Washington — Federal employees, including members of Congress and their staffs, owe the government more than $2.5 billion in taxes, a situation the head of the IRS says could undermine public confidence.
The tax noncompliance rate for federal employees and retirees as of October 2000 was 2.9 percent, compared with 5.7 percent for the U.S. population as a whole, the Internal Revenue Service reported Thursday.
The noncompliance rate includes those who owe taxes but have not entered into an installment agreement with the IRS to pay the bill. It doesn't necessarily mean a person is cheating or evading taxes.
"Tax delinquency among federal employees can damage the credibility of the tax administration system," IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti said in a letter to federal agency heads pointing out their noncompliance rate.
"If the public perceives that federal employees do not maintain the highest level of tax compliance, public confidence in government will suffer," he added.
Improving from last year were members of the House and Senate, their staffs and other legislative branch employees. The House's rate was just over 5 percent, compared with almost 6 percent last year, and 4.4 percent for the Senate, down from nearly 5 percent last year.
The IRS, which has released the data since 1993, is not permitted to disclose names of individual taxpayers.
Agencies with relatively high noncompliance rates include the Inter-American Foundation, concerned with development in Latin America and the Caribbean, at 9.8 percent; and the Appalachian Regional Commission, at just over 9 percent.
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