Last week I wrote a post about federal workers and taxes. There I argued that government workers and contractors do not pay taxes. I wrote in part:
It truly does amaze me that so many people think that government workers pay taxes. If you were to ask anyone whether government workers pay taxes, I suspect that very likely response will be, "Well, their pay stub shows that taxes were taken out of their base salary, ergo, they pay taxes." Government workers and contractors do not pay taxes, they are paid out of taxes. The only reason government workers "appear" to pay taxes is due to the accounting trick in their pay stubs.
Today I found this story in The Washington Post that reported that Capitol Hill employees owe $9.3 million in back taxes. Apparently federal workers owe almost $1 billion in taxes according to this report. That the article says federal workers owes taxes demonstrates that mainstream journalists are easily fooled. But what about the Post's readers? Are they also just as easily duped? Well, yes. Here are some of the comments I found:
You know all the rest of us have to pay our taxes. There just is no excuse for any of these people to not pay their taxes. I find this disgraceful. These people are no better than crooks. I am stunned they still have government jobs. Fire them immediately.
amazing that the tax parasites dodge even the minimal responsibility to pay some of the "earnings" back into the federal revenue quagmire. no doubt no one will be fired as greater dc is the ultimate nanny state of lifetime "employment" irrespective of achievement or merit. as mere peons my wife and i both took second jobs to repay tax judgements in a timely manner-we would should just taken federal jobs it appears.
How does this happen? Do they not withhold taxes? As a regular working stiff, I couldn't really get delinquent if I wanted to, how does this come about for these people anyway?
I don't understand how this could be allowed to happen. It's absolutely disgraceful. Why can't salaries be garnisheed? Is it any wonder why Americans have absolutely no respect for a Secretary of the Treasury who was a tax cheat/evader??? This revelation simply makes the situation worse. Both parties should be ashamed!
Nowhere does it give any excuse to the IRS for not putting a lien on their paychecks. The IRS is responsible for collecting taxes. If they are not doing there job, we should find out why. Have they been told to back off by politicians or are they just whining about people not paying? Ever have YOUR pay docked by the IRS...they do it all the time to common folks even when they are the ones making the error. Maybe we should all stop paying taxes this year. $103 billion in outstanding government worker taxes is a LOT of money!!!
i love it. stealing from the taxpayers twice-on the front end and then on the back end. obviously these people should be terminated post haste. is it to much to assume that their paychecks are being garnished by the irs like regular citizens or do they get to just smile, coast and double dip at the taxpayer funded trough! this is more reprehensible than a lame duck congressman going on an overseas junket "to learn more about the challenge america faces overseas" when people in his district did not trust him to deal with the problems we face at home.
Two points: 1) Remember that the intelligence agencies aren't even included in this list. 2) Why should Federal Workers be held to a higher standard when they are experiencing the same downtrodden economy as everyone else? Its not like they are immune from the difficulties others are having just because they have job security in government.
I'm not defending them, they should pay. But the idiot broad statements people make in comments here reveal an underlying contempt that biases your focus against Federallies and ignores them as a small sub-component of the majority of tax evaders you call your neighbors and friends, mostly private citizens.Federal employees should be treated by the IRS in the same manner it does with any other deadbeat. The average taxpayer who owes is nearly hounded to death by the IRS bloodhounds. What makes government employees different?
You can read more comments here (you may have to register). There is a lot of anger and a lot of people believe that this is unfair. Some blame the Democrats, some blame the Republicans. Most have the same complaint: "We have to pay taxes so why don't government officials?" But the vast majority of the commenters do not realize the irrefutable fact that government workers do not pay taxes.
I concluded my previous post saying:
But I can't fault governments for using this trick. If a government worker's pay check clearly reflected the fact that he does not pay taxes, the vast majority of Americans might realize that there are in fact two classes of people in this country: the tax payers and tax consumers. And the tax payers might rise up against their exploiters. However, this accounting trick appears to be quite efficacious at blurring the line between tax payer and tax consumer because so many tax payers believe that they are sharing the burden of government with tax consumers.
The vast majority of comments I read appear to prove me correct. While many people are angry, they still believe that the same rules that apply to them also apply to government workers. It is not clear to them that they are the exploited class. They believe that we are all in this together and that the government workers who do not pay their taxes are not sharing the burden of government with them. It really is amazing and depressing to see libertarian class analysis work itself out in the real world.
However, I did find this comment by nil_fed:
Government tools don't pay taxes silly.
Sounds like someone read my post on this issue.
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