Notice that none of them faced criminal prosecution or jail time...but try the same thing and see if you get the same treatment. It pays to be a member of the "government insider club"...
GAO Report: Tax Non-Compliance on the Rise Among IRS Workers!
Report by: Ken Rankin - October 15th, 2004 WebCPA
Washington (Oct. 15, 2004) - New data suggesting that income tax noncompliance is on the rise among the Internal Revenue Service's own employees is causing some hand-wringing among members of an IRS task force formed to address the problem.
A report from that task force outlining plans to "more effectively educate [IRS] employees about their responsibilities to comply with the federal tax law" is expected next month.
Behind the agency's planned civics lesson for tax service personnel: a disturbing increase in the number of IRS employees who either don't pay their taxes, don't file returns, or commit other tax law violations.
Although Section 1203 of the IRS Restructuring and Reform Act of 1998 requires that IRS personnel be fired for failing to file a tax return, the number of tax service employees accused of "noncompliance with tax filing and reporting laws steadily increased almost every year since" that law was enacted, investigators from the Government Accountability Office said in a recent report to Congress.
Since July 1998, nearly 3,000 investigations into alleged tax noncompliance by IRS employees have been completed, and charges were substantiated against 667 individuals, the GAO said. Despite the Section 1203 penalties, only 126 of these tax service employees were fired because of their violations, according to the investigators. Almost half (44.2 percent) were allowed to remain on the job due to "penalty mitigation," and the rest either resigned, retired or left the agency for other reasons.
Top tax service officials may be reluctant to discharge employees for non-filing and other tax related violations for fear of discouraging field personnel from taking aggressive enforcement actions against taxpayers.
Despite evidence that noncompliance among their own employees is becoming a more serious problem, IRS officials have stated "that they still believe that Section 1203 can have a chilling effect on enforcement," the GAO said.
Over the next few weeks, the IRS plans to conduct a new survey of agency enforcement employees to determine whether the threat of Section 1203 sanctions has affected their willingness to undertake tax enforcement actions. That survey, which will focus on IRS personnel who contact small business and self-employed taxpayers about their tax compliance, is expected to be completed before the end of this year, the GAO told Congress.
http://www.webcpa.com/article.cfm?articleid=7812
And here's another agent caught trying to frame a Senator and dealing cocaine:
Even the Powerful Can Be Victims of Abuse
(Editor's Note: The following is the 46th of 100 stories regarding government regulation from the book Shattered Dreams, written by the National Center for Public Policy Research. CNSNews.com will publish an additional story each day.)
"IRS management does what it wants, to whom it wants, when it wants, how it wants with almost complete immunity," retired Internal Revenue Service official Tommy Henderson told the U.S. Senate Finance Committee.
One of Henderson's agents attempted to frame former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Howard Baker, former U.S. Representative James H. Quillen and Tennessee prosecutor David Crockett on money-laundering and bribery charges, apparently in an attempt to promote his own career. When Henderson attempted to correct the abuse, it was Henderson, not the agent, who lost his job.
"What I had uncovered was an attempt to create an unfounded criminal investigation on two national political figures for no reason other than to redeem this agent's own career and ingratiate himself with his supervisors," Henderson testified. Henderson attempted to reign in the rogue agent by taking away his gun and his credentials, but he failed. The agent, Henderson told the committee, had a friend in IRS upper management.
In fact, Henderson was told that management had lost confidence in him. He believed that if he did not resign, he would be fired. Henderson resigned. "I had violated an unwritten law. I had exposed the illegal actions of another agent," Henderson testified.
Eventually, the agent was fired - but not for illegal actions within in the IRS. He was arrested on cocaine charges and subsequently fired because the arrest was public knowledge.
Sources: Testimony of Tommy Henderson to the Senate Finance Committee, the Washington Post
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp...030513a .html
