3,700 Tax Cheats Got $24 Billion From "Stimulus"

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Why am I not surprised?

news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110523/ap_on_re_us/us_stimulus_tax_cheats

The Government Accountability Office, in a report being released Tuesday, said at least 3,700 government contractors and nonprofit organizations that received more than $24 billion from the stimulus effort owed $757 million in back taxes as of Sept. 30, 2009, the end of the budget year.

The report said the tax delinquents accounted for nearly 6 percent of the 63,000 contractors and grantees examined and cautioned that the real number might be higher because the known tax debt does not measure such factors as income underreporting.

Among the examples was an engineering firm that received a $100,000 stimulus act contract but owed $6 million in taxes. The IRS called it "an extreme case of noncompliance." A social services nonprofit that received more than $1 million in stimulus funds owed taxes of $2 million

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

I wonder if they will have to pay it back?

[Deleted]

I heard about this...seems to me being past due on money owed gov't should eliminate one as qualifying for more gov't money. I've known 2 people that were wiped out by the IRS, and no one gave them money to try to dig out. They were just individuals, though, of no importance to anyone except their own families.

[marshabar1]

At least 3,700 recipients of federal stimulus funds owe more than $750 million in federal taxes, according to a new study from the Government Accountability Office.

GAO released the report (pdf) today, in response to a request from several Senate committees. Of the $757 million owed, $417 million is in corporate income taxes and $207 million is in payroll taxes. The remaining $133 million included unpaid excise and unemployment taxes.

But those numbers are not all-inclusive, wrote Gregory Kutz, director of GAO's Forensic Audits and Investigative Service . The IRS database does not include recipients who have not filed tax returns, and GAO included only stimulus recipients who have complied with the reporting requirements in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The report is the first to look at the tax records of stimulus recipients. The Recovery Act appropriated $275 billion for federal contracts, grants and loans. About $191 billion of that has been paid out, and $24 billion went to recipients who owe taxes, according to the GAO report.

But the act does not require contractors to be paid up, and federal agencies are prohibited from checking their records. GAO alone has the authority to match tax records with recipient reporting.

The Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, which was created to prevent Recovery Act fraud, is lobbying for the authority to do the same. In a written response to the GAO report, RAT accountability director John Higgins lamented the fact that the board "does not have access to IRS tax information -- even where such information relates to recipients of Recovery Act funds."

GAO's report highlights a larger problem, he wrote, that could be mitigated through further analysis of tax records.

www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/05/24/24greenwire-gao-report-3700-stimulus-fund-recipients-owe-m-37870.html?pagewanted=print

What a snake pit Washington is.

[Deleted]

At least 3,700 recipients of federal stimulus funds owe more than $750 million in federal taxes, according to a new study from the Government Accountability Office.

Boy the government did a GREAT job with those stimulus checks!! We just need to keep them out there working away.......I know, let's let them take care of our Health Care. Yea, that's the ticket! More responsibility.

[Deleted]

I know a couple of Democrats that will be happy though. It's bound to create government jobs....You know. Hire guys to send checks out & then hire more guys to try to get the money back. Job creation at it's best. ;D

[❤ mollymouser ❤]

NEW THREAD MERGED INTO OLD + BUMPING TO THE TOP

[marshabar1]

Congress’s chief scorekeeper said Wednesday that the price tag on President Obama’s stimulus law has risen once again, this time to $830 billion — or more than $40 billion more than first projected.

More than two years after it passed, meanwhile, the Recovery Act’s effect on jobs continues to wane, according to the Congressional Budget Office, which said the massive spending program accounted for between 1.2 million and 3.3 million jobs in the period from January to March of this year.

That improved the unemployment rate by between 0.6 percent and 1.6 percent, compared to where it would have been without the federal spending.

In a new report analyzing the stimulus, CBO analysts said about 70 percent of the package’s spending was paid out by Sept. 30 of last year, meeting the president’s revised goal.

And the CBO said the spending was responsible for boosting the economy by between 1.1 percent and 3.1 percent in the first three months of 2011.

When it passed, the stimulus was expected to cost $787 billion over 10 years, with most of that being front-loaded. But the CBO has regularly adjusted that cost — usually upward — and now says the 10-year price tag will be $830 billion. That’s a $9 billion jump from the last estimate in February.

www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/may/25/stimulus-price-tag-once-again-lurches-higher/

It's only money. . .

Very confused about photos. Guess I'll go read to COC again.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

Well in PBP's perfect world there'd be no "stimulus" handouts, so we wouldn't have to have a whole screening process, I'd just screen EVERYONE out and be done with it.

[AgeOfEnlightenmentSCP]

May 25, 2011 13:13:10 GMT -5 ❤ mollymouser ❤ said:

I wonder if they will have to pay it back?

[❤ mollymouser ❤]