Treasury Watchdog Agrees to Investigate Status of Tax Cheaters Working for IRS: Ernst

Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration J. Russell George answers questions before the House Oversight Committee In this May 22, 2013, file photo. (J. Scott Applewhite/AP Photo/)

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) said on Sept. 14 that the Treasury inspector general for tax administration (TIGTA) has agreed to update a 2019 investigation that found hundreds of IRS employees with overdue or unpaid tax bills.

Ernst made public an Aug. 30 letter she received from TIGTA J. Russell George agreeing with her request that he open the new probe. A copy of the George letter was made available to The Epoch Times.

“Based on your request, TIGTA is initiating a review to follow up on our previous audit work regarding IRS employee tax compliance and the IRS’s rehiring of former employees with conduct and performance issues,” George told Ernst.

The new review will examine how many current IRS employees “are not fully compliant on their federal tax obligations,” as well as how current employees were rehired after being previously separated or allowed to resign for “failure to fully pay their taxes owed.”

The review will include TIGTA recommendations to remedy “any control weaknesses identified during the review.”

Ernst said her request for the inquiry into IRS employment practices was prompted by TIGTA’s previous audit, which found that the federal tax agency had identified a total of 1,250 employees about whom there were questions over their taxes and whether return errors were innocent mistakes or willful violations.

“TIGTA estimates that IRS management did not properly determine willfulness in 530 (42 percent) of the 1,250 cases closed in FY 2017,” the 2019 report reads. “TIGTA also found that, in seven cases, IRS management did not include required documentation to support the determination of willfulness.”

The report also states that auditors estimated that in 177 additional instances, or 14 percent of the total, IRS managers “did not include [other] required documentation” of the facts in the cases.

Such failures could indicate that IRS officials either imposed discipline without sufficient justification or didn’t obtain all of the relevant facts needed to justify a decision.

Ernst told reporters during a Sept. 14 press conference that “part of what we’re requesting is that the IG [inspector general] really go back and do the audit to find out exactly what repercussions and what penalties were assessed on those employees who had not paid their taxes, and whether those taxes were paid.”

She decried the possibility that since the 2019 review the IRS has continued rehiring former employees with serious tax problems.

“For heaven’s sake, let’s stop rehiring people who willfully don’t pay their taxes,” Ernst said.

The new review of IRS employment practices comes amid continuing controversy over President Joe Biden’s plan under the recently enacted Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 to hire 87,000 new IRS agents, thus doubling the agency’s workforce.

It would be better for the federal tax code to be made easier to understand, the Iowa Republican told reporters.

“We really need to simplify the tax code and move forward with that. If we have IRS employees who don’t know how to file their own tax returns, you know, they are supposed to be the experts on this,” Ernst said. “If they can’t do it right, then how can we expect an everyday Iowan or American to do the right thing as well?

“So let’s simplify it. This is going to take an immense overhaul. I don’t know how soon we get there, but I do think there are a number of things we can do much, much better.”

Regarding the Biden plan to double the size of the IRS workforce, she said, “Nobody in Iowa is demanding more IRS tax agents. Republicans will be auditing the IRS.”

The IRS is also the focus of controversy as a result of the leak or hack last year of hundreds of confidential tax returns filed by prominent upper-income individuals to ProPublica, an investigative media website that has since published a series of stories based on the documents.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa), Ernst’s Senate Republican colleague from Iowa, demanded during a Sept. 12 floor speech to know what, if anything, has been learned by federal officials at the Department of Treasury, IRS, and Department of Justice regarding the leak.

Spokesmen for those agencies either didn’t respond to The Epoch Times’ request for comment on Grassley’s demand or declined to confirm or deny any details of an investigation into how the documents given to ProPublica were obtained.

It’s a federal crime to provide unauthorized individuals with federal tax returns, although it isn’t illegal for media outlets to publish stories based on such documents when they’re received.

Concerns about IRS mismanagement and abuse first made national news after it was learned that the tax agency had subjected hundreds of conservative, evangelical, and Tea Party nonprofit applicants to excessive delays and documentation during the 2010 and 2012 elections.

A 2013 study by scholars at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and Stockholm University estimated that the IRS abuses aimed at the Tea Party groups had cost Republicans millions of votes that could have made Mitt Romney the winner of the 2012 presidential contest rather than then-President Barack Obama.

“The data show that had the Tea Party groups continued to grow at the pace seen in 2009 and 2010, and had their effect on the 2012 vote been similar to that seen in 2010, they would have brought the Republican Party as many as 5–8.5 million votes compared to Obama’s victory margin of 5 million,” the AEI study concluded.

No IRS employee was ever disciplined as a result of the Tea Party scandal.