More than 2,800 Internal Revenue Service employees who recently had been disciplined received performance bonuses totaling more than $2.8 million between Oct. 1, 2010, and Dec. 31, 2012, a government audit found.
The misconduct ranged from failure to pay taxes to misuse of government travel cards, violation of official-conduct standards and fraud, according to the report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The discipline included written reprimands, suspensions and even removal. The oversight agency said some of the conduct issues might have occurred after an employee earned a bonus.
While the IRS doesn’t prohibit bonuses, “providing awards to employees with conduct issues, especially the failure to pay taxes owed to the federal government, appears to be in conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration,” the report said.
For fiscal 2012, the IRS gave bonuses to about two-thirds of its 98,000 employees. Some lawmakers have been critical of the practice.
The report identified nearly 1,200 employees with tax issues or official-conduct violations during the period who received a total of $1.1 million in monetary bonuses, and about 11,000 hours of time off. One employee who was suspended for 10 days in September 2011 received a $1,300 performance award in August 2012, the report said.
The IRS generally doesn’t consider conduct issues when administering bonuses, officials told the watchdog office.
For employees represented by the IRS union, the contract specifically states that disciplinary investigations or actions generally won’t preclude a performance bonus.
I understand HHS people did too.
That’s the union for you. Competence and merit play no part in the giving of raises. Raises are pre-negotiated without the taxpayer being at the table.
Where do the taxpayers go to get the nonpayment of taxes investigated…when can we expect big fines and interest to be collected? The nonpayment of taxes by government employees is a long ongoing story. How many of them now owe $1 million because the fines and penalties are piling up and yet go unpaid? Has an IRS swat team visited them?
Elitists in the government bureaucracy are the oligarchs.
‘Has an IRS swat team visited them?’
Nope because they only “graze” in the wallets of tax payers, and so far they are a benefit to both the leadership in the WH and Senate. and only represent a danger to the afore mentioned ‘DC BLM’ types
(Distorting the Constitution By Leftist Maneuvering) currently in those offices to prevent the Tea party ideology from clearing the path of lies for a better and effective Government. Just by using our Constitution as originally written, to once more build and unite this divided country