 percent of Treasury Department employees, including the IRS, owed $9.3 million, the agency said.

Just under 2 percent of the 1.8 million federal retirees tracked by the IRS owed $470 million at the end of fiscal 2010.

Overall, American taxpayers owed $114.2 billion in unpaid taxes, interest and penalties at the end of fiscal 2010, according to the IRS.

The agency has tracked tax delinquency among current and retired civilian federal and military personnel since 1993. Annual reports are compiled for agency heads, but the listings are only released publicly by lawmakers or upon request by the news media.

Follow Ed O’Keefe on Twitter: @edatpost

Friday, January 27, 2012

Two D.C. Metro employees charged with stealing thousands in fares

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Two D.C. Metro employees charged with stealing thousands in fares

Graphic: How the alleged scheme worked

Text SizePrintE-mailReprints By Dana Hedgpeth,

Metro employee Horace Dexter McDade typically spent his days traveling from one subway station to another, collecting bills and coins from fare machines.

Often, Metro Transit Police officer John Vincent Haile was nearby, watching over McDade as he made his rounds and trucked the cash to a collection facility in Alexandria.

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But authorities allege that the two men have been taking an unofficial detour, driving to a spot near the Capital Beltway a few hundred yards from the collection building and hiding part of the day’s take. When their shift was done, they would return in their own cars and make off with the money.

On Wednesday night, federal authorities arrested the pair and charged them with conspiring to commit theft. According to an affidavit filed in U.S. District Court, the two have been conspiring since at least 2010.

Surveillance tapes and a confidential source revealed that Haile used bags of the collected coins to buy lottery tickets, according to the affidavit. He collected close to $63,000 in winnings over the past four years.

A federal judge released McDade, 58, of Bowie and Haile, 54, of Woodbridge with no bond after they made their initial appearance Thursday afternoon. A status conference is set for Monday.

McDade told Magistrate Judge T. Rawles Jones Jr. that he plans to hire a lawyer. Haile asked the judge to appoint one for him, according to federal officials. If convicted, McDade and Haile face a maximum penalty of five years in prison.

“They were stealing from the very system they’ve been entrusted to protect, defend and support,” Neil H. MacBride, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia, said.

It was unclear how much money may have been stolen. Prosecutors say that Haile’s bank records show unexplained cash deposits of more than $150,000 since 2008 and that the probe is ongoing.

The pair systematically worked stations on Metro’s rail lines in Maryland, the District and Virginia, according to officials involved in the case who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. Investigators found that Haile would often switch his security assignment with other officers so he could work with McDade.

According to the affidavit, surveillance teams observed McDade and Haile on three days in December and January. The two would ride through a parking lot at a Marriott Courtyard hotel on Eisenhower Avenue to an underpass and hide bags of money they would unload from a Metro van. Later, each man would return separately — Haile in a gray Jaguar and McDade in a green Ford — to get their stashed cash and go their separate ways, according to court records and those involved in the case. Investigators placed Global Positioning System tracking devices on their cars and the Metro van.

The underpass is about a quarter-mile from Metro’s revenue-collection facility and is in the opposite direction of Haile’s route home to Woodbridge, authorities said.

Haile used stolen money to buy Virginia Lottery tickets — sometimes paying with bags of change, authorities say. Between October and December, he used more than $28,000 in coins and cash to purchase tickets, according to the affidavit filed by Metro Transit Police Capt. Kevin P. Gaddis.

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