Apparently, despite what most of us think, IRS employees are a lot like you and me. This report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration found that agency employees regularly violate official e-mail usage guidelines.
Specifically, the Treasury Inspector’s office discovered inappropriate messages in 74 percent of the office e-mailboxes it reviewed. The bulk of the questionable missives: chain letters, jokes and non-work related pictures.
Sound familiar?
The report got me to thinking about what jokes IRS employees might share. Roth & Company went beyond speculation and came up with a potential e-mail joke that might be making the rounds of IRS in-boxes:
Why did the chicken cross the road? Who cares, if he didn’t have
adequate documentation of the trip’s business purpose under Section 274!
So there we have it. Proof that IRS workers goof off by spamming
their family and friends, just like the rest of us.
Since we’ve all sent or received e-mail at work that our bosses would not approve of, maybe we should cut IRS workers a tiny bit of slack. Or at least
hope they will share some of their better jokes with the rest of us!
Not so funny: In addition to innocuous jokes and the like, the Tax Inspector General
found 20 percent of the IRS’ nontax e-mails contained offensive material and
another 4 percent included sexually oriented content.
Remember, IRS workers: The rest of us just want good, really funny, jokes! None of that other stuff, OK.
The problems with these extraneous mailings are obvious, but the report states them just to make sure everyone is clear.
"Offensive and inappropriate content … can damage employee
relationships and lead to adverse personnel actions or potential
lawsuits. When forwarded to outside recipients, these messages could
also invite high-profile media attention, damaging the IRS’ reputation."
That ship in that last sentence probably has already sailed from most
of our personal perception ports, but it had to be pointed out.
More to the real purpose of the investigation, off-topic e-mail and attachments often pose serious security risks. They could contain malicious
software that could destroy computer data or allow unauthorized
access to sensitive IRS material, including taxpayer information.
An Oregon Department of Revenue employee found out the hard way the truth of this warning. In this case, it wasn’t a questionable e-mail, but rather some decidedly questionable at-work Web surfing that led to the same disastrous results.
During a visit to a porn site, an Oregon tax department employee
taxpayers.
That’s right. A porn site. At work. In the Oregon state tax office.
Maybe he was doing some research on a proposed federal tax of online sex sites. Nah, I really didn’t think so either.
I just hope the picture he just had to have was really, really worth it!
So let this be a lesson to us all. Surf safely, especially at work!
Thanks to TaxProf for the tips.
