Federal Employees Don’t Like Paying Taxes Either

Many of us resent paying taxes. The money extracted from us goes to fund an always authoritarian and intrusive institution that’s frequently unaccountable and arbitrary when it’s not outright malicious. But who knew that even federal employees resent supporting the government? A recent report finds a rising number of federal employees are delinquent on their taxes. That’s quite an eye-opener at a time when the Internal Revenue Service has been empowered to tighten the squeeze on ordinary Americans.

Even Feds Hate Taxes

“Although the Federal civilian workforce increased by 6 percent between FYs 2015 and 2021, there was a 32 percent increase in the number of delinquent Federal civilian taxpayers during the same period,” finds the U.S. Treasury’s Inspector General for Tax Administration (TIGTA) in a report published March 6. “Delinquencies include both balance dues and unfiled returns.”

As of 2021, this tallies up to just shy of 5 percent of the federal workforce owing back taxes. “In FY 2021, 149,000 Federal civilian employees owed $1.5 billion in unpaid taxes.” Roughly 42,000 federal civilian employees didn’t even file tax returns for multiple years.

The problem is sufficiently pervasive that the IRS has a program to address it: the Federal Employee/Retiree Delinquency Initiative (FERDI). Given that FERDI has been in place since 1993 and the ranks of government workers collecting paychecks funded by taxes they’re not paying themselves is rising fast, the program doesn’t seem very effective.

The report helpfully breaks out the top ten agencies with the highest number of repeat civilian nonfilers. Those are the U.S. Postal Service with 9,056, the Department of Veterans Affairs with 6,586, the Department of the Army with 4,459, the Department of the Navy with 3,411, the Department of the Air Force with 2,725, the Department of Defense with 2,373, the Department of Agriculture with 1,992, the Department of Homeland Security with 1,936, the Department of Health and Human Services with 1,417, and the Social Security Administration with 953.

“Of the top 10, the U.S. Postal Service, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Department of the Army had the highest rates of repeat nonfilers.”

But what of the tax agency itself? While they’re mugging the public, are IRS agents skating on their own tax bills?

The IRS Has Its Own Problems

“Our analysis found that the IRS workforce consistently achieves the lowest tax delinquency rate in the Federal Government,” boasts TIGTA. “According to the FY 2021 FERDI Annual R