The IRS continues to pay awards to employees with disciplinary and tax compliance problems, an IG report has said, despite a 2015 law prohibiting the agency from paying awards to such employees that was enacted after an earlier IG report pointed out the issue.
The IRS’s screening procedures now in place prevented more than 1,000 employees with conduct and tax compliance issues from receiving awards over the 15 months through year-end 2016, it said, although they still allowed payments to 26 employees with personal tax issues including willful tax noncompliance.
Further, the agency in that time issued more than $1.7 million in awards to nearly 2,000 employees who had a disciplinary or adverse action during the 12 months prior to receiving their award.
“Some of these employees had serious misconduct, such as unauthorized access to tax return information, substance abuse, and sexual misconduct,” the IG said. In addition, the IRS screening processes do not look for or identify employees with tax compliance issues unless those issues have resulted in disciplinary action, it said.
Agency management agreed with recommendations that it expand misconduct screening to consider employees with any level of disciplinary action prior to issuing awards, examine the federal tax compliance status of all employees before issuing awards, and comply with reporting requirements.
