The IRS’s purchase card program controls are “generally effective” and the violations of agency rules identified by the IRS were “minimal and generally for nominal amounts,” an IG audit has found.
Over the six-month period ending in March the IRS identified only six instances of confirmed purchase card misuse for unauthorized items, totaling only $317, while the auditors identified two more, totaling only $216.
However, it added that the IRS credit card services branch also identified 37 purchase card transactions totaling more than $60,000 that did not comply with OMB guidance. Among them, the most common issue was making purchases without prior approval, followed by split purchases–dividing a procurement into parts in order to keep each transaction under thresholds requiring more formal procurement procedures.
It also identified instances in which purchases were made for valid business needs, such as for cables and other computer-related items, but the cardholder did not have authority to purchase those particular items.
