Posted on 09/10/2010 7:26:53 AM PDT by Qbert
Over the years a lot of suspicion has built up across the country about Washington and its population of opportunistic transients coming to see themselves as a special kind of person, somehow above average working Americans who don't work down in that former swamp.
Well, finally, an end to all those undocumented doubts. Thanks to some diligent digging by the Washington Post, those suspicions can at last be put to rest.
They're correct. Accurate. Dead-on. Laser-guided. On target. Bingo-bango. As clear as it's always seemed to those Americans who don't feel special entitlements and do meet their government obligations.
We now know that federal employees across the nation owe fully $1 billion in back taxes to the Internal Revenue Service.
As in, 1,000 times one million dollars. All this political jabber about giving middle-class ...
... Americans a tax cut. Thousands of feds have been giving themselves one all along -- unofficially. And these tax scofflaws include more than three dozen folks who work for the president with that newly decorated Oval Office.
The Post's T.W. Farnum did some research and found that out of the total sum, just 638 workers on Capitol Hill owe the IRS $9.3 million in back taxes. As in, overdue. The IRS gets stiffed by the legislative body that controls its budget. How Washington works.
[Snip]
Privacy laws prevent release of individual tax delinquents' names. But we do know that as of the end of 2009, 41 people inside Obama's very own White House owe the government they're allegedly running a total of $831,055 in back taxes. That would cover a lot of special chocolate desserts in the White House Mess.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimesblogs.latimes.com ...
I would NOT be at all surprised if a story came out showing that NOT ONE MEMBER of Congress pays taxes!
I would not be surprised AT ALL!
““We talk about welfare and we talk about poverty, but what people really want is fairness. They want people paying their fair share of taxes. They want that money allocated fairly. One of the distressing things about Katrina was the fact that we have not made systematic investments. And the only way we’re going to make it is by making sure that those of us who are fortunate enough to have the money actually make a contribution.”—BO
Heh. Good quote.
In addition, if it’s our ‘patriotic duty’ to pay taxes according to Joe Biden- then a lot of Obama aides aren’t patriots...
SO now the WH is now the greatest employer of tax offenders in both percent of employees and probably dollar amount per employee in the nation! No wonder they need 2000 more IRS agents.
Didn't mean to say, nor did I say, "government contractor".
What I intended was "federal employee".
And, based on my own experience, I realize full well the IRS can be totally screwed up, dead wrong and occasionally vindictive.
But that's a circumstance the citizenry already has to put up with that, apparently, federal employees do not. If the IRS' pig-headedness cost them their job, as it often dearly costs us, they might be less enthusiastic about expanding the size and scope of the federal beast.
Seems a simple matter of equity.
What a great pic, Wobbly Bob!
One source of error is alimony and child support, whether as a payer or payee.
Most of our headquarters accountants took their vacation time to do taxes.
wonder how much Obama owes!
You KNOW he does!
Taxes are for the little people.
Please don’t play an economist, you might hurt yourself.
Your point is not that government employees do not pay taxes (they do), it is that the taxes do not increase real revenues to the government. The taxes paid by government employees just move the money from one pocket of the government to another. The employees DO have their net wages reduced by the amount of income taxes (and other taxes) withheld from their gross wages. To put this another way - the employees have thier gross wages reduced by the taxes withheld, but their is no new revenue to the government.
need to proof before posting.
I am going to make a huge number of people mad across the country.
I am not sure how many of you all realize this, but almost all the states in the US, except Illinois and a few others, charge you sales tax on your shipping and handling fees when you buy from catalogs and internet, assuming that company has physical plant in every state.
So whatever your sales tax rate is, for me is 6%, you get that charged in addition to the purchase price of your item.
That is over $20,000 APIECE!
Uhm, isn't that what I said? You chose to use different words. Call it "taxes, rebate, refund, I don't care. Their wages are dependent on the private sector paying into the Treasury for the funds to be disbursed to the agency they work for. They don’t “pay” taxes. They could have their wages offset by the "taxes" they would be paying and there would still be a net decrease to the Treasury, but only in a slightly smaller amount.
The fact that all employees (private, state, federal, etc.) are forced to go through this exercise every April 15th is just that, an exercise. When I was in the military, I’d have rather had my pay reduced by the amount they were going to “tax” me rather than have to go through that BS of filing a damn return.
In the grand scheme of things, it makes absolutely no difference. It's damn game to make everyone look "equal". "See, us fed employees "pay" taxes just like you private sector folks." Bovine scatology.
My point is that federal employees or any employee dependent on gov’t largesse, do NOT pay taxes. They return a portion of their pay not just to the federal gov’t., but too a much more obnoxious arm of the gov't.
Home Depot several years back refused to accept US Government Visa Cards because that turned them into a government contractor and that in turn required certain performance regarding their employees and management.
The law was straightened out a bit, but if you imagine IRS won't find a way to put the screws to someone because there's this "employee" clause in between you are wrong. They'll squeeze anyway, and dare you to go to court.
My recommendation pertained to only federal employees. If your paycheck comes from the USG..and you're behind in your taxes...you're fired.
I'm willing to concede that the IRS is capable of a mistake. Indeed, they make a godawful number of them. But those mistakes often destroy lives in the private sector.
I'm simply saying that government employees should be subject to the same kind of depredations by the IRS as private sector employees are subject to.
If you get the impression that I distrust and detest any and every instrumentality of our federal government, the answer is "yes".
Did you imagine that only federal employees don't pay taxes on time? That center had a huge number of clients ~ far beyond what you'd believe.
The federal government employees who fall behind in taxes and who also have a security clearance will lose their security clearance and their job on account of nonpayment. A private sector employee will do what?
C'mon, muawiyah, I'm fully aware that federal employees who are in trouble with the tax man are going to be proportionately similar to the general population.
However, those who are employed by the federal government -- or seek employment by same -- should have a special obligation.
If a person is in debt to the IRS (i.e., the taxpayers), he should not be employed by the federal government or be eligible for employment there. In any other circumstance, an employee who was in arrears to his employer would be at risk.
I'm not asking federal employees for anything more than is expected from private sector employees.
The federal government employees who fall behind in taxes and who also have a security clearance will lose their security clearance and their job on account of nonpayment. A private sector employee will do what?
That comes under the heading of "tough", don't you think? If a private sector employee is behind on his credit card payments, the employer is not involved. But if he is behind in his work product (which is the equivalent a federal employee's taxes), his job is at risk.
Like I said earlier, a lot of the nonpayments are associated with alimony and child support situations. What will happen is the ex-spouse (usually the wife) will FILE TAXES INCORRECTLY ~ she'll keep the alimony and the child support, but not claim it as income. The guy goes ahead and files his taxes and takes the deductions for such payments (taxed elsewhere as income to the wife) and next thing you know IRS has a tax lien on his head.
It is up to the taxpayer to get it straightened out.
Then there are the partnerships that go bad.They are a bunch of sociopaths ~ not at all like the USPS guys who collect bills.
I'm not referring to either IRS or USPS employees. My comments refer to "federal employees".
And, yes, there are lots of extraneous reasons for IRS arrears. But they apply equally to private citizens.
However, our employer is not the federal government. And the IRS can make our lives a misery. They should do the same for federal employees.
Or they can adopt a more reasonable approach to all concerned.
The point remains: you're a federal employee, the IRS says you owe back taxes, pay them...or get fired. Either unleash the IRS against federal employees...or restrain it vs private citizens.
It's a matter of equity.
Did someone imagine these are nonpayment situations of log standing?
That can happen (and as I pointed out does because they have the Covington KY center). I don't think it's at all limited to federal employees.
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