Government workers with the biggest unpaid tax bills? Former employees

Inquiring minds want to know just which federal employees aren't paying their taxes. As I mentioned yesterday, one way of parsing the IRS debt numbers revealed that Capitol Hill workers top the unpaid tax list.

But as the old saying about figures and liars (c'mon; even though I loved my years in the nation's capital, you knew I had to use that phrase in talking about Washington, D.C.!), there are many ways to crunch numbers.

The Washington Post's Post Politics feature provides a breakout of federal workers — by category, not name — who owed money to the IRS in 2009.

Leading in unpaid taxes are military retirees, who owe a collective total of more than $1.5 billion. The exact amount is $1,525,688,378.

Federal civilian retirees are a distant second in the tax debt department with $454,938,448 overdue at the IRS.

Those two retiree sectors also led in the number of folks who haven't paid all their taxes. There are 84,034 military pensioners and 40,000 civilian retirees who still owe federal tax money.

Kind of makes the Senate employees' $2,774,836 and the House staffers' $6,524,892 tax debts look paltry. I said "kind of."

Forty-one folks working in the Executive Office of the President owe Uncle Sam a total of $831,055.

And no department is safe.

I love that 66 employees of the Government Accountability Office are not accountable for a combined tax debt of $704,485.

Check out the Post's interactive tax debtor table. You can sort by department/debtor group, number of nonpayers and total amount of money owed the IRS.

Related
posts:

• Capitol Hill workers top unpaid tax list
• Effort to fire federal tax cheats on hold
  
• Federal workers owe IRS $3 billion
• Who owes the IRS millions? Uncle Sam
• Rangel resigns Ways and Means post
• Geithner — and TurboTax — grilled again
• Geithner's apology works
• Tax trouble for another federal appointee
• Daschle's turn to apologize
• Performance officer brings IRS skills … and a nanny tax past
• Tax troubles end Daschle, Killefer hopes
• More Rangel wrangling and W&M ghosts
  
• Tax time is tax-cheating time 

Want to tell your friends about this
blog post? Click the Tweet
This or Digg This buttons below or use the
Share
This icon to spread the word via e-mail, Facebook and
other popular applications. Thanks!