The IRS human capital officer should implement a policy that requires management to consider conduct issues resulting in disciplinary action before giving out performance and other kinds of awards to employees, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has said.
It said that while the IRS awards program complies with federal regulations, some employees with tax and conduct issues received awards last year. (As has been widely reported, over 1,100 IRS employees out of tax compliance received over $1 million in cash and over 10,000 hours in time-off awards.)
J. Russell George, Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, said the awards were not prohibited, but acknowledged that “providing awards to employees who have been disciplined for failing to pay federal taxes appears to create a conflict with the IRS’s charge of ensuring the integrity of the system of tax administration.”
TIGTA did the audit under new guidelines requiring it to evaluate the agency’s spending on rewards. For fiscal 2011, the IRS awarded almost $92 million in cash and almost 520,000 hours of time off to 70,500 of its approximately 104,400 employees. In 2012 those levels dropped to $86 million in cash and almost 490,000 hours of time off to 67,870 of its approximately 98,000 employees.
