The IRS had 27 employees who traveled 125 business days or more in fiscal 2015, at a total cost of more than $1.4 million, according to a report by Senate Finance Committee Republicans.
In a closer look at 15 of those employees it found “several examples of excessive travel costs including specific instances in which employees failed to seek affordable housing accommodations and instead opted for high-end hotels for extended periods of time during official business travel,” the committee said.
Such expenses included routinely using more expensive high-speed trains, use of private drivers and rentals of luxury apartments, it said.
That slightly above half of that travel was to the Washington, D.C. area shows that “some executives at the IRS are still not geographically located where their primary job duties are,” it added.
“The IRS has routinely failed to take allowable steps to reduce its travel expenditures. The lack of effort by IRS employees to exercise prudence and economy when utilizing taxpayer funds is concerning, and more importantly, a direct apparent violation of the FTR,” committee chairman Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said in a letter to the agency.
